Stumpy's (stumpy) Reviews

Review Requests: ON
193 Public Reviews Given
205 Total Reviews Given
Public Reviews
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Review of The Arrival of Summer  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (5.0)
Love this.

The personification of summer is delightful and the descriptions of the other seasons equally so.

The dialogue and descriptions are polished, spelling and grammar on point.

Only two things gave me pause - the beginning and the end.

I think I would have preferred Lucy's nature and status to have come out through the body of the story instead of being narrated at the beginning. And something seemed just a little off about "...one bright morning...". Maybe "...that bright morning..."? I don't know, it just snagged a little. The overall sense of the sentence is fine - just that "one" didn't seem quite right to me.

Not the kind of thing I usually go for, but this I really liked.

Nice work.
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Review of Feline  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.5)
Nice piece of observation.

Your lament about people and the weather is so true. Here the seasons are reversed, and the complaints tend to be more of the "where did summer go" variety, after the first few hot days of October give way to the inevitable wind and rain of November and even December before summer proper begins.

I find it interesting that you describe the cat as 'dingy' and attribute that to its being an 'outside cat'. I guess you're right for where you live, but where I am, outside house cats generally look as clean as indoor cats. It's only the feral strays that look dingy. Also, she may not be a runt - just not overfed.

A couple of things did trip me up on the way through. You switch back and forth between 'she' and 'it'. I think it would be better to stick with either the gendered or ungendered version, even it means repeating the same word close together.

The description of "bright yellow asphalt" doesn't seem right to me. I take it you mean the centre line? But then that would be paint, not the asphalt itself. Unless you actually have tinted asphalt where you are?

I'm also not sure you've used 'avail' correctly. I'm used to seeing it in the sense of an actor 'availing themselves of' something, meaning to take advantage of an opportunity presented. I don't think I've encountered it used in the reverse sense of something presenting itself. That may be a vocabulary gap on my part.

Finally, never underestimate a rabbit. They are fierce! The cat's got the edge, for sure, but if it isn't successfully ambushed an adult rabbit would put up a fight and have a fair chance of being victorious, if somewhat the worse for wear.
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Review of Sanctuary  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.5)
Cute.

Sitting within a couple of feet of a trap isn't a very strong strategy for catching things in it. Nor is letting an apex predator hang about it.

But sure. Given what you were going for, it more-or-less hangs together, and it was fun.

You have a typo in "could" (as "cold"), but it's otherwise technically solid.

Nice work.
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Review of Atomic Miracle  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Neat story.

As I was reading this, I was picturing 1960s sci-fi matte paintings and retrofuturistic furnishings. I'm not sure how much of that is actually evoked by the story itself and how much by the pre-planted suggestion in the header, but at the very least the descriptions are consistent with the suggestion.

It's well written. Not much to comment on there.

The one thing that troubled me, and troubles me still, is why the "time machine" would have been set up the way it was, if grandpa's death was a surprise. I know they were coming to visit anyway, but that doesn't quite seem to answer the question for me - how did it come to be mentioned in the will? Why the voice-over, if grandpa was expecting to be on hand in person?

In any case, nice work!
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Review of Blinky  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: ASR | (4.5)
Ridiculous!

On the one hand, I want to say that you've kind of cheated, or missed the point of the dialogue challenge, by having Blinky narrate his own actions.

On the other, because of the ridiculous premise it kind of works.

Sadly, one of the down-sides to the way the Dialogue 500 operates is that the prompt is gone, so I don't know what you were responding to, so I don't even know if that was part of the brief.

In any case it's a fun, silly little story. It might have worked better as a normal action-plus-dialogue piece, but I guess that's almost always the case.
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Review of Just a Walk in the Dark  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
Cute.

I wonder how many readers know Bigfoot and Sasquatch are the same thing? Probably most, I guess. Love Sal making Chewie look like a porpoise.

I would have done without "which were standing up". The context is more than clear enough without it.

I think that's the only thing that struck me as a little off though. Maybe a few sentences that ran a bit long, or took a moment to parse - I do the same myself and it's something I look out for when I revise.

But next time... if the moon is full, give the flashlight a miss. Your eyes will adjust and you'll see better without it... and without the spooky shadows leaping all around.

