It's a little bit overwritten in places, and predictable. You have a good imagination, but it suffers from you wanting to tell all the details to the reader rather than telling just enough to kick his imagination into gear and letting it run wild. Think about how Alfred Hitchcock tells horror stories. He shows you the darkness and lets it creep you out.
Also, you waste golden opportunities to develop your characters. You use a lot of dialog tags and those spots are lost. Here's an example. You have:
"You too," I responded.
that's your main character talking to a teacher that just passed. I know he's responding, the fact that his dialog is in response to her comment tells me that. Instead of losing that space by just saying "I responded" use it for action. Show me bits of his personality in how he responds. Maybe he's feeling guilty:
I swallowed and refused to meet her eyes. "You too."
or maybe:
My gaze flickered over my friends and sweat started to bead on my forehead. "You too."
Or maybe he's feeling overconfident:
A grin turned up one corner of my mouth as I straightened. "You too."
Go back through it and every where you have a dialog tag, visualize what the speaker is doing as well as what they are saying. Enhance those tags to show me the people, let me see their personalities shining through.
I want to say an enchanting tale, but this story is a little bit too gritty for a word that is normally used for fairy tales. Great writing, great story telling, excellent word smithing.
Very well written and entertaining to read as well. One little fact that you didn't include, but might want to, is that the word Google is now being included in various dictionaries as a verb, much the same as Xerox has become a verb.
The only other thing I'd suggest adding is a mention of the cute graphics that the Google name tends to display on various days.
Interesting poem. I haven't read the book that this is from but I do hope that Dr. LaHaye isn't saying these are the only personality types? If so, well the Dr. needs to do a bit more research. The poem's good though, nice writing job on it.
Didn't give it a 5 simply because the overuse of bold with each of the personality types bothers me baddly and made reading the poem unpleasent by the time I got to the end of it.
eh...I liked it right up till the last part of the last paragraph. It looses it's impact when the second visitor at the door is described :( It reminds me of the Monkey's Paw to some extent which is good.
I'd much rather it ended with out the last paragraph at all, just the last line
Wow. What a fantastic job of rewriting the months assigned run-on sentence! The only reason I didn't give this a 5 star raiting is because there are a few places where it read a bit akward for me. Nothing major but it could use a bit of smoothing out.
Yuck! Icky. This left me feeling disgusted. Excellent job on the writing. Now I gotta go wash off my keyboard and clean the grease off my monitor screen!
Being serious for a moment, this is very well written. An excellent piece of writing and well worth reading.
Just one comment on this line:
>It is of an old man with oily hair—an overly fat man, >the Founder of the hospital I think, smirking with a >slack canvas face and wearing small pig-like eyes that >stare madly.
It's a great line, nice description but it feels incomplete. I want something after or with that 'stare madly' phrase. I want something like 'stare madly at me' or 'stare madly from the canvass' or something.
This is a script of sorts. It contains very little technical direction, so I'm not sure if it's supposed to be for a stage, a movie, a tv show or a radio show. It's a good start but it's in need of some proof-reading and polishing. For example at the beginning, paul and roger are supposed to be roman senators, and their speech is fine, right up to this line:
>even roman senators got names –
If they're both senators, there would be a 'have' before that got.
It's very confusing to read, and I had to go over it several times to sort of get the idea that these two are showing up in different places in time with the same fight going on. It needs better direction to indicate that they are meeting each other over and over again.
Since it's an outline, I'm not sure you're interested in technical stuff like grammer or punctuation. The plot sounds interesting thought I'm not sure how well it'll appeal to a kid. You didn't say what age range you're writing it for, so since your main character is 12, I'm assuming that's the range?
This is a good start and an interesting plot. It would be enhanced with the addition of the actual tarot card at the top instead of just words refering to it, though perhaps your account doesn't allow the use of images.
There are some technical problems but even though you requested it be torn apart, I'll just mention a couple. You're welcome to contact me privately if you want more indepth.
Problem 1:
In this sentence:
>The world had found itself in a strange place upon the twelfth hour of that night, as two found themselves blissfully unaware
you have repeated the phrase 'found self' twice. once as 'found itself' and once as 'found themselves'. Please remember the rule:
Never repeat the same word, or phrase, in the same sentence or paragraph. The only exceptions are dialogue and small words such as 'the' or 'as'.
With dialogue, you can ignore all the grammer rules if you like, because people frequently don't speak with correct grammer.
Problem #2:
In the fourth paragraph you have this:
> A groan from the creaking wood of the bed echoed through out the room, walls expanding and contracting with no rhyme or reason, confusion and chaos laying their hands over the fabric of this reality. She whimpered
The problem comes with the second sentence. The first sentence talkst to us about that bed and the walls of the room. Then w see the word 'she'. 'She' refers back to something, and in this case, it refers back...not to the woman IN the bed, but rather, the bed...or the walls...or the room itself. Please use something other than 'she' for that sentence, such as her actual name, or perhaps something like 'the sleeping woman'.
Very well written and the point is very clear. The only thing that bothers me is that the first singleton (last word of the each stanza on a seperate line) starts with an o and I keep wanting it to start with an a so that it matches with the other 2 singles.
This is a good start to what could be a much longer story. The character of Davy is interesting, and he seems quite realistic. The story ends abruptly though, and that's disappointing. We find out next to nothing about rose except that she's someone he's fallen for. The very last paragraph almost screams that the author either got bored, ran out of time, or ran out of paper.
This is a short story which has quite a bit of promise but falls short of delivering simply because of the passive telling.
