This is a post where I Beta read the second chapter of a story.
If you think I'm wrong or are worried about my ability then check out the story yourself.
Chapter 1(After prologue)
http://figment.com/books/779189-The-Wondrous-World-of-Alex-Martin-
Geeez after ages and four pages of notes.....
Waking up and opening your eyes seems redundant. it would have been more impressive if he hadn't opening his eyes and woken up. so i'd change that to some other act. (in hindsight just describing the eyes opening might be more thrilling.)
i would remove the whole second sentence. checking his throat right after waking up is proven through action that he remembered, maybe intergrate it into the second half of the next sentence.
if he's questioning where he is in reality then i assume he is somewhere familiar otherwise that question makes no sense. okay i see you adress that question so i can't fault you. but i can suggest fucking with his and the reader's mind by you putting something seemingly familiar, then boom, birdcage.
You know if I now know something about the diference between our writing styles it's that my style is like a shotgun as it spreads all over the place and yours is like a sniper, specific on a moment and to the point. But have their pros and cons, its up to us as writers to find balance.
love that he knows the difference between strong and weak weed. so i can assume he's a pothead lol
'what i recall'??? i remember thinking 'what teenager talks like this' (Edit after reading more you do this more than once, the fact that hatter talks like this and that everyone else talks like this is great, i love. it's weird when alex does.)
i like mad hatter but then again i am bias. I love every creation of the hatter ever made. Your dialogue is good, i enjoyed this moment. might not have put that exclamation point though.
i maybe might have not said the hatter's joint had a strange effect. i might have either made it more subtle or left that line out entirely. the same goes for the 'i had a difficult past' line. the same goes for the drug taking, you could have maybe gotten away with detailing which drugs, since lets face it, the type of drugs you take can define a personality type. the one love hippy type are weed and hash smokers, the trailer trash depressive types, coke takers are a little harder to nail down, i'd say talker/ dreamer types and the acid/lsd people are the psychedelics I'm just pointing out stereotypes(and shit i'm seen lol)you know this whole paragraph would have best worked as dialgue.
nice line with the change of subject(if i were you i would consider swapping the dialogue with the description IE put the dialogue first: I said, changing the subject abruptly, I had had enough of the topic.
The hatter does get more interesting the more we go on. I assume that that is on purpose. Like you are feeding us a bit more of what he is, what he does and what he looks like piece by piece. If its on purpose, it's just short of awesome but it is pretty damn good.
I wish you'd mentioned the joint more, no a lot of puff and pass happening lol (you can linger on hubbly, you dont linger with a joint, don't ask how i know that!)
yup the hatter is definately a unique character.
a forty year old man giggling is insane enough, no need to use the adverb 'madly'
'jumped' we both JUMPED out of the bird cage.
'and he was also holding' just say 'and was also holding' you odn't need the second he.
the running was a great scene. i loved it, except for the 'tripping out immensely' line. i was excited and drawn in that sentence snapped me out of the vision, the word 'still' in 'everythin was STILL distorting does what that sentence does for you, without reminding the reader that alex is tripping out.
This is the only time in the book where you shotgun it. where you've put some real description and it's easily the best past of the book for far. yes, he's freaking out but he's also in a freaky world creating a distortion for the reader of what is real and what is not real. it's fucking awesome. i like like will smith from bad boys 1 "From now on THAT IS HOW YOU DRIVE!" lol
you still need to master your repitition in my eyes though it made some paragrapshs blocky and weird.
'have to admit' should be 'had to admit' tenses bro.
'living in it' should be 'living in them' you already established there were more than one flating rock.
'way to fast' should be 'way too fast'
'dangerous it is' should be 'it is dangerous' unless you're doing yoda ^^
these insects are complete asshole! holy shit those were harsh things to say. alex is tking it surprisingly well lol
i ave noticed a pattern. alex is super vague on when thinking about abut himself. he hurt parts of his body he took drugs he had a difficult past he got through it if you're doing it on purpose it's clever but makes me not care about alex himself and always put him on the back burner. I still don't care about joana or his brother. I care more about the hatter. But as you can tell from my notes, i'm slowly and painfully starting to care a little about alex. Just the fact htat i'm not calling him 'the main character' shold be prof enough.
holy shit what is wrong with those little jerks! so mean! and specific about it!
"i screamed in rage" should be 'i screamed' these things were insanely mean and alex is screaming back at them, we know he's angry.
'so i could observed them' should be 'so i could observe them'
You were right this is much better than the first chapter. you were right i did care about alex more and things slowed down BUT they were still fast and lively. Which is what I wish you'd done better with in the first chapter. this was really good work. Not perfect work or sale ready work but definitely getting there. your chapter end didn't have a cliff hanger but it didn't need one. You put a lot of description and finally gave your world some colour. Your world stopped being a dark nothing but became something with potential that as a reader i might want to know more about. so Kudos.