Young Writers Society

Hey there, Captain

Normally, I'd pick out every small detail I find to fix, but there's just a bit too much here for me to cover.
Okay that came out wrong, I mean there's a lot of content, so I me pointing everything out might make this unnecessarily long.
So to prevent that, I'm gonna try to point out only the major spelling and grammatical errors I find. Hopefully you'll be able to pick up minor ones from what I point out.

I'll start out with the spelling(ish) mistakes I found:

Alrighty, Dogs here with your review today! This piece is looking good but certainly could use some touching up. Lets dive in shall we?:

"it's colour seemed to have been drained from it; it's vitality drained.."

Ok, good line, I really love the imagery here, great vocab. HOWEVER! You are breaking a major rule here and it is almost never EVER use the word "it" in your writing unless it adds significantly to your literature. Which in this case I don't believe it does. Always specify the "it," you can always change it out with a "them" if you really need to stop sounding redundant. But "it" is usually a no no.

"and, to only add the darkness and gloom of this squalid little world..."

Wonderful wonderful vocab and imagery here. You use "squalid" very effectively here without making it forced. However, begining a sentence with "and" is usually frowned upon unless it helps the flow, but again you can get away with it in short stories. However, beginning a paragraph with a conjunction is a big no no again.

"And out stepped another PC followed by a women"

This line just sounds awkward and is breaking the flow for me. Maybe throw in some commas and rearrange the wording. A good way to fix these problems is to re read your work aloud to yourself. It's a total pain and I hate doing it... but it really helps all my writing.

"sragles"

I'm not quite sure what this word means, or what you were trying to say with it... I looked it up but I couldn't find a definition for it. Apart from this little misspelling I am really enjoying your word choices in your writing.

"Other than the dress she wore nothing else"

Ok, thats something that is typically common sense to the reader, our image is formed by what you tell us is happening. Therefore if you just say the girl is wearing a pink and pokadotted dress with purple swirls, that is what we'll see. You don't need this line.

"Did she have parents that were missing her? That were worrying about her?"

Ok, "That were worrying about her" is grammatically not a question, either merge these two lines together or just chop of the "worrying" aspect of it.

"Not any more love"

Ohhhhh I can already tell I'm going to love Inspector Vile. I love characters with that style, really develop this guy and his "vileness" or whatever you choose to make him. But egotistical stuck up and arrogantly sassy detectives can never go wrong .

Ok, intresting interaction between Hannah and Vile... I'd expect a character like Hannah to be more in an outrage about her sudden dismissal and not so willing to compromise. That part seems a little rushed in your writing. I'd suggest Hannah to inquire more about why she's being replaced and some reasoning from Vile. Thats like someone coming to your house and saying: "hey, this is my house now... get out. Thanks." and then you just going along with it without asking why or what prompted that comment. All and all this piece is coming along very well. Maybe a few grammatical errors and you should do a spell check but it's looking good. Definitely cut out a little for smoother transitions. I looovvee your vocab choice most the time, very well written in that regard. Anywho! give me a P.M if you have any questions, I'd be glad to help. I myself am writing a mystery novel also The Magnificent Mansion. I wish you the best of luck in your writing though. Keep up the good work!!!

TuckEr EllsworTh

Hey Captainfinnicky,

It's Audy here with a review, I can be somewhat blunt/harsh, so just let me know if you have any questions or want to chat this up sometime. Also, remember to take anything I say with a grain of salt. So, enough of the preamble and let's just jump down to it.

The very first thing I noticed: your first sentence is a fragment. This is the FIRST SENTENCE of this entire piece, you don't want to start off with a bad impression. You want to grip and hook your reader, you want to keep me invested. I'd suggest to do a quick proofread, or read your own work out loud - check for common grammar mistakes. There were a lot of fragments and run-ons that I've noticed, a lot of misplaced commas, and a lot of spelling and formatting errors. Check to see if you can't cut anything out. For example:

The grass here was not green nor lively. It was damp and cold and it's colour seemed to have been drained from it

She couldn't risk getting emotionaly involved. That never helped and often brought back unpleasant memories. Unpleasant memories of the last time she'd gotten emotionaly involved...

