Hey Justin,
Thank you for asking me to read and review your story. To me, that is a high honor, especially from someone new to the site. So thank you again.
I would love to praise this, telling you how great it is, but as you can tell from the grade, I can't do that. Not entirely at least. I will tell you this, and I'm always honest in my reviews; you have a REALLY GOOD story here. I loved the twist at the end; suspected you had one coming since you tried all you could to get the reader to convict him. But still, the twist was excellent. So, you have a very good story, but it's the telling and showing that's off a bit. I'm not going to give you a list of every single thing I noticed that needs work, but I will give you general things to look for. So, here goes.
1. Write the story. The way it is currently written, it's like you and I are sitting around a campfire, and you're telling me the story. Write it, describe it, show (show us more about what Clef does in the basement, etc), don't tell. (You'll hear that a lot in your early stories.)
2. Read this out loud for flow. In doing so, pretend you don't know the outcome of the story. Look for jumps in continuity, because sometimes you jump from one scene to another quickly. That's something you have to fight against, something I've had to really fight. You know the story, and want to get it told. But in doing so, you forget that we the reader don't know the details you do. So slow down some, and build the story. Let it come to you, don't force it.
3. Your dialog is missing quotation marks in quite a few places. Dialog should have the first letter of the first word capitalized, just like the start of a sentence. If more than one person speaks, it should be a new paragraph. Here's an example:
They waived (should be waved) to him good morning Clef, Morning he responded. Pulling around back of the school he parked his truck, put on his navy blue jacket, embroidered on the left side was his name Clef on the right side it read Matience (should be Maintenance).
The part in bold should be separate paragraphs, and in quotation marks.
4. Run this through a spell checker. There are numerous misspelled words in this. Minor things like this can cause a very good story (YOURS!) to receive low review grades.
5. Along with the spell checker, look for punctuation needed. Comma's (don't overuse them) are needed in some places. Minor things like that.
Justin, forgive me please, but I am not about to do a long detailed review of this, it would take me a couple of hours to do that. Plus, I don't want to seem to belittle and tear down what I consider a very good story, I think my rating does that enough, and I hated giving you that grade. If you edit this, and improve it, I will be happy to return, erase this grade and give you a higher one if it is warranted. I look forward to reading this again sometime in the future.
Sum1
WDC POWER RAIDER
** Image ID #1840790 Unavailable ** |