Oh, but good advice about the following the dog home, at the end. Stay safe out there.
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Review of The Reno Massacre  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)
I wrote a whole bunch here before checking your bio and the date.

Given that it's such a long time ago, I'm going to guess you've learned a thing or two since this, so I'll give you the bullet point version.

It's okay. Nothing outright wrong with it, bar the odd typo. It's just a bit bland.

The opening scene doesn't really do anything, except telegraph the ending and chew through word count.

The action scene isn't bad, but could have hit a lot harder without the soft opening and by starting earlier in the firefight - right before the first of the rookie's fellow officers go down - and seeing things from the tighter POV of a greener rookie.

And the ending's a little obvious. But then anything but one of the three obvious endings would have to be a proper twist, I guess.

The three obvious endings? This one, Jordan saves the day, and the Sheriff saves Jordan. At least you didn't choose option B.
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Review of The reflection of your hopes  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (5.0)
I am so glad you've got something in your bio-block! I wondered whether English was not your first language.

But you're very proficient with it! Better than many native English speakers on here.

Interesting perspective. I mostly agree. It's the classic philosophical "problem of other minds".

I only disagree slightly with the notion that whether you love someone makes no difference to them. It can make a difference, if it shows. It won't necessarily be the difference you want it to make though. All the rest of it is objective truth, in my subjective opinion.

Technical bits and pieces:

Those first three things about the bracelet, the number and the lyrics should be separate sentences, I think, and similarly when they are reflected later on.

Online, it's much easier to read if there's a blank line between paragraphs.

I think "just your mind who" should be "just your mind that" or "just your mind which". You could argue for "who", but it's personifying your mind as distinct from yourself, which in English is grammatically problematic, I think. Interesting "edge case" though, and not at all surprising to be something that trips up a non-native speaker.

"...both about his thoughts and yours." Rather than "both,and", "either,or" in the same places would be better here. Your way reads almost right... it took me a moment to work out what was "wrong" about it. There are certainly native speakers who would make the same technically-a-mistake(-for-now).

"... his world thinks of you once in a while..." This wouldn't normally be the right way to say this, I think, but in this context it works.

For a non-native speaker - even a well-educated and somewhat immersed non-native speaker - this is very good.

Welcome to WDC!
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Review of Henchmen Resources  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
Loves a good orc funny, we does.

This is a good'un.

We's noticed a bit o' tex-nickel stuff tho':

"Man-eating" wants ta gobble a hyphen.

Woss monsters? All we sees is well-qualified thugs of diff'ent specieses. You bin readin' too much hoomie trash, bruv.

Yer's gived the game away wot wiv Tiffany bein' a bloke an all, by sayin' "he" right up front, only then it gets all confusing like, cause then 'e's she an' her and then back ta Mister.

When that Bobert fella says "So, you two..." 'e oughts ta have a wubble-you instead o' two 'O's.

An they's a few places where ya' gets yer punc... punk... dots an' dashes an' stuff not quite right, but tha's no' a biggie.

Good fun.
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Review of A Thimble Full of Trouble  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.0)
Nice idea.

The story feels like it would work really well as a picture book for kids.

As a read-to-kids story, I wonder whether it might be improved with a bit of "once upon a time" fairy-tale language to it.

As an adult short-story, it feels a little thin to me. The descriptions, while functional and reasonably clear, don't immerse me in the scenes, somehow. I think maybe it's because you tell me what things are, but don't show me enough of what they are like. I get an intellectual, rather than a sensory experience. It's that old "show" vs. "tell" chestnut that gets thrown around here in all the writing advice.

And similarly for the characters. I don't feel like I really get to know Flik, or get inside his head. His father feels a little bit caricatured too.

A few minor technical issues:

...small door in the tree's trunk she was kneeling in front of. - I think "...in the trunk of the tree..." would be better here. There are those who will tell you never to finish a sentence with 'of', but they're wrong. We all know that that's how people really speak.

I'm not entirely sure you have the POV nailed at the beginning. It sort of seems to drift from Betsy to her mother before settling on Flik, but looking back once it settled, it's not clearly wrong. Maybe it's the "tiredly" which trips me up - that's an internal state, which suggests Mom's POV. Maybe try to show us she's tired, without saying it? Also, when you describe Flik as 'standing a few feet away,' that's told from a perspective outside of Flik.

