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 Review #4655058 |
| (5.0)  Welcome to WdC from the "Newbie Welcome Wagon" Good day to you, Turbo1904  , and I hope it finds you well. I am thrilled and honored to meet you; I've spent most of my 73 years looking for the other native of San Diego, and isn't it amazing that we meet on this site?Now, I'm certainly no one to be telling anyone how to write, having myself managed to successfully avoid fame and fortune for over sixty years, but I flatter myself that I have learned a thing or two in my decades of chasing the dream. Given reviewing is a major part of the WdC experience, I'm taking that as my license to offer my opinion. And make no mistake, it is nothing but an opinion for you to use or discard as you wish. My reviews are thorough and honest, and while I hope we can be friends afterward, my greater hope is that you become a better writer as a result of our having crossed paths. For the record, I am an occasional hobbyist writer of mystery, fantasy, horror, and steampunk who tries to review in a wide variety of styles and genres; I have, in fact, been recently nominated for a Quill Award for reviewing. I generally review prose fiction, and use a 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. It doesn't have much relevance to poetry, so I'll refer to it on occasion, but for the most part, I'm working without a net. 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!  That's straight from the template, and as you can see, it applies more to prose, but anything needs to look good on the page if you want anyone to read it. There is certainly nothing wrong with this. You've used the defaults properly and there's nothing visual that's going to send a reader off disappointed. I do, however, have a couple of suggestions for you to try out.First, it might break up the "blocky" look if you indent the 2nd and 4th lines of each stanza. Not doing so might be a conscious decision on your part – I'll freely admit that I know diddly-doo about poetry – but if you've been frustrated by the sometimes-odd commands that WdC uses, here's how you indent: Add the command {indent} at the beginning of each line you want indented. That sounds like a hassle, but there is a shortcut key just right of center above the creation box that places the command wherever the cursor happens to be. Not too different from hitting the Tab key. Second is the font. The default font here is a very small version of Arial that resembles nothing so much as the fine print in a used car contract. There are a number of ways to tweak the font – this review is in 3.5 Verdana with a 1.4 line space setting, for example – but an easy way to make Arial more attractive is to place the command {size:3.5} at the beginning of the text. If you don't like it, just remove the command and it will revert to its original form. STORY: 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. I guess this should be called the Theme where poetry is concerned, but "a rose by any other name..." The theme is the oft-unnoticed passage of time, and how no one can escape or even mitigate its effects. We all have a finite amount, and we don't know how much. None of us can stick a crowbar in the gears to gain even a couple of seconds, and yet we all waste it, squander it even, hardly aware of its passing even as our bodies scream warnings. This should resonate with anyone who is, you know, alive. It certainly did with me, and that's why I'm here, to reward a brilliant effort.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. I read this over several times looking for something to mention, and I finally found it! Omnipresent is one word. There! There's my contribution to improving your writing, though I'm certainly not going to mar this review over a renegade space.Seriously, I think most writers here are hobbyists like myself, and they rush to post their newly completed works to start getting comments... Which would be a lot better if they did the proofreading first. This is often the largest section of my reviews and becomes a tedious laundry list of mistakes to be corrected. Not the case here, and I tip my begoggled patrol cap in your direction. Excellent work! SUMMARY: And there you have my words of "wisdom." I hope that I have presented my opinions in a way that is constructive, and that you will find helpful to your endeavors going forward. I thank you for sharing and exposing your work to the whims of public opinion, and I wish you a thrilling journey to wherever your writing takes you.** Image ID #2271299 Unavailable ** "You don't choose writing; writing chooses you." Interested parties may follow my antics at "Invalid Item" — Serious writers may want to check out the biggest little group on the site. If you'd enjoy occasional deep conversations and a spiffy monthly contest featuring unusual and valuable prizes, stop in for a look. Our forum, linked below, is open access, and if you like what you see, e-mail me to be added to the roster. Hope to see you there!
 My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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