*Magnify*
SPONSORED LINKS
BY ONLINE AUTHORS
Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/profile/reviews/dreadfrom/sort_by/r.review_creation_time DESC/page/2
Review Requests: OFF
276 Public Reviews Given
278 Total Reviews Given
Public Reviews
Previous ... 1 -2- 3 ... Next
26
26
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
Hey, it's me again. Apologies for taking so long to get to the next chapter.

Let's start with this sentence, "Bartholomew, James, and Jonn sat near each other..." here I think you can replace the "near each other" with a "together." There is a slight difference between the two, but not so much that it disagrees with your intent.

So for this sentence, "Jonn gazed at the floor deep in thought, he did not look up." the second part is unnecessary because "gaze" is a prolonged action with no obvious conclusion. What that means is that if you say somebody gazed at something then they will continue to gaze at that something until you give them a new action. Thus, you don't need to say "he didn't look up" because he looking at the floor.

This is one of the unnecessary speech designators IMO, ""Not today," said Jonn flatly." We know it's Jonn speaking because he had the last designated action and you didn't start a new paragraph. It also echoes with the previous use of "Jonn" because the readers know it's him speaking. If you want the brief pause in-between his bit of dialogue then you can get away with replacing the "Jonn" with a "he," which would resolve the echo. Or you can insert a small action like sighing or rubbing the back of his neck.

So I think this sentence, "Rumors are told of unfamiliar ships..." is a little more passive that it needs to be. I think you can switch the "are told" with a "tell" without breaking your chosen style.

First off, you need a quotation mark at the end of this phrase, "women do not understand these things. " second, that kind of misogynistic thing to say. And while that would be appropriate for the time period, it still came across as sexist. You don't have to change it because there's nothing technically wrong with it, but I did have an "Oh Really?" reaction to it. :P

(never mind my previous comment about the absent quotation mark, the paragraph jump through me through a loop.)

So it might be a little nit-picky, but I feel like this sentence, "He wanted to get on with it." breaks you narrative style a little bit. It feels like a slightly too modern parlance. Besides that, it's also a slightly cliche phrase.


I think the paragraph is a little messed up here, ""James, I have heard enough.

" Son, come here... please," Jonn called out." I think you have the same person speaking, but to have him start a new paragraph (if it was intentional) made me think somebody new was speaking.

So for this paragraph, " William heeded his father's call from across the room..." you suddenly switch over to William's perspective when previously it had been from that of his uncle or father. The standard rule is not to do this (I don't know if it's an official rule) without some form of hard break in the story like a chapter or a line to indicate a change of perspective/scene.

you might be able to cut out this sentence entirely, "It came to him that this is what great men look like." It's elucidating William's thoughts, but I don't really think they need further explanation because he shivered beneath their gaze two sentences prior (indicating a feeling of awe) and then notes that they looked different. All that being said, it's not particularly obtrusive if you wish to leave it in.

Sudden is one of those funny words that are often unnecessary. "Startled by this sudden action,..." if an action is sudden, it usual comes across as such in the story and thus does not need to be labeled as such. Thus sudden is oftentimes simply reiterating something the reader already knows. That all be said (again :p) you might be using that phrase as a catalyst to involve William in the sentence. If that's the case, I still think there might be a better way to say it, something that adds further detail to the scene rather than repeating itself.

First, this sentence, "was one of a grim and grave purpose." is passive in an unpleasant way and I would consider changing it a more active tense if you can. Second, the "grim" and the "grave" echo one another because they both start with the "gr."

This is a small thing but in the sentence, ""William, you have a solemn choice before you!" I would replace the Exclamation Mark with a period. An Exclamation Mark indicates that this sentence was spoken loudly if not shouted but I feel like this sentence was spoke more solemnly. Those are just my thoughts, however, and should hold no more weight than that.

For this sentence, "William was taken aback and panicked but he did not run nor did he back away so much as one step" I think you can make it more active by using the word blanched. Something along the lines of, "William blanched, but he did not run or step back." As for the second half, something will almost always be stronger when you understate it. I believe that's the case here, you don't need to espouse on William's act of courage, just let it stand for itself because it can.

So you have a wayward quotation mark at the beginning of this sequence, ""What was his father saying! How can he be expected to make such a decision? How will his life change?" If you're trying to indicate inner thoughts, those are designated with either italics or an apostrophe.

This is another instance of telling where showing/leaving alone would be stronger, " In a commanding voice, the Wizard said,..." here let the words themselves convey their tone. Use strong words and a commanding syntax and the readers will hear them spoken as such. You don't need to tell them the wizard spoke strongly becuuse it will be evident in his speech.


I would just remove this sentence, " The Wizard said, "Do it, William! Join us! Take up your father's sword, do not be afraid!"" William doesn't need further cajoling and the previous sentence rung with power. Having this here just diminishes the power of this scene because it delays the moment of William's acceptance. Have his father speak and have William answer.

you don't need the "all" in this sentence, "running wolves swept across all the walls" and to have it in just slows down the momentum with a weak word. All can be strong, but only when it brings weight to the sentence. Here, is does not.