I don't get a clear sense of what the gnomes are. Small, sure, but how small? Are they the beardy 'garden gnome' type, or something else?

The parlour scene is pretty good, but a bit more detail wouldn't hurt.

His reply came... - "His" here initially seems to apply to Flik, when it's meant to be his father. Maybe just swap it for "The"?

The first time Father Gnome uses "boy" works, but you overuse it, I think. You can use it more than once, but not just about every time he speaks. But then, also, when you start the instruction with "Flik, run upstairs..." that doesn't ring true either. I would just start that instruction with "Run...". (Or if you've cut most of the other "boy"s out, you could use something like "Right then boy, run...".

The conversation feels a bit stilted too. If Flik is "shortly" less than "hundreds of years" old, you'd think he'd have a bit more nous than to parrot back what his father is telling him. In hundreds of years, he hasn't heard the story of Dimune, who lives just down the block? He's never been taken and introduced to their friendly neighbourhood protective crystal?

And then Father Gnome rather jumps to conclusions about what Dimune means by wanting company. Does she want crystal company, or gnome company, or someone else - maybe she wants human company?

None of this is a problem for a children's story of course. Most kids won't even notice the issues, and for those who do, the supervising adult can use them as learning opportunities.

Neat story. Best of luck with it.
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Review of The Short Term Loan  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.0)
I don't think I've ever read a body-swap story from the perspective of an unsuspecting swappee before. Obviously you get those unexpected-by-both parties stories like 13 going on 30 and that other one with Jamie Lee Curtis, but as the - is victim the right word? - of someone who is doing it deliberately... that's a new one on me, though I'm sure it must have been done before.

That first paragraph's a doozy. It needs breaking up. I don't think you need the introduction. I guess you're making sure we know the narrator/POV character is male from the get-go, but you can do that without stating it outright at the beginning. Just start with him waking up. The affirmations to himself in the mirror later on are much better in this respect.

I don't think the '5th battalion in an old war movie' is proverbial. Nice description of a headache, but not proverbial.

I don't buy that he doesn't notice he's a woman until he goes to the toilet. He puts his hand to his aching head (first clue) then says "Oh man," which should give it away right there. And he's not going to miss that he's wearing pyjamas the moment he moves.

Conceptually, it's an interesting idea. Rather than the in-bed misdirect and the bathroom scene though, I'd rather get more of an explanation of what Julie does with this power. Her (unnamed) partner doesn't know what she needs David's body for, but he clearly has some understanding of why she does this. That's where the real story lies. What have other people who have found themselves in this situation done with her body while they've been in it? Does the partner have rules that she/they have established for guest users? And what systems and responses does the partner have if a guest breaks them (or tries to)? How unusual is it for her to pop out without telling him?

Is there anything David is expected or encouraged to do or try, while he's in residence? You could take that all the way into the rabbit hole of body-swap porn that seems to find a home in WDC's interactive fiction stories, but you could have similar things happen behind a veil too, if that's within Julie's rules, in order to keep it seemly.

I'm also intrigued by the possible legal implications and other forms of come-back from people who are less happy about being body-snatched. Letting on where they're based seems like asking for trouble, and even without that, Geoguessr.com shows that (some) people can work out where they are in the world pretty easily from just a view out the window.

Definitely worth developing further. Good luck with it!
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Review of Chapter 1: Call of the Sea  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 18+ | (4.5)
Love the voice! I think the mask slips just a little here and there - but on the whole, very nicely executed.

I'm a little confused about the setting though. I can't tell whether it's meant to be historical or fantastic, and if historical I think you've missed the mark with your measurements. Metres (and hence centimetres and kilometres) are a very recent invention.

I take Rory and Barney, and even the big fella, to be Irish-ish, but then the Sea Mother isn't an Irish deity that I'm aware of. That could be a me problem though. Pharang could be an allusion to the Franks? Although Google suggests that that's usually spelled with an 'F'. Long boats evoke Vikings, Danes and yes, Franks, I guess, but from a time period much earlier than guns, cannons or centimetres. Maybe there's a real historical setting where this all makes sense, but it's not at all clear to me where or when that would be, so it seems a bit of a mish-mash - and yet still not clearly a fantasy world either.

I don't think you need apostrophes in "somewheres" and the like, and I think you mean 'im where you use 'em in a couple of places.

