This sentence can be rearranged or broken up to be more concise: "The sea was calm; it was just beautiful scene, to watch the water in the dark, feeling the cold breeze, on the captain Lance’s ship." Changing it to "The sea was a beautiful scene to watch in the dark: calm with a gentle, cool breeze flowing over the bridge of Captain Lance's ship." As a side note, the sea is especially hard to see in the dark. I suggest changing the setting to twilight hours or near dawn.
"Suddenly the weather changed, a storm started to rise, lightening and thunder started to strike. A scream came out from the deep sea. Everyone on the ship heard it; the waves came to strike the ship. The ship’s crew was busy, trying to survive and trying to keep the ship steady in water." Again, I would attempt to rework this entire grouping. Don't use so many commas when what you have are full sentences. "Suddenly, the weather changed. A storm came to rise, bringing with it ramparts of lighting and thunder. An uncharacteristic scream came from the sea: everyone heard it, even as waves came to strike the ship. The crew was busy trying to keep the ship steady, trying to survive." It's important to note that the scream isn't normal since it's coming from the middle of the sea. And it's also important that you keep similar details locked together while keeping in mind that you are trying to make coherent sentences and tell an engaging story.
The second paragraph shifts to the scene bellow the ocean and you immediately talk about the setting, but you're not clear if it's something that's already happened or if it's happening at the moment. After reading it, I'm led to assume that Keith is what emitted the scream in the first paragraph but I couldn't be sure since Keith is supposed to be married to a human woman and she might've screamed (generally, a woman's scream would be what the reader would think was heard as they tend to be higher-pitched and more easily heard in a storm).
The third paragraph is written much like the first two: run-on sentences and over-usage of your commas. "Lance ordered his crew to save Keith; they threw the ropes to him.." Make sure the second period on the end is taken off. And you can add to this by striking the semicolon and saying "...to save Keith, which they attempted by throwing ropes out to him." It flows more easily and when you want to tell a succinct story, you have to concern yourself with the flow. The passage mentioning the man made of water is also too choppy and needs to be revised.
Regarding your dialogue, it almost feels natural but you should remember that even though you don't start the paragraph with a character speaking doesn't mean you don't have to capitalize what they're saying. Case in point: "Keith looked at Lance with grief and said 'sorry, I didn’t mean for this to happen.' " "Sorry" should be capitalized, and maybe have a period after it instead of the comma (though that's a personal choice). And it's not necessarily a rule anymore but, when you're starting dialogue in the middle of a sentence, many people will tell you to put a comma before the quotation, like this: "Keith looked at Lance with grief and said, 'Sorry, I didn’t mean for this to happen.' " Again, that's not the rule anymore. it just depends on who's reading it. For the sake of entering any contests on the site, I suggest you follow it.
"Lance left with his crew to face their destiny, endless lives sailing the sea for eternity." Using a colon instead of the comma here will be better because a colon is used as a means of introducing a list of important things or to denote that someone important or emphatic is about to follow. The fact that the crew is meant to sail for eternity is a pretty important piece of information, especially to the crew!
Concerning dialogue between Laura and Keith: you often jump around in your tenses. This is true throughout your entire manner in writing. If someone "jumped", then they cannot also "smiles". The "smiles" will have to be "smiled" or the "jumped" changed to "jumps". As most stories are written in past tense, I suggest sticking within that confine. That means you can't type the story in the present. Laura cannot "smiles" but rather "smiled" or "have smiled". It's important you remember this because switching between your tenses is a big way to get the reader to drop what they're reading and find something else to do. Also, their dialogue together is filled with improper comma usage. When typing dialogue, you want to use commas only where you'd expect a person to pause. And if someone is pausing because they're speaking raggedly, I'd use periods instead of commas as that gets the points across better. Or even ellipses (...). Keith cannot "hided" the truth from Laura, but rather "hid" it from her. Mind those tenses.
