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Dec. 18th, 2015 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lit_galI"m looking for some feedback on an opening chapter. I don't know if I'm catching the reader's interest and making the team dynamics clear enough.
Chapter One
A blast of hot air slammed into the corner of the brick school building so hard that red dust settled over Darren. “Too close!” Darren yelled. He checked around the corner, pulling back just in time for another hit and another rain of fine brick dust. He wished real like was more like television where federal agents got to fire randomly and crystal magic users always had the exact right spell at the exact right time. Instead Davina was crouched down behind Les, her lips moving as she chanted over three crystals. Les had his weapon pointed at the abandoned school where they had pinned their suspect and Traci stood at the far corner so the suspect couldn’t double back around.
She was chanting, a soft lyrical song that sent ripples of protective magic across the team. Les and Darren needed the help. Les’s adept magic allowed him to spot lies when interviewing a suspect, but wouldn’t stop a projectile or keep a wall from landing on their heads, and Darren was the only mundane on a team of all-Talent federal agents. Another blast crashed into the corner of the building above Darren.
“How much mojo juice does he have?” Darren yelled to Les. Adrenaline caused Darren’s question to come out much louder than he anticipated.
Les shrugged. “Can’t say. But he’s a magic user, not a shaman, so he has to run out sometime.”
“Not fast enough,” Darren said.
A black SUV came screaming into the parking lot. Boucher had arrived in his usual style. Using the brick fence as cover, he parked the SUV and ran for the place where Darren was crouched. Unfortunately, Ben ran right behind him. Boucher stopped and went to one knee, his hand darting out to hold Ben back.
“Report,” Boucher said.
“We got a tip about a car matching the suspect’s and came to investigate. The other three were ahead of me, and they took cover there,” Darren said, gesturing toward the larger brick structure. “I took cover here. The suspect seems to have a better line of fire on me, but other than that, I don’t have much to report.” Darren got that familiar flutter in his stomach. Boucher always left him so unsure. He wanted to do a good job, but after years of being on Boucher’s team, Darren couldn’t escape the fear that he didn’t measure up.
Boucher seemed to reinforce that when he turned to Les on the other side of the wide walkway and called, “Anything to add?”
Darren turned to focus on the crumbling corner of the building while Les confirmed everything Darren said. A blast hit the brick wall again, this time with twice as much force. Chunks of bricks flew. Boucher wrapped an arm around Darren’s waist and pulled him backward. Their bodies pressed together, and Darren bit back a groan of frustration because he knew what was coming next. Sure enough, as soon as the danger passed, Boucher shoved him away. That was too fucking common anymore. Boucher occasionally offered some small touch, a kind gesture, a reminder of the relationship they’d had years ago when a younger Boucher had taken in a green rookie and taught him how to be an agent. But it was always withdrawn.
Back when the team had started, Darren could trust Boucher, but more and more he got the feeling that Boucher offered just enough overt approval to keep Darren in line. After all, Darren was the only mundane on the team—the person who could work with the more conventional police departments and even other federal teams. Not everyone wanted to work with magic users, but Darren could charm them into interagency cooperation where Boucher had to use injunctions and get official requests from the head of the FBI.
Boucher didn’t spare Darren more than a glance before turning to fuss over Ben, their newest team member, and Boucher’s official adept partner.
Darren wondered if that strong arm around his waist had been instinct or caring or simply FBI training meant to keep team members safe in the field. No matter the answer, Boucher definitely didn’t see Darren as anything special… not anymore. That honor went to Ben.
Not wanting to listen to the two of them, Darren backed up and then turned to head for the east side of the small building they were using for cover. Maybe he could get a better shot from there.
“Oberton!” Boucher called.
Darren turned around. “Sir?”
“Watch while Ben and I go on spirit walk.” With no more warning than that, Boucher sat cross legged and pulled Ben down close to him. From this plane of existence, it looked like the two of them had fallen instantly asleep, but Darren knew they had moved to the spirit plane where Boucher was the big cojones of shamans. Hell, Les said that most shamans had to meditate and sit in the dark to even reach the spirit world, but Darren had watched Boucher move there in a blink more than once.
One second Boucher would be sitting in a car on stakeout, sighing while Darren explained the virtues of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and the next he was just gone, his eyes mostly closed and his breathing even.
