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 Review #4652412 |
 | Cemetery Pond  [ASR] Birthday dreams and childhood innocence are destroyed the same afternoon..  |
| (4.5)  Welcome to WdC from the "Newbie Welcome Wagon" Good day to you, Trinoir , and I hope it finds you well. It's Friday, which means the Blimp is on the prowl in search of someone to antagonize with one of my infamous reviews.Got your attention? Good. Now, the serious part. I am certainly no one to be telling anyone how to write, having myself managed to successfully avoid fame and fortune for over sixty years, but I flatter myself that I have learned a thing or two in my decades of chasing the dream. Given that it is alleged to be understood by all that reviewing is a major part of the WdC experience, I'm taking that as my license to offer my opinion. And make no mistake, it is nothing but an opinion for you to use or discard as you wish. My reviews are thorough and honest, and while I hope we can be friends afterward, my greater hope is that you become a better writer as a result of our having crossed paths. For the record, I am an occasional hobbyist writer of fantasy, horror, and steampunk (hence my handle) who tries to review in a wide variety of styles and genres; I have, in fact, been recently nominated for a Quill Award for reviewing. I should explain that I use this review template in which I discuss my views on the important areas of quality storytelling, then compare your work to my own beliefs on the matter. As I said, I'm no authority, but hopefully my comments will give you some ideas to take your writing in directions you hadn't previously considered. Let me just drop a warning here, and we'll get started. THIRD-PARTY READERS TAKE NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD PRESENTATION: This aspect deals with the first impression your story makes when a reader clicks on the title. Call it the cosmetics. I'll be looking at abstract items from text density to scene dividers in an effort to ferret out any unfortunate habits that might cause a reader to move on without actually reading anything; before you can dazzle him with your show, you have to get him into the tent!  I am awarding the full five stars here as you have done nothing that I can point to and say, "This is wrong." You've written your story using the default font provided, which is nothing you can reasonably be penalized for, but there are options to improve it which I'll let you in on in a moment. You've indented paragraphs, which I prefer, and written a story that doesn't, strictly speaking, need scene dividers, though I'll point out a spot where one might sharpen the focus.First, the font. The default font is a tiny version of Arial, a clean an attractive font that I use myself on occasion. However, at the size provide, this resembles nothing so much as the fine print in a used car contract, and the longer the story is, the harsher this effect becomes. There are many ways to tweak your font – this review is in 3.5 Verdana with a 1.4 line space setting, for example – but the simplest way to enhance the attractiveness of Arial is to place the command {size:3.5} at the beginning of your text. If you don't like it, just remove the command and it will revert back to the original format. As an English teacher, you know what scene dividers are, and you quite correctly wrote this as one long scene without any. However, you begin the story as your adult self, and invite us to return to a time decades back to witness an event from your childhood. In a TV show, the almost cliched demonstration that a flashback is coming is the sweeping harp music. A scene divider after Allow me to go back in time 54 years to when I was five on the day in question so I may relate the events leading how the carnage began – a couple of open lines or a centered asterisk – is sufficient notification to the reader that a change is occurring. But WdC offers over 1,400 Emoticons that can be placed as scene dividers to give your text some "pop." {e:duck} posts a bathtub rubber ducky, not quite "on" for this scene, but {center}{e:cloudgrey}{/center} yields:  Seems a positive enhancement to me, and something for you to consider for future projects. STORY: Now we come to the heart of the issue. This is really the basic element, isn't it? If you can't tell an engaging story, it doesn't matter what else you can do, because nobody's going to read it anyway. I try to explain aspects from characters to grammar, but I don't know how to teach someone to have an imagination. The fact that I'm here writing a review is proof that you've done a pretty good job with the story. Let's examine the individual parts of the whole and see what works to make it successful. Not everyone enjoys these little "slice of life" stories that have no profound outcome or world altering conclusion, but they are a guilty pleasure of mine, and this is a good one. Your descriptions of a child trying to make sense of the adults in their confusing worlds, and mis-hearing things they are told – Grandma was a great baseball fan, and the scariest monster I ever heard of in my toddlerhood was the "twi-night double header" – feel spot-on and are quite entertaining. The aftermath of the Great Bird Attack was a wonderful read, and I have nothing but the highest praise for your storytelling skills.MECHANICS: Whether you're writing fact or fiction, prose or poetry, the "holy grail" that you're striving for is immersion. This is an area that no author, myself included, ever wants to talk about: "I've done all this work, and you want to argue over a comma?" But those commas are important. What you're really doing as a writer is weaving a magic spell around your reader, and your reader wants you to succeed. He wants to escape his mundane world for a period and lose himself in your creation. Errors in spelling and grammar, typos, "there" vs. "their" issues, use of words inconsistent with their actual meanings, all yank him out of his immersion while he backtracks to re-read and puzzle out what you meant to say. This is never good, and this is the section that deals with that.  