It's a bit slow to get started. I think you labour the point about dragging the big fella up the beach a little too long, especially when it seems they didn't really get him very far when they change their minds and drag him back to the boat. You also kind of gloss over how they get him up and over the gunwales into the boat, if he's so heavy they can barely drag him.

And then there's the odd typo and tense error, which I'm sure you're more than capable of finding and fixing yourself with a good proof-read after leaving it for a while. It's amazing what you miss when you read over and over, but find when you come back a week later.

Overall, it's an interesting piece. The characters are well drawn. The situation is compelling, if a bit drawn out. The episode with the key is well pitched. It just needs a bit of tightening up and a bit more to ground the reader in the setting, I think.

Best o' luck wi' it.
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Review of The Calling: chapter 1  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)
Okay...

This is full of contrasts.

The descriptions of the action are mostly clear and very well done, and the dialogue's not bad either, but...

There are continuity and timing errors, spelling and grammar issues, and the geography is a bit loose. Your tense drifts, or is just plain wrong in places, and you're way overusing a confusing mish-mash of first and last names, including the sudden appearance of 'Usher' halfway through, which I take to be a revised (or perhaps pre-revision) name for 'Nathan'?

It's fine to introduce each character's full name, and even to switch back and forth occasionally for the main character, but he should have a preferred way of thinking about the other characters, probably surnames for the male characters, given his military background, but likely first names for non-combatant women. And use a lot more "he" and "she" where the context is clear, using names or other descriptors only once per paragraph (if necessary!) or when you need to make it clear who you're referring to.

I don't get a clear picture of the valley, the forest, the road they've come in on, or how the cabin is situated. The scene-setting paragraph at the beginning doesn't help, because I don't know what to care about yet and the rest is like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing. How thick is the forest here? You mention thick underbrush, and pine trees on a slope would normally be pretty good cover most of the way, given that they're evergreen and overlapping due to growing from different elevations, yet you describe Cort as having to be careful about sticking to cover. And I don't think oaks and pines grow together all that commonly. Pines tend to deplete diversity around them, apparently. Maybe it does happen where you're from? Maybe it's pines on the tops and oaks lower down?

I don't get a clear sense of steady progress from where Cort and Macklin park the car and have their fight-of-unexplained-cause, over the ridge and down through the valley to the cabin. At first it seems they're more-or-less at the cabin straight away, then they have to make their way across and down and then suddenly they're there, without having approached in stages as the cover thins out. You mention each stage, for sure, but it doesn't develop in a clear and consistent progression. The fight at the car is also where you mangle your tenses the most. You do do a reasonable job of suggesting the passage of time with respect to daylight though, except that you don't establish time of day well at the beginning. You mention "the darkening of the sky" but then it's still gray, not dark, when they get to the bottom, so did they start before it started to darken?

When they get to the clearing around the cabin, it's not clear how much clear space there is around it. You say Cort heads for the West side of the cabin, but we have no established orientation to know what that means in context. Is he going around the side, from the perspective of where they arrive? The back? Straight up to the side they're facing? Where is the front door? NSEW? Or just use left and right. Even with well-established compass points, it's better to use left and right as well.

It takes Macklin an awfully long time to open the door. Once the knob starts turning, I wouldn't expect Cort to have time to get to the corner of the cabin before he opens it, let alone around the corner and across the porch in time to save the great galoot from getting shotgunned in the chest.

You say Cort won't touch his gun until he needs to, but then as soon as he gets to the cabin he draws it, before there's any sign of trouble. But then later he draws it again. The gun seems to pop in and out of Cort's hand by magic. Sometimes he draws it or puts it away, other times it just jumps from his hand to his holster or vice versa. The same goes for his jacket or coat. He takes it off before approaching the cabin, then uses its sleeve to wipe the window. And "The Girl." in the bed turning into Henderson is a bit ham-fisted too. "The girl?" turning into Henderson might have worked.

And finally, "instinctually" is the wrong word (and you overuse it). You can have an instinctual sense of something, or an instinctual urge or reaction, but direct actions are instinctive. But maybe substitute "well-honed" or "highly-trained" or "ingrained" or "expert" or "natural" or "second nature" etc. for some of those instincts.

