I'll be honest with you, there are a lot of rookie mistakes in here. It's an interesting premise, but it was difficult for me to read through, because I felt like parts of the narration were literally hitting me over the head with a hammer. There's an art form to balancing dialogue with exposition that helps to weave the story together.

I do admire you for tackling first person narration. That's a tough one to take at the start. A basic rule in creative writing is to try to include multiple senses in your narration, at least two, but there is also opportunity here for smell, and possibly taste, when mentioning the bananas.

I felt the story was a little too rushed. Plus, the idea of a human being able to run on all fours easily makes no sense. We can't do that easily. That implies the changes to the narrator's body had to have already started, before he was brought to the tribe.

Also, lightning doesn't have the power to vaporize a human body. We're living conductors. The electricity would pass through us and into our hearts, stopping them, unless we are firmly grounded against something that the lightning can pass through. Then, it's possible for a person to survive, and I stress possible. They can still die from the current stopping their hearts. If you're going to use certain triggers, effects, and descriptors, I recommend you do a little research on them first. It would also help with your description of the physical changes as a character evolves into something more. Metaphor and simile would also be of great help here, pulling a person into the narration better.

Grammatically, you should separate quotes from one another, if they're two separate people, not merge them into the same paragraph. Each new piece of dialogue from a different person gets its own line, like so:

Person one: "...."

Person two: "..."

Person one: "..."

And so on.

Also, I really would like to learn a little more about this god and the creatures that serve him/her. There have to be natural born generations who are descended from the original worshippers and might be able to explain what happened. Also, if your character is being moved that way to act as one of the tribe, then there must be some form of magic at work, or at least be implied on there to alter his mind to think and act more like them.

Also, it would be nice to have some names for some of these characters, rather than just leaving them without any names whatsoever. Names have power and are important for interaction, not to mention it could prove useful for internal monologue.

Anyways, there are some things to consider for improving you style in the future. I hope this criticism helps, and I look forward to seeing you continue to improve as a writer.

Oh, and one more tip. Keep reading. Read novels and stories as much as possible. They always help to show you tricks and techniques that will be useful to you as you write your stories.

Wow, thanks for the detailed criticism! This was actually grade A critique. Are you a proofreader, by any chance? Hoping I'm not asking too much of ya by having you read every piece of fiction I write, but man I bet you could make me a far superior writer...I'm gonna need it lol

And yeah, I noticed that about the dialogue from other pieces of writing I found today on FA, they shouldn't be in the same paragraph. They MUST be separated into their own. Also i had the feeling the story was probably a bit too long, because well unfortunately most people have such a short attention span lmao. But after uploading, I realized my story actually wasn't too long like I feared! More details are definitely in order, and I will heavily consider that. Oh, and...yeaaaah lightning doesn't literally vaporize our bodies, it just burns them, right? XD hmmm fuck, i knew that but didn't seem to have remembered at the time of writing LOL

Thanks, really, for the much-needed critique. I wish to blossom my writing skills as much as possible, as I think there's lots of probable potential in me (if I do say so myself, lol, sorry if i don't sound humble at all lmao). I just checked your page btw, WOOO you got some serious experience with furry fics O.O I'm about to read some of your content, now :) Thanks very much for the comment.

My pleasure. I've been proofing and copy editing for over four years, and it's what I attended school for, alongside creative writing. So, yeah, I know what I'm talking about. If you're ever looking for someone to help proofread or copy edit a story, let me know. My rates are pretty reasonable.

So first off, I just want to say I'm absolutely thrilled to see you venture into writing. It's something that can be an absolutely wonderful experience, and when you can bring a world to life that people can just visualize in their heads, ah it's just such a great thing.


Now... This wasn't bad for a first attempt, but I can see a few things that do need working on. One of them is it does get a bit confusing on who's talking sometime. Generally anytime a new person starts talking you want to start a new paragraph. Most of the time if you've had a long bout of exposition and a person starts talking you'd also start a new paragraph with the dialogue. It makes the story flow a bit better and keeps it easier for the reader to tell who's saying what.


Some of the story feels a bit rushed, and could use some more time fleshing it out. I often felt like things happened... And then we were immediately onto a new scene before we had any time to explore or process the event emotionally. For example, we really don't get to feel much of the excitement the main character would be feeling when he's surviving on his own on the island, or see him develop the skills needed to survive more before the tribe captures him. When we move through the scenes to fast it can be difficult to develop emotional attachment to what the current event is going on. It's actually an issue I struggle with myself with finding the right pacing so I know it's not an easy thing to find the right balance between expanding out a scene and over padding... But right now it's definitely on the light end and could use more in it.


