I'm glad someone else chose to write off of the prompt of Dragula. I noticed you used a bit more of the lyrics in your own work than I had done, but it worked together nicely. The story had a good flow to it and I liked the twists of Max being female and Cecilia being male.
Very well done. Good luck in the competition.
Keeping in mind the fact that you are editing this, I tried to read past the tense confusions. A bit difficult, admittedly, but I managed.
I did like this story, a very nice tale being passed on from father to son containing lessons of making calculated moves that may not be immediately obvious to those around you. The one thing that I did find issue with in the story was that you try to focus on the father and the son for point of view (or at least that's what it appeared to me as). I'd suggest that as you edit out the verb tensing, you take a look at the sections denoting the father's actions and the son's actions and determine whether you want to focus on the son's internal emotion and thought or the father's internal emotion (as you did not venture into the father's internal thought much if at all from what I noticed.)
Aside from that, this was a very well written piece that is still not finished, whether you are merely going to finish changing over the verb tensing or put thought to my aforementioned suggestion. Either way, nicely done.
Well, while I did not find this writing as full of gore or images as disturbing as the warning had lead me to believe, I found this piece to be expertly written. Although they imagery was still gory, it was written with the right level of description to spice in the gore while not making the story overly graphic. A great read for any looking for a good Halloween time story or love to fear the things that go bump in the night.
Well done in deed.
May the winds tell you their secrets and the sun shine upon your page.
May your imagination always be blessed and your muse never fear the stage.
~Alexia Wynd, Proud Member of CSFS~
I think this was really well done. Caveman reanimated in modern day - I like the concept. Though it seemed that your wording was a little bit more sophisticated than I would have used when referencing his state of mind, but it doesn't take away from the story. Given the word count restrictions, it makes sense to do it that way.
As I have said before, well done. I hope you did well in the competition (or will if it has not passed yet)
Well, no lying, this was short. I liked the poem. It described stars in a very artistic and beautiful way. I do agree that this needs revision. At several points throughout the poem you attempt at a rhyme scheme, but seem to not find that right touch to continue rhyming all the way through. I'd say if you managed to either clean up the rhyme scheme and have it coupled rhymes throughout the poem or removed the rhyming line endings the poem would have a much better flow.
But this is really good work nonetheless.
This was a well written piece. Short, direct, a nice take on how roosters would view their lot on a farm. I was happy to see you included the note about how roosters had a poor sense of time. It helped you be able to skip telling what happened in the passing time and be able to just continue on the roosters observations. And I really liked how it took Charlie a short moment to realize he was next for the block.
Once again, well done.
With this portion of the story, I noticed you quite frequently focus on other aspects, the 'behind the scenes' action which does and does not help the story move along. Some parts, like the pope making arrangements to steal The Book, help the story move along. Others, the meeting amongst the would-be thieves hired by the Church in particular - though helping develop the characters we will encounter later in your story - do not really help the story move along aside from showing us that these folks don't seem to get along and all have moderately different opinions about how to get the book. I don't know if I would exactly suggest to remove that section from the book, though, because i don't know how that character development will impact the remaining book.
One thing that I noticed is that you do keep having the same conversation repeated just in different settings. Though sometimes this is good to reiterate character feelings upon certain subjects (like showing The Book to a minimum of several hundred thousand people), it can feel monotonous if used too often; this information may be a bit premature considering I have not yet read the next section of this book, but it is always a good thing to keep in mind.
I will hopefully get to read and review the next segment before another week passes. Good read, though.
Just to mention this at the beginning, this review was written as I read the story so I could remember to comment on things and make suggestions as I went along instead of forgetting some things after reading the entire story. Also, as a fore note I would like to suggest re-reading this and looking for missed punctuation, particularly quotation marks - they are often forgot during the wave of words rushing out.
My excerpts and suggestions begin in Chapter 2 (the first chapter was exquisite and had nothing I would suggest altering in it).
I'll start with a suggestion for wording regarding this particular excerpt: " "What kind of things?" Delaflote asked, his expression revealing his curiosity.
"Never mind," Lynch refused to take the bait... " Instead of using 'never mind', it might give it more power and add to Lynch's well established prestige if you used the phrase "Never you mind". It offers itself to be more of an order rather than an off hand remark as some have come to associate with the use of 'never mind'.
When The Book has a change in title and begins to draw Lynch into it while Delaflote is there you have Lynch say excerpt: "...and then I heard a growl..." but we, the reader, do not hear that when he is picturing his wife's murder. It could help draw the reader in a bit more if, during his fantasizing of being pulled into the book, you make that known in some way.
In Chapter 4, excerpt: "...In Rome, the Cardinal Chamberlain, a diminutive man in his early fifties named Luigi Lubrano, hurried on slippered feet down a long hallway on the fourth floor of the Vatican Palace..." you seem to introduce this Luigi man by two different terms. I don't know if this was on purpose, or if this was originally supposed to introduce something else but I felt this should be brought out to your attention for an updated draft.
Around midway through Chapter 6, you begin to forget to italicizing the words The Book.
With that out of the way, this is a really great story and I'll be reading/reviewing the rest of it shortly. Although there is quite a bit of french in it, I would not change that a bit. It gives the story character, and continually reminds us (the reader) that Francois is a french man.
I would, however, suggest that you compile the first and second chapter into one chapter, perhaps even make it the prelude to your book since those are the only two chapters in which your Mr. Lynch and Mr. Herrington are actually moving characters. The rest of your story seems to focus on the members of the Hounds of Hell and Francios, only making references to the short time that The Book was in Lynch/Herringon's possession.
But I really did enjoy this story and you seem to have a wonderful way with submerging the reader into the setting without overloading our senses. Great job.
I liked the poem but noticed that only the first four and the last four lines rhyme in couplings. The rhythm developed in the first stanza is lost by the end of the second but picked up again in the last. All in all though, it was a well measured poem with a great end line. Well done.
I've seen many a haiku and most of them usually are three different sentences that just relate to the item being spoken of. You, however, managed to make each haiku seem like it's all one sentence (even if the sentence is missing words to allow it submit itself to haiku form). I hope more trees inspire you to add to this page. Haikus are wonderful and too few are written well now a days.
This was very well written and conveys the story in the few short words allowed by the contest guidelines (I'm assuming, I have not checked the actual contest you wrote it for.)
This is a decent story and although it is not quite what I was expecting, it was well written. However, this never brings up how he dies which is something that you may want to add in if you keep writing this.
So, although your first point of view character is a highly educated man, 'opined' - at least where I'm from - is a rather archaic term which many a casual reader might not be familiar with. I would suggest changing it to 'concluded' or 'suggested' or 'believed' - no one would think lighter of your character's vocabulary and will be able to continue reading without having to grab a dictionary.
Also, you forgot quotations around excerpt: Have you been experiencing any side-effects - dryness of the mouth?
And, finally, I would recommend switching the term 'prognostication' for 'omen' for the same reasons I suggest changing 'opined'.
This is a great story, well thought out, very mysterious. A great suspense thriller. If there is more to this story, I would love to read it.
I like that you start and end with the same line and that you refer back to the original concept of being locked up through out. I do find it rather odd though that you choose to break up some words - youngest in particular. I don't think you gain any more power out of hyphenating youngest than without, although the pacing is perfect with hyphenating hopelessness. Some of you line breaks didn't make much sense, but honestly, I wouldn't suggest you change them.
With the exception of some misplaced/missing spaces in or between words, this piece is an excellent story. Although I foresaw the fact that Nihinya would develop a gift of sorts, it was written in such a fabulous way that most readers would never have seen it coming. After all, a mother always knows. ;D
I've read a lot of suspense thrillers and this is very good. I didn't really know what to make of it until the very end and even then, I didn't see the twist coming. Great job, truly.
This has a good story line behind it and you do explain what the boy is cursed with, but the delivery seems to be mangled with all the information you wish to convey. That may be in part the fault of the grammatical errors and spelling mistakes which are scattered throughout this piece. I suggest you use the spelling tool writing.com provides. As for the grammatical errors, I would recommend you ask someone to proof read it (or if you would like me to follow this review up with a list of spelling/grammatical corrections I can.)
Another part of the problem is that you have very little information on the action occurring. After you have the boy run inside to get his things, you do not indicate that he had come back out again. When I read this, I thought he was still in gathering his things and his mother was outside talking to the mob. Then the boy is there and...what is this; holding a weapon? Where did he get a weapon from? There's no indication at all that he was even holding a weapon until after his mother is killed and nothing even denotes what type of weapon it is: is it a sword or a gun or a knife or is it a fantasized weapon that had never been seen before?
Excerpt: "Leave!" One word uttered with such fierce power and followed by such a deadly strength.
It exploded from him, a rushing river against far to weak a damn.
It destroyed them all the life destroying energy following the deadly desires of the sorrow stricken boy."
These lines are fine to leave as they are, but I would make them all part of the same paragraph. They compliment each other and give a bit more insight as to what he was now capable of as far as his 'awaken' power is. They, in a way, give more information than a lot of the rest of the story and give the imagination a lot in so few words.
I do want to see where the story goes from here. Definitely write more.
Before I get into the actual review, I just wanted to point out that you may want to make a minor edit: in the third paragraph, instead of 'here' you use 'hear.' And that seems to be the only grammatical thing to correct. And when making a quotation within a quotation as you do with: excerpt "...it means “pure.”..." you would use ' ' instead of "; you the sentence would look more like ...it means 'pure'."
Also, if that little paragraph in the beginning is all that is the prologue, then I would recommend putting 'Chapter One' in between the two sections to help break them up.
Anyways, this is a very good start to a story. But you say you 'don't know where to go with it from here' in your brief description. If it's because you don't have this D-3.0 visualized very well, perhaps write as much about D-3.0 as you know right now and if it doesn't feel real to you, then maybe you should flesh the dimension out more by comparing it to our own world and what makes it different from us.
Then you should ask yourself: Why is Carmen so important to this other dimension? And flesh that out as much as you can as well. Following that up with these two very important questions: What would happen if she doesn't go to this other dimension with Josiah and Karin right now? Will more Deleoms come after her? Or, worse, her family?
Once you have this all taken care of, you can move onto what will move the story along. The very important question to ask Josiah and Karin: How are you going to get Carmen to D-3.0? Are you going to convince her (I was right in assuming Carmen is a she, right? Just asking 'cause Carmen is a uni-sexual name) to come with you? Kidnap her?
Once they have answered the question, ask Carmen how she feels about it once she does go with them. Or, perhaps, she first has an internal dilemma, asking herself why she is so reluctant to go if she has no destination in mind or the hang up of what not going would mean if these Deleoms are looking for her.
I know it sounds weird to ask your character something, but it's the best phrase to use because you are getting into your character's shoes, thinking like them, and answering a question that they need to resolve.
I hope this has been useful to you and I hope to see more on this story!
I think you have a good start to this story, but you're having a bit of trouble getting it off the ground from the looks of it. I don't know if you have done this for this story, but I'd suggest writing a bio for your character, Paige. I have a particular bio write up that I use when I need to really figure them out for the story - say if I had a dream and remember only the character or a small bit of the dream and I want to turn it into a story. I can send you the format if you'd like. The reason I mention this is because the story seems to start off strong at the prologue but it seems to lose some steam and attraction after the first little bit.
I'd really like to see this turn into something larger than a little blurb in your portfolio and I can't wait to see what Paige's adventure is.
I like seeing the attempt to keep a rhyming scheme, though the stanzas do not have a consistent rhyme scheme nor structure.
The overall feeling seems to stay consistent though.
I noticed a consistent rhyming 'scattered' with 'splattered' between this poem and your other poem No Matter What. I think it's nice imagery in reference to hearts.
I'm going to just start off with just pointing out I think you have an extra word in this exert: "...couldn’t recall from where from nor could..." I'm not quite sure if you meant to do that or it was an overlooked grammatical error.
I've noticed with the style in which you write you tend to break up the dialogue from the person that is saying it. This does not happen constantly throughout your writing, but enough that it starts to confuse the reader with the dialogue's speaker. Take this exert for example: "... I heard a soft voice coming from behind me,
“Hola senor!” I turned apprehensively to see who the voice belonged to. The voice, it turned out, belonged to a Spanish woman, long flowing brown hair and stunningly blue eyes.
“Bienvenido al el cielo del hotel!” I stood there unsure what to say. I wasn’t exactly in the mood for pleasantries, as what I really wanted to be doing right now was sleeping, so I just rudely asked,
“What?” At a closer look at the woman..." This section was the best example I found where you break the speaker from the dialogue. The addition of the first person pov action following the dialogue that clearly belongs to Sara and then breaking the pov's dialogue and putting it next to the description of the woman seems a bit distorted.
So aside from that, I did like how you related the characters to one another as well as to the main character and think it was well written over all. And I do like that none of them have any hard feelings about the main character's indirect cause of their deaths. I especially like the 'life' lesson that the pov character learns and that he becomes friends with the ginger man.
I would like to take the time first to see if I can identify why Kaas is called Kaas...is it because it's Dutch for cheese?
Anyways, I did find this piece to be rather funny, though it had a rather choppy flow. You change from focusing on Mark and Kaas to a skunk out of no where; at least that's how it seemed to me. But other than that, I think the style in which you wrote it is appropriate for the levity of the topic.
I particularly like the ending; such an epic quest to come home and find out his wife doesn't need the cheese grater he worked so hard to find.
Great job and congratulations on winning the award.
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