"Gasp!" You are being reviewed! Dear Dandelion Man ,

I am reviewing your "Invalid Item"  story as a part of your shower at "Invalid Item" . These are my observations about your work.




General Impressions I actuality thought it was pretty good. On some newbie authors I would warn against the extra descriptions. The reason is info dumping. To use an example lets take a ladies purse. We all know what's in a ladies purse so you never list the contents of the purse you only add the important things necessary to the plot. Like two tickets to Denver. That would explain how she got there.

Favorite Parts Oh excuse me again but that loggerhead over there is vying for some attention. I think he fancies himself a bit of a player. Oh what the heck. I’m in the mood for a bit of playful Venus. The reason I picked this part is it was part of the climax to your story and it explained a lot about part of the turtle life cycle.

Plot In short stories we use the title and the description. Then we read the story to see how confused we get. Everything matches the description. A judge once told me to never pass up a chance to plant a hook. Some times it is the title but what she was referring to was my description. You should always use the description to grab people to your work. Leave the update and contest notes to the inside top corner we never use notes as part of the word count.

Characters The main character Shelley, a female and some old male were all we learned about which was good enough to make the story work.

Setting It was the Atlantic ocean outer banks off the coast of North Carolina. You did your research well and I know the area I researched it for a slave ship story.

Conflict The males trying to show off for the females.

Theme The life of Shelley.

Climax When Shelley mates with the old timer.

Dialog You did a really good first person dialog.

Presentation Presentation has two parts. The first part how well did the author present his work to the reader? You did a great job here in passing WDC allows block style so I don't include it in the rating but most pros use indents and believe me you write like a pro. The second part was how well does the writer present the subject to the reader. You did a great job but it took the middle of it to hook me after stumbling through the over descriptions in the first three sentences. Your doing some of the best descriptive writing I have ever seen in WDC. I'm glad you don't continue it in the rest of the story. The reason is, it slows the pace way down and stalls a reader. As a hook it wasn't good to me. Please remember I'm just one of many readers and this is only my opinion nothing more.

Grammar/Spelling/Punctuation
I pried and tried.
I looked far and wide.
Alas, no bad grammar,
Could this Grammar Nazi find! (Please excuse my poor attempt at humor, but it is true!)

Now I know your what WDC calls a Newbie But to me you another part of our growing community. I think and treat you like one of the group and look forward to a long lasting friendship. Your really off to a great start. I really like your new series as well. But for SAJ I try to steer away from book reviews. But for Pencil, hey glad to do one of their reviews for you any day.

Please remember that you are best judge of what is right for your story Whatever another person says -- especially me -- whether positive or negative, is just their opinion You are the only one who can decide what is right for your story.

Thanks for sharing this item! I only review things that I enjoy reading and I truly did enjoy this piece. Please keep on writing more things just like this!







My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .