Hi Blake's stories and poems! I'm Yoshi and I'm here for your review!
Let's get started, shall we?
First Impression: I really think this is an interesting story. It's really dark and gloomy with a twist ending. Very nice.
It was 11:59 P.M., two people stood at the ladder of the mighty Clockwork along with two guards. The time ticked bit by bit until midnight.
Issue: Even though this section isn't very descriptive and it doesn't have much action, it feels a bit empty.
Fix: You could fix this by adding more descriptive sections-- like describing what the Clockwork is. You can also fix this by using descriptive verbs. For example, you could add, "The Clockwork seemed to glare down at them condescendingly." or something of the sort to give some spice.
Issue 2:The first sentence is a run-on.
Fix 2:You could change it by adding a subordinating conjunction at the beginning so that it is, "As 11:58 changed into 11:59, two people . . ." If you don't like subordinating conjunctions, you could separate them into two sentences.
“I din’t kill nobody!” one of the people said.
Issue: This dialogue is forced. This means that your dialogue is too plain and doesn't describe how this person is feeling. Are they angry? Are they being sarcastic? Are they exasperated? You need to tell the reader what is happening-- with more detail.
Fix: To fix it, you can give some action, for example: "I didn't kill nobody!" one of the individuals standing there shouted, waving his arms theatrically. As you can see, this flows much better.
The other person said “C’mon now, you and I both know there's no getting out of the Clockwork.” The mighty Clockwork began to chime as the ring spread across the great town.
Issue: Improper punctuation. You are missing a comma.
Fix: To fix this, you place a comma in front of a quote. Whenever any character speaks through dialogue, there must always be a comma in front of the quote.
Issue 2: Improper technical line spacing.
Fix 2: Although this can sometimes be a writer's choice, you should always break the line after a quote. In this example, you have the descriptive sentence directly after the quote. This causes it to be hard to read and messy. To fix it, you can create a line break after the quote.
One person banged on the door and cried . . .
The other person went and sat in a corner of the room and said . . .
The other person replied desperately . . .
Issue: You are too vague and plain in your language that consists of "one person" and "the other person". There are many examples of this throughout the novel. I understand that you are attempting to be mysterious, but there is a line between mysterious and confusing. I think in this story, you've crossed over to the "confusing" side. First of all, I can't tell the difference between the two "people" except for the fact that one of them screams "I didn't kill anyone" or something every once in a while. Other than that, there is no clear differentiation between them. Second, you've decided to introduce their names later in the story. To the reader, those names have no meaning, so why did you decide to leave the reader in the dark for the entire first half? If you're going to introduce the names anyways, then at least introduce them early.
Fix: Fixing this is pretty self-explanatory. All you need to do is give the two characters their names earlier in the story.
Anyways, I think this is a really great story! Keep up the good work!
-y0shi
Points: 3506
Reviews: 67
Donate