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I love this scene right here! Reall gets the blood pumping. If you make this into a book, I have a feeling it will be great.

I like how you gave some action in the scene, yet you hinted around about something of a betrayal between friends that could branch out a thousand more ideas, really gets the reader interested, makes them think.

This scene could be the prolougue of a great story, and that's all I really have to say


Yep, seems pretty accurate.

Nov 14, 2011, btw XD

︵‿︵‿୨ ♡ OwO ♡ ୧‿︵‿︵


sass levels loading


[he/him]




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I called my first "reviewee," so to speak (GeeLyria), my "kitten-avatared friend."
I guess I was, at very least, accurate in my description of the writer.

This was, of course, before I had learned the tag for a block quote, so... Lots of quotation marks.

It was a few days ago. April 14, 2013. Since then, I have learned some BBCode. :)

Spoiler
Here: work.php?id=100951#c357142

Imma do this with some particularity and style, so take note, kitten-avatared friend:

Each double line break (with a space between paragraphs) henceforth corresponds with a paragraph of yours. The last one will lead into a short overall impression, and I'll end with my kindest remarks and tell you what you did well.

Young lady, Sunday morning; so far, this is somewhat trite. You are blatant. Not to be unkind, of course, but each sentence here is brimming with opportunity for complexity and thrill!
"There is no human being as far as you can see,..."
Perhaps this could be streamlined - say "There is not another soul in sight," "So far as you can see, you find yourself alone," "Not another human being falls under your drooping gaze," et cetera. This opening is your only first impression, and it needs to lead strongly! I like the idea behind your leading paragraph, but try to differentiate your word choices and your structure. The mark of a good writer, in my own opinion, is the inherent beauty of his (or her) sentences. This is especially true in your opening.
"Somewhere near, there's a woodpecker creating a constant noise as his beak hits the bark" Make this active; for instance, "A woodpecker knocks in the distance, creating constant noises of beak against bark." And remove "there's," "that," "this," "the" whenever possible. The particle unneeded is a particle that needs deleted!
I like "begging for admiration." Good personification there.

Remove "still" in "you still refuse," and don't use the conjunction "and" there. "but you refuse to open your eyes. Crossing your arms, you smile, and suddenly..." So on. The little words that clutter sentences are the obstacles I think your writing struggles most against; so, if you see a word you can omit (especially a conjunction or an abstract word like "still," "although," "whereas," so forth) then omit it! Then you'll flow like a silky carriage down a hill of ice. So to speak. :)

The baby stroller lead is good; strong; maternal - perhaps, however, too maternal? But still, it works.
You don't need "behind you" when talking about the tree trunk. Walking backwards, it must be behind you - I think the reader can deduce that. Sometimes it is best to leave a few details to the reader; I personally find it more engaging that way.
"bleeding, while being drenched in alcohol" makes no sense to me. Alcohol stinks, but blood and alcohol don't seem as though they necessarily mix.

"laughters" must necessarily, definitely, incontrovertibly be changed to "laughter" - there are no "laughters." Also, grammar picking: "laugters" should be "laughter" and "he teeth of a cat" should be "the teeth of a cat." Grammar was strong until the conclusion. Keep strong!
"ribcage" is two words: "rib cage."
The transition between creepy baby breathing heavily and toxic mental breakdown is weak - suddenly, I (the reader) just am hijacked by emotion? Why? By what compulsion? Who or what is doing this to me? I haven't even seen freaky cat-tooth-man-face-baby yet, so is it anticipation? And why do I lose the stroller (or why, more importantly, is the baby upside down)? Creepy feelings? Be slightly more explicit here, maybe, to string the reader along.
"You scream and try to escape." Try to escape, but how? I think I want to see arms flailing or something here - give me an image to follow up the baby. Scary images deserve detailed reactions! "you are chained to him." Elaborate, or discuss this, or make it seem more metaphorical, if there are not meant to be real chains.

"And this is how you will stay... forever." Alright, this story was frightening. And it was good. But the conclusion? A little lackluster. It was platitude worthy. I think you can do better!
I may seem a little nit-picky, but I swear it's for the better. This was something I felt strongly enough to react to, so perhaps that's consolation for the nit-picking. Regardless, here is the final digest of suggestions:

*NO particles, conjunctions, abstractions except where they contribute to the work, the timing, or the flow

*Eliminate ambiguities that seem concrete but may not be - if it is a metaphor, you must either make it feel so real it must be interpretative, or false enough to be metaphorical. That doesn't make much sense, but such is the nature of metaphor.

*Get those boiling and freezing and spectacular sensations across! That means, if necessary, reorganizing the whole story so these things flow together. That's not very specific advice, but it's something I cannot even pretend to do for you. I just mean to say that, if you pull together those beautiful descriptors and experiences, they conglomerate and congeal and stick in the reader like plaque before a heart attack! AND THEN YOU CONCLUDE AND IT IS... well, amazing. So aim for plaque build-up! And don't tell your dentist or your cardiologist I said that!

:)

~Skorlir




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...I'm a bit mean. xD

Spoiler
You did something very very bad. You switched tenses. Now what does this mean? Observe:

"Grant turned toward the window and looked out."

"But I stop, and our faces are four inches apart."

See? You turn from past to present and then eventually you go back to past again. Don't do this. Some writers may think it's original and drills in the point more; it actually does the opposite. Be careful about your tenses.

