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The music man with no name ![]() An extremely short story about a man with a saxophone, and a girl with imagination. ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() Good day to you, tara celeste ![]() For the record, I am an occasional hobbyist writer of fantasy, horror, and steampunk (hence my handle) who tries to review in a wide variety of styles and genres. I should explain that I use this review template in which I discuss my views on the important areas of quality storytelling, then compare your work to my own beliefs on the matter. As I said, I'm no authority, but hopefully my comments will give you some ideas to take your writing in directions you hadn't previously considered. Let me just drop a warning here, and we'll get started. THIRD-PARTY READERS TAKE NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD PRESENTATION: This aspect deals with the first impression your story makes when a reader clicks on the title. Call it the cosmetics. I'll be looking at abstract items from text density to scene dividers in an effort to ferret out any unfortunate habits that might cause a reader to move on without actually reading anything; before you can dazzle him with your show, you have to get him into the tent! ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Indenting paragraphs is another way to improve the look, giving it an almost tangible professionality. You do this by placing {indent} at the start of each paragraph. Sounds like a slog, I know, but there is a shortcut button at the top of the creation box that places one wherever the cursor is. Not much different than using the Tab key. I recommend familiarizing yourself with Writing.com 101 in the Writing.com Tools menu. There are an awful lot of tricks you can use to spark up your presentation, but this site speaks its own language, and if you're used to using Office or a similar program, they don't play well together. STORY: But those are things that can be fixed with a few mouse clicks. Now we come to the heart of the issue. This is really the basic element, isn't it? If you can't tell an engaging story, it doesn't matter what else you can do, because nobody's going to read it anyway. I try to explain aspects from characters to grammar, but I don't know how to teach someone to have an imagination. The fact that I'm here writing a review is proof that you've done a pretty good job with the story. Let's examine the individual parts of the whole and see what works to make it successful. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() MECHANICS: Whether you're writing fact or fiction, prose or poetry, the "holy grail" that you're striving for is immersion. This is an area that no author, myself included, ever wants to talk about: "I've done all this work, and you want to argue over a comma?" But those commas are important. What you're really doing as a writer is weaving a magic spell around your reader, and your reader wants you to succeed. He wants to escape his mundane world for a period, and lose himself in your creation. Errors in spelling and grammar, typos, "there" vs. "their" issues, use of words inconsistent with their actual meanings, all yank him out of his immersion while he backtracks to re-read and puzzle out what you meant to say. This is never good, and this is the section that deals with that. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Paragraphs, and I don't mean indentations. That first, giant, rambling paragraph could profitably be spilt into a half-dozen or more. A paragraph is a discrete package of text or description that conveys a single idea. It can be one sentence or ten, but it must all be about one idea: At the start of the story, the girl "sits quietly, listening." Her eyes "set upon the lonely man." Two sentences. The second paragraph begins when the man "slowly and carefully moves..." and continues until he completes what he's doing with that piece of cloth. Then the next one begins, each paragraph signaling the reader that a new idea or new speaker is being introduced. This is not a huge discrepancy in terms of what I've seen in the course of 600+ reviews, but in a piece so small, every mistake is amplified. In the end, though, it's your story; tell it as you see fit. CHARACTERS: This section discusses all aspects of the characters, the way they look, act, and talk, as well as the development and presentation of backstory. Allow me to present "Tyler's Axiom:" Characters are fiction. Rich, multifaceted characters with compelling backstories will seize the reader in a grip that will not be denied, and drag him into their narrative, because he can't abide the thought of not knowing what will happen to them. Conversely, lazy, shallow stereotypes will ruin any story regardless of its other qualities, because the reader will be unable to answer the second question of fiction: Why do I care? ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() SETTINGS: This section deals with the locations you've established for your action, the ways in which they affect that action, and your ability to describe them clearly and concisely. You could say that this aspect answers (or fails to answer) the first question of fiction, What's going on here? Setting can be used to challenge a character, to highlight a skill or quality, to set the mood of a scene without overtly saying a single thing about it, and a host of lesser impacts too numerous to mention. You might think of it as a print artist's equivalent of a movie's "mood music," always important yet never intrusive. All in all, a pretty big deal, then. So how did you do? ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() SUMMARY: ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ** Image ID #2234711 Unavailable ** Drop in and meet the gang at the
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