Speaking of which, yours for action are very good. The technical stuff can be practiced (or proof-read) and improved, but having a good sense of the action and dialogue is something many people can never achieve. Technically, this has issues. Creatively, it's good work. Best of luck with it!
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Review of Colours Are Numbers  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.0)
I'm not sure what you mean by "college essay". Is this an essay you intend to include with college applications, or an essay for a college course? It would be easier to provide useful feedback with a clearer idea of what you're trying to achieve, and what prompt or question you're responding to. Perhaps Americans will know exactly what you're trying to do, but I'm not American and don't know what a "college essay" should be trying to achieve, assuming it's for a college application. Or am I misunderstanding your nationality and this is a college-as-in-high-school essay? For English class?

Whatever, I can still offer general comments on what you've written.

It's very interesting. I have questions... so many questions. Synesthesia is fascinating to me, not being someone who experiences it.

If the aim is to make you stand out from the crowd. This nails it. But it can still be better.

What you've written is interesting, but I feel like it's missing a layer of detail. The question that nags at me most is whether the numbers that apply to colours and the colours that apply to songs are consistent? Does "The Loco-motion" by Kylie Minogue always come with the same colour? Does Little Eva's version come with the same colour or a different one? What about plugged and unplugged, or studio and live versions of the same song by the same artist? How do you experience the colours with songs?

How many digits are the numbers that relate to colours? Are they RGB values or just numbers that your brain has arbitrarily assigned them? Are they precise numbers, or a general quantitative concept. How do you experience them? Do they appear on the page? If there are printed numbers and colour numbers, do you experience them differently? How does your brain decide when a colour has changed, given that colour changes more-or-less continuously? (That last one's more of an empirical psych experiment question than something for this essay.)

While the challenges and mental tools you use to manage the experience are interesting, it's hard to fully comprehend what those tools are managing without the details of presentation.

I'm a little worried about how an admissions reviewer will take the strengths and weaknesses you portray due to your unusual perception. One would hope they would see self-awareness and opportunities for unique insight. Maybe that's meant to be the whole point of the essay. But they might also see a barrier to success and therefore a potential blemish to their school's success.

On a purely technical level, you change tense early in the piece, going from "My brain had" (past), to "I can't" (present), and even "I saw" (past) and "I watch" (present) in the same sentence. You will need to switch between past and present tenses in this piece, but be careful how and when you do it. (I think it's all good after "Everything clicked" so focus on the beginning of the essay.)

Also, "informing about" doesn't scan nicely for me. I think just drop "informing" and it'll read better. Or replace with "explaining".

I also feel like the structure is a bit loose. You have things mostly in a decent order, but it's missing something in terms of flow. That might be paragraphing. It might be partly the tense thing. You use passive voice here and there "same number isn't seen in my brain" which probably doesn't help. Stick to active voice and present tense for the most part, except when you're telling the backstory - still active voice, but past tense.

All in all, it's a good draft. The elements are pretty much there, I think, and the subject matter seems appropriate as far as I can tell. It just needs some tightening up and proof-reading.

And assuming this is a college admissions essay, best of luck with getting into your preferred school(s)!
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Review of Next Stop Hollywood reviewers wanted  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.0)
Intriguing idea. Sadly it appears this project was a one-off and is long-finished.

My guess is that it proved unsustainable, due to being flooded with self-promoted stories that weren't at all movie-worthy.

Still, the resulting 2007 book may be worth a read.

Thanks for the free GPs.
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Review of Aurora Borealis  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
I love the concept here, but the piece as-written does have its issues.

The core idea of the story is very strong. Strong enough to carry a longer piece even, I think. The story of how Kevin and Steven learn to establish two-way communication, and perhaps even get Annelis back, could be worth exploring.

But it does need some technical polish.

The opening is fine, but you don't really come back to it at the end. Typically a story like this would "bookend" with the aurora tour, otherwise why mention it at all? You could start from "Annelis was my classmate..." and the story doesn't really lose anything.

That line itself, like many others in the piece, perhaps tell when they should show. There's always a bit of 'tell' in backstory exposition like this, but you can still wrap it in more experiential language to give it more depth and texture. Along the lines of "I first met Annelis in Statistics 101 and was immediately struck by (her hair, her eyes, her smile, her wit)..." or some such. I think it's worth going through the whole story asking yourself "am I telling here, where I could be showing?".