You have a couple of good lines in this chapter, but this one is one of my favorites :D "A new vision came to him and the evil voices were banished. He had a revelation of an island floating in a fog surrounded by mountains. The sign gave him strength. The power and the glory of his heritage revealed entered into his consciousness and he heard the sound of distant thunder and waves lapping a far shore. He would never be alone with his fear again." It all has all of the quite power and glory that I love reading in these kinds of stories and ends with a soft statement of power that nonetheless speaks loudly. This is what it means to understate. There is no fluff to aggrandizement the grace of William's heritage, nothing that says "look upon me and be awed" because it does not need the embellishments.

This is another great line, "Now, ten years later, long after he had forgotten; James felt that love return. He beheld the exceptional young man before him and thought he would never love anyone as fiercely. There was a greater glory in his soul than resided in his father, or his uncles, a power surpassing the grand splendor of the Eldest. James had never married nor had children. There had been no time. Now the Wizard would have a son and he would show him the true way through the deceptive path of his destiny."

This is a great return to the form of the first chapter, for which I am very pleased :).
Besides the things I mentioned up above there was only one paragraph that I felt needed a lot of work. It's the one where William hear's his father call and returns to join them. You run through his emotions, telling the readers what he's thinking and how he's feeling but it just doesn't read well. It reads passive. The readers have no involvement in what you're trying to convey (which incidentally is the difference between bad telling and good telling.) The only I have is to try and make it more active.

I hope you find my review useful and wish you nothing but the very best of luck. :)


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
27
27
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (4.5)
I liked this quite a bit. It has strong rhythm and momentum along with good rhymes and poignant mien that I found very pleasing. The fact that it speaks of an accurate sentiment (in my opinions at least) also helps it. finally, I think the last few hopeful lines are appropriate for the message its trying to convey.

I hope you find my review useful and wish you nothing but the very best of luck. :)
28
28
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
Hey, it's me again.

So I have two problems with these sentences,

""Little Brother!" The wizard cried out.

"Big Brother!" Jonn exclaimed..." The first is that since you have an exclamation point the dialogue tags "exclaimed" and "cried out" are unnecessary because the exclamation point already says that the dialogue was spoken with enthusiasm.
Beyond that, up till now you have portrayed Jonn as being fairly reserved, so for him to go bounding off with a jubilant cry seems to contradict his character.

You probably know this but when direct addressing someone, "So William, what do you think of my hotel" the name is always bracketed by commas.


Something that occurred to me in the previous chapter, which I forgot to mention, is that the word "hotel" seems a little too modern for a renaissance setting. I think something like a tavern, inn, or wayhouse might be a little more appropriate.


So in this sentence, "...William," said Mary-Rose blushing slightly." the dialogue tag unnecessary, we know who's speaking due to the flow of conversation. I would consider removing it, or replacing it with an action if you think it's necessary for rhythm or flow, because dialogue tags (and said's in particular) tend to read poorly.

So here is one the rules in grammar that I myself just learned. When someone is speaking loudly or with excitement it is actually required to put the exclamation point it. So in this sentence, ""Yes," said William enthusiastically,..." you need to put an exclamation point after the yes.

So this sentence was a little confusing, "The Paladin regarded this man closely;..." because up until now you've always referred to Jonn as a priest, which is not a synonym for paladin. Moreover, it's generally best to stick to just one name for a character just to avoid possible confusion. Different characters can refer to one another with pet names or the such, but an author can't.

So one of, if not the, golden rules of writing is to show, not tell and this is one of the examples that proves this. "Not now son. I will explain later," Jonn looked perturbed." In this sentence you tell the readers Jonn looks perturbed when it would be far more compelling to show it. Have him frown or observe Bartholemew with a clouded gaze. Don't just feed the readers the relevant information, let them infer it on their own.

Why is there a long pause in the sentence where James is revealing Jonn as a Paladin? "then came a long pause, "your father is a paladin."" People pause when they're under some kind of stress or purposefully building tension, but neither of those seems appropriate for this situation.

So I found this chapter markedly less enjoyable than the first :(. I think there are two reasons for this. The first is the switch from first-person to third-person. You have a very telling-heavy style, but it worked in the first chapter because it was written in the first-person which is somebody telling a story. In third-person, however, the reader isn't being told a story, they are experiencing the story first hand.

The second thing was that your first chapter had a huge amount of personality invested in the prose, something that made it feel very Tolkienesque and made it very enjoyable to read. This second chapter lacks that. I don't know if this is a result of the perspective switch or because of some other reason, either the story suffers for its loss.

