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I think the problem is that it drifts away from Caleb's personal point of view, where we're in his head, to a narrative of his actions that seems impersonal. Consider the contrast of: With As we get to the end of the scene the actions of Caleb and Stranger appear to have equal detail and...

I thought this was decent for the most part, it didn't really grip me but I did get a nice sense of place and character. I've picked out a few simple things that I think should be fixed: Repetition of consumed, one of them should be changed. A bit nitpicky perhaps, but it doesn't quite sit...

Yes I think that dialogue would help, because earlier you have this sentence: "As a police officer would have called them his detective gut but that had calcified upon his retirement." It's a missing a "he" which confused me a little and then made me forget that fact on my second...

It's absolutely fine, sometimes you just have to tell your readers some things, and this is one of those times. If someone is already three and a half chapters into your book and then puts it down because 500 words of info dump is too much for them to bear then the issue is with them and not you.

There are quite a few grammatical errors here but I assume you'll pick those up if you decide to continue with this piece. To the question asked, the beginning doesn't have quite enough to justify some of the indulgences within it. The main character is, perhaps by necessity, almost entirely...

I thought this was excellent, a few things that didn't scan well for me. I don't like the repetition of "cellar" here, perhaps the second word could be "room" or "space", or even "them". Is "washing up" dialect? It jarred with me a little and I'd prefer simply "washing" or "bathing" here...

I'm going to speak to the general feel of the piece as I think there are some problems with the whole concept. I recognise that advice of this type may not be useful at all, since you're doing what you want to and in many ways that is the only thing that matters with writing. With that, and the...

I think you could refer to it by a brand name that is similar to centreparcs and then add a small descriptor. "FamilyWoods, a chain of vacation spots that provided "a summer camp experience for the whole family" had no doubt been marketed by someone who had never been to summer camp. Or part...

I was going to say this and apply it more broadly to almost every word mentioned here. It's only the repeated use of uncommon words that will make readers notice. I remember a particular author used the word "automatically" all the time to describe characters reacting to something, that really...

I never knew what a crying badger sounded like, not until that Tuesday. Whimpering dogs? Not a problem. Trumpeting antelope? An oddity, but not without precedent. But for the noble badger, as stoic a beast as could be found in these parts, to be reduced to tears? It shook me to my core. It had...

I focused on the jokes, overall my reaction to the piece was ambivalent. There are some nice touches of humour but nothing has made me care about the characters or the situation. If the werewolf being female is supposed to be intriguing or funny then it didn't work for me, and if it's incidental...

I think this is just a natural consequence of experience with any art form. You can't help but see the moving parts. It's the reason Stewart Lee is popular with people who love comedy and Cezanne enjoyed a following among lovers of fine art. Awareness of the tropes and mechanics means you can...

Quite a nice opening and I like the Smooth Jazz joke. Yes it's a classic rule of three, yes it's very Red Dwarf, but it works. It got a smile. This is the first sentence of your story and it's a cliche, you need to be doing something different, particularly in a comedic story. Quite a long...

I got this same sense too, and the reason is because the dialogue is painfully weighed down with exposition. To speak to what was requested by the OP, anything can be a story and I could be looking at a skeleton of the opening to the greatest story ever written, but nothing about it thus far...

Is there anything in the story that suggests the weapon may be able to save him? Is there any foreshadowing at all? If you're plucking this from nowhere with no precedent, then yes it's Deus Ex Machina and an audience may balk.

The setting for my fantasy book is largely indistinguishable from a european pre-industrial society circa 1150-1300 I could change the names to real places and alter one or two small details and it'd be historical fiction. But its not, because it's an entirely fictional place with fictional...

He could have been a victim of identity theft in the past and thus his credit score would be terrible and he'd get turned down for loans. Or he could be registered to vote in one place but reside in another, that always throws up red flags

Something I've noticed in my creative work and friends have confirmed about theirs, is the problem of being very nearly finished. When I get to about 95% completion of a piece I just stop, because I know exactly what I need to do, there are no more surprises for me. Some of the impetus I had to...

I'd like it noted that I did my critique before this happened, because I had to get it finished before walking 9 miles (uphill both ways) t'pit.

Ok here's my understanding of how the POV shifts in this piece: Omniscient third person Omniscient narration Third person Tarquin Third person Jethro Third person Tarquin (confusing because Jethro is initially talking) Third Person Jethro Throughout all of this I have no idea what's...