A couple of story elements didn't quite ring true to me. Having Annelis disappear 'less than a year after graduation' doesn't give them a lot of time to get married and establish a pattern of seeing Kevin 'once a month or so'. And then Steven calling Kevin after Annelis has been gone only an hour? That's easily explained by running into someone she knows on her jog, or stopping to pick up ingredients for a suddenly-inspired dinner idea. I wouldn't even begin to wonder where my wife had got to until it got closer to two hours and wouldn't be calling friends for probably a couple of hours after that, give or take nightfall. The police and news outlets won't be interested until she's gone 24 or even 48 hours. Fixing these timelines won't affect the overall story and would just make it that much more believable.

I think I'd drop the line about UFO sightings, or maybe wrap it in a "not even". Most people wouldn't think of that as a realistically plausible explanation, but maybe as a "not even this weird 'out there' idea we thought of when grasping at straws".

You use 'I tried to think rationally' and 'I know it sounds irrational' close together. I think I would use 'sounds crazy' just so it's not the same word twice in close succession.

I'm not sure that coded patterns in backgammon dice would be noticeable, but that has to be granted for the sake of the story, I guess. Maybe Yahtzee would be a better medium? Three rolls of (up to) five dice at a time and a need for the rolls to be different to score well. Everyone gets their own turn too, instead of it being a two-player (or team) game. That could make repeating patterns stand out, especially if it was only happening to Steven's rolls and not to his wife or children's. Speaking of whom, where are they when Kevin comes over to talk dead exes? And while we're at it, does Kevin have a family too, or has he just been pining for Annelis all these years?

The dialogue between Steven and Kevin is very stiff. "You cannot possibly believe..."/"I do not think..." Nobody talks like that. At the very least "cannot" and "do not" ought to be truncated to "can't" and "don't". Dialogue is messy.

Conversely, in "wherever she's right now", "she is" should be spelled out (or alternatively maybe use 'wherever she's at' for colloquial flair).

And "dice" is already plural. "Die" is the singular, "dices" is not a thing. Stats nerds would know this.

Finally, I'm not sure what to think about "in between". Where does this term originate from? Does Lis use it? Or is it Steven's interpretation of something in her message? In between what? And I'm not sure about "we never knew existed" either. Maybe that's fine, but I don't think it's how I would talk about a phenomenon like this, either in a story or in real life.

You have a really good story here, well worth the effort to tidy up the technical stuff. I hope Kevin can find a way to bring Annelis home.
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Review of Game Models  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (5.0)
Wow, scary.

This is a great piece. It belongs in an anthology somewhere.

The only critique I can offer is that it's a bit confusing that Samir is getting notifications before the app is built. It's not clear whether he's rapid-prototyped some parts of it while writing the proposal, or he's just imagining it.

Mostly I'm just left wondering what will happen when half the world is living their lives at the direction of an AI, and what happens if that AI gets hacked, or evolves its own objectives for humanity.

Bravo!
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Review of Border Breached  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
That packs a punch!

It's a lot of story to capture in 300 words.

I guess the only thing I'd question is the 'gorilla type creatures' - they seem almost too mundane for what's going on here, but I suppose the word limit constrains what they can be. Also, 'gorilla-like' might have been better.

I really don't know what else to say, except very well done.
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Review of Untitled  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
A story stub from 2012, that pops up as a sponsored item in a genre search? Odd.

I love me a good time travel story and I guess this has the makings. I'm surprised you say you don't know where it's going. I would have thought you'd have an idea of what's going on 85 years ago, or else why write it? If you don't have that nailed down, why not write one of the stories of disasters averted instead?

A few notes...

The first two sentences set the scene reasonably clearly, but they're a bit 'tell'y instead of 'show'y.

Sending an 'engineered virus' to the future sounds like a sure-fire way to get the future sending teams to destroy your time-travel technology. Why else would the future be trying to cause disasters in their own past?

28 seems a bit young for the oldest operative. Under forty, sure, but under thirty? Unless there's a reason why people in their prime are already over the hill for this. Which I guess could be something to do with the "in your own lifetime" thing. But what that means is not entirely clear from what you have here. Are they young so they can travel further into the future?

I guess really though, there's just not enough here to know whether it could be good. Geriatric time travelers? Could work. Or send a 45-year-old back to recruit another 45-year-old to go back to the target time? I hope you find a way to continue it.
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Review of Discovering Earth  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (5.0)
Very nice!

