Copy&Paste

Taken down because it was an epic failure. xD I wrote it like... over a year ago!

Ahoy there! Haven't seen you around before; I can see you're new. Welcome aboard YWS! My name is Razorblade.

Anyway, the biggest complaint I have right now is your spacing! I open this thread up and BAM! Wall o' text. Could you do me a favour and space out your paragraphs like I'm doing? It's greatly appreciated and makes things way easier on the eyes.

Send me a PM when you've done so and I'll give this a proper critique, okay?

-St. Razorblade
The Official YWS Pirate

Alrighty Saint Razorblade! Lol. I spaced out the other excerpt you were going to critique, so I'll do this one real fast too.

Thank you, dear. ^_^

Onto the critique!

Hmm... I'm not entirely partial to your introduction. It starts out as a good intro, but it kind of fizzles out in the end. It starts off with a bit of action and then it turns to info-dumping.

Ways to improve it! Continue with the strand about "We have to write about our lives." Scrap what follows and turn it to action. Like, explain how the main character is feeling when they hear about the assignment. Do they sit in class, nervously clutching the sides of their chair, looking left and right as their classmates get to typing away furiously? What's going through their head? Make us feel the character before you slam us with their problem. (If you want an example of the technique I'm talking about, look for my story called "Ten Years, Twenty Eight Days" and read the prologue. That kind of thing is what I'm getting at.)

The rest is up to your writerly instinct.

Wow. No words could describe what I thought at that moment.

Describe it anyway!

"This should be better than Jaggle." I told myself.

Quick grammar rule: when you have speech that does not end in a question or exclamation, and you have something following it, the punctuation at the end of the quote is a comma.

with updated results."

Updated should be in italics. Also, same grammar rule as before applies.

Hello Mickel.

Mickel? Bit of an odd name. Do you mean Michael?
I'm just rambling, you're the writer.

I'll declare myself crazy before that happens."

Need some beginning quotes here.

"Then declare yourself crazy! Hell, tell the whole damn world!" The little man named Bruce exclaimed.

New paragraph. Any time someone new speaks, it's its own paragraph.

I don't have to take this from a non-existent, little punk."

Extraneous comma. Also, the grammar rule I mentioned before applies here (as well as several other places).

"Good morning, love!" Mom said to me as I entered the kitchen for breakfast. "Mom, please," I beg, slightly annoyed. What, love? Is something wrong?" She asks innocently. "Oh, no. Nothing. It's just, ever since we visited Grandma in England, you seem to have taken on a bit of an accent if you haven't noticed."

This whole paragraph needs to be checked for beginning quotes, as well as broken up. Like I said, when someone new speaks, it's its own paragraph.

I was there alone, eating a toasted, jellied bagel, ready to beat the crap out of it. I didn't know why. I just felt like being mad at this particular bagel-or maybe it was the world.

This is a very nice touch. You need more like them!

I decided to wear my favorite pair of pink and brown plaid capris, a brown, pink-polka-dotted shirt, my most comfortable pair of flip-flops, a brown head band with pink polka dots, and to top it all off, a seashell necklace that my parents brought back to me from the unknown island of : Zipedi.

This is a bit unnecessary.

Anyway, I can see a story beginning to develop here! Granted, there needs to be a bit more character development, but that'll come with time. The biggest complaint I have is that your characters seem flat. There's not a lot of reader-character bonding going on here, and that is crucial to any story. It keeps the reader interested. You had one nice characterization touch, which I pointed out above, but you need more like them. You need to give the readers a reason to care. And that, my friend, is where my advice stops and your writer's instinct takes over.

All this needs is some development. It's a good story, but it's in the phase that all stories start off with. It'll get better with time.

-St. Razorblade
The Official YWS Pirate

P.S. I'll critique your other piece later on. ^_~

Wow! Thanks love! Lol. (A bit of her mother's accent.) It's a girl's name by the way. It's pronounced : Mi-kel. Basically it sounds just as it's spelled. Anything you'd like me to critique? (Soon, I shall take this down and edit everything that you pointed out. (And sorry about all of those errors. I'm new to the writing business and to tell you the truth, I thought it was quite good for my first time. I guess I'm a bit too confident...)

Wow! Umm... I don't really knwo what to say. The story started out very normally, but it ended up going, weird. Little man in a suit? I just didn't really get this story.

I did like the beginning, though. It was funny. ABout how the teacher only seems to say copy and paste. It's true, they do say that a lot.

Well, thanks. I suppose it is weird. I guess that's sort of what I'm aiming for. Because seriously, normal is not my forte' at all, so really, it's good that ot's 'weird'. Lol. And, I just edited it from Saint RazorBlade's critique and I changed quite a few things around, so I'll be modifying this shortly.

Hm...interesting. I really don't know what to say.
I heard you wanted crit, but I am not the kind who has those page long speeches on how to improve. So, I will do my best.

1. I didn't spot any grammar or miss spellings through the whole thing.
That's a plus.

2. The first chapter was very odd. Very creative! Good idea!

3. The ending, when the little man pops up and etc. I felt like your writing
lost focus and there was something missing. Maybe more description might
help.

