the premise here is great as i'm sure other people have said and the analogy is nicely done
so having said that i think formatting the work into sentences instead of the blocks you have would make it easier to read and reader to be able to see your the point faster
maybe put the sentence structure inside the blocks you have already just add extra spaces between each statement block you now have
any way just thoughts on the format the rest is good
you have written a lot on your story and i commend that i tried some longer stories and it is hard it took me forever because it was so slow for me do it conversation is hard for me and i sometimes ramble along and forget to just get to the point and move faster and i see some of that is your writing
if four lines can take the place of six lines it must be done 100 words can be distilled to forty you want to do that even when you see your words vanish with the delete button
i didn't see a lot of big things happening fast and a lot of readers are going to want that and the build ups weren't clear black and white or clear pictures but seemed muddled to me it reminds me of some writing i have done where i just had nice background and ordinary conversation that was actually kind of boring
the very good thing is you have a lot here to work with if you can live with the scalpel you shroud be able to repair what you have and i don't know if you put the whole story in an outline form but you need to that it usually helps the writer to make the path of the a lot easier to follow
good luck you do have a lot written down to work with and i see you have edited your work so that is a good thing some people never edit so i don't even know why they ask for reviews
it appeared to me that while you had a core story it seems that some of the conversation especially in the beginning and the characters meandered on without much focus and it slowed things down also the separation of big chunks of description and long sections of conversation doesn't work for me i would have rather read the disruptions cleverly mingled with the conversation anyway just a suggestion
you will hear this a million times here a giant block of text makes your piece basically unreadable on a computer screen so first please divide it up into paragraphs and lines then it can be read and reviewed it was too hard to read in the block type but i skimmed over it and i think the short sentences work but you have a heck of f a lot of short sentences but i thought from what i did see you are showing a story but you will have to brake up the one block to see what you have
it goes fairly smooth although i do see few lumps to me but poetry is the hardest for the author to change i would say taking out three or four of the weaker or redundant lines would tighten up the poem up without losing anything looks like you have a good base
I haven’t been by my page for a while but I saw you did a review for me so I thought I would check out one of your links. I like the subject of this poem and I thought you did a good job of setting up the feeling of opposites attracting.
I never really got the concepts of the old soul and new soul idea but I know it means something to those that understand the meaning of it and you did a good job of using that in your poem. I actually feel I know more about it from reading what you wrote.
Nice about you guys being together that long doesn’t always happen that way.
Good poem and nice story
I'm pretty much into sci-fi so I thought I would take the time to point out a couple of things that might help. First, as you might have been told, starting out with a lot of description about the character descriptions isn't recommended.
Maybe just the planet description and get into the conversation of the story. Then add the character descriptions as you go along.
You have a creature attack and then later say "the beast had silently glided…" it is better to have the action and describe things as it happens rather then describe things after they happen. I hear it all the time when reviews say to me "show don't tell." I hear it a lot LOL
The other thing is you have is a lot of sentences that are really separate, but you have then hooked together with commas. I've been told that it is called run on sentences or comma spliced sentences. Petty easy to fix, just make more sentences and only keep one or two commas in each sentence.
The story is done well, and it is pretty funny. And the end is satisfying. So that's good. I think you have everything there and if you could clear up the paragraphs a little it will be easier to follow.
Sometime I paste two identical paragraphs on the same page. Then I take one of them and try to cut it down as smooth as I can and compare it to the unaltered paragraph. If I can say the same thing is fewer words, and not lose anything I want to say, it is better to have fewer words.
So you did good job and with a little rewrite it can only get better!
I stumbled a bit and thought it was a coyote pack… at first.
…watched the coyote the pack had…
The paragraph …. to a section of land in North Central Texas … has a lot of repeated information and needs cleaned up.
In fact the whole section down to the conversation is long and many readers, and certainly publishers that look at buying stories, will find that a deal killer.
That’s why I felt you have to have a better starting sentence. some won’t read much past the first sentience if it doesn’t grab them
Try comparing him with the rejected wolf and much of the other information you want as you go along with the story’s conversation.
Sometimes it’s called - information dump – where to much information is dropped at once. If you could spread out the background info over some action pages that will help a lot. Also btw braking up the blocks of text makes things easier to read on the screen.
As far as the story itself and your descriptions, those are good. You just need to get things moving along faster. Imo….
I enjoyed this story; it was sweet and child like, with the talking animals. I did find some of the animal conversation the same as the human conversation and the over lap lost me a couple of times, but probably no big deal. A couple of other times when you were explaining things it might be possible to tighten up some, but great over all. Thanks for the story!