Finally, my last comment is about your dialogue. It comes across a little wooden and childish. Some of this is the dialogue tags you add on the end like in,'"What is the 'family business'?" he inquired shyly,...' the shyly takes this from being a perfectly acceptable question to feeling like something in a children's book because you're walking us through every detail in the story instead of letting us experience it.
(I just went through looking for another example and I think that the wooden dialogue is almost exclusively because of your dialogue tags. Every bit of conversation has a dialogue tag that rarely adds anything to the dialogue itself. The only really wooden pieces of dialogue are most of Mary-Roses lines and some of James's.)

I hope you find my review useful and wish you nothing but the very best of luck. :)


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
29
29
Review of Angelique  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 13+ | (3.5)
So hello again. :)

I'll start with the phrase, "The blond barman didn't look young enough to drink." this doesn't really make sense. I think you meant to write "old enough to drink" instead of "young enough to drink." If not, then I don't really know what you're trying to say.

Here's a funny thing about writing, a lot of times a writer will say something's obvious, but the thing about something that's obvious is that you don't need to state it. That's true for this sentence, "It was obvious why they called her The Demon, yet there was nothing evil about her." I was able to infer she would be spectacular on the drums long before the music ever started and I was also able to guess that's where the moniker "the Demon" came from. So this sentence is generally unnecessary, even the bit about there being nothing evil about her because most people will not passive view music in an evil light (even if it's death metal.)

So this sentence feels a little contradictory, "Though he knew the truth of the scriptures better than anyone in this hall, yet he'd still turned his back on God" Up above you state that he "knew the truth of the scripture" or something to that effect and even state the same here. So for him to turn his back on god, despite being such a devout believer, feels off. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it still doesn't feel right.

That was quite the interesting conclusion. On the whole I thought this was nice but that it relied to heavily on telling to convey the story. My guess it that you were constrained in the number of words you could use but the telling still weakened this. The thing that makes a story like this (and romance more than any other concept) are the small details that fill in the cracks:the way someone likes their coffee, the way they walk that different other people, the way they. It's these small things that only somebody who is intimately aware of another person bothers to notice. It is by showing these things that you build a good romance, here, in this chapter, you convey everything through telling which deprives these small things of their power because there's nothing intimate about telling.

I hope you find my review useful and wish you nothing but the very best of luck. :)


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
30
30
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (4.0)
I liked this. The shape, flow and contents of the story you told was good. The prose was a little weak though (I'll give some suggestions below) and you relied a little too heavily on telling to convey information.

I'll start with the Telling. Telling in general is considered weak prose, but it's is most egregious when in reference to emotions or thought process and it is these that were the most notable in your story. You were constantly telling us what one character thought of a situation and the emotions that they felt at the time when both of these would be far stronger if conveyed through actions. To your credit, you don't generally didn't straight up say their emotions most of the time but use their thoughts instead. Take the sentence "eyes full of melancholy and anger." You describing her eyes here but that's just a veil, you're actually telling us her emotions. It's not something that's easy to fix, especially if you're writing in a fable/mythological style, but it would be the best way to improve this story.

As for the prose, much of its weakness comes from the telling but there are a few places where it's a little wordy. I won't name them all because I just want to show you what I mean.

In your second sentence you have, "If one traveled past the silent forest, and through the misty marsh, they would arrive at the lake." here the phrase "misty marsh" echoes itself because of the two Ms in close proximity. Also, (though it might just be me) descriptive words that end it Y tend to sound weak. I, personally, would change the sentence to "mist-laden marsh" but it could just as easily be written with a different adjective or no adjective altogether.

At the end of the first paragraph you have, " And the icy surface of the lake looks just like it had a certain night, long ago." Here the phrase "and the icy surface of the lake" is both wordy and echoes with your previous use of lake. The echo has less to do with the word "lake" and more to do with the "the." The echo is of the phrase "the lake" rather than just lake. As for the wordiness, that derives from using a lot of glue words (the words used to hold a sentence together and connect the important words) and the unnecessary specification (though that's not quite the word I want to use.) It's not the icy surface of the lake that looks the same, its the entire lake (at least that's how most readers will interpret this sentence.) I would write the sentence something more like, "And the frozen lake looks just as had on that night so long ago." The image you're trying to convey is that of a frozen lake, so use the appropriate words. Say a frozen lake.

In the third sentence of the next paragraph you have, "Even after they migrated to this faraway region by the lake," here the phrase "by the lake" is unnecessary because you already indicated that they lived on this lake in the opening sentence.

In the same sentence you have, "it has been said that they retained their old barbaric traditions from their homeland." Here the "it has been" is just wordy. I believe you can abbreviate but exchanging the "has been" for a "was." "It was said they retained the old traditions of their homeland" or "it was said they retained their old traditions." The adjective phrase "of their homeland" is unnecessary because it's inherent in the word "traditions" but you might want to keep it in nevertheless if you think the flow of the story. The word "barbaric" is unnecessary because you already labeled them barbarians up above.

The last thing I want to mention concerns the phrase, "and never hunted fish or drank water from its reserves" here the phrase "from its reserves" is unnecessarily verbose. What you're trying to say is that they never drank from it, so say that. Don't bother with the reserves even if you think that parlance is appropriate for the story. Just say , "never hunted fish or drank from it." If you want to make sure they know they're drinking water than say , "hunted fish or drank its water."

Like I said above, these aren't all the things I noticed (and there are probably more besides those I did) but I just wanted to give you an idea of what I was saying.

I hope you find my review useful and wish you nothing but the very best of luck. :)


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
31
31
Review of Old Story Told  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (4.0)
I really liked this, it had great rhythm and powerful emotion. I also liked the repetition of certain phrases, to an extent. The times where you repeated the same phrase twice and then again with a slight variation didn't mesh well IMO. The repetition of a phrase can have power (like your use of "Why is it always wrong?) but only if used correctly. The use of the same phrase twice/three times actually disrupted the rhythm because there was no progression in the momentum, it leaves the reader feeling ever so slightly trapped in that moment. And while that is an able simile for the purpose of this poem, its not the most enjoyable reading material.

I hope you find my review useful and wish you the best of luck :).
32
32
Review of Dinu  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (3.5)
The first half of this is a little rough, its lacks rhythm and flow. It might be because of the style you chose but, either way, it read a little discontinuous to me. The second half, though, reads well with a good flow and a nice word selection.

I hope you find my review useful and wish you nothing but the very best of luck. :)
33
33
Review of Gate 11A  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
I liked this, Paul's mental process was interesting to watch unfold as well as his reactions to the very events. I also think the writing style you employed here worked well with the story. There was only twos thing that I noticed. The first was a tendency to use LY words (I can't think of their actual name at moment) which are often unnecessary and a little melodramatic.

Take the sentence, "Sitting depressingly by himself..." Here you don't need the depressingly. You indicated up above that he was lonesome and the phrase "by himself" alone is enough to give the impression of loneliness. Not all of you LYs are unnecessary and you don't use them that often, but there were a couple I would consider changing.

Tieing into that is the second thing, a tendency to overstate something. This was a little more prevalent but harder to pinpoint because some of its was Paul's character coming through into the prose, which I enjoyed. just to give you a could examples, "definitely his favorite" instead of just "favorite" and "way more" instead of just more.

Neither of these are hard suggestions, just merely things I would consider looking into.

I hope this review helps you in some way and wish you nothing but the very best of luck. :)


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
34
34
Review of Dust  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (4.0)
This had good flow and rhythm with a nice, varied word selection. I got a little confused, however, when you introduced the Herder. I feel like you switched scenes and characters without telling me. There's nothing wrong with the second half, it just feels like you took two separate, but similar, poems and strung them together.

I hope you find this review useful and wish you nothing but the very best of luck. :)
35
35
Review of Shaman's Trance  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (3.5)
Some lines of this were really strong, the concluding phrases in particular, but the sharp dialogue and interruptions disrupted the flow causing for an unpleasant read. Besides that, your rhythm and word choice were all quite good. The occasional incomplete thought, while no doubt intentional, also disrupted the flow a little.

I hope you find this review helpful and wish you nothing but luck. :)
36
36
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
I found this a very enjoyable read from the imagery to the prose to the conclusion. I particularly enjoyed the conclusion with the appearance of Docility. To manifest the Sins is always an interesting concept, but to contrast that with a manifesting of the Virtues was extremely enjoyable, and handled with superb grace.
There were two things I noticed as I read through, the first is that you misused Heinous. The first time is the more egregious of the two and really should be changed. I could accept your second use of it, but it was still not used with the exact definition in mind. Heinous is something unforgivably terrible. so while it can be used to describe a smile it's a small stretch.
The other thing was that you occasionally would subtly reiterate yourself. Take the bit of dialogue where Pierre is complaining about something (I tried finding it but couldn't) and then you say "Pierre complained." The dialogue tag itself it necessary, but using the "Complained" reads poorly because it was obvious he was complaining, so you saying it just read as pointless filler. There were a couple other times throughout this where you had a similar situation or telling the reader something that was blatantly evident.

I hope you find this review helpful and wish you nothing but the very best of luck. :)
37
37
Review of The Offer  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (3.0)
I'm just going to be writting thoughts as I come by them so some of them might be invalidated later on.

Let's start with the first line, "Gold emblazoned tapestries straddled the long and inviting welcome lobby of the hotel." there is very actually wrong with this, nothing concrete, but the problem I have with it is that there's too much going on. This is only a twelve-word sentence but you're presenting us with six or seven relevant details through it's duration which leads it to feel a little overstuffed and to trip over itself a little. I think some of it comes from the extraneous words "inviting" and "welcome." A Hotel lobby will almost always be inviting (that's part of their purpose) so to say it's inviting bogs the sentence down unnecessarily. The word "Welcoming" falls into the same context, a lobby is meant to welcome some into a hotel or business, it's very often the first room a visitor sees, so to call it a "welcoming lobby" is unnecessary, lobby alone will suffice.
(This is actually a consistent theme I noticed through the opening paragraph, a tendency toward slight wordiness.)

