for Swamp Gods (Labyrinth October 2015) Rough Draft11/2/2015 c1 
82Solemn Coyote
Very choppy opening. Good impressions, great establishing shots, but strung together in a way that feels bullet-pointed.
On the other hand, your ending is spectacular. It feels like a bit of a jump, not quite following from how you've set up Emma's character, but it was too good for me to care about that.
In the middle, you've got a lot of great ideas, and sometimes they're executed perfectly. The way you describe the cooking is spot on. The Creole that you use feels well researched, but not quite natural. My own experience with bilingual people is that they switch back and forth on the hard words, not the easy phrases, and it's rare to see a story that's written that way.
More than anything else, I think this needs a bit of expansion. The narrative feels hurried and it needs a slow build for the ending to hit its hardest.
Personally, I would change the story to just the scene in the house, the scene in the boat, and the morning after. I would stick to either being over-the-shoulder on Emma and missing details that the reader will pick up, or being over the shoulder on Bobby and getting more invested in his supernatural family drama. I love the lore you're drawing on, and you pulled together a lot of good research, but Swamp Gods feels a bit like a first go at a really good recipe. All the right elements are there, but it hasn't reached its full potential yet.
82Solemn CoyoteVery choppy opening. Good impressions, great establishing shots, but strung together in a way that feels bullet-pointed.
On the other hand, your ending is spectacular. It feels like a bit of a jump, not quite following from how you've set up Emma's character, but it was too good for me to care about that.
In the middle, you've got a lot of great ideas, and sometimes they're executed perfectly. The way you describe the cooking is spot on. The Creole that you use feels well researched, but not quite natural. My own experience with bilingual people is that they switch back and forth on the hard words, not the easy phrases, and it's rare to see a story that's written that way.
More than anything else, I think this needs a bit of expansion. The narrative feels hurried and it needs a slow build for the ending to hit its hardest.
Personally, I would change the story to just the scene in the house, the scene in the boat, and the morning after. I would stick to either being over-the-shoulder on Emma and missing details that the reader will pick up, or being over the shoulder on Bobby and getting more invested in his supernatural family drama. I love the lore you're drawing on, and you pulled together a lot of good research, but Swamp Gods feels a bit like a first go at a really good recipe. All the right elements are there, but it hasn't reached its full potential yet.