The story concept sounds interesting and off hand it just seems hard to do, but you do tell a understandable story with this idea.
you’ve never had the pleasure of that feeling…. Don’t get this …displeasure?
but Smokey had already made it to the basement steps. Smokey had been running so fast that when he made it to the stairs he was unable to stop himself from sliding.
It would be nice if the thoughts were condensed some of the paragraphs like above - the stairs are mentioned twice - wonder if you could rewrite so the steps were referenced once and you saved some words off the explanation?
Other examples are the paragraphs
We expected Joshua’s mother to be home
And the paragraph
It was two years later when I had my first encounter
Both seemed to me to have extra words and redundant explanations in them. Other paragraphs I feel have the same problem.
There are some other things that makes it a little hard to read for me, but you have plenty of comments so you probably already have had lots of help.
You did well enough with what I think is a difficult story idea.
Your story about your experiences of going to science fiction conventions was interesting and well written - in an easy to read retelling of the events.
It must have been exciting to be involved in the Sci-fi conventions back in the good ol’ days.
I have heard that the rule was there were few girls going to the convention and the ones that did were not so hot, but I can see that you were an exception to the rule.
I have always been a Sci-fi fan and joined Writing.com to try to get feedback on some Sci-fi stories I am working on. But the current Sci-fi writing is a lot different than it was back when Isaac Asimov was writing. My stuff sounds so dated now.
Anyway and thanks for sharing that part of your life.
You seem to know where you are going with this story, but over detail at times.
Like after --“Sighing, Jackson shoved his hands on his hips.”
And then two paragraphs of detail, that is well written, but it’s right in the middle of the very important part where they are confronting the main issue. If anything their inside feelings should be here, not stuff out the window.
The details are nice, maybe cut them out and use them somewhere else, when she’s thinking or remembering things.
Every things alright with the conversation, but just so. Wish something sparkled, some words that reached out and dug in and held me, still alright I guess.
Anyway the premise is good. Think each conversation line over and see if it really seems natural and instance with feelings enough.
This is good and I like it. I’m not so much into the vampire thing but I did do a story poem about one - since the genre is so poplar.
I like the idea of floating makes me think of a spell, the pale moon is good too. I do think the format of the lines could be a little cleaner. Not sure why the extra works “of my room” is in the sentence “Past the light glow of my room” when glow is so good with know. Past the light glow - sounds alright to me.
Also the coolness line seem like it could be divided and put on two shorter lines.
I like - the racing of my blood – that’s certainly vampire like and - working powers - again a good analogy. Very good, the minor format thing isn’t really a big deal.
I read several of your poems and was going to review something that hasn’t been reviewed, but since this piece is sort of like what you reviewed for me, questions and a mystery without explanation, I decided to review this one.
I like the way you set up a mysterious background, but it still seems to be familiar or something we’ve been told about.
Also, I like the way there is no real explanation about what is happing and you leave that up to the reader’s imagination.
I read through much of this folder and feel there is a lot of great information and instruction here.
I would like to write science fiction, but I’m poor at spelling and grammar because of dyslexia, and I’m forced to rely on spell cheek too much. I do try to go over the stuff I write, but I still misspell sometimes.
I have been trying poetry and I seem to get better ratings on poetry then my prose.
However, I really don’t have a lot of knowledge about poetry, the styles and types. I usually rhyme and try to pay attention to rhythm and meter, but my poetry isn’t strongly structured with traditional rhyming lines. So your articles were good information for me.
I see a lot of free form writing on this site, with high ratings, which even I know is bad. Still for some reason people rate it high. I recently have been trying to do the more free form style, but I’m still confused about how to get rhythm in free form.
Again your articles in this folder helped, expressly the one on scansion.
Although I do like the concept of asking questions in a piece like this my feeling is that your questions are to esoteric and wandering too much to keep the reader interest in what the answer might be to the things you ask. In fact the whole thought pattern in this piece wanders around someplace in the multiverse and isn't focused at all in our current world.
"…back to the world of originality" --- what does that mean? The way life used to be or some new original way of life
"The sense of getting lost and losing all sense of belonging has caught many a people prisoner" maybe law enforcement should get lost and then they could catch more crooks
"Since when did life become a commodity?since when did dreams become so real? since when did we begin to lose our souls to live this grand artificial life?" (sic)
None of this makes any real sense - the typo errors are easier to understand then whatever direction the thoughts are going
You did pretty good on the part of the prompt “about the experience, real or imagined!” because I can’t tell if this really happened to you are not from they way your wrote it. Although the content of being young and getting a way with sneaking out makes me feel it might be made up.