This is the section where a story is most likely to fall down if it's going to. Yours is quite well done, as again one would expect from an English teacher. But there are enough little hiccups to keep it from absolute perfection, and I will look at them here....events leading how the carnage began. Missing word: ...leading to how the carnage began. Odd spellings: You use grey, the British spelling, and that's fine, but in the next paragraph you write favorite, the American spelling of favourite. Consistency is an important factor, as anything that a reader notices will break his immersion. Unintended spellings: Early on, you write how Aunt Patty tells Uncle Clayton that he would be covered with plastic in the truck. Up until here, this has been the trunk. This is seen again in describing the scars left by the viscous birds. Viscosity is a measure of fluid thickness, and while the birds near the Exxon Valdez may have exhibited a high degree of viscosity, those attacking your young self were probably vicious. I phrase this as a half-assed joke, but I mean to make a point: Don't rely on SpellCheck. It's a wonderful tool and should always be on, but the only tool to date that will pick out this sort of error is the Mark I Eyeball. Use it liberally. This will also pick up such items as After changing and asking Aunt Patty what to do with me wet clothes. This is not a complete sentence, and should also read my wet clothes. Proofreading will also catch things like the paragraph you neglected to indent near the end, that begins "When I finished." This looks like a lot when you write it all out like this, but it's really on the low side for a piece of this size. Nothing big here, just a bunch of little things that add up to not-quite-perfect. The rule of thumb for proofreading is to do it until you're sick of your own words... then do it again. You won't be sorry. CHARACTERS: This section discusses all aspects of the characters, the way they look, act, and talk, as well as the development and presentation of backstory. Allow me to present "Tyler's Axiom:" Characters are fiction. Rich, multifaceted characters with compelling backstories will seize the reader in a grip that will not be denied, and drag him into their narrative, because he can't abide the thought of not knowing what will happen to them. Conversely, lazy, shallow stereotypes will ruin any story regardless of its other qualities, because the reader will be unable to answer the second question of fiction: Why do I care? Your childhood self is delightful. You've captured the essence of the confusion felt by a child working out the signposts, and I enjoyed reading about it immensely. The aunt and uncle are close parallels to my own Uncle Joe and Aunt Marie. Joe was a Teamsters Union enforcer back in the bad old days, and while he was never bad to me, even my childhood self knew that he was nobody to mess with. Aunt Marie was my closest adult friend and biggest cheerleader growing up, and I still miss her six decades on. A beautiful piece of work!SETTINGS: This section deals with the locations you've established for your action, the ways in which they affect that action, and your ability to describe them clearly and concisely. You could say that this aspect answers (or fails to answer) the first question of fiction, What's going on here? Setting can be used to challenge a character, to highlight a skill or quality, to set the mood of a scene without overtly saying a single thing about it, and a host of lesser impacts too numerous to mention. You might think of it as a print artist's equivalent of a movie's "mood music," always important yet never intrusive. All in all, a pretty big deal, then. So how did you do? A car, a pond, a house. Always a good idea to keep it simple. While fantasy and sci-fi often require detailed descriptions of the backdrop, avoiding those scene-stoppers is always a good idea whenever you can. Placing your story in familiar surroundings is the easiest way to accomplish this, and you've done it well.SUMMARY: And there you have my words of "wisdom." I hope that I have presented my opinions in a way that is constructive, and that you will find helpful to your endeavors going forward. I thank you for sharing and exposing your work to the whims of public opinion, and I wish you a thrilling journey to wherever your writing takes you.** Image ID #2234711 Unavailable ** The curious may follow my antics at "Invalid Item" — Serious writers may visit a group that comes with occasional deep conversation, and a spiffy contest featuring unusual and valuable prizes. Our forum, linked below, is open access, and if you like what you see, contact me, Richard ~ Shenanigans INC.  , T.J.Gunn  , or Sumojo  to be welcomed to the fold.
 My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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