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Printed from https://shop.writing.com/main/profile/reviews/alexwolfe
Review Requests: OFF
2 Public Reviews Given
2 Total Reviews Given
Review Style
I use the following points when reviewing, but will adapt it as needed for your item. Readability: How well I feel I understand the concepts your piece is trying to convey. For example, how well I can follow your story, or understand the points you're trying to make in an essay, etc. Composition: Here I'll critique your choice of words and the construction of your sentences while offering my approach to the situation. Story Flow: Where Composition looks at the grammatical structure of wording and sentences Flow is an assessment of your literal structure. Think plot and outlining. Grammar: Slightly self-explanatory, but I'll be checking for use of grammatical structure and punctuation. Enjoyment: As it says on the tin, did I enjoy reading your piece? While technically a piece doesn't have to be enjoyable to qualify as top-notch writing I still feel (and suspect many of you do as well) that any piece I write would hopefully entertain on some level.
I'm good at...
Being upfront and honest with whoever I'm reviewing. If I don't like your piece, I will not only tell you so, but I will go into excruciating detail as to why I didn't enjoy it. That said, I'll also load you up with my opinions and tips for how your piece can be improved and what I feel it may be lacking.
Favorite Genres
Fantasy, Romance, Erotica, Mystery, Horror, and Sci-Fi.
Least Favorite Genres
Action
Favorite Item Types
Stories, Chapters, I'll even do whole books on a chapter-by-chapter basis. I'm also a fan of argumentative pieces that are trying to make a point to the reader in favor of/against an issue.
I will not review...
There really isn't much I won't review. That said, for erotica pieces, I won't be touching anything with extreme bathroom-play, filth, or AB/DL.
Public Reviews
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Review by AlexanderWolfe Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (3.5)
So, before getting into this, I have to get this out of the way first. That was one hilarious music video! I also apologize for not being online to see your request! That out of the way, let's get into things.


Readability - I'm able to read your sentences without issue and basically follow along with where the story is going in this piece. That said, I do feel it's a little spastic as far as pacing is concerned. I was left mostly confused after reading your piece. It wasn't until I watched the music video that the missing context was added in. I think this may be, in part, a side-effect of taking the music video's story-boarding as a base and trying to stick with it. Music videos as a medium don't really have a solid story line these days and instead aim to illustrate whatever moral or point the artist was going for. They have the liberty of visual and audio cues to contextualize the words. As for how I'd fix this, I'd take the events as depicted in the music video and use them more as landmarks instead of going from one to the next. This would allow me to flesh out the different scenes (I.e. the restaurant sequences as well as the 'morning after' scenes). I feel this would allow us as authors the spacing required to add the missing context that we lose by adapting this from a music video to a piece of literary work. I'll give you half a star here since your piece mostly does the job. I just think it could do it better.




Composition - So, first off, I don't think Mr. Poe's quote really works for this piece. The poem "Dream within a Dream" was about how the internal mind was no different than the external one. In the poem this is illustrated by the sandy shore with crashing waves in the second stanza being tied together with his lover passing away before him in the external world. The fact the dreams in your piece are shown to be fake, I feel anyway, clashes with the sentiment of the quote. This isn't something I'm holding against you, mind you. Edgar's poem is wide open for interpretation, just a personal nit pick. The first part of your piece I want to discuss is the following line: "Yes! I would love -" she began, but couldn't finish because a piece of food lodged in her throat. "I would-" She coughed and collapsed from the lack of oxygen. On my first time through I didn't think this was something significant. It wasn't until I saw the scene play out in the video that is was significant in that the words were false. Or maybe in your telling of the story the words aren't false and she's just nervous? It's also possible that, just as I thought before, this isn't a significant event since she ends up marrying 'Real Quincy' anyway. I think a lot of this confusion would be fixed if this line was preceded by another sentence describing Kaily's mental state. How did she react to the ring? Did she like it? Did she not? Again, this is something the music video is able to take for granted thanks to audio and video as a medium, but we can only use words to paint what we mean.

The second line I'm going to pick at is "Duke may not have money, but he has what money can't buy," said Kailey. Duke removed her straitjacket and the two made out. What is it that Duke has that money can't buy? I'm assuming it's kindness because of how these sorts of pauper and prince stories go... but Duke never really gets a chance to display any kindness other than a caress on the cheek while she's trapped in a straitjacket. Furthermore, I feel Quincy (dream Quincy, not real Quincy) hasn't really been show to be unkind. She's been dating him long enough to get to a marriage proposal. He lets her live in his massive mansion, and the only time he really gets upset is when A) She burns down his mansion, and B) When she starts making out with another man. Both are things I feel he would be justified in being mad at her for. Again, I realize this is based on a music video, but this is another instance of words from the video lacking the context clues that gives the audience a better idea of what's going on. In the previous restaurant sequences, I'd give Duke a bit more positive characteristics and Dream Quincy some more negative characteristics in order to draw a better contrast between the two and thus make this line have more impact than it does. I'll touch on this a bit more in Story Flow, but as for composition, I'll give you a star overall, since the rest of the sentences didn't cause confusion upon reading them.