In the last sentence of the paragraph, you have, "just what reason he had no inclination." Here, I believe you used "inclination incorrectly. You're using it as a synonym for thought or hint but, while similar, it doesn't mean that. Inclination is the act of favoring something or physically leaning in one direction, it is a verb, here you're using it as a noun.

In the third paragraph you talk about how everyone in his small town was nice to him and gave him an incorrect view on people but this isn't really plausible. People are just as likely to be mean in a small town as in a city, especially when there's eighteen hundred of them. He can be naive, just not to that extent. Also, the concept that he could bring wealth to a small town is a little far fetched, maybe if he was a certifiable genius but even then I don't know. He would have to do something amazing and then die first so they can get that tourist money.

Still in the third paragraph you have the phrase, "he constantly thought everyone was in his best interest." I feel like this is either missing a word or has a typo. "Everyone being in his best interest" just reads off.

Several paragraphs down you have, "The man looked up, “Mr. Starcose”" here you have him looking up, but he was already looking at Remy. Also, the period would go inside of the quotation marks, not outside.

All right, in overview what you have here is somewhat interesting but its potential is weighed down by the wordiness and unnecessary prose which is pervasive throughout. Phrase like red blood (what other color is blood going to be?)and less obvious stuff like telling the reader everything when the circumstances alone would suffice (if Mr'Starcose is alone in a dark at what should have been a huge party then you don't need to call him mysterious or dangerous it's pretty evident.)

Besides that, you have a lot of backstory/ character exposition with Remy's history and Mr'Starcose's Socrates bit. These slow down the story and didn't really interest me; Remy's felt like you exposed upon it a little too much and that the emotion and purpose behind it could have been achieved in just a few lines. The Socrates bit just felt entirely irrelevant, yes it built up Starcose's character a little but it wasn't interesting so it didn't really add anything to him.

Finally, we have the conclusion. You have to be careful with ending like this because you risk leaving the reader unsatisfied (which unfortunately is what happens here.) We never really got connected with Remy, yes we knew his history but it was given to us in an information dump which never allowed us to emphasize with him. After that you have Mr.Starcose who is dark and mysterious, but we never really get to know him as an antagonist or a character which means we never get invested in liking/hating him. Thus, we have no real investment in your two main character's which means we never really become invested in the story or its conclusion, which left me unsatisfied at the end.

If would allow me to tender some suggestions I have two concerning your characters. First is Starcose, I would ease off on telling the readers he's a mysterious, dangerous individual. Let the setting, his presence and dialogue convey all of it. Let the readers experience the danger he brings instead of telling them they should fear him. Then, hint at what he intends, not enough to reveal it, just enough to invest them in the outcome.

As for Remy, the vast majority of his character is told to the reader through exposition and I would remove that. Have Remy show his character somehow and make it something they can root for. It hard to grow attached to Naive characters (unless it's a beautiful naivety) and harder when those characters come across as weak on top of that (Remy wimping out of college and then running away from home.) So, give them somebody to root for; he doesn't have to be perfect, but show them his better qualities before the eleventh hour. You can up the tension by giving him a grayish morality, a sense that he might go either way in the final decision. You do touch on that as he's making the decision, but it lacks weight because we have no history of the character wavering between "right and wrong." If you add the actual fear that he might choose wrong while contrasting that with the hope that he'll chose right you'll build a lot more tension and investment in the conclusion.

I hope this helps you in someway and wish you nothing but luck :).
38
38
Review of The Benign  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (2.0)
So I didn't really like this, the words themselves were fine, but their composition was really grating for me. I don't know if you intended for them to be read that way, but the short sentences made the poem read incredibly jagged and ruined any rhythm the words themselves might have had. The meaning in the poem itself was nice, though, and a pleasant thought to consider.
I hope you find this review useful and wish you nothing but luck :).
39
39
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (4.0)
I found this somewhat hard to rate because it evokes a strong sense of control from the author, always a good thing, but the opening paragraphs read a little dry. They were well constructed and used solid prose but consisted mostly of setting the scene which is generally uninteresting. At the same time, though, I recognize the necessity of setting the scene else wise the import of the terrace in later paragraphs will be lost.
After the midway point the story picks up and gains a subtle tension as the reader wonders if there's something sinister about the house, a question you never answer (which I like.) Something else I like the ending with it's mix of hope, questions and the uncertainty as to what exactly just happened and if the reader should be glad for it. Supporting that fact is the moral ambiguity of the MC's actions which are at once wrong (he's stealing a picture) but not immediately reprehensible because you almost get the feeling that the pictures are meant to be taken.
Beyond that, there were a couple places where your wording could be improved, just small things like better words and removing a little wordiness.
I hope you find this review useful and wish you nothing but luck :).
40
40
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (3.5)
The Haiku was nice, but I found the actual story you told above it more affecting.
41
41
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: ASR | (3.0)
My personal opinion is that you didn't achieve the desired effect with this piece. The format you employed here is entirely reliant on the dialogue, but several of these lines didn't feel complete like they were missing a word or a phrase. I know that it's probably just a typo most of the time, but their absence still had a deleterious effect.
Beyond that, the dialogue didn't feel energetic, it had a very simple, somewhat boring pattern: she would ask something and he would explain it. There was no character in their dialogue, their personalities were entirely conveyed through you telling us in-between the lines of dialogue. This led to the dialogue feeling kind of flat because it had no real emotion. for a piece like this, the dialogue has to be able to stand on its own, to convey the emotion that drives it and to reveal the personality of the characters who speak it.
I hope you find this helpful and wish you nothing but luck in all your future endeavors. :)
42
42
Review of Untitled  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)
I'll just be writing stuff as I find them so some of my comments might be invalidated late on.

In the first paragraph you have, "I saw nothing in the darkness in which I slept." here there is a slight echo of the "IN" and the which is a passive word. You can fix both of these by switch the sentence around a little to something like, "I saw nothing in the darkness that clothed/surrounded/enveloped me." Yes, you lose the sleeping, but you had her waking up so you don't need it.

In the next sentence you have, "I lay still, consciously recognizing the cold on my skin, the hard stone beneath my body, and hearing every minute sound." here you start a litany with the active verb "recognizing" but then break it by adding the "hearing" later on. By adding the second action you interrupt the reader's flow and diminish what had been a lovely sentence. I would suggest changing "hearing" to a descriptive "ING" like whispering ( "and the whispering of every minute sound" I know whispering and minute are a little iterative but I'm just spitballing to show you what I'm thinking.)

In the third paragraph you have, "Gentle lighting surrounded ups, lighting..." here the "lighting" echoes with itself and can be easily replaced with something like "illuminating." You also have the typo "ups" which I believe should be "us."

In the seventh paragraph you have, " deep within which seemed to..." here the two "WHs" stacked on top of one another echo a little.

In the ninth paragraph, you have, "...the stone. The words were so ancient..." here the "THEs" echo slightly. I think it'll read better if you replace the period with a semi-colon and remove the "the" and the "were" so you end up with something like, "...the stone; words so ancient he should not have been able to pronounce them."

In the twentieth paragraph, you have, "...know, I’m afraid,” he replied. “I don’t need you going after him." Here the "he replied" interrupts the flow of reading and the sentence might benefit from its removal. You don't need the dialogue tag because we know who's speaking and the tag itself adds no color to his words. The other thing I found disruptive was the "I'm afraid" it doesn't fit his personality up to now and he's not actually sorry. That type of phrase is basically an apology, but he just bound the MC into his servitude for the rest of his life; he has no reason to tell her anything in the first place.

In paragraph twenty-one you have, "I had decided that his cocky attitude did not require me to be polite." I think this is the wrong way to take you MC, this phrase indicates she's cautious of her new master, that she would be polite if it was appropriate but I think she's a much more compelling and interesting character if she's (for lack of a better word) a dick all the time. It's an unusual but vibrant character trait that suits her very well, so I wouldn't water it down at all.

In the twenty-second paragraph you have, " I shook my head, regarding him steadily with my most unnerving stare." here, everything after the "I shook my head" is telling and thus loses the impact you want. I think an active verb would serve you better like "glowered" or even "just stared at him" might work well also. You don't want to tell the reader what's going on, you want them to intuit it and to feel her anger because it will be much more intimate for them that way.

A general thing I've noticed is that you have a tendency to add dialogue tags where they aren't really needed. Dialogue tags are only necessary when it's uncertain who's speaking or in what tone they're using. You only have two character's thus far and her personality is very clear. Take this phrase for instance, ""I KNOW how it works,” I growled." here the "I growled" is unnecessary because the capitalize "I KNOW" indicates her aggression plus we know her personality and that she found the sound it made unpleasant. So the "I growled" doesn't really add anything to the narrative and slows it down by elucidating something the reader already recognized on their own.

In paragraph thirty-three you have him turning on an electric fire but up above he said he would build her a fire. This isn't a large discrepancy but I think his phrasing would change because to "build a fire" has a very specific meaning that won't really be subverted by colloquial speech. I think he would say more accurate like "I'll turn up the heat once we get there" or something.

In paragraph thirty-four you have, "When the man returned to the room, he was carrying a pair of fleece lined slippers, and a very warm looking housecoat" this phrase is passive when it doesn't have to be. if you replace the "was carrying" with a simple "carried" the phrase transitions from passive to active and reads stronger.

In the next sentence, you have, "Both were too big on me, as the overcoat had been,..." here the "as the overcoat had been" is unnecessary because we know it was too big (you stated as much.)

in the forty-fourth paragraph you have, "I spat the word at him, leaving no doubt about how much I despised it" here you don't need to elucidate on her emotions with the "leaving no doubt..." because you stated her distaste for it up above and then clearly showed it with how she spat the word at him.

In paragraph forty-five you have, "proper names,” he said. “What name..." here the "he said" is unnecessary because we know who's speaking. But, the pause in the dialogue it provides is appropriate because there would be a natural pause there if the dialogue was actually happening. Some this might be just because I don't like the way "said" reads in most situation but I would switch out the dialogue tag for a quick action like him leaning back or something. It's fine if you don't change it though.

That's the conclusion of my line by line; I didn't mention everything I noticed because I didn't want belabor any of my points or be nit-picky. On the whole I found this quite interesting with a lot of promise. You have an intriguing set up with her being his slave and something inhuman, and the bit with her being susceptible to the cold was very pleasing from an organic, world-building standpoint. The two character's you've presented us with a distinctive both from one another and in of themselves. They need a little polishing, though, so that their personalities can really shine forth and interact with one another.
As for the dialogue, it depends on what you're going for. For here, I feel a longer, more proper speech would be appropriate considering her age, though not with a medieval accent. Just stuff along the lines of "I am" instead of "I'm" and a generally more proper and considered speech pattern. (That's just my opinion and should not be taken as any other than such.)
His dialogue felt a little more off. I don't know the vibe you were trying to give him but it was a cross between ivy-league and more colloquial and humorous and they clashed. in this type of situation, a person's speech patterns would reflect their emotions and personality rather than their education. He has a more easy going personality so his speech would mirror that ( more "I'm" and other abbreviations rather than "I am.") It would go beyond just abbreviations, though, he would abbreviate his speech pattern as well. Instead of , "When we arrive, I will build a fire for you" it would be more like, "I'll build you a fire once we get there." Of course, if he is Ivy League then some of his word choices would stray toward the more high-brow but I can't really help you there. In general, though, his speech pattern would be very flowing and easy even with more advanced words.

I hope you find this review useful and wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors. :D.