And now he took Ben with him as he delved farther into the spirit realms. Apparently adepts, while they had little magic of their own, were great at keeping the door between the two worlds open or something. Darren might be on a Talent team, but the agents with Talent were still slow to share much magical intel with him.
“What’s the plan?” Les called, and another wave of magic hit the building, but this time Liam could feel the shift. The impact had much less force, and it created more wind than concussive force.
“I have no idea,” Darren answered with a shrug. It wasn’t like Boucher shared with him.
Darren wished Boucher would have kept working with Les. He was an adept, so technically he had similar skills as Ben. Both could navigate the spirit world. However the longer Boucher and Les had worked together, the less successful they’d been. Darren had feared Boucher would transfer Les to another team, but Les’s ability to perceive truth when he talked to someone face to face was invaluable.
And Darren liked partnering with him. Les was from Hawaii and he had brought his laid-back island attitude to a team full of type-A personalities. Rima and Davina, and even Traci who was new to the team, tended to get overprotective when Darren partnered with them. After all, he was a munny, a magicless, talentless norm. But funny enough, Darren had a gun, and bullets worked better than magic, no matter what his team sometimes assumed.
Davina moved to the corner of the building she was hiding behind. “Get the suspect to fire at this,” she said as she shoved a piece of cardboard with a crystal on it into the middle of the walk. It was too far away for any magic aimed at Darren to hit it.
“Push it farther this way.”
“I don’t have anything to push with. Get Boucher to pull it closer magically,” Davina said.
Darren snorted. No way was he going to try to break a shamanic trance. So that left him. Darren holstered his weapon for a moment and shrugged out of his jacket. Then in a move right out of a bad prison break movie, he tried to throw his jacket over the crystal while holding one arm of the jacket.
“Oberton,” Davina said darkly. The woman had a mean scowl on her, but she still didn’t have anything on Boucher when he was unhappy, so Darren ignored her. She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t say anything more, especially since his trick worked.
“Down!” Traci called from the other end of the building. Darren threw himself backward and collided with Ben before a large, concussive force hit the corner of the building. And then all hell broke loose. Darren had seen Davina use trace back spells with her crystals in the past, so he knew that the crystal should have reflected most of the energy of the magic user back toward him, but the second blast was far too large for that.
“What?” Ben’s voice was unsteady as he blinked his way back to consciousness.
Darren pushed away before Ben could realize that Darren had knocked him to the ground. “We had an explosion in the direction of the suspect,” Darren said with as much professionalism as possible.
Boucher uncurled his long limbs and stood. He was an imposing man. “Report,” he said.
Darren had no idea what had happened, but luckily Davina answered for him. “The suspect hit a cast back crystal, but there was a larger explosion than I expected,” Davina said.
Boucher moved to the corner and held his hands out as though ready to block a magical attack. Darren could swear he felt the magic, but that was imagination. Norms couldn’t feel shamanic power unless they were in the middle of getting knocked on their asses by it. Moving slowly, Boucher stepped out of cover. Nothing happened.
Davina followed, her weapon in one hand and a crystal in the other. Ben tried to follow Boucher, but Darren caught his arm. Ben might be Boucher’s adept partner, but he was still a newbie. “Stay back,” Darren said. He moved to follow the two team leads, and Les moved to his side. Traci stayed behind, watching their six as they moved in.
A crack in the sidewalk started when they were halfway to the main building.
“Earthquake,” Boucher said.
“Seriously? An earthquake? That was a little overkill, wasn’t it?” Davina asked, her glare focused on Boucher. He didn’t comment, and Davina looked back toward Les and Darren. But Darren was not getting into the middle of this fight. He might have been the first to join Boucher’s team, but Davina was the official second in command. Boucher was on his own.
“He was firing at my people.” With that, Boucher walked faster. Davina sighed and followed.
“Bruh, that is one serious case of overprotectiveness,” Les said before he moved to cover the left side. Darren covered right while Boucher and Davina headed straight into the main building.
Two seconds later, Davina’s yelled, “Call for a bus… and a rescue team with heavy machinery.”
“Crap,” Les muttered, but he pulled out his phone to make the calls. Darren moved forward, and now he could see the drunkenly leaning walls through the open doors. Boucher stood next to a deep chasm in the floor.
“Wow, boss. Way to not pull your punches. Is the suspect alive?”
Boucher ran a hand over his dark, shaved head, but he didn’t say anything. Davina glared at Darren before saying, “We can’t tell what happened. We don’t know how much of this was the suspects spell redirected back at him and how much was Kavon’s.”
