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Hello there R.J. Hoffman. ^_^

I was going to give this story a review, seeing that it has yet to recieve any, but I'm afraid you've done a couple of things to put me off:

1) YWS has a rule: you have to give two reviews before you post any literary items (stories, poems, articles, artwork, etc.) of your own. After that, you have to give at least one review for each item you post. To date, you have posted three items - this story, plus two essays - but have failed to give any reviews, putting you five reviews in debt.

2) You didn't put a space between each paragraph, making this rather awkward to read.

Once you've fixed these problems, I'll give you a proper review.


-- Sureal ^_^

‘lo again. ^_^

Benu crouched inside his small house, it was far better than most peasants had.

You have a comma splice here. This means that the two parts of the sentence don’t gel together correctly. There are a couple of ways you can solve this problem - the simplest of which is to simply replace the comma with a period/full-stop, cutting it into two different sentences. A slightly more complex way would be to replace the comma with a semi-colon.

Like so:

Benu crouched inside his small house. It was far better than most peasants had.

Benu crouched inside his small house; it was far better than most peasants had.

Either of these would be correct.

and there was a low a wooden ceiling[

Delete the second ‘a’ (bolded).

But it was not the low ceiling that made Benu crouch in the dim interior, moments before a wooden box had fallen from the planks above.

I don’t really like the way this sentence has been constructed. Although it’s technically correct, it doesn’t make immediate sense, as it isn’t readily apparent that Benu is ducking because of the falling box. Luckily, the problem is easily rectified; I can see two easy ways to solve the problem:

But it was not the low ceiling that made Benu crouch in the dim interior: moments before a wooden box had fallen from the planks above.

But it was not the low ceiling that made Benu crouch in the dim interior, as moments before a wooden box had fallen from the planks above.

Both of these solutions make it clearer that Benu is ducking because of the falling box. ^_^

He had accidentally whacked his head on what he had thought a board,

I think you’re missing a ‘was’ from this sentence.

Carefully the fortunate surf pried a plank from on top of the long narrow box.

Personally, I’d add in a comma after ‘carefully’.

and in his haste hay was flying every where.

‘every where’ = ‘everywhere’.

He scrutinized it from a distance, for sometime.

Get rid of the comma: it’s not needed here.

Very slowly he approached the line to inspect it further

Personally, I’d put in a comma after ‘slowly’.

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I think it’d be helpful in this story to focus a bit more on Benu’s thoughts and feelings. The situation he has found himself in is clearly a very strange one, and I think it’d really strengthen this chapter (I assume it’s a chapter?) if you put more time into the character, rather than focussing almost solely on the actions that are taking place. At the moment, I’m not really getting much from him.

Keep on Writing.

-- Sureal ^_^

I thout it was pretty good
i can't really give any advice since i'ma novice to so!

Sureal already pointed out the nit-picky things, but here are my opinions/advice:

Spacing: Please, organize this into paragraphs.

Emotion: This piece has no emotion in it - I assume that Benu is surprised, but you never mention it. But don't just state his emotions like items on a grocery list; use some interesting metaphors and similes.

Ideas: Have you ever read 'His dark materials'? Because the idea you have here mirrors Pullman's idea - Will ( a character) can cut into different world with his 'Subtle knife', just as Benu can with his sword. But it could just be an honest mistake. =o

Here are some articles/sites that may help you:
• Using commas
• Using semi-colons
• Using emotion in prose

Well, this has potential. Edit this then keep writing the next part[s]!

Cheers,
Camille

P.s. Sorry this review seems so rushed - I had a much better one, but my computer crashed so I had to re-start.

I apologise Ayra but i have never even heard of that series before... well any ways as far as the spacing goes, this stupid thing wont keep my original format and crams it all together. Sorry about that part, im just technology deficient. the part about adding more emotion, i see what you mean. i need more emotion but i will go back and fix that portion as soon as i find out where this thing is going, so i can capture his attitude towards the situtation. I will take your advice on the editing as soon as i am finished with the story. i tend not to dwell on editing unless the work is complete, else wise i risk falling in the writers block of perpetual editing.
thank you

Hmm.. This is really good. A lot of excellent discription and not rushed at all. I'm just wondering what's up with the tiny writing. Not that I can't read it or anything, it's just that the writing on posts aren't usually like that.

i felt that this was a good piece of literature, and as all things are, there is room for improvement. most of the suggestions have already been made, and all that's really left to say is that i feel it could use a bit more character description. i understand that he is a peasent and not some incredibly important person, but you can give a bit of description about what he's wearing and what he looks like.

good point but that is coming up in chapter 3 which will play a signifigant importance , i also mention them in chapter 2.

Very nice, i thought that the font was a little hard to read, and that you just dived right into the action withought explaining who was acually doing anything. couldn't really visualize it in my head, but i liked it none the less,

keep writing.

thank you kaliber. i see what you mean, though it is intentional. please view chapter 2 to understand why. i want the reader to not know what is going on to much. because it is from the point of view of a very confused serf.