4. I have done this before, putting two chapters on the same entry. I have to say that that is not that good of a thing.

5. Chapter two is good. I like how she reacts to her mom, and her bagel (lol)

6. I don't know if you weren't finished with chapter two or not, but, it was
really short. I would delete chapter two and put it on a new entry. And make
it a little longer.

I really like this. I hope my crit was useful. I hope you continue this story.

-- M.B.Author

M'kay. This could use some work. Your thoughts are all over the page, causing little coherency, and, as the others have said, you've got a psycho story line. What? A little man in a hawaiian shirt? That came out of absolutely nowhere. And what's more your diaolgue is contrived and gives me a small headache. You could also add some more description and ditch the shopping list style writing. I don't really care what she had for breakfast. We don't care about our dear heoine heading up to her room and deciding what to wear. We want action, as Rzor said. And not only in the prologue (which needs it by the way) but throughout the story. We want to experience things. We want to live through the character. This seems a lot like a autobiography of your life, except on pot.

Your writing is not half-bad, but could use some polishing. The major ingredient in story writing is characterization. If we don't like your character, we don't like your story. Plot comes next. You have no story without a relatable MC. And so far, your MC is slightly haywire, but on the whole underdeveloped. Like a bad photo. Spend some more time here writing about your character and also more about the character's surroundings. With a little hard work and some dedication you could pick up the appeal of this piece.

Sometimes the strangest story ideas can become the best ones.

Nitty-gritty:

Unoriginality and something normal usually isn't my forte'

You can word this differently. "Something normal" is awkward and the same concept can be conveyed just as well with "commonplace" or "orthodox". "Unorginality" is an iffy wording as well. Consider changing.

Gremlin is a newer search engine and their mascot is none other than a cute little gremlin!

The mascot part is toatally irrevelant. You can cut it out.

"Okee dokee then... And you're supposed to be... No, no! Wait! Let me guess! My genie? My fairy godmother?!" I sarcastically ask.

This is a feeble piece of dialogue. Mainly because this is not how anyone would react in real life unless, as I've said, they're on drugs. I'd be scared out of my mind. What the heck is that thing doing on my desktop? I'd probably push the computer off of my table and onto the floor. Be realistic. Please.

"Oh, no. Nothing. It's just that ever since we visited Grandma in England, you seem to have taken on a bit of an accent."

This is awkward. First of all, why would she care. I thought this girl was supposed to be avant-garde and accepting. What does she have against the brits? Also, consider rewording. Dialogue, like real speech, has syntax. And here the syntax seems a bit...off.

Oh, school.

What? You say this like it's an afterthought. School isn't an afterthought for anyone. It's on the forefront of their mind. Leave this out.

Oh, joy!

Previously, you used another "Oh, [fill in the blank]" style sentence. Choose one over the other because their close proxemity doesn't work.

Anyways, you're a good writer. But you got a wierd story...

-Kylan

Thank you both for your critiques. Kylan > Good thing I take 'constructive' criticism well. That's a good thing though. I need people to be a bit tough on me because I don't spot my mistakes and I'm not that good at being realistic. So thanks for the heads up! I think I'm just going to re-start the whole thing-Make it more : realistic. It is supposed to become a novel, not a children's chapter book. And thank you too M.B.Author. I'm... not so good at those long posts either, but I do appreciate either. The longer, more descriptive ones really help to modify my writing, but the short and sweet ones give you incite on another person's perspective of my writing. So, either's good with me. Thanks to everyone helping! Oh, and to answer your 'question', Chapter Two is not finished yet. I had wrote that at the bottom, but took it out for some unknown reason. Again, thanks a bunch!

~The One, The Onle-THE Monki

Sorry, was I too harsh?

-Kylan

No, that's exactly what I need! It's not harsh! It's constructive! Keep it up! People think it hurts, but if they know how to use it, it helps.
~Monki

MONKI!!!!!!!!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Okee dokee then... And you're supposed to be... No, no! Wait! Let me guess! My genie? My fairy godmother?!" I sarcastically ask. I close my eyes trying to gather my thoughts and then put them together to make sense, but it just didn't

Take out the 'she said.' Instead, have the gremlin thing say "I can do without your sarcastic remarks. I'm only here to help..." bla bla, you get the idea. :D

I pressed the wonderful little, magical button on the back of my computer and it all went black.

What???????? I thought he appeared behind her....

"Oh, no. Nothing. It's just that ever since we visited Grandma in England, you seem to have taken on a bit of an accent."

Uh, this makes her sound like an ungreatful little... devil.

Overall, it was good, but we really don't get a variety of emotions from the main. Make her a little more dynamic. Does she like guda cheese? Does someone in her class annoy her? We need more details read it OUT LOUD... and see how you can develop her character. :D:D:D:D:D

Eep. I suppose I didn't clarify enough that the little dude popped up on the computer screen (not behind her). Ha ha. Simple mistake. And about the details as you mentioned last... They're coming. I just have to re-build this first. (Or maybe just destroy it and not re-build it at all.)