%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 Review #4477243 |
 | The Expats  [18+] Contest Entry - Short Shots for March  |
| (4.0)  Mastiff, As a fellow participant in "I Write in 2019" , I am reviewing your March entry for the Short Shots Contest which you linked here: "Week 14" by Mastiff Before I even begin to read your entry, I want to mention your Brief Description. It currently reads: Contest Entry - Short Shots for March. These days, I tend to suggest using the characters you have available in your Brief Description to create a hook to lure prospective readers. Your genre selection already tells us it is a Contest Entry and you can put the contest specifics in an author's note at the bottom of your item. Take a gander at some of my contest entries to see what I mean: "ruwth is writing..." . I often use a small, light grey font for my contest information.Secondly, when the prompt is an image, I like to see it displayed in the item. Your cover does give a hint of the image prompt but since the actual image is shareable, you could have displayed it in your item. If the image is NOT shareable, you still have the option of displaying it as a bitem or citem:
Now, if you are concerned the image will not continue to be available, you can screenshot it and use it as a cover or add it as an image item in your port. I did that here:
I did spiffy the image up a tad. Had I entered this month's contest, I would have cropped the boat out of the picture. I may do that yet. LOL Okay, now I will read and comment on your actual story... (took me long enough, eh?) Well, your story kept me engaged. I believe I learned little tidbits as I read. I know nothing about diving but from your story I learned folks use "diving flags" and for some reason spit in their masks—what is up with that? I believe you have a few punctuation issues such as in this sentence: The six-two dark curly haired man chuckled. "Oh, how about we run over to the waterfall, Mate?" Punctuation is not my forté but I believe you need some commas in your description of the man. I think it should be like this: The six-two, dark curly-haired man... Of course, I am assuming the man's hair is dark so I am not putting a comma between dark and curly—since I am assuming dark here goes with hair. To be honest, as I think about it, I really don't know where to put the commas but I am pretty sure some are needed. Although I did find your story engaging, I had trouble with your formatting. For me, this was hard to read: "What the hell?" Jim exclaimed. "Eric, check this out." I stepped over to the little monitor. "Looks like a boat, maybe... Why didn't we see it before? Think it's recent?" "Maybe, but I don't remember using the finder in here before, so who knows." "How deep?" "Looks to be about fifteen feet." Jim replied. I looked over the port side. "You can barely make it out, but something's down there." "Yeah, with deeper water we'd never see it, either. Could have been there for years." "Curious?" I asked. "Oh, yeah. Very." I would have preferred: "What the hell?" Jim exclaimed. "Eric, check this out." I stepped over to the little monitor. "Looks like a boat, maybe... Why didn't we see it before? Think it's recent?" "Maybe, but I don't remember using the finder in here before, so who knows." "How deep?" "Looks to be about fifteen feet." Jim replied. I looked over the port side. "You can barely make it out, but something's down there." "Yeah, with deeper water we'd never see it, either. Could have been there for years." "Curious?" I asked. "Oh, yeah. Very." As far as the writing itself, I would suggest beefing up your intro and conclusion. I think your first paragraph is actually more than one paragraph as far as subject matter and could be refined a bit to make it do a better job of drawing the reader into your story. Your conclusion seemed a tad weak after the pulse-raising strategies of escaping the bad guys—and did I understand correctly that the police were in cahoots with the bad guys??? An off the cuff idea for a different conclusion would be to see the fellas relaxing on at a safe location reading a newspaper article about the counterfeit money that had been tossed out to the people on the street in their old resort home location or something... It did look like you consider it to be real money and it might have been but that would make a good newspaper article as well... LOL  My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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You last responded to this review 03/31/2019 @ 1:36pm EDT