Darren nodded. “Yeah, I get the feeling the suspect had more firepower than he was showing until the end. But can’t you make with the magic and see if there’s still anyone alive down there?” Darren asked as he looked at the deep chasm full of debris and the wall that was threatening to fall into it. He didn’t like the idea that someone might be hurt down there.
“I don’t have a crystal spell for that,” Davina said, but Darren was looking at Boucher. He was the hot shot shaman, and shamans were all about life force. Hell, the most popular show on television featured shamans who stole life force and created herds of zombies that they aimed at each other and the ragged human survivors caught in the middle of the war. Surely he could tell if someone was breathing down there.
Boucher backed away from the fissure, his weapon still drawn. “Life force fades, it doesn’t blink out like a burned out bulb. If he’s dead, I won’t be able to tell for an hour or so.”
Davina headed for the door. “I’ll get some magical EMTs out here, but you’re calling the director,” Davina said.
Boucher grunted. She left, and Darren and Boucher were left guarding the ruins. Dust had settled in Boucher’s closely trimmed beard, giving him the appearance of gray hair even though Boucher wasn’t more than forty. His black hair and dark skin didn’t normally have a trace age, although Darren wasn’t sure if that was the result of good genes or shamanic magic.
“Oberton,” Boucher said.
Darren immediately focused on the case. “I’ll get crime scene techs to the car and check on registration. The suspect probably stole it, but at least we’ll have an idea of where our suspect was. That will give me a place to start pulling surveillance tapes.” Darren headed for the door. He’d learned early that if he couldn’t find his own investigative leads, Boucher tended to make him dig through dumpsters or something. Let Rima take those jobs. Agent Rima Dolen was a freakishly beautiful blonde who specialized in charms, and she seemed weirdly pleased when Boucher ignored her femininity and looks and assigned her to dig through trash.
Outside, Darren started making his calls. Dead or alive, their suspect had used his magic to carry out a string of bank robberies, and they needed to tie all the loose ends together so the case could be officially closed. Outside, in the grey light of a cloudy DC day, Darren looked at the small building where he’d taken shelter. It had more damage than Darren had realized. The corner was all but gone and surrounded by red brick dust. Huge cracks went up toward the roof and one wall bulged. The whole thing looked ready to fall.
Les walked up to him. “The bosses are not going to be happy with this,” he said as he looked at the chaos. An ambulance was just pulling into the small, cracked parking lot. Despite the fact that the school was abandoned, the lot was still almost full as people in the area took advantage of the free parking. The ambulance had to take the tight corners carefully to avoid hitting cars parked in ragged lines since the parking spot lines had long ago worn off.
“The only bosses we have to care about are Supervisory Agents Boucher and Nixon.”
“And since they’re the two that blew this place up…” Les let his words trail off, but Darren got it. The director came down hard on the Talent team because every bit of damage caused a PR nightmare. Darren turned his attention to the car, but not before he caught Ben glaring daggers at him.
Great. Whatever. Yeah, Darren had knocked him down and then ordered him to stay back, but Ben was the newbie on the team and he could follow orders in the field or find another team. At least that’s what Darren hoped happened. Unfortunately, Darren knew one thing about magic: the more powerful the shaman, the more they needed the help of an adept to balance out that power. Darren’s great fear was that Ben Anderson was around to stay. His greater fear was that with Ben in the picture, there was no place for Darren. He would start looking for departmental transfers, but the Talent team was his family, and he would rather fight for them than give up easy.
Chapter One
A blast of hot air slammed into the corner of the brick school building so hard that red dust settled over Darren. “Too close!” Darren yelled. He checked around the corner, pulling back just in time for another hit and another rain of fine brick dust. He wished real like was more like television where federal agents got to fire randomly and crystal magic users always had the exact right spell at the exact right time. Instead Davina was crouched down behind Les, her lips moving as she chanted over three crystals. Les had his weapon pointed at the abandoned school where they had pinned their suspect and Traci stood at the far corner so the suspect couldn’t double back around.
She was chanting, a soft lyrical song that sent ripples of protective magic across the team. Les and Darren needed the help. Les’s adept magic allowed him to spot lies when interviewing a suspect, but wouldn’t stop a projectile or keep a wall from landing on their heads, and Darren was the only mundane on a team of all-Talent federal agents. Another blast crashed into the corner of the building above Darren.
