Hello J.M. Arlen

A little bit of a long review.

In our previous email to me, you seem surprised you can post a story. Let me tell you something I learned about formatting.

If you can, learn how to format a story. If you copy and paste from word for example, it never looks right. I had this problem in the beginning but it's easy to format.

You don't need numbers before each paragraph, a bit distracting.

There are some grammar mistakes which I have discovered always occur in first, second or even third drafts. Maybe that's my problem being dyslexic but you have a few which you would be able to fix after reading this again a day or two later.

Some that I saw are as follows:

Too many capitals. In line 2, the comes after a comma, not a full stop, I would use small t
In the second paragraph, you use a capital for shuddered

In line 1, the opposite occured, for the fifth paragraph, you used a small i instead of a capital.

As I said, these types of errors are usually there and can be fixed after proofreading it a day or two later.

As for reading the story, I tried to picture the scene. Consider the first paragraph. I was a bit confused with the positioning of the landscape.

For example, you wrote the following in line 2:

The largest mountain in Talmoria, crying down a waterfall into a shallow pond. Next to that, lie a door made of stone.

It looked like to me that the mountain was crying down a waterfall, should that not be the other way around. Next, you wrote a door made of stone was next to the pond.

In line 9, you wrote: Ahead, next to the waterfall, the girl with blue hair spotted the stone door

Now the stone door is next to the waterfall.

Now the position of the girl. In line 9, you wrote ahead, indicating that the waterfall was in front of the girl but in line 13, you wrote: The girl ran past the waterfall.

I was a bit confused by the positioning of where the girl stood. You could have written that she ran towards the door next to the waterfall which is what I think you meant. Just confused a bit. If I am doing a scene in a large area such as this, I do a basic drawing to get an idea where everyone is. Dooesn't have to be a great drawing, I do stick figures but you get the idea. It can help you explain what you mean and help prevent people like me being confused.

For the last line, you wrote the girl watched in wonder. It felt out of place a little. I would assume that to watch in wonder would mean that she wasn't sure what to expect but if her friend Danyal had given her the crystal and told her what to do, she would be more relieved or impatient as in line 2 of the second chapter, you wrote about a soldier shouting there she is. That tells me she knew the soldiers, or the army, were after her and she would be impatient. Also, if she is a witch (or a she-wizard as she called herself in paragraph 6), I don't believe that she would stare at the door in wonder as she would be used to magic, it is what she would expect.

So to recap: proofread this after a day or two, it is surprising how many mistakes you can find (it is for me anyway)

Figure out the positioning of the characters and the environment they are in

Try to understand your character. If she is a witch, then what would make her stare in wonder? I wasn't sure about her. You said she was a girl, how tall, how old, etc. I was told once at a drama seminiar that write down everything about a character. Name, age, where they were born, likes, dislikes, character traits, good and bad, whatever, write down everything. Even if you don't use any of them in you story, and it's possible that you will not use any of them, you need to know your character.

Keep it up. It looks interesting

Billy






My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .