Hi, Brooklyn:
March Raid has led QueenOwl's wings to your port. So here she lands to pore over your literary piece.
Here are some comments you might consider when you decide to revisit it for tightening and improvement. My observations and suggestions are enclosed in brackets and color-coded green.
*Content
Cute story. Fantastic imagery wrapped into the writer's creative mind. I just didn't understand why anyone would allow a disabled 12-year-old to stay outdoors at night in the middle of winter - to think that they have a home nearby and a concerned mother. To top that off, Andrea was aided by an oxygen tank to help her breathe.
Perhaps this scene needs a little tweaking to make it believable and nobody can suspend their unbelief!
Aside from this part, my interest was held until the end.
As far as *Mechanics,*Syntax, and *Punctuation Marks are concerned, here are some snippets I cut and pasted that need tweaking for clarity and readability:
The grass in these hills looked like daggers, though[they] couldn't cut the legs of a fly.[Insert]
Made sense, now that her favorite older brother[, Mathew ,]had left.[Enclose the proper name in parenthesis if the sentence is complete without it.]
Creatures [that][delete] varied from shades of blue[,][insert] so dark they looked black, bright shades of yellow that could distort your vision, powerful reds that filled their victims with fear, and even camouflage in the rare, smaller species.
[Twelve year old][Twelve-year-old]
In presentation of numbers, such as in age in the above here, ages (of persons) except in journalistic, business and technical contexts, spell out ages: forty-eight years old, a twenty-three-year-old, aged ninety-seven.
An hour [past][passed] as Mikey and Andrea continued on,[syntax]
Another hour past.[Another hour passed.][Replace]
Out of no where [nowhere is one word][ Replace.]
Like a curious animal.[Fragment. Revise.]
and his front fangs were pointed outward rather than curved like a snakes. [Possessive. snake's]
this dragon couldn't have been any older than a young adult just hardly coming out of his [adolescents.][adolescence] [Replace]
but [too][to] an eight year old like her[,] the beast was more dangerous than any mountain lion or wild dog. [Replace][Insert comma]
"I wonder...."
[Use of Ellipsis: Ellipses, also known as ellipsis points and suspension points, are punctuational device composed of a trio of spaced periods. (Always make sure that all three periods fit on a single line of text.)
Ellipses have two important functions.
First, they are used in dialogue to indicate that a speaker has not brought an utterance to completion or to indicate that there are awkward pauses in the utterance.
The second use of the ellipses is to indicate that one or more words have been omitted from a direct quotation because the quoter considers them irrelevant to his or her purpose.
If you delete one or more words from the beginning of a quotation, you do not need to use ellipses – unless the document you are writing is unusually formal, in which case the blank space will separate the opening quotation mark from the first ellipsis period, but one blank space will follow the final ellipsis period.
If you delete one or more words from the end of a quotation positioned at the end of the hosting sentence, however, you need to use both a period and ellipses if the quoted matter has the status of a grammatically complete sentence. No blank space will precede the period.
If you are deleting one or more words from the end of a quotation that has the status of a grammatically complete sentence and that ends with a question mark or an exclamation point, position the terminal punctuation mark after the ellipses.
[Somehow being the cooler atmosphere, high above all the dust and dirt below, it was easy to breath fresh air without the oxygen.] [This is inconsistent with the the beginning of the story where Andrea and her brother were cold and shivering from the snow covering the ground..."They got too caught up in their fun, and didn't notice the deadly cold dropping in until Andrea was hardly able to breath and snow began falling. In an instant, the mood changed. The two siblings and their dogs went from chasing little flying lights with jars, to huddling beneath a shelter of old pines. Moby lay next to Andrea to keep her warm. Mikey curled up in his sisters lap. Poppy was only a small puppy at the time, but still tried to help by lying over his human's feet.
An hour went by. Snow fall soon turned to an ice storm. Mom hollered for them in the distance for half an hour, though the two siblings were so cold and lost in the night they couldn't move."
Am I missing something here?
*Dialogue
Good employment of dialogue showing your characters interacting with each other. Dialogues put the reader in the head of the narrator, character, or author and make the story pop, sizzle and dazzle.
*Disclaimer
I hope my observations and suggestions can help you tighten some loose ends relating to the mechanics in writing. Keep in mind, though, that these are from one reader's point of view. As such, take it with a grain of salt. The decision to adopt or discard suggestions is your prerogative.
*Over-all take away
There are a couple areas I would work on for consistency and credibility as I pointed out. All in all, it is an entertaining and delightful story about children and for children.
Write away, Brooklyn. You're good for it.
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