I've finally gathered the courage to post something on here and I can fully accept any criticisms regarding what I'm writing. Please just bear in mind that english is not my first language, so I appreciate any bits of kindness. Thank you! :)
You obviously need to hear this, and so for you and the other folk who don’t name their characters immediately for no reason, here’s straightforward advice: name your protagonist from the start. There’s zero need to avoid using their name until someone else says it. There can be merit in a curated experience where a protagonist doesn’t use a name, or where identity is being explored, or a very distant and ignorant narrator is being set up, but these are all niche cases. Just call Raevana by her name from the start. There’s no reason here not to.
You need to work on present and past tense mixing. Actually, your sentences in general have a tendency to be awkward, with slightly off construction at times, tense mixing elsewhere, etc…. Almost certainly an artifact of your ESL, but still something that needs work. Like “[h]e put forth” as a kind of dialogue tag is just not something you’ll see even uncommonly, because it’s an awkward construction.
This excerpt is short, and shorter than it appears because the opening paragraph is unneeded framing, and the exposition between it and Raevana’s proper story is mediocre. The exposition about the festival and politics isn’t seemingly relevant to her yet, so why include it before we even are properly introduced to your protagonist?
And it’s short in part because this Vaughn guy apparently just… disappears? He makes a plea and then even though his last words are for Raevana to listen to him he sort of sits around silent and doing nothing (aka: disappearing as an agent/actor) after that, to the point where she can fall asleep and chill with zero thought for him. I’d suggest cutting every bit of exposition outside the dialogue, and trying (as an exercise foremost, but also as an improvement) to have a careful conversation between these two where you weave any useful exposition into the talk, and you conclude the conversation firmly, with someone accomplishing their objective of the conversation rather than pausing — which is closer to what you have now. Nobody needs to ‘win’, they can compromise instead, or both characters can feel like they lost, but you should expand and conclude the conversation properly. One party acting like a topic is urgent but letting the other walk away while the topic is still in limbo/unresolved doesn’t feel very real, and isn’t satisfying.
You obviously need to hear this, and so for you and the other folk who don’t name their characters immediately for no reason, here’s straightforward advice: name your protagonist from the start. There’s zero need to avoid using their name until someone else says it. There can be merit in a curated experience where a protagonist doesn’t use a name, or where identity is being explored, or a very distant and ignorant narrator is being set up, but these are all niche cases. Just call Raevana by her name from the start. There’s no reason here not to.
You need to work on present and past tense mixing. Actually, your sentences in general have a tendency to be awkward, with slightly off construction at times, tense mixing elsewhere, etc…. Almost certainly an artifact of your ESL, but still something that needs work. Like “[h]e put forth” as a kind of dialogue tag is just not something you’ll see even uncommonly, because it’s an awkward construction.
This excerpt is short, and shorter than it appears because the opening paragraph is unneeded framing, and the exposition between it and Raevana’s proper story is mediocre. The exposition about the festival and politics isn’t seemingly relevant to her yet, so why include it before we even are properly introduced to your protagonist?
And it’s short in part because this Vaughn guy apparently just… disappears? He makes a plea and then even though his last words are for Raevana to listen to him he sort of sits around silent and doing nothing (aka: disappearing as an agent/actor) after that, to the point where she can fall asleep and chill with zero thought for him. I’d suggest cutting every bit of exposition outside the dialogue, and trying (as an exercise foremost, but also as an improvement) to have a careful conversation between these two where you weave any useful exposition into the talk, and you conclude the conversation firmly, with someone accomplishing their objective of the conversation rather than pausing — which is closer to what you have now. Nobody needs to ‘win’, they can compromise instead, or both characters can feel like they lost, but you should expand and conclude the conversation properly. One party acting like a topic is urgent but letting the other walk away while the topic is still in limbo/unresolved doesn’t feel very real, and isn’t satisfying.