Again Hannah banished the thought from her mind, silently cursing herself.

He was a tall, not exactly thin man with mid length, wavy hazel hair and pale blue eyes thatmade Hannah shiver. He wore a dark grey suit with a purple short and a black tie and a pair of smart shoes all of which was cuddled together by a shin length, charcoal Crombie overcoat with a belt wrapped around it and dangling freely about the place as a brief wind picked up.

Hey there Finick! I'm going to give you a quick review. I'm going to start the review with some technical issues in the story, like sentence structure, word order, and the like. Next I'll talk about idea, voice, and research. Crime fiction is sort of my thing, so I sincerely hope I can help!

Technical Stuff

The grassy island that stretched outwards from the mainland.

This sentence is a fragment. This means there is a subject but no verb. In this case, you can remedy the problem by removing 'that'. In fact, 'that' may have just been a typo. Either way, with the 'that' in the sentence, it is a fragment.

Tree's hemmed them all in; standing ominously tall and overbearingly looking down upon them.

This sentence is worded awkwardly. What did the trees hem in? The part after the semi-colon has some good description, but the wording is bad. It's an easy fix, I would now use the word 'overbearingly', because ominously pretty much covers that aspect of the description. I would also avoid saying they are 'ominously tall'. Ominously does not really compliment tall very well.

Another quick note, 'Tree's' should be 'Trees'.

Their bark was cold and crumbling, their leaves a sickly shade of an ugly green.

I would take out the 'an' in this sentence, and it would sound great.

It wasn't long after that another police car added to the swarm and out stepped another PC followed by a woman.

This sentence should be broken down into different clauses. The way it's worded right now, there isn't many pauses in the sentence so it reads very awkwardly.

She was tall and thin in a black suit jacket and a black pencil skirt with a white shirt with blue pinstripes and a pair of high heeled shoes.

Here's another instant where you'd be well off breaking this sentence down into clauses.

sragles

I don't think this is a word, I'm sure you meant 'strands'.

Your wording in the latter half of this piece improves drastically. Just go through and read it aloud or to a friend, if anything sounds off, you'll notice.

Unpleasant memories of the last time she'd gotten emotionaly involved...

Nice allusion!

You have a very good voice for this story. It's compelling, once you get past the technical issues. They are the biggest thing bogging this story down. Work hard on your sentence structure and word order, and your voice will be fine. You're only thirteen, and you're doing incredible for your age! All of the technical thing with your writing will come with time and experience, you have a natural knack for voice. Most of the time, it's the other way around. People will struggle with their voice, but the technical issues aren't a problem. Your ahead of the game as far as voice goes!

You have a nice idea, but we don't know much about it yet. With crime fiction, it's a delicate balance between too much information and too little. If you give them too much, they'll solve it too easily, if you give them too little, they'll accuse you of cheating. This only comes with time, experience, and hard work, but it's worth it.

The next thing I want to talk about is research. Research is important for anything you write, so go ahead and get your notebook ready!

In your story, you don't give much detail about the investigation or the crime scene. I suggest you do plenty of research on crime scenes. My TV is almost always tuned to HLN. Most of the time they portray realistic crime scenes. Check out COPS, on Fox, too. That'll give you a lot of insight into active crime scenes. Avoid basing your crime scenes on fictional shows. They are rarely accurate.

Another good idea is to read plenty of mystery. This'll give you insight into how other writers do their crime scenes. For cozy mysteries, stuff like Katherine Hall Page writes, there isn't much that goes into a crime scene. They aren't a common setting in her stories, because her mysteries tend to be more personal and character driven. But for authors like Tami Hoag, you'll see a bit more of the crime scenes because her characters tend to be detectives.

But, don't let research bog you down either. If you are spend too much time focusing on research, you'll more often than not get scared off of the actual writing process. The awesome RoseyUnicorn told me to write until I hit a point where I actually HAVE to research. This is an excellent method.

Well Finick, I hope my review was helpful. Keep up the great work! If you need any help with anything, feel free to PM me. Keep writing!