Young Writers Society

[content deleted by author request]


[reviews in this thread have been moderator edited]

Hi Cal,
Just a few nitpicks.

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You meant to use first person in the above paragraph.

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You used the 'witch' when it's suppose to be 'which'


I know it's now much help.
Jungle

Alooo! Since its for school, I showed every grammar/spelling mistakes I could find...

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Add a comma after while and before they...

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Maybe imagine instead of image?

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Be more specific, this makes it seems as if you don't know what you're talking about.

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A little info-dump-ish, but I like info dumps, and it works here.

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O.K., somewhere you have to add additional details, up till now it seemed as if you were.

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I think you mean too and not two... and the whole sentence is a little awkward...

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Again slightly awkward... not sure how to put it right... maybe you should take out the almost.

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Just add a comma after right.

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Firstly, there? Where? Secondly, you should either take out the "though".

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Just a comma after better.

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An, not a.

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This could use more clarity.

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Besides that its great! I absolutely love the emotion in this piece,and I like your descriptions! I really think this has great potential, and that it is very close to achieving that potential.

Thankyou!!

Hello there, Calli!

Here as requested.

Nitpicks, comments highlighted in RED.

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Add "the" for a smoother flow of the sentence.

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Perhaps you might want to add the preposition "of" between the words "those" and "pictures".

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I think this lacks a comma or something, because it's all confusing and pretty blurry to know where is the "pause" in the sentence.

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"...the truth", perhaps?

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"there", you mean?

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How about trying to put a comma here? It's a bit too run-on, perhaps?

We would just smile nod and make a few comments for each other then we would both take our places.

A comma again there.

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I think you meant to write "their".

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First, I think it's supposed to be"since" instead of sense and I think you mix two of them up. O_o

~

First of all, I thank you for the good read. Even if there are the presence of awkward words, misspellings, still I think this really has potential. But there are just some things that I want to clarify though.

I'm going to say something about your punctuations. Although there is barely a dialog here but I can read some sentences that just doesn't flow smoothly. The cause: lack of punctuations, especially about commas. You have to be really careful about your punctuations and don't ever underestimate them because they bring about the flow, you know.

And this one is about your verb consistency. You tend to switch tenses and it's kind of confusing already. Sure, talking about memoir- I would've have expected at least half of this to be based on past tense. However, don't worry about it too much since there are some slight considerations.

As with the piece itself, I think you almost have written this pretty well. There are just some parts actually where you can just delete, since I think they are a tad info-dumps. But I'm not saying they are all that bad, as with this case, it's okay for me.

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Kicking aside those comments and nitpicks of mine, this definitely has potential. And I'm going to apologize in advance if ever I was being so rude or if ever you see this review vague and unclear. Hope this helps and PM me for questions.

Keep writing,
yuri

Heya

I'm here to review as requested. I've never, in my life, reviewed anything like this before so this critique might be... interesting to say the least. I'll give it a go and see what I can come up with.

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You don't need the comma in bold here.

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You're talking in present tense.

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The comma in bold isn't needed.

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If you made the parts I highlighted in blue here italic, I think that it would work well.

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This part confused me an awful lot xD I'd consider rephrasing it, making sure you use the word time a lot less!

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You don't need the comma in bold.

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This sentence was phrased a tad bit awkwardly, but it's not that bad.

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I changed your but to although because you're using but an awful lot.

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There was one really long sentence here, so I tried cutting it off a bit.

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I didn't understand this xD

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There were a few long sentences here, so I once again shortened them a bit.

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Overall

I'm not really sure how to critique this at all, but I'll try and help you out somehow. This review might be kind of short, but I should be able to come up with something decent to say. When it comes to the concept of this as a whole, I liked it.

What you were saying was touching and your emotions throughout this piece were clear and entertaining to read about. There's the odd info dump here and there, but it didn't really bother me much. Something else that I thought you did well in this piece was showing instead of telling. That's always a really great thing and many writers can't grasp that too easily. Really well done for that!

My main critique for you is grammar. I noticed that you were doing things like starting sentences with but and so, using unneeded and missing out comma's, some awkward phrasing here and there, the odd missing word, and you also had some rather long sentences. To be honest, the best way to improve your grammar is by simply practising your writing as often, obviously with the help of school as well. Grammar's a funny thing. One day, you might have absolutely no idea how to use comma's, but one day, it will click in your head and from then on, you'll use comma's exactly as they should be used. It's weird. If you want any extra help with grammar, maybe you could google it and see if you can find any helpful web pages? I would recommend one myself, but I'm not aware of any. As for this piece, I noted and edited the area's where your grammar was incorrect. All that you need to do is take my, and other reviewers, grammar advice into account and edit this up a bit. Remember, teachers love good grammar.

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Keep writing,

xoxo Skins

Thank you guys you really helped. I didn't have enough time to edit everything before the due date (a half an hour ago), but I did do a lot. For anyone else thinking about reviewing I am not going to edit this anymore except for grammar.

A. S.

Hey there sorry for the delay!

Calligraphy wrote: *removed*

I would change the "but" to "because" and rephrase it slightly so it reads something like "...what he looked like because the pictures I saw of him were faded..."

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I would rephrase this slightly for clarity.

Calligraphy wrote: Not a very pretty picture,

"It wasn't" instead of "Not"[/quote]

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Comma after "before", take out "Instead"

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Kind of a funny comparison. My first impression was "what?" which isn't necessarily bad, but if that's not the effect you want to have maybe try and come up with a a different comparison.

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I would break this sentence up because you're talking about two very different things. Put a period after "on his face" and then start the next sentence with something like "I noticed he hadn't..."

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quite rather than quiet.

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"dog" and "they" don't match. Change one or the other.

I really liked the last paragraph and how you summed it all up. What I think could help you out a lot is to do a reverse outline of this. Here's how it works:
-Number all of your paragraphs
-Starting with the LAST paragraph, write the main point of that paragraph. Then go to the second to last, third to last, etc.
-Look over these summaries. Are there some paragraphs that say a lot of things and you had difficulty figuring out what the main point was? Maybe break those paragraphs up. Are there some paragraphs that you had difficulty figuring out what the main point was because it was so jumbled or you didn't actually make a point? Obviously that would need to change.
Find paragraphs that are making similar points. Can you combine them or make them closer together? Is the order your paragraphs are in the best order? Can you make it better in some way? Are all the paragraphs needed? Can you cut any out or do you need to add any for clarification?
Look within each paragraph and make sure that every sentence is contributing to the main point of the paragraph and all the sentences are in a good, logical order. Try to ween out some of the information that isn't as directly important to the story.
It'll take time, but flushing it out like that will make it sound a lot more concise and professional.
I think the story overall is very interesting though!
PM me if you have any questions!

-Carly

Hi! I'm here too review!
First off: I've never reviewed anything like this before, but I'll do my best!
Second: I really liked this. It was nice!
Third: I noticed very few errors here, and that is very good. There are a few punctuation problems, but nothing major. Overall, I liked this!!!