“How much mojo juice does he have?” Darren yelled to Les. Adrenaline caused Darren’s question to come out much louder than he anticipated.
Les shrugged. “Can’t say. But he’s a magic user, not a shaman, so he has to run out sometime.”
“Not fast enough,” Darren said.
A black SUV came screaming into the parking lot. Boucher had arrived in his usual style. Using the brick fence as cover, he parked the SUV and ran for the place where Darren was crouched. Unfortunately, Ben ran right behind him. Boucher stopped and went to one knee, his hand darting out to hold Ben back.
“Report,” Boucher said.
“We got a tip about a car matching the suspect’s and came to investigate. The other three were ahead of me, and they took cover there,” Darren said, gesturing toward the larger brick structure. “I took cover here. The suspect seems to have a better line of fire on me, but other than that, I don’t have much to report.” Darren got that familiar flutter in his stomach. Boucher always left him so unsure. He wanted to do a good job, but after years of being on Boucher’s team, Darren couldn’t escape the fear that he didn’t measure up.
Boucher seemed to reinforce that when he turned to Les on the other side of the wide walkway and called, “Anything to add?”
Darren turned to focus on the crumbling corner of the building while Les confirmed everything Darren said. A blast hit the brick wall again, this time with twice as much force. Chunks of bricks flew. Boucher wrapped an arm around Darren’s waist and pulled him backward. Their bodies pressed together, and Darren bit back a groan of frustration because he knew what was coming next. Sure enough, as soon as the danger passed, Boucher shoved him away. That was too fucking common anymore. Boucher occasionally offered some small touch, a kind gesture, a reminder of the relationship they’d had years ago when a younger Boucher had taken in a green rookie and taught him how to be an agent. But it was always withdrawn.
Back when the team had started, Darren could trust Boucher, but more and more he got the feeling that Boucher offered just enough overt approval to keep Darren in line. After all, Darren was the only mundane on the team—the person who could work with the more conventional police departments and even other federal teams. Not everyone wanted to work with magic users, but Darren could charm them into interagency cooperation where Boucher had to use injunctions and get official requests from the head of the FBI.
Boucher didn’t spare Darren more than a glance before turning to fuss over Ben, their newest team member, and Boucher’s official adept partner.
Darren wondered if that strong arm around his waist had been instinct or caring or simply FBI training meant to keep team members safe in the field. No matter the answer, Boucher definitely didn’t see Darren as anything special… not anymore. That honor went to Ben.
Not wanting to listen to the two of them, Darren backed up and then turned to head for the east side of the small building they were using for cover. Maybe he could get a better shot from there.
“Oberton!” Boucher called.
Darren turned around. “Sir?”
“Watch while Ben and I go on spirit walk.” With no more warning than that, Boucher sat cross legged and pulled Ben down close to him. From this plane of existence, it looked like the two of them had fallen instantly asleep, but Darren knew they had moved to the spirit plane where Boucher was the big cojones of shamans. Hell, Les said that most shamans had to meditate and sit in the dark to even reach the spirit world, but Darren had watched Boucher move there in a blink more than once.
One second Boucher would be sitting in a car on stakeout, sighing while Darren explained the virtues of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and the next he was just gone, his eyes mostly closed and his breathing even.
And now he took Ben with him as he delved farther into the spirit realms. Apparently adepts, while they had little magic of their own, were great at keeping the door between the two worlds open or something. Darren might be on a Talent team, but the agents with Talent were still slow to share much magical intel with him.
“What’s the plan?” Les called, and another wave of magic hit the building, but this time Liam could feel the shift. The impact had much less force, and it created more wind than concussive force.
“I have no idea,” Darren answered with a shrug. It wasn’t like Boucher shared with him.
Darren wished Boucher would have kept working with Les. He was an adept, so technically he had similar skills as Ben. Both could navigate the spirit world. However the longer Boucher and Les had worked together, the less successful they’d been. Darren had feared Boucher would transfer Les to another team, but Les’s ability to perceive truth when he talked to someone face to face was invaluable.
And Darren liked partnering with him. Les was from Hawaii and he had brought his laid-back island attitude to a team full of type-A personalities. Rima and Davina, and even Traci who was new to the team, tended to get overprotective when Darren partnered with them. After all, he was a munny, a magicless, talentless norm. But funny enough, Darren had a gun, and bullets worked better than magic, no matter what his team sometimes assumed.
