Young Writers Society

Loved it Jacko! I felt the excitement and tension throughout the whole narrative...brilliant job!

Wiggy

I approve of this, it being dedicated to David Gemmel and all. It got tiring after a while though, it being enitrely based on a run. It was, however, excellently written. I applaud.

*shrugs* I knew it wasn't wrong, and it's fine if that's the general use in your area. So it works.

By the way, I tend to like inverted sentences - they break up the paragraph so it's not one long chunk of the same structure, you know? Personal preference, I guess.

Thanks Bek and Sam!

Sam -- We do tend to use "were", since what you call a singular group, I call a collective noun. It's debatable but I was tend to use a plural instead of the singular, for personal reading reasons, I suppose. It doesn't sound right for me using "was". I suppose because I am referring to the crowd as individuals.

I point you to this from wikipedia --

In British English, it is generally accepted that collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms depending on the context and the metonymic shift that it implies. For example, "the team is in the dressing room" refers to the team as an ensemble, whilst "the team are fighting amongst themselves" refers to the team as individuals.

In American English, there is an epistemologic tendency to believe that the grammatical number mismatch makes such metonymic usage "wrong". Thus, collective nouns are almost always forced to take singular verb forms. In cases where a metonymic shift would be otherwise revealed nearby, the whole sentence may be recast to avoid the metonymy. (For example, "the team are fighting amongst themselves" may become "the team members are fighting among themselves" or "the team is fighting [full stop]".) See Differences between American and British English -Singular and plural for nouns.

Yay! Very cool. I loved it. With a few minor exceptions...

The crowd were screaming now;

Too scared to brave a quick glance backward, he told himself any more decelerations would be met with defeat. His mind flickered back to the sprint at the Athens track, his body just inches ahead of Perdikkas at the final line. It had been scarily close, the spectre of defeat hanging over him the whole last straight.

He had led to long, setting the pace, and now the predators would catch their prey.

Geez! You had fun with this one, Jacko.

Taking the corner with large strides, he managed to scrape a few more yards over his closest pursuer.
This is just me, but i hate inverted sentences. No idea why, but I just do. But, as you only did it a few times, I won't yell (I read an essay once, every other LINE was inverted. I screamed).

Leon, his tall body covered in sweat, panted with exhaustion
AH! "Leon panted with exhaustion, his tall body covered in sweat." Less weird-sounding.

“I’m going to give you a few moments, then I’ll be behind you with this spear in front of me. Slack and you’ll have this through your gut.”
He's mean! Brillaint, but mean.

I loved the ending! It was... now you have to write a novel for this character. It needs it. Er..ok, maybe it's already been written. Write your own! Now! I command you!