Apart from the fact that 'wrinkled' doesn't appear to meet the 'wrinkles' prompt, and presumably got this disqualified from the Flash, this is exactly the approach I love to see to word prompts like this - avoid the obvious (if there is any) and blend the prompts into the prose as smoothly as possible. Masterfully done. It disappoints me when people brute-force the whole prompt into the first sentence or two and then write the first thing that running the three words too close together brings to mind.

I do wonder whether just a pinch more description of Fran herself might improve it, but it's a delicate balance. Probably best left well enough alone.

Bravo!
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Review of Edit Chapter 1 Dream of Dragons  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: E | (3.5)
Welcome to WDC!

I like to read what people have in their Bio Block when I'm reviewing, so that I can tell what stage they might be at.

Yours isn't filled in so I'm going to have to guess. I guess that you're young - maybe within a couple of years of Delta's age, older or younger?

That being the case, this is a pretty good start. The grammar and spelling isn't perfect, but it's better than some of the grown-ups on here. I think your fundamentals are good enough that you can fix the few mistakes yourself with some careful proof-reading.

Your story structure is good. The opening scene feels like the right place to start. The trip to the hairdresser makes sense where it is and so do the arrival at the new house and the dream. I'm not so sure about the baby-naming bit (unless that's going to be important later) and I think maybe you didn't cut the dream off at the end of the chapter in the best way, but those are relatively minor things. Overall, the structure of the chapter is good.

I'm guessing you have a story idea that you really want to get down as fast as you can, and that's fine, but this chapter is going to need more work before it's ready to be in a proper book. Don't let that stop you from getting the story written down as well though. You can always come back and tidy it up later.

When you do come back to edit this again, try not to tell the story to the reader. Try to show the story from Delta's perspective. Try not to info-dump things like the town name, the family name and the character descriptions. I know English teachers love to get you to write descriptions just like you have here, but that's not how real stories do it. Real stories sneak the descriptions into the actions - not even important actions - actions that are just there to carry the descriptions.

For example:
- Delta brushed a sweaty curl of blue hair away from his eyes.
- Dad wiped his hands on his black shirt.

I hope that's helpful! Don't worry if you find it difficult to start with. It takes practice.

Keep writing and keep reading. The more you do both, the better your writing will get.
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Review of Making of a King  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
This is kind of poetic, huh? In the sense of poetic language, that is, not poetic justice.

That can be a strength in a short piece like this, but it would get mighty annoying mighty quickly in a longer work. I think you'd need to rewrite it in less flowery prose to take it forward.

Alaric doesn't strike me as the hero here. He's jumped to conclusions and killed his father (or badly injured him at least) on the strength of what, some boat noises? How does he know the ships aren't traders? Or allies? What does he think his father was doing on the cliff? Surely he had a reason. What does he think is going to happen when he gets back to the village (for a king?) and tells the adult soldiers that he's killed the king and they're being invaded?

As a short piece, leaving open a bunch of questions like that can be a good thing - food for thought once the reader is finished. In a longer work you need to have believable answers to all of those questions.

As presented, realistically I think Alaric will be dead by nightfall. Either the enemy (if that's what they really are) will kill him in battle due to his hasty overconfidence or his father's court will execute him for treason and put someone less hot-headed on the throne. If he's really, really lucky he'll end up in a dungeon instead, because royal bloodline and all that.

That could make for an interesting story actually. Use this as the prologue and then cut to some years later when an older and hopefully wiser Alaric finally gets a chance to escape the dungeon he was thrown in for assassinating his father. That might work.
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Review of Relic  

Review by stumpyMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Bravo!

Nice piece.

Only two issues occurred to me. The first I would normally have just read right over, but something made me stop and look it up. There are indeed standards for clean rooms and they do go to level 9 (which was what triggered my checking), but level 9 is barely a clean room at all. What the situation calls for and matches the description you give (not quite semiconductors) would be ISO level 6. But of course very few people will notice.

And more obviously, the paragraph about the Gospel of the Second Coming is repeated.

I'm no expert on any of this, so any other issues have passed me by, just as they would any other non-expert reader.

Overall, this is better than plenty of published pieces I've read over years. Well done.