Critique Request: The Fight in the Dog

Well, Hello again Madoka Mori. Long time no see. I read this story when it first came out and thought it was a top contender for the number one slot in that competition. I'm shocked to find out it didn't place... You have asked for critique of a piece, which is an essential part of the comment section for any story--how otherwise are we to become better writers? I'll do my best because you leave little room for critique with the quality of your work. The voice of your character is excellent. It IS evenly applied, almost too evenly, but I'll get to that in a minute. I didn't feel that your characterization lacked, and that was down solely to the richness of your character's voice. Her stream of consciousness revealed a great deal about her. The bold text. As I began reading, the bit of foreshadowing about letting the rage out just before you switched over to the bold text didn't do the job as well as you may have intended. I thought the battle scene was being described boldly (sorry) and it felt gimmicky to me. I thought you were missing an opportunity to highlight the schism in your character by assigning the bold text to the rage in her. It wasn't until I got to the part where Akari exclaimed that this was SO MUCH FUN that I realized that was exactly what you were doing. Using bold text to separate the "normal" Akari, if there is such a person, from Akari, the murder mote and gleeful killer, is a great idea. It worked incredibly well at the end of the bold passage, where you switched in and out between bold and regular text, highlighting that the murder mote doesn't like to go back in the box. Perhaps during those bold passages, creating a greater disparity between the two voices would help increase narrative tension rather than relying more on the bold text to let us know who is talking. Still, that depends on where you want her to go and how deep the box needs to be to separate the two. Commas. I throw them around like chicken feed on a Sunday morning, but you do you, as someone else has commented. The writing does not suffer from the lack of them. Except in one place. To my mind, When Akari has her fist down the merc's gullet, she observes that the sensation is "better than sex it was amazing." Some pause there, whether commas (or even longer, an m dash or ellipses), could have drawn that moment out a little bit more and dialed in on how murdery Akari gets when she lets her little fren' out of its box; how much she enjoys gruesome slaughter. As written, it was a little flat. That's really all I have. Loved this story. Your battle scenes are top-notch, and they are notoriously difficult to write. The last long-form I wrote was co-authoring my wife's memoirs; we did that straight through. It all depends on your personal narrative process, but writing the story linearly does help to keep from having to shoehorn disparate parts together.

The run-on sentence/paragraph: "Then if by a million-to-one chance, literally one million to one, this imaginary example person is plucked from their introspective drift before their air runs out or they descend too far into the Earth's gravity well by a passing cargo hauler, so that they feel suddenly like they’ve been brought back to the world of the living to commit some grand scheme of unfinished business like a ghost or that crow guy from the old movie, well." works for me, but the separation of "plucked from their introspective drift" from "passing cargo hauler" by two phrases makes it a little difficult to follow. In the paragraph beginning, "His eyes go wide...," you have the compound sentence (triple) "I’ve never felt such a deep connection with another person before it’s more intimate than sex it’s amazing" without the commas you so detest. In this case it makes it very difficult to read the first time through. I wouldn't use commas. I'd use periods. "I’ve never felt such a deep connection with another person before. It’s more intimate than sex. It’s amazing." Alternatively, I like using a long dash between the second & third sentences: "It’s more intimate than sex--it’s amazing." I still have the same question about the "gene-hacked fungus" "biohazard" becoming inert so quickly. As to the questions you raise: I thoroughly enjoy the voice of your main character by which you've managed to flesh out her personality quite thoroughly already. The bold face for the adrenaline-laced fight sequences works very well for me. As I've already indicated, I think you've done an extremely good job of developing her character already in this first chapter. I feel I have a pretty good sense of who she is. Except for the comment I made above, my high school debate coach would tell you not to listen to me on the issue of commas, lol. While every comma I used in papers I wrote for him was technically correct, they rendered my writing almost unreadable. I use was too many & have to work hard at cutting them out. I've only done long form once & it was decades ago (& not very good). I did write it straight through without jumping around, edited repeatedly all the way through, & knew both how it began & how it ended (both of which were essentially the same) before I wrote a single word. Other than my tendency to edit throughout the process, I wouldn't say that's how I would do it anymore.

Still grinning about what you said with commas. I enjoyed reading this. You motivate you do you do you do! (Notice no commas!) Novel eh? Hmmm. *Naughty grammar thoughts...* Thanks for sharing Madoka!

I may give it a look...even if you are a comma chameleon (they come and go; they come and go...oho). 😉

I will be back to offer some critique after reading the piece, but I just want to say... Crack Fox doesn't get used enough, and for his inclusion THANK YOU 😁

Like the bold or embolden type. I haven't attempted a long story or novel. When it comes to creating, you can start from the ending. You know how the story ends Then, you build the story. In other words, a story can grow from the middle, the end, or the beginning. Wishing you the best!!!💕