To illustrate, you have this sentence:
Barbara and Ruby the owners of the Cream Bun Café were really looking forward to the arrival of what they affectionately called the Monday Ministers.
You can make that less passive, and involved the reader more, by turning it into dialog and action:
Barbara wiped a few crumbs off one of the tables and glanced out the window.
"Looking for something?" Ruby asked from the other side of the cafe.
"Yes," Barbara nodded, a smile playing about her face. "I'm waiting for the Monday Ministers to arrive. I can't wait to hear what happened!"
This is a fairly standard semi-love story told as a passive narrititive by one of the characters. The reader finds themself just standing off to the side, eves dropping on the coversation of a mother and her daughter.
There are technical issues which should be fixed. In this sentence:
Emily and her daughter Debbie plonked their bags and themselves down at a window table in the Cream Bun Café.
There needs to be a comma after bags, and also after themselves
This story could be a lot more interesting if you remove the passive nature and really involve the reader more.
I keep trying to read this and failing. I've started to read it five times now. I keep getting to the point where the General takes over and loosing all interest. At that point, it reminds me too much of too many movies and I become incredibly bored.
Oh this is funny. Way too siily and a lot of fun to read. I'm not sure why The Raven lends itself so well to filk songs but it does and you've used it masterfuly here.
Favorite lines:
While the furniture was bounding to and fro across the floor,
Devil furniture that took delight in bounding o'er the floor.
This it did and nothing more.
Excellent job on this. it reminds me slightly of the movie alien, especialy at the last.
There are some picky technical problems with it which should be addressed. For example, most of the beginning is passive. it tells us, not shows us. It doesn't really reach out and grab me even though it should because the main character is obviously emotional. In order for me to fall into the story, I need to feel that emotion too.
In this paragaph:
A homeless man was huddled in the corner, a blanket around his body. In the dark corner, I noticed a large bump on the side of his neck. It was probably some kind of abnormality. Not wanting to stare, I shifted my eyes back over to the staircase.
The third sentence is an incomplete thought:
It was probably some kind of abnormality
and needs to be attached to something else. It could easily be combined with the second sentence however the paragraph has a second problem. the homeless man is sitting in a dark corner, the main character is nervous and shouldn't be doing more than glancing at the homeless man. Yet he can clearly see the large bump on the homeless man's neck. Some how that doesn't quite reality check.
This short piece has an interesting plot and a lot of potential to develop into something longer.
There are some technical issues that should be addressed however.
One of the things that a lot of writers do when first putting down an idea is a sketch. Much like an artists sketch, the writers sketch doesn't contain a lot of details but it gets the ideas down quickly before they fade. However, a sketch should only be the jumping off point, both for writing and art. Once the ideas are down, the artist and the writer should both carefuly go back over the piece, adding detail, enhancing bits and polishing the work.
This piece is very sketchy and needs to be polished. As an example, I'll use the first paragraph. You have:
A soft breeze blew down the street, bringing an early winter chill with it. The sole person walking in the street pulled his jacket tighter over his large frame. He stopped walking, and stood in the middle of the street as he examined a small piece of paper. He quickly folded it carefully and placed it back into his jacket pocket. The man stared intently from building to building. He walked faster down the street, head sweeping from left to right. Near the end of the street he stopped, his attention fixed on an old brick house. The last dead leaves of the season crunched underfoot as he climbed the steps leading to the door. He firmly knocked and waited as the door opened slowly to reveal a kind-looking woman. She only briefly needed to look at him before she smiled broadly. ¨Come in, ¨ she said, ¨She’s waiting inside.¨
The sentences in themselves are fine. They each carry an idea and they each are grammaticaly correct. However when read togethe, the result is very bumpy. Rather like riding in a car with the driver continualy applying the brake over and over and over. To smooth this paragraph out, combine thoughts. Also be careful to avoiding repeating the same word or phrase in a sentence or even in the same paragraph.
The first two sentences are:
A soft breeze blew down the street, bringing an early winter chill with it. The sole person walking in the street pulled his jacket tighter over his large frame.
In those two sentences you have repeated the word street and they are related. They could be combined into a single sentence:
A soft winter breeze blew down the street, biting at the sole person who traversed it, and causing him to pull his jacket more tightly over his large frame.
However those sentences flow fairly smoothly as it is and combinging them is really not necessary, just find some other word for street in one or the other of them.
These next sentences however, do need to be combined:
You have:
He stopped walking, and stood in the middle of the street as he examined a small piece of paper. He quickly folded it carefully and placed it back into his jacket pocket. The man stared intently from building to building. He walked faster down the street, head sweeping from left to right.
Each sentence is a single short thought and while it tells us each action, it's jerky. he stopped and looked at a paper. he put the paper in his pocket. he stared at a building. he hurried down the block.
combine the thoughts like this:
He stopped, looked at a paper, glanced at the building, put the paper back into his pocket and hurried down the block.
See if you can make one sentence out of the four by combining them in this way.
This is a delightful, light hearted story. A lot of fun to read, though I think if my kitchen started talking to me, I'd be looking for someone else to do the cooking!
Favorite line:
The apron giggled. “Stuff’s a’flyin!”
I love this piece. I'd like to see a series of shorts dealing with other parts of Ann's life.
This story has potential and an interesting plot. The paragraphs need to have a blank line between them however, to make it easier for the reader.
Also, when you do your next re-write, please keep in mind that it is bad grammer to start a sentence with the word and.
The word and is a connecting term, used to combine two thoughts. If you find yourself about to start a sentence with and, then use a comma after the previous sentence rather than a period.
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