I’m here to judge for ‘Ermergerd, a Fantasy/Sci-fi Contest!’
I liked the concept of this—with the dragon egg as a rite of passage at fourteen, and I was even intrigued by the format of letters. I think, had there been more letters in all the time gaps or the letters had simply just been a little bit longer or something that provided a little more content and details, it would have worked better. As it is, though, I thought it was too short and abrupt. It ends so quickly and I didn’t really get anything out of it. It went from Samuel’s fourteenth birthday to him and Eleanor dying tragically—with a few letters in between that don’t make much sense to me because I don’t know who Hillary is and I didn’t get a good grasp on any of the characters.
The ‘story by letters’ format is definitely a tricky one and hard to pull off. Because it’s not as if you can just dump dialogue and details into it as if you were writing actual prose so you have to introduce characters and relationships naturally without breaking the flow of things, but you probably would have been better off at least making the letters longer or having more of them to fill out the timeline.
I did really enjoy the concept, though! I would’ve loved to have received a dragon on my fourteenth birthday!
I liked the concept of this—with the dragon egg as a rite of passage at fourteen, and I was even intrigued by the format of letters. I think, had there been more letters in all the time gaps or the letters had simply just been a little bit longer or something that provided a little more content and details, it would have worked better. As it is, though, I thought it was too short and abrupt. It ends so quickly and I didn’t really get anything out of it. It went from Samuel’s fourteenth birthday to him and Eleanor dying tragically—with a few letters in between that don’t make much sense to me because I don’t know who Hillary is and I didn’t get a good grasp on any of the characters.
The ‘story by letters’ format is definitely a tricky one and hard to pull off. Because it’s not as if you can just dump dialogue and details into it as if you were writing actual prose so you have to introduce characters and relationships naturally without breaking the flow of things, but you probably would have been better off at least making the letters longer or having more of them to fill out the timeline.
I did really enjoy the concept, though! I would’ve loved to have received a dragon on my fourteenth birthday!