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
43
43
Review of CRAZY MAZE  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 18+ | (3.5)
I really liked the beginning few lines, they had a wonderful dark aesthetic and a sense of building momentum. That momentum broke, however, when I got to the "aze" portion. I guess you were just trying to coincide with the title, but the lines lacked power and didn't sound good in my head. The pace and momentum picked up a little after that until I read the line "dark & big" and big just didn't sound, read, or rhyme well.
Your rhythm is a little jagged after them, sometimes it reads well and sometimes it doesn't. Occasionally it's because your lyrics need a little more space before the rhyming word because they echo one another too much.
44
44
Review of The Burden  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 13+ | (3.5)
Hey, it's me, I'm back from the dead! I apologize for the wait.
Anyway, I really liked the conclusion to this piece bu the first two-thirds of its felt a little bland. I never really felt connected to Mariel or Bran or felt particularly interested in her mother's secret history.
Mostly I think that this story was just a little too large for a short story. Something like this really needs time to reach its full potential so you can make the readers question both sides and wonder which is the right choice while being invested in all parties.
45
45
Review of The Hollow Keys  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)
On the whole this was an interesting piece with a nice conclusion. I also really liked the title. I did, however, notice some small areas where it could use some improvement.
In the sentence "The monastery perched, like a bird of prey, waiting for a mouse to creep up." perched needs a little for description. Perched generally indicates height and that there's an edge but you mention neither of these which makes the sentence feel a little off and incomplete. You need to specify what the monastery is perched on.
The second bit that needs a little work is when he's entering the monastery and you describe it as he felt like he was being eaten. This description felt a little off and I found myslef asking why he felt like he was being eaten. You mentioned something about the jagged teeth about the ruins ( which is a very vauge description, where are these teeth protruding from?) but ruins are by their nature sedentary which makes the feeling of him being eaten by them a little off. Eating requires movement, obviously, but the monastery doesn't move at all and you never describe the entrance as mouth like beside a vague reference to jagged teeth, which makes the simile feel false.
the next sentence that feels off is "...and some were even stacked against the walls." Here the "some were even" is saying that cages stacked against the walls are something unusual and worthy of extra notice but that there were only a few of them. Bird cages stacked against a wall doesn't seem that unusual to me so I would probably remove the "even." The "some" is another word that I would consider changing. The image I had to that point, and the I still have, is that of a room filled with bird cages, almost overflowing. So the description of "some" ( "some" generally being a reference to a small number of objects from a much larger group)feel discordant with the mental image I had at that point. If this image is incorrect then I think you might want to rearrange the initial description of the room slightly.
The last point, though it's very small, that I felt was a little off the the "scent of rotten meat" Leif smells as he's entering. I don't have a problem with it being there, but with it going unremarked upon. I don't know where Leif is from (and that information is unnecessary) but if he's from the city/suburbs the smell of rotting flesh would probably make him balk or at least question what the smell was. If he's from the country ( where it's somewhat common to run across a dead animal) he wouldn't balk at it but he would still react differently than you have him doing. Instead of saying that he smelled rotten flesh the wording would be more along the lines of "it smelled liked something had died" or "the smell of a dead animal reached Leif." I know those are horrible suggestions I was just to say that a country would immediately equate the smell of rotting flesh with a dead animal and would think of it in that way. "Rotting flesh" is a very gothic/horror description (yes I know this is a horror story but Leif doesn't so his thought process would still be country boy-esque) and doesn't feel authentic. all that being said, this is a minute gripe and strictly refers to the vague intricacies of verbiage.
46
46
Review of Story Maker  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 18+ | (4.5)
I really enjoyed this, especially your descriptions and imagery. My favorite line is probably the one where he talks about storing previous victims/contestants in the books after he ran out of wall space.
There are three lines where I think it could use a little editing though. The first is, "He was about six and a half feet tall with dark, tangled hair, and a hungry build." I love the description "hungry build" but I don't actually know what you're trying to say.
The line is, "...he was either going to try to rape her or devour her whole." There's nothing technically wrong with this sentence, but I don't think rape is the correct word, it disrupts the aesthetic. Rape is such a human, such a worldly/pedestrian fear that it doesn't fit with a Dark Fantasy aesthetic. You want something dark and unearthly, the bespeaks of ghouls and ghosts, vampires and werewolves. Like I said, there nothing technically wrong with it, I just think the term doesn't fit as well as something else could.
The other thing, and my only true grievance, is the conclusion. I have no problem that she guess correctly, but the aftermath where she becomes a hugely successful Novelist is ever so slightly disappointing. You have a wonderful story with a lovely dark aesthetic that culminates in something entirely human. I feel like this deserve a more unearthly conclusion. I'm not saying that she has to die but there has to be more to it that her having all of her wishes granted for free because she guessed correctly.
47
47
Review of Graveyard of Time  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
I like the concept and the opening lines, but after the first stanza/paragraph (forgive I don't know the technical name) it lacked some rhythm and flow. Some of this is probably because it felt like some words were missing ("some as fragile as a wrinkles of old woman" instead of "some as fragile as the wrinkles of an old woman") but that's not the entire reason.
In first paragraph/stanza you present us with a pattern ( the naming of two "somes") yet you abandon that pattern from the second paragraph onward. At the same time, the some's also echo one another, detracting from the "sound" of the words in the reader's head. This echo exists because you have a single line separating the initial "some" from the next (buried in the graveyard of time.) So the timing of the words is slightly off, at least for me, which further disrupts the rhythm.
The other thing I mentioned was flow. This is a poem, but it's still inherently a story must evolve in some way. This poem does not; the feel of every paragraph/stanza is the same as the last. The reader is left with the feeling like almost every paragraph/stanza is the same as the previous just worded differently.
The one line where there is change is the fourth paragraph/stanza but the change is so abrupt and so immediately differently from the previous lines that it further disrupts the reader. One moment your conveying sorrow and loneliness, the next it's gore, bloodshed and brutalized individuals.
I do like the final paragraph also; I feel that it offers a satisfying conclusion to the overall piece. That being said, it does feel a little lost; like a mix between another stanza and the conclusion without wholly being either.
I hope you find this useful, I'm still figuring out how to review poems.
48
48
Review of Moirai  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (4.5)
This was good. It has a nice progression of emotion and emotions while simultaneously managing to convey all the necessary information about the current situation. The concluding sentence to main body of words perfectly encapsulates the thoughts I was experiencing in the process of the reading it and the countdown provides impetus towards the final, true, culmination.
49
49
Review of Blacky  
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (4.0)
This was a nice little story. The largest inconsistency I noticed was Blacky's personality shift at the conclusion; previous to the concluding paragraph he/she was somber, depressed, and lonely but then he/she changes into mocking and triumphant at the final moment. This is just slightly discordant with his/her personality up to that point.
I hope this helps you in your future endeavors.
50
50
Review by TristenKozinski
Rated: E | (3.5)
The thing I liked best about this was how they both had a different concept of what happened; him seeing her as reversing quickly and her seeing the opposite. The thing I didn't like was that it wasn't really an argument; for me, an argument has to be more than three lines of dialogue. Both characters have to have the opportunity to state their points of view to one another and the conversation has to evolve as those points are stated.
56 Reviews · *Magnify*
Page of 3 · 25 per page   < >
Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/profile/reviews/dreadfrom/sort_by/r.review_creation_time DESC/page/2