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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/profile/reviews/beelzebob
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26 Public Reviews Given
26 Total Reviews Given
Public Reviews
1
1
Review of The Steed  
Review by beelzebob
Rated: 13+ | (2.5)
Hello, I'm Bob. Your entry came up in the Read a Newbie section and I thought I'd take a look.

This is a credible work, and there's a good haiku jump between the first two lines and the third.

That said, it's easy to write Haiku but nearly impossible to write great Haiku.

To strengthen this one, I might replace the evaluative terms 'grand' and 'noble' with more concrete descriptors that evoke the same feelings.

Hope I've been some help.
Be well, and keep writing.

--Bob.
2
2
Review of What If  
Review by beelzebob
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
Hello, I'm Bob. I saw your entry on the Please Review section and 'if I'm on the right track' caught my eye in the item description.

The short answer is that you are.

The long answer might not be as pleasing.

The best thing about this is character voice. I'm with the main character right away and I have a clear view of her world. The hook at the end of the first entry made me thing OMG give me more!

The immediate revelation that it was a texting-while-driving death was a bit of a letdown. I was hungry for some complex character tension with high stakes and some bad decisions that led to a dramatic death explained later in the narrative. But perhaps you have a different story to tell.

The third entry didn't have the sharpness of the first two. The voice flattens out and it feels less personal. She's lost the snark of her first entry where she calls her mother and father parental units (at least that's the word I think you intended) and said Yeah I can't tell you why that's even a thing' about her sister's name. I'd love to see more of that in the third entry, and throughout the rest of the story.

A couple of mechanical notes:

'Brakes' not 'breaks,' unless you want Emmeline to sound uneducated--which is a very difficult way to write, because you have to prove it's the character and not the author making the error.

'Feelings' not 'feeling' near the end of the third entry.

Hope I've been some help.
Be well and keep writing.

--Bob
3
3
Review of Evening escape  
Review by beelzebob
Rated: E | (2.5)
Hello, I'm Bob. I saw your entry in the Please Review section and the entry description made me curious.

The poem is accessible and brings the feeling through well enough.

I'm not sure if you intended to use homophones for 'through' and 'soar' in the third line.

Lines seven and eight I feel are unnecessary. You could get the same effect with a blank line.

The imagery of the bird in its nest seems to clash with the freedom and motion in the first few lines.

Hope it helps, and may you make your escape.

Be well and keep writing.
--Bob.
4
4
Review of Love's Infinity  
Review by beelzebob
Rated: E | (3.0)
Hello, I'm Bob. I saw your poem on the please review list and I thought I'd give it a look.

Some genuine feeling comes through, but I would cut out several words to give it sharpness.

If you cut out the word 'can' in the first two lines, the poem goes from potential to actuality.

Likewise the word 'sometimes' in the fifth line weakens the work overall.

'like birds' is a simile that can be left out to make the metaphor starker.

'to me' is unnecessary in the third line since it's already established as a personal piece with the first person opening.

You don't need the word mysterious--the piece shows the mystery to begin with.

Last of all, the final phrase 'the traces of my memories of you' is too explanatory for a work like this. It crackles with the notion of fragmented memories as it is.

I hope I was some help.
Be well, and keep writing.
--Bob
5
5
Review by beelzebob
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
Hello. I'm Bob. I saw your story on the Please Review section. The item description drew me in.

Congrats. There's a clear, succinct story here.

Problem is, it fell short of how exciting it should have been. I had to read through again to figure out why.

There are some instances of passive voice that could be changed. Do a search for -ing.

Ellie's voice is clear and the writing supports it. But she sounds more like a teenager (anytime you use the word 'perfect' in a description be suspicious) nursing the hero in her bedroom than an elite physician qualified to work on the city's beloved defender.

Do doctors really eat chocolate in the patients' rooms?

The city may care about Judgement, but I don't. Less so Jake. Ellie's fluttering heart doesn't do anything to change it. He's been in a coma for how long? The city still seems to be intact. What are the consequences of failure? Show them ahead of time.

In some cases (the guard fell) the writing is too sparse. A single knife wounds won't drop someone in their tracks, even from a super, unless it takes his head clean off.

Hope I've been some help.
Be well, and keep writing.
6
6
Review by beelzebob
Rated: E | (2.5)
There's nothing wrong with this poem.

There's nothing fantastic about it, either.

In order to impress me with poetry, you have to do more than exhale. You have to cough up the blood of your feelings and spit it onto the page.

List every single physical thing that you can associate with this feeling. List all sorts of actions associated with it. Dig deeper. Do it some more.

Then make every line into an experience of one of those things.
7
7
Review by beelzebob
Rated: 13+ | (2.0)
I found the strongest point in the story to be when Eve finds out that Rose is her mother. A good reversal; I didn't expect it.

Eve and Sybil are so similar they could switch places in the story without much impact. Develop them further and they become memorable.

Tears lose impact when they happen often. Imagine how the reader would feel if the only time anyone cried in the story was when Eve finds out that Rose is her mother.

I feel the two friends aren't challenged enough in their travels. Instead of telling us that the terrain is impassable, put something impassable and dangerous in the way. Having that pesky knight on their trail longer would make the tension even higher.

Beating the knight's pursuit tenfold is not very exciting. Having the dragon be just faster than the knight is more engaging. Better still, the dragon being slower than the knight (perhaps through some injury) is scary. It forces the characters to get away by cleverness rather than pure speed.

I'd love to see a revision, and I would be even more delighted to see this get a higher rating.
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