Honestly, the peice I critiqued was pretty buttoned up. I'm happy to do a second critique and have it up sometime tomorrow. Thanks!

Your critique is a good start, but it's pretty focused on individual lines, with a cursory summary of the story as a whole towards the end. Our standards rise above 2.5k words, and I'm going to have to ask you to do expand on your crit, covering more aspects of the story in detail, or critique another story to the same standard. The New Users sticky has useful advice and templates for structuring a balanced and thorough critique.

**Plot** 

I'll start with a comprehension summary so you can gauge whether your plot came across. Avy, Isana, and Carlin, three siblings with absent/dead parents, set out to forage during the dwindling winter. Avy reflects on her mother's teachings about the brutality and provision of nature. She risks discovery when she finds a patch of earth and feels some sort of power. Also mentioned are the Redemptioners, the rich assholes in the temple who do not starve in the winter. There is some conflict here, perhaps magic is outlawed by the Temple. She finds mushrooms and senses a presence, but no one is there. Her siblings return and Carlin alludes to a possible person, igniting fear. On their way back to their home, they run into a dangerous Redemptioner. 

This is just a chapter so not much has happened yet, but every chapter should be almost a mini story inside the overarching story. I think you do this fairly effectively. You have an immediate goal to each scene and you slowly build th

I did not see your first draft, so here is my fresh perspective.

**Hook** 

*"This winter, my family nearly starved."* 

This is an effective hook for me. However, what follows is a few paragraphs of exposition and then it's basically after winter already. It almost makes the hook disingenuous--say you read the first sentence of a book that began with "This week, I almost died." Then it goes into a couple paragraphs of quick summary on how they almost died and then it skips right to their recovery. It's a grabbing first sentence, but you essentially gloss over the action/drama it implies. 

Even though the next few paragraphs are expo, I really enjoyed them. This one: "When the sun is a forgotten dream among the sea of dusky white, death lurks behind even the most inconsequential of corners." is very nice. Is the prose enough to keep my attention? I will say that if this were a book I picked up, I would probably continue to read the first page, but I think you can do better. Though th

Oh I completely know what you mean. ~[f l o w  s t a t e](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology))~
I didn't notice it until I had a reader once tell me they could see the difference in sections of my writing where I was in flow state and not in flow state. Once I was aware of it I slowly learned how to tell the difference between these sections myself.

You said you're not sure what the fix is, so I jumped on to say I think the flow state is something that comes with practice. It's counterintuitive, because you'd think this state would come during bouts of sudden inspiration, and yes occasionally that may happen, but I noticed for me the best times were induced during my habit-built writing sessions. My advice for op and for anyone looking to find that magical place of flow is build up a habit. Pick a time and write even if you don't feel like it, because though the writing may be forced at first, the more you do it, your brain learns how to flip the switch and that natural 

I read it as well, I'm not banking this one so I'm not writing a full critique but I agree with the feeling that it started slow. I think the scene where they all wake up etc is too long pacing-wise. I had a very weird experience reading it, it was almost like ... the tense moments, when they came, came out of nowhere?? It's not a bad first chapter and not a bad piece of writing at all, I'm sitting here doing nothing, I started it and I finished even though I didn't need to (I should have enough critiques for when I post already), so the story itself pulled me forward. I wonder why I had this sense that the tense and risky moments were almost like, "pasted," on the rest of the story. :::thinking::: .... the best I've got is because the draft feels too engineered.

What I mean by this is, usually, at least when I write, I write from a "place." I am viscerally in a vibe, and naturally that vibe carries through into my choice of language and also into the rhythm of that language. I'm sure

[2,881] Temple of Redemption