Walt Disney I could see that, but Ross Perot? Pretty funny combo. (made up?)
There were a couple of places like the “Sadly, Mum paragraph and the “That was the first of many“ paragraph that felt out of place or awkward.
But in general your sentences were written well and easy to read and - all in all - the story ran along good.
I did wonder why since he talked to “you” - as was mentioned in the start of the story - why he said ‘little Wheeler girl’ instead of using your name, that stuck out to me.
I see you have been working on your story since you first wrote it and probably have been using the advice people have giving you. That’s good. Some people never change anything even after dozens of reviews, makes me wonder why they ask for reviews.
Anyway this is just my grain of salt and my opinion…
I thought your piece started out really strong, although I felt you wandered around some and could have tightened up the middle of your piece, and unfortunately I felt your ending was weaker then the start of your argument.
However I see you have plenty of reviews and you’re probably not interested in the wording, but rather the content of your argument.
Here is my take on what science and logic can determine about an ultimate God. (Although I’m rather agnostic myself.)
Your statement that “If God exists, then it must be possible to prove His existence by means of the scientific method” - actually goes against the rules of scientific logic considering Gödel's incompleteness theorem
From Wikipedia
Gödel's incompleteness theorem states in part
…for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory
And goes on to add
The true but unprovable statement referred to by the theorem is often referred to as “the Gödel sentence” for the theory… that share the property of being true but unprovable. For example, the conjunction of the Gödel sentence and any logically valid sentence will have this property.
You said “Must everything that exists be scientifically measurable? Yes, if by ‘all that exists’ you mean ‘what is scientifically measurable’.”
I would suggest that because of the incompleteness theorem that this in not true. There are scientific things that exist that cannot be measured even within the theorem that described the “scientific things.”
There are tons of implications of Gödel's theorem beyond math - as it applies to logic as well.
(Probably plenty of stuff on Google)
If it is possible to have “true, but not provable” statements in math and science how can science be ask “to prove His existence by means of the scientific method”?
Could it be faith is necessary both in science and in theology?
Good job in bringing up the concepts you did and this is just one more example.
I read three of your poetry items about dogs and I liked this one the best. I didn’t really think about how many references we have to dog that could be turned around like you did.
I also think you did a good job on the rhyme with a formal rhythm, something that isn’t as easy as it might sound.
I read and reviewed some of your other stuff and I think in this screenplay you have avoided the things that I felt - in my opinion - distracted from your other screenplays. The conversation in this one carried the story and you didn’t need a lot off screen narration or lots of explanation in the description text blocks. Good job on that.
I see that your date is really close and at first I wasn’t going to send you a review on this - because the time to rewrite is so little.
I was just going to read it for fun and to see how it compared to your other screenplay stuff. And I really did enjoy your short story I reviewed so I thought I’d just read this.
However you have this written well - with believable characters and the story is well driven by the dialog - and there are only a couple of things that struck me as possible improvements.
And I think you may be able to do them easily (if you think they are valid ideas) all imo… of course - I thought two things might help.
I’m saying this in a constructive way and they are simple ideas. One is the tag line - It’s only a matter of time. This is a good play on the fact he always has to be on time, but in a way to me it seems to short, to vague, maybe.
It’s only a matter of time and you’ll see. It’s only a matter of time till you find out. Not saying those exact words just something that points stronger to the predicted future that Stan will find that his wanting to be perfect on time and his overlooking relationships with people; will eventually be re-evaluate as to the importance in his life.
I know this is a code phrase and you may not want to change any of it at all, maybe just think about it.
The other thing I felt was his relationship with the homeless man. I felt that since he is the ghost or sprit of Rira’s dead husband that maybe the homeless guy could be portrayed slightly more sympathetic to the viewer, a stronger connection to him; since he is such a major character.
I see that you do have Stan beginning to have feelings for him and I do see that he is supposed to have a certain amount of disgust at first - my only thoughts is perhaps less disgust and faster sympathy.
Just something to think about. It seems you have a good handle on this piece and may not really need any of my comments. Good work and I hope the best for you on the Nicholl Fellowship!
Pretty funny I was trying to review another member on writings dot com’s poem and they had the word “ladigo” which I don’t know what that means. So I Googled it. I hit the web site button and ended up at your poem.
I see you used the word but can’t say it helped me define what it is!
Still I liked your poem. You have good rhymes and images, so I thought I would review your piece because---I liked it.
Wonder what ladigo is ….
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