Davina moved to the corner of the building she was hiding behind. “Get the suspect to fire at this,” she said as she shoved a piece of cardboard with a crystal on it into the middle of the walk. It was too far away for any magic aimed at Darren to hit it.
“Push it farther this way.”
“I don’t have anything to push with. Get Boucher to pull it closer magically,” Davina said.
Darren snorted. No way was he going to try to break a shamanic trance. So that left him. Darren holstered his weapon for a moment and shrugged out of his jacket. Then in a move right out of a bad prison break movie, he tried to throw his jacket over the crystal while holding one arm of the jacket.
“Oberton,” Davina said darkly. The woman had a mean scowl on her, but she still didn’t have anything on Boucher when he was unhappy, so Darren ignored her. She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t say anything more, especially since his trick worked.
“Down!” Traci called from the other end of the building. Darren threw himself backward and collided with Ben before a large, concussive force hit the corner of the building. And then all hell broke loose. Darren had seen Davina use trace back spells with her crystals in the past, so he knew that the crystal should have reflected most of the energy of the magic user back toward him, but the second blast was far too large for that.
“What?” Ben’s voice was unsteady as he blinked his way back to consciousness.
Darren pushed away before Ben could realize that Darren had knocked him to the ground. “We had an explosion in the direction of the suspect,” Darren said with as much professionalism as possible.
Boucher uncurled his long limbs and stood. He was an imposing man. “Report,” he said.
Darren had no idea what had happened, but luckily Davina answered for him. “The suspect hit a cast back crystal, but there was a larger explosion than I expected,” Davina said.
Boucher moved to the corner and held his hands out as though ready to block a magical attack. Darren could swear he felt the magic, but that was imagination. Norms couldn’t feel shamanic power unless they were in the middle of getting knocked on their asses by it. Moving slowly, Boucher stepped out of cover. Nothing happened.
Davina followed, her weapon in one hand and a crystal in the other. Ben tried to follow Boucher, but Darren caught his arm. Ben might be Boucher’s adept partner, but he was still a newbie. “Stay back,” Darren said. He moved to follow the two team leads, and Les moved to his side. Traci stayed behind, watching their six as they moved in.
A crack in the sidewalk started when they were halfway to the main building.
“Earthquake,” Boucher said.
“Seriously? An earthquake? That was a little overkill, wasn’t it?” Davina asked, her glare focused on Boucher. He didn’t comment, and Davina looked back toward Les and Darren. But Darren was not getting into the middle of this fight. He might have been the first to join Boucher’s team, but Davina was the official second in command. Boucher was on his own.
“He was firing at my people.” With that, Boucher walked faster. Davina sighed and followed.
“Bruh, that is one serious case of overprotectiveness,” Les said before he moved to cover the left side. Darren covered right while Boucher and Davina headed straight into the main building.
Two seconds later, Davina’s yelled, “Call for a bus… and a rescue team with heavy machinery.”
“Crap,” Les muttered, but he pulled out his phone to make the calls. Darren moved forward, and now he could see the drunkenly leaning walls through the open doors. Boucher stood next to a deep chasm in the floor.
“Wow, boss. Way to not pull your punches. Is the suspect alive?”
Boucher ran a hand over his dark, shaved head, but he didn’t say anything. Davina glared at Darren before saying, “We can’t tell what happened. We don’t know how much of this was the suspects spell redirected back at him and how much was Kavon’s.”
Darren nodded. “Yeah, I get the feeling the suspect had more firepower than he was showing until the end. But can’t you make with the magic and see if there’s still anyone alive down there?” Darren asked as he looked at the deep chasm full of debris and the wall that was threatening to fall into it. He didn’t like the idea that someone might be hurt down there.
“I don’t have a crystal spell for that,” Davina said, but Darren was looking at Boucher. He was the hot shot shaman, and shamans were all about life force. Hell, the most popular show on television featured shamans who stole life force and created herds of zombies that they aimed at each other and the ragged human survivors caught in the middle of the war. Surely he could tell if someone was breathing down there.
Boucher backed away from the fissure, his weapon still drawn. “Life force fades, it doesn’t blink out like a burned out bulb. If he’s dead, I won’t be able to tell for an hour or so.”
Davina headed for the door. “I’ll get some magical EMTs out here, but you’re calling the director,” Davina said.
