A Question of Fate Options

[ThatSkyrimGuy]

Brief Intro By The Author

A Question of Fate would be the title of my piece.

I have been back and forth about trying to start and post a fan fic piece. The idea has always intrigued me, but I never considered myself to be a writer, let alone a good writer. I have read a sampling of some of the works that are posted on this site, and quite frankly, it is intimidating. The material is amazing. I must say say that despite the intimidation, it is also inspiring. So I am willing to throw caution to the wind and go for it. There are a few provisos. I work for a living. Often times, the hours I work are long. There may be periods of dormancy in this thread. I will apologize in advance for that. Life outside the internet does have it's restrictions. Also, I am sure that there is an unspoken etiquette that states, "You read mine and comment, and I shall do the same". This is also where I could run into trouble, for the same reasons that there may be dormant periods in this thread. There are stories on this site that I could never hope to read all the way through, with triple digit page counts, while I try to keep posting my own story and work through everyday life. So, with all that being said, I will wait to start posting chapters until I get a sense of what the audience demands. Please let me know if I should start posting a fan fic piece, based on what you have just read.

Thanks.

EDIT - This was originally posted in "General Discussion"

This post has been edited by ThatSkyrimGuy: May 4 2013, 04:41 AM

[Acadian]

I follow numerous stories and quite appreciate a tiny ‘In our last episode. . . .’ summary of a sentence or so to get snapped right in as I start to read a new episode. I noted that you sort of did this at the beginning of Chapter 4 and it was particularly helpful to me in this case as I have ‘offline’ for about a week. I encourage to you to fully adopt and maintain this wonderful courtesy for your readers. You’ll notice that several writers do so in their own fiction threads.

Let me also say how much I appreciate (as I’m sure mALX and SubRosa do) your reading and commenting on each or our sagas in the ‘Commentasaurus’ thread. It is gratifying to hear your wonderfully welcome observations!

‘The sound of tumblers falling into place and a slightly squeaky hinge proclaimed success. There was a thunderous crash somewhere on a floor above us, proclaiming the keep was no longer undamaged.’ -- I quote this for two reasons. Firstly, I love your use of sound to obliquely, but clearly tell us, what is happening here – wonderfully done! Secondly, the word ‘proclaim’ is rather distinctive – enough so that when used twice in close proximity it detracts from the stellar quality of this passage. Alternatives for one of the ‘proclaim’ uses might be variations of announce, attest or perhaps declare.

We don’t see a lot of axe fighting descriptions in fanfics here and I really liked your description of Valrimor’s use of one that favored finesse and momentum over brute strength.

And we see Val is quite the skilled thief with a lockpick. Woot! Wine, a bow and plenty of arrows! What else could a wood elven rogue need?

’The dragon announced its culpability with a distant roar.’ – - Again, I love your use of sound to enrich your descriptions!

‘I hated spiders. Ralof actually vocalized his shared opinion.’ – - Val and Ralof have plenty of company among the various characters here at Chorrol! How clever to 'milk' them for poison.

“Poison is a drunken archer’s best friend.” – -

This story continues to be simply a delight to read!


Nits:
You are a bit inconsistent regarding punctuating your dialogue. I recommend Googling ‘dialogue punctuation’, which can shine plenty of light on this rather complex art. Here are a few selected examples from Chapter 4 regarding comma vs period use:
“Damn, that dragon doesn’t give up easy.” said Ralof.’ -- The period after ‘easy’ should be a comma.
“I got it all,” I said to the others, “let’s keep moving.” -- This passage is perfect. The speech tag is effectively inserted in the middle of a sentence of dialogue.
“No.” she replied, “I haven’t seen him since the dragon showed up.” –- The period after ‘No’ should be a comma since you are linking the speech tag to that clause (by not capitalizing ‘she’). Use of a comma or period after ‘replied’ depends on your intent. You could keep the comma after ‘replied’ if you intend the entire passage to be one sentence of dialogue. On the other hand, if you intend the last clause to be a new sentence or statement, you would precede it by a period. Confusing, eh? It was our own SubRosa that really helped me get a handle on dialogue punctuation and, as I implied above, I found that doing some internet research on the subject proved very helpful.

’Looking that the other dead Imperials, I found two more quivers.’ – - (From Chapter 5) I suspect you wanted ‘at’ instead of ‘that’.