A lot of the story and the word usage is... A bit odd if I'm being honest. It doesn't always sound very natural or realistic. I'm not a big fan of the idea that a story has to be grammatically perfect. After all certain intentional grammar errors can be a stylistic choice to show how a character thinks or interacts. We don't have perfect grammar when we have conversations in real life so it's not expected someone would have perfect grammar when they narrate their life. It should however always sound like something someone would naturally say. Luckily, this one is actually one of the easier items to learn how to correct. Just read your story out loud to yourself. If a sentence sounds awkward to say out loud then you know it's going to read awkward as well. And as you read it out loud just think about does this sound like a natural speaking pattern you or someone else you know would use. It can create a bit of work starting out as you have to go back and rewrite a ton... But doing it over time you'll find you start getting closer to how you want to express yourself more and more often on the first try as you get practice. There's always that struggle when writing that you want to express certain ideas and thoughts to the reader but you still need them presented in a natural way that won't come off as to in your face to the reader.


Another important thing to focus on... Is asking the why to a lot of things that happen. Why does a character do this? Why does a character want this? Why does an angry god suddenly attack a boat? Why do the animal people hate humans? Why are they suddenly so willing to let the human in. Now, these questions don't always have to be answered in the story. And in fact, they don't always need to even have an answer that can be understood. For example, the reasonings of a god might be unfathomable to a mortal and beyond our comprehension. But even if we can't understand this the motivation should exist and it's something you should think about as you work. Always be asking yourself "Why is this character doing this." Or "Why does this cause that." Again, these questions don't always have to be answered in the story but asking these questions yourself will help you build your world more to be a realistic world with consequences as opposed to "A bunch of things happen because reasons." You touched on this a bit with the animal people, where our hero earned their respect by living off the land... But we never really covered why that impresses them. Is this a process they've done many times before? Is there a punishment for those who are deemed unworthy? Again this goes back into expanding the details again. Having the main character interact with members of the tribe before the ritual more while trying to find out what's going to happen to him could have been an excellent time to get to know the tribe and their way of thinking. But right now, they don't have much of an identity, and that's a major problem when the climax of the story is the character getting welcomed into them.



Anyway, I'd love to see you get more into this! Like I said, writing can be a lot of fun! Hope that wasn't too much information starting out. One thing I've learned though is that we're all always improving and can all use a few hints on how we can improve. Another thing of course is writing is subjective so there's never going to be one style or way of doing it that's inherently better than everyone else's. Different people are going to like different things. So listen to advice you're given, but don't be afraid to sometimes go against what's accepted or advised as you develop your own style. Always keep improving, but also find what works best for you and what you enjoy doing.


Anyway hope this was helpful info! Thanks for sharing your story and see ya around!

Also OmniKitsune is super knowledgeable about this stuff! I've seen him around quite a bit! On the actual structures and mechanics of a story his advice is probably a lot more solid than mine. XD

Aww, shucks, thanks, Calex.

Dude, that was an AWESOME story!

haha omg! thank you so much XD

I also loved the very helpful criticism I got from two other commentators here. They are legit writers! Well, more experienced so to speak, since I'm a writer now too :3 Thanks for reading my 1st ever story!

For a first story this was pretty good.

I looked at some of the other comments and there isn't really anything to say that hasn't already been said but I'll offer this:

Certain parts like when you were describing the tidal wave about to hit the ship seemed a bit too verbose. For example: "This is really happening...My God, we're probably gonna be fighting for our lives...Those islands..'Furnesia,' they seem to be called..swim ashore to there, okay?!" Kinda stuck out as being a bit too wordy and collected for someone to say as certain doom is racing towards them.

Another thing is the idea of "show don't tell". I think you spent a little too much time explaining what the protagonist thinks rather than showing it. The part when you talked about the monkeys and how much the protagonist admired them for example I thought was a good example of this. Instead of talking about how cool they are focus on how the hero becomes more and more like them. Since he's a monkey fur he obviously holds them in high regard to start with.

Overall though this was enjoyable to read. Again these are just my thoughts and they're totally subjective. I really like the monkey transformation and the tropical island setting. I'm curious if this was a stand-alone or if you have sequel in the works?

there CAN be a sequel =D and thanks for the input! "Furnesia" btw was the theme for the furry convention i went to XD check out Megaplex 2018's con theme! Furnesian Islands. haha

Ah, I was wondering were the tropical inspiration was coming from.

Maybe the sequel might get a little more adult as well, I saw mention of foxes but I do wonder if there are she-chimps on that island?

ooooh there can be ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) or spider monkeys like myself. Or maybe i welcome a lost girl to the tribe myself >:D

Ah you're a spider monkey eh? Interesting. Personally I would have thought you would have gone with something a little bit bigger (like chimp sized or so) since you're into weight lifting.

Also I like the idea. Some furry/human stuff is my kinda thing, I like the contrast. Plus through in a little TF and bam

Oh my monkey sona tho is human-sized of course, just in case