I'm not sure of my personal opinons of this story, mostly because I'm from California and snow is the most awesomest thing to me, so I can't understand snow being a bad thing. Even so, besides that tense mistake, this was an okay story. I only say okay because (to me) it didn't seem to have a purpose and it seemed to wander a bit. The wandering seems purposeful so it flows nicely, but it's not my cup of tea.
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach

Moth and Myth <- My comic! :D




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My first review was well...short? and had many spelling mistakes (I used chat handwriting) ... *Hides her face after reading it* XD

This was the first time I got so interested in readying the history type of thing....I love the lines "But songs are lost . . .
Memories are forgotten . . ."
seriousli u shld keep on wrking and writing cuz you really are amazing at it. its really hard to write it like you wrote narrating the story instead of being the main character and doing it this good is harder, really great work.
Last edited by umaima on Fri May 03, 2013 9:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
“The strong person is not the one who can wrestle someone else down. The strong person is the one who can control himself when he is angry.”

“It is better to sit alone than in company with the bad; and it is better still to sit with the good than alone.”




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This thread is so perfect, everyone has changed so much!

I realize now, exactly how much I used to repeat myself in my reviews and post unnecessary rambling. Ahhh.... Good times, good times ;)

This work here. :)

Spoiler
Hello Sassykat,

I found this poem really quite amusing and very creative. I love the use of onomatopoeia that you involved in this poem. It was very effective and made the poem so much more than it would have been without it. I compliment you on this poem for it is really quite unusual and it was very humorous and unique and certainly not the kind of thing that you would read every day. However I do have a couple of things that I would like to point out that I personally think would help improve your poem quite significantly.

Blam blam POW CRASH CRASH SCREEEEEEE--
Hey hey Bow now drown drown SCREAAM.

My first point is about the quoted part in stanza three. I think you should have either capitalized the whole of this part or just not capitalized any of the text I previously quoted. To me it just doesn't look right with part of it capitalized and part of it not, maybe it's just me but I think it would look better if it was all in capitals. Another alternative would be to italicize it, but I still think that putting it all in capitals would probably be more effective.

In a way I kind of agree with Veritas, this was very entertaining and it certainly made me laugh but that was really kind of where it stopped and started. It was basically just an entertaining poem and nothing really more. I think you could have taken this a bit further rather than just describing different types of music and ending it. In the fourth stanza when you described rap you started to go into bit more depth describing how it made you feel but then you stopped which was a bit disappointing but at least you did touch on it.

Apart from those two things I thought this was really quite an excellent poem that had a very good flow and beat. The next step for this would be to make it longer and include even more musical genres so that the poem is a bit longer and more complete. My favorite part was definitely the last stanza

Whistle whistle, hmm...oh, you're still there?
I'm impressed that you stayed, that's pretty rare.
I normally don't find people who like my work,
When I do this out loud it drives people berserk!

because it ended the poem perfectly and you just wrote it excellently.

Overall this was a really good poem and I fully enjoyed reading it. I loved how you took such a simple topic and made it really interesting and funny. I loved how you constructed this and how you put a lot of thought into each different genre of music and I also liked how you summed the whole poem up really well at the end. If you would like any more works of yours reviewed than feel free to PM me and I would be happy too, your works are a pleasure to read!

From DreamingForever




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I actually just cringed as I read this.

"No offense to the person above me but that sounded more like a spellcheck(not literally, you get my point) to me, if thats what you wanted great. On the the other hand I am not going to be able to give you a detailed literary review. What I can supply is a couple thoughts.
It seems intriguing but a little out of nowhere, generally you try to hook someone in the first chapter, when you try to do so in the first paragraph the reader feels a little lost, like they have just been thrown into the middle of something with no idea whats going on. Try to give a little more(paragraph or two) introduction. Who is the main character? Whats he like? Has his brother been in trouble before or in noticeable mental anguish of late?
And I would try to be a little more descriptive with most everything, but dont get bogged down in the descriptions and lose the narrative either."




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"I feel like the poem was a little broken up with the punctuation. If you go through and read it again I think you'll get the rhythm down better than just running through it and thus see the punctuation.
One particular area where I find the punctuation distracting is between lines 12-16 ("But you were always there." to "/And broken hearts before me.") This section really seems choppy to me because the sentance in twelve seems to continue on, but the punctuation indicates that it has stopped. The idea is still continuing so it feels like it's sectioned off from the rest of the poem due to the uneasiness of the punctuation.

Aside from this I like how you went about expressing yourself. You did a good job staying on topic and the reactions to him are truly human. I suggest reading through it again deciding on a final format."

spelling..... x.x;




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I really like the beginning to this story. By starting with a tragedy, you pull the reader in and make them want to read more. You also didn't give a lot away so that makes the reader want to find out more. I think this is very good. I for one would love to read more, and I will.

The narrator is still unknown at this point, but that could just mean you aren't ready to introduce them. Once you get a little farther into the story you will want to introduce them.

The description of the fire is very good. I could imagine everything that happened from the time smoke came through Talia's door. It was very well written.

This isn't as bad as I remember it being. My reviews have definitely gotten more in depth since then. This was about 2 years ago I think.
Noelle is the name, reviewing and writing cliffhangers is the game.

Writer of fantasy, action/adventure, and magic. Huzzah!

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Life is about losing everything.
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