Story Flow - Being honest here, I think the story reads like you're starting out with one story, but on the ending you've glued in a different story's ending using the same characters. You have this back and forth between Billionaire Quincy and BusBoy Duke, but when the dream sequence is over we find that not only is Quincy not billionaire (Or someone of moderate financial standing) there's also not busboy to speak of. Comparing it to the dream sequence of this event at the beginning, I'm lead as a reader to conclude Kailey was expecting this proposal for some time now and has been nervous about it, hence the first dream. That has the problem of where the rest of the story fits in with the ending. Is there someone else named Duke she's interested in? Is she afraid of commitment and the busboy in her dreams is a manifestation of that? Or worse yet, has she already cheated on Quincy and the dream about burning down the mansion was some sort of allegory for what she thought would happen if he found out? There's no real way to tell because the details required to make the assessment aren't in the story. Sadly, I don't feel I can five you a star for Story flow due to all of the confusion that arises by plugging these pieces together without surrounding context to guide the reader one way or another.



Grammar - I didn't catch any overt grammatical errors, so you get a star in this category.


Enjoyment - While I believe your story-line here has some clean-up that needs to be done, I did enjoy reading it nonetheless. It was short and sweet, and I believe a general audience would be able to read this, get something out of it, and then move about thier day. Another star for you.


In summary, I feel a lot, if not all, of the issues I highlighted can be fixed by adding the context you lost when moving from a music video to the written word. It's important to illustrate the mental state of the character(s) we are following alongside and it is also important to ask yourself on a re-read, does this actually make sense? What are my readers going to get from this? Things like that. All in all, an enjoyable piece. Have a good day!


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!Open in new Window..
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Review by AlexanderWolfe Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Firstly, greetings! I decided to try my hand at reviewing and the machine put this piece in front of me. So here we go!


By your item description I see this snippet of story is an attempt to introduce Mr. Finnigan, the gardener, to the audience. As such, I'll be breaking this review down into three distinct elements: Flow (One star), Characterization (Two stars), and Interaction (Three stars).


For flow, I'm looking to see how the addition of the character is treated in the story, does the insertion of this character seem forced or awkward in some way? Admittedly there's not much beyond this scene to go by, however, I believe this was achieved reasonably well. The way this scene reads it feels like Mr. Halman is taking Irelle on a tour of some sort of his estate, introducing her to her new life pending their engagement. It's entirely reasonable, if not probable, the pair would encounter the gardener in his place of work. So I feel this character has been introduced at an appropriate time in the story and doesn't detract from surrounding context, whatever that context might be in the full version.


Characterization for the purposes of my review is a measurement of how well the traits of the character come through to the reader. Do they feel fleshed out, or simple cardboard cut-outs? With the dialogue alone I am reminded of many mid-western and southern farmer types. His first two lines already establishes him as someone who is thorough and methodical with his work. His physical description matches what I'd expect from someone who is out in the sun all day, tending to flowers and produce. Furthermore he is clearly personable, telling stories of his wife from the past completely unprompted, and his words communicates he's a husband that cares for his spouse a great deal from the way he seems to zone off, reliving the past in his head while his body operates on muscle memory to do the work. Taking into account that this is a snippet, I still feel like it achieved it's goal of getting the character's traits across in a meaningful way, so another two stars for you.


For the last two stars, I'll be looking at how other characters interact with this character as well as the logic of the conversation as a whole. While the conversation is admittedly short, Overall it does appear to make logical sense. I feel the beginning of the interaction is a little clipped off, the phrase "Just a minute" followed by "You ought to be more patient..." Implies that Mr. Halman had asked the gardener to hurry up for one reason or another. For the sake of the piece I think it would be improved by adding that interaction in the beginning for the sake of context, but I don't feel it's it's strictly imperative either, so I'll give you a pass on it. As for the rest of the dialogue and interaction in the scene, I feel you did a good job manufacturing a scene using the traits of the different characters to create some interplay. In particular, I feel you did this best when Mr. Halman had to come and turn the water off in order to snap Mr. Finnigan out of his lapse into the past. The fact this occurred with no hesitation on Mr. Halman's part either means this is a common occurrence with the Gardener, or that Mr. Halman is an impatient individual who doesn't take issue with disturbing others to save time... which given the beginning of this scene could also be equally true. Either way, I'll give you the last two stars for achieving good interaction between Mr. Finnigan and your other characters.



In summary, I think you did a fine job with the introduction here and I feel it's perfectly serviceable to just snap it into your story line with minimal tweaks. Good Job!


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!Open in new Window..
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