Young Writers Society

Hey there fj117. It's just lizzy dropping by real quick, so without a further ado, let the reviewing begin.

Your piece has been sitting in the Green Room for quite some time. My apologies for taking so long to get here, I missed the YWS connection at the Internet station. (This is why I shouldn't make jokes in reviews, no one understands them.) There isn't that much of a story to talk about so most of my review is going to focus on grammar, spelling, and typos.

this story is full of adventure, and war.

The buddhist mongol

Frankie Jimenez

Buddhism

Back in 1246 in Shanghai, Buddhism was a peaceful religion in Medieval China.

People in China always walked to a temple and meditated.

I haven't read the story, but just a quick thing: when I first saw it I mis-read the title as "The Buddhist mongo!" I then spent about 5 minutes trying to imagine what a mongo is and why someone would write a story. Just thought this might make someone laugh

Some Errors I Thought Might Be Notable:

-"The mongol felt like he should kill him or let him run off then the Mongol thought how China worked." Thought of how China worked. Also, you might want to check the whole work to see if you capitalized all the Mongols, because Mongols and Mongol should be capitalized.

-"He jumped towards the temple and surprised the monk and the monk jumped up and screamed and he said, “What do you want from me!”." This is just a personal preference, but you don't have to say that 'he said'. You could just leave it as 'the monk screamed' or something of the sort. Also, you don't have to add a period at the end of the quotation marks, since you already have an exclamation mark inside the quotations.

-"The monk said, “why do you want to know the ways of Buddhism? " Add a quotation mark in the end.

-"The monk said ok i'll show you the ways of Buddhism." Consistency, consistency. If the monk said that directly, put the sentence 'Ok I'll show you the ways of Buddhism' inside quotation marks.

-"meanwhile the two keep talking." Kept, not keep. Assuming you're using the past tense, which you do for the most part.

-"Then china soldiers came and fought the mongols and defeated the mongols the mongol said thank you for teaching me." china soldiers should be Chinese soldiers. Also, that's a lot of different Mongols we're talking about here. Consider splitting 'the mongol said thank you for teaching me' into a different sentence, to make it more coherent.

Actual Review:

For the most part, I did like what this was trying to do. It's a very simple but very poignant look into Ancient China, at least in a layman's point of view. I liked how you portrayed the two sides as having equal tendencies towards prejudice and violence in the ending, and that the only way the Mongol finally finds peace is by the way of Buddhism.

However, other than the errors above, I found that it didn't develop the characters very well. While it did tell us why the nameless Mongol felt the need to be a Buddhist, the story never showed us why, expecting the reader to understand immediately after it's been told. Was he captivated by the peace of the monks? Was he tired of the war and senseless violence? These are the questions essential in making the reader root for a character, and I think it's worth trying to answer a few of them.

The beginning was also a bit of a mess. It started out like a non-fiction piece, telling us of Shanghai Buddhism, and then suddenly launched us into the conflict with the Mongols. Try focusing your energies into the main character a little bit more, it'll make for a much more coherent story.

Overall, it could be better, but the concept shines in all its glory nonetheless. Good job.

Signing out,

--EM.