This is going to be a small paragraph, but it's about comma usage and names: use commas before and after proper names when you're describing a person. But you wouldn't use one if you said something like "Keith drew the picture." I'm talking about situation like in the beginning. "The sea lord's son, Keith, was being cursed." That's paraphrasing it, but I want you to understand the difference. I mention this because, regarding dialogue, informal names like "baby" and "sweetie" also need to have commas before them. "I saw you, baby." "Sweetie, go find some fish."
When Laura is telling Keith that she's pregnant, she does not come off as happy. Rather, she sounds information, like a robot might sound if it said it was running low on power. An exclamation point might be needed. In that same part, she says "NO" in a way that makes it look like she's shouting the term. Is she? All-caps should only be used when someone is truly and uncontrollably shouting something emotionally important.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm remarking as I read. I'm at the point when Mystic is introduced. Always capitalize her name. And in introducing her, you mention that Keith is hiding the fact that Mystic has the potential in becoming a mermaid. Does Laura not know that Keith is a merman? She seems to know in their first iteration of dialogue but that's not evident here. It's important to keep details like this in check when you're writing a story: especially a fantasy story. People want to be whisked away into a world and live there for a while, but they won't if they don't believe it and they won't believe it when they have to question whether or not the characters are behaving nonsensically. Some simple piece of dialogue like "they won't agree I know them" has the power to pull the reader away because it doesn't make sense. You have to distinguish between your sentence parts and include commas where a person would naturally pause.
You continue to focus on Mystic as you've jumped straight from Keith's point of view and into her's without a physical break in the material. By break, I'm talking about extra line-spacing like that between the sections where Keith and Laura first speak and "two years later". Jumping into another person's mind can be confusing if you don't differentiate it. But I've digressed because I brought this up for a different purpose: Mystic is swimming and commenting about how she swims very good without a mermaid's tail. Why would this be mentioned? In Mystic's mind, she knows nothing about mermaids. She would simply marvel at how well she swims without having been in the water. And since we're in Mystic's perspective, she wouldn't know the ship she saw was Captain Lance's. You've added this for our benefit but it'd be better if Mystic is the one that found this information out for us. Learning as the character learns is a big factor in sympathizing with them. Say that Mystic is brought about the ship and the captain introduces himself as Captain Lance. Then we, as the reader, have learned something, but also know that Mystic truly doesn't know who she's dealing with. But telling us upfront that it's Lance's ship is a cop-out on that potential to learn.
I've reached the ending and have to say that it's far too convenient. First of all, I don't understand how Mystic would have mermaid abilities if her father is, by the curse, a true human. And you didn't tell us that Mystic informed Lance who her father was: just dropped it in and said that, after the captain's own curse was lifted, he went and told Keith. Why would he do such a thing? When they parted ways, Lance was mad at Keith. You've provided us with no reason to believe he would to the man any favors. It's also not so easy to believe that a merperson can turn a human into a merperson since Keith chose Laura but didn't outright turn her into one. Was Laura given that choice? If so, why would she choose to stay on land and disrupt Keith's life like that? Why would he allow it? These are stipulations that you need to think long and hard about when you're writing a story. Always ask yourself "Why?" because I'll guarantee that a reader will be doing just that. I always do that, which is why, in my writing, I try my best to explain whatever is necessary to make the story coherent, understandable, and enjoyable to read.
In the end, I read this because you asked me to. This will be the third thing I've reviewed for you. The first, I didn't even read all the way through and I feel almost terrible about that. The second, I read it without knowing I reviewed you before. But I got through the second one and, in response, you've asked me to use my "cruelty" to look at this piece. I'll admit that I laughed about your statement in saying that I'm cruel with my reviews but I think you know that I'm trying to be helpful and honest, above all. We all need someone who can give us truthful reviews and, with this detailed piece here, I hope I've helped you not just with "The Merman's Love", but with your future stories.
Either way, I do want you to always keep writing and sharing, even if a stickler like me drops a cruel comment every now and then. Take care and thank you for the story.
Than Pence |
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