Boucher grunted. She left, and Darren and Boucher were left guarding the ruins. Dust had settled in Boucher’s closely trimmed beard, giving him the appearance of gray hair even though Boucher wasn’t more than forty. His black hair and dark skin didn’t normally have a trace age, although Darren wasn’t sure if that was the result of good genes or shamanic magic.
“Oberton,” Boucher said.
Darren immediately focused on the case. “I’ll get crime scene techs to the car and check on registration. The suspect probably stole it, but at least we’ll have an idea of where our suspect was. That will give me a place to start pulling surveillance tapes.” Darren headed for the door. He’d learned early that if he couldn’t find his own investigative leads, Boucher tended to make him dig through dumpsters or something. Let Rima take those jobs. Agent Rima Dolen was a freakishly beautiful blonde who specialized in charms, and she seemed weirdly pleased when Boucher ignored her femininity and looks and assigned her to dig through trash.
Outside, Darren started making his calls. Dead or alive, their suspect had used his magic to carry out a string of bank robberies, and they needed to tie all the loose ends together so the case could be officially closed. Outside, in the grey light of a cloudy DC day, Darren looked at the small building where he’d taken shelter. It had more damage than Darren had realized. The corner was all but gone and surrounded by red brick dust. Huge cracks went up toward the roof and one wall bulged. The whole thing looked ready to fall.
Les walked up to him. “The bosses are not going to be happy with this,” he said as he looked at the chaos. An ambulance was just pulling into the small, cracked parking lot. Despite the fact that the school was abandoned, the lot was still almost full as people in the area took advantage of the free parking. The ambulance had to take the tight corners carefully to avoid hitting cars parked in ragged lines since the parking spot lines had long ago worn off.
“The only bosses we have to care about are Supervisory Agents Boucher and Nixon.”
“And since they’re the two that blew this place up…” Les let his words trail off, but Darren got it. The director came down hard on the Talent team because every bit of damage caused a PR nightmare. Darren turned his attention to the car, but not before he caught Ben glaring daggers at him.
Great. Whatever. Yeah, Darren had knocked him down and then ordered him to stay back, but Ben was the newbie on the team and he could follow orders in the field or find another team. At least that’s what Darren hoped happened. Unfortunately, Darren knew one thing about magic: the more powerful the shaman, the more they needed the help of an adept to balance out that power. Darren’s great fear was that Ben Anderson was around to stay. His greater fear was that with Ben in the picture, there was no place for Darren. He would start looking for departmental transfers, but the Talent team was his family, and he would rather fight for them than give up easy.
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Date: 2015-12-18 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 07:59 pm (UTC)Btw, is this a rewrite of the original stories featuring these characters?
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Date: 2015-12-18 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2015-12-18 11:05 pm (UTC)Gabrielle
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Date: 2015-12-22 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 11:50 pm (UTC)I can feel the action and tension in the team. You give a great sense of personalities and conflict within the team.
That said, I always have issues telling characters apart (I have issues connecting a name with everything else; names are hollow to me until I spend enough time with them). For that reason this chapter is difficult because you introduce so many people (and throw around even more names). Since this is my personal issue I suggest you ignore it unless it suits your narrative needs.
I hope you write more because I'm hooked enough to re-read it multiple times to try to figure the individuals out.
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Date: 2015-12-22 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2015-12-20 12:29 am (UTC)Just as a suggestion, as you mention each person have a few words about who that person is to Darren or the team. Such as Davina is the den mother trying to keep everything by the book, or that Rima is like a little sister. It will also help tag the various characters. You're introducing a lot of information very fast. Slow things down just a touch and give as many hooks to each person as you can. There are a lot of characters to keep straight. It's still Davina and Rima who are the least defined. That can be okay, backgrounding a few at the beginning may help but there has to be a reason Darren feels like these people are family.
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Date: 2015-12-21 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-26 10:21 am (UTC)I read the comments, and I think I agree with Mistress Tien (and I love the way she described it - "Names are hollow to me until I spend enough time with them.") I think I would have been somewhat confused by some of the team's identities if I hadn't just read the other story. I like Texasfan's solution - just a few words to connect each character to Darren and help us understand how they fit into his family would round their characters out a bit more, and make it easier to follow who was who.
So I guess I'm not really saying anything new...just "yeah, what they said." I think that will help. But I like the start, and I'm looking forward to more!
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Date: 2015-12-29 04:07 am (UTC)