%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 Review #4604452 |
 | Night Dove  [18+] Indian princess & Spanish grandee meet in Tejas in 1785  |
| (4.0)  Welcome to WdC from the "Newbie Welcome Wagon" Good morning, R. Alan Wilson , and I hope it finds you well. Okay, we're old friends and you've requested this review, so 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!   A single word here, Ron: Paragraphs. Readers need them to break the text into easily digestible bits. You plainly know where they go, but there needs to be visual separation, as anything the reader has to work for distracts him from your story and reminds him that he is reading. The most profession way to set out paragraphs is to indent each one. This involves placing {indent} at the beginning of each one. Sounds tedious, but there is a shortcut key at the top of the creation box that does just that wherever the cursor happens to be.The other way, widely accepted here on WdC, is to double-space between paragraphs. This review contains both methods, so you can easily compare them to see which you prefer — both together are acceptable as well — but one of them needs to be employed. I would be hard-pressed to say that this or that is the most important part of how you present your writing, but if I had to make that list, paragraphing would certainly be in the top three. I must commend your opening up of the defaut font. That's pretty tough for these old eyes, and you've made an excellent choice. Well done! There are a couple of places where the scenes change abruptly, such as where each of the lovers goes home to dream, and any time a scene changes (just think of how it's done in a television drama), you need a scene divider to alert the reader; you want him to live your story, never being reminded that he is reading. Sudden, wrenching, unmarked scene changes are one of the fastest ways to remind him. The simplest scene divider is a centered asterisk, but WdC provides over a thousand emoticons, accessible through the Writing.com Tools tab in the left sidebar, that can be placed in your text to make it "pop." For example, {center}{e:tree2}{/center} yields:  There are many ways to make your text more visually attractive, and the best way to learn what you like is to experiment with them. Also, bookmark this and refer to it frequently:
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 will try to explain aspects from characters to grammar, but I don't know how to teach someone to have an imagination. Let's examine the individual parts of the whole and see what works to make it successful. While there are a few mechanical issues that I'll cover in the next section, the story itself is excellent. Basically a retelling of Romeo and Juliette with a happy ending, this classic story of a forbidden love seems to end somewhat abruptly, but it works. There's really nowhere else to go with it, and it's a logical end. I guess you could have talked about the six fine children they raised or something, but for every reader who would have preferred that, there would be another who would feel it unnecessary. The story is good and complete as it is, and well-worthy of five stars.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. There are a few things we need to talk about here, none major by itself, but all adding up to enough immersion-breakers to keep the reader from getting too deep into it.I already called out the lack of paragraphs above, so I'm not penalizing that twice, but this really needs to be addressed. There are several places throughout where there is a big space in the manuscript like this. It looks like the {indent} key was accidentally pressed at random points, though it could be something else. In any case, it needs fixing. There are commas scattered at random throughout the piece, many of them where commas don't belong. This plus the lack of scenes and paragraphs suggests to me that much of your experience might lie with technical manuals and medical texts. If this is the case and you feel you would benefit from boning up on your prose writing, may I suggest that you acquire a style guide. The one I use is The Elements of Style by Strunk & White. around $5.00 on Amazon, well organized, and as readable as a textbook. Mine is never out of reach of my keyboard. Some commas are missing as well, and an especially tough one is here: She must marry this man when the buffalo return for her father and Hawk Catcher's father had agreed many seasons ago that this should be. This sounds at first like the buffalo are coming for her father to take him to the afterlife. a comma after when the buffalo return would fix that. Numbers that can be written in one or two words should be written out. This refers to the "20" in the last paragraph. Of course, you don't want to write out 127.694, but simple numbers look much better as words. Visualization issue: Night Dove supports Julio by getting under his shoulder. From that position, his hand wouldn't be on her back, but outside of her arm... or if he looking to cop a feel, out of character for a Spanish gentleman, down the front of her upper torso, even right on her breast. Had to stop and try to figure out what I was supposed to see. There are some missing letters that cause a bit of confusion, which is again, never what you want. An example: Night Dove came beside him. he pointed to one of the warriors then to her belly. Julio stared at her, then understood. I suspect this should read She pointed to one of the warriors. Again, it's never good to cause a reader to go back and re-read something to figure out what you meant, and this does that in spades. The bottom line here is that you need to do a more thorough proofreading. This is a boring chore that doesn't thrill any writer, but it's part of the process, and thorough proofreading is what separates the pros from the amateurs. Do it multiple times, and do it carefully. 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? The only characters who are really fleshed out are the lovers. Everyone else exists to provide the backdrop of tension, and this works well for this story. You've done an excellent job with these two, and should be rightly proud of your work.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? Just beautiful, the wide open plains of Texas. Great use of the land to enhance the story, and that tree was just a fine cherry on top. Excellent work!SUMMARY: What we have here is a fine first draft. If you now do the proofreading, get the commas right, the paragraphs, and all those little details, you'll have a fine five-star story. You've told a great story with sympathetic and compelling characters. All you need to do is bring the mechanical aspects up to the same standards, and you're there. I hope I've offered my opinions in a way that hasn't caused you any angst. That wasn't my intention. I thank you for your courage in putting your work out there to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous reviewers, and wish you a wonderful writing journey that takes you beyond your wildest dreams. Read well, and write better!** Image ID #2234711 Unavailable ** Looking forward to seeing you around the site!  Jack "Blimprider" Tyler My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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You responded to this review 04/01/2021 @ 10:17pm EDT