Oh this is so good. I've really enjoyed reading it. I hope you don't mind if I paste a couple of your sentences into my self-motivation poster to encourage me to keep going when I think my writing's rubbish.
Congratulations SoCalScribe. You truly deserve the prize. I read a few Dear Me entries every year for tips but, after reading yours, I can't see how anybody can improve on it. (That's why I've rated it 5.0.)
Your text is interesting, upbeat and well-written, with humour, good vocabulary and no spelling or grammatical errors that I can see. I love your concept of writing it like a personalised mailshot. It really made me smile from beginning to end. You present your targets well, stimulating my curiosity about the script contests, and you include a few hints about your life outside writing, without overwhelming your reader with detail.
I love this blank Novel Outline sheet. It's so minimalist compared with the character questionnaires I've found and yet it appears to force me to answer all the relevant questions. I'm going to fill it in tomorrow, for the novel I'm editing/rewriting this month. Thank you for sharing it with all of us.
This challenge looks really well thought-out in that you have constructed a really useful-looking series of activities and you have organised it well. Thank you. Here are some GPs for your funds.
This is a really good teaser for people who are interested in finding out what they need to know in order to enter this field. I hadn't realised fashion designers needed to develop such a wide range of skills.
I would like the piece to be longer, and to include more detail about such topics as where to find good courses and what computer software you would recommend to beginners. I appreciate you might feel you've covered this by directing us to selected websites for more information.
English grammar is often tricky but I can see only a few errors: commas should sit directly after the word, followed by a single space before the next word. It is difficult to work out when to use "the" or "a" and when to leave them out so I think it's probably best to ask a native English speaker to read through anything you wish to publish in English. Likewise, the word "softwares" should be singular, regardless of how many different software packages you have.
You wrote "entrolling" instead of "enrolling" and "horning" instead of "honing" but I would guess these are typos because your other spellings are excellent. I don't know what you mean by "runway". Did you mean "catwalk"?
I've rated this piece 3.0, which seems a bit harsh, but it leads us towards a survey which has no questions. If it wasn't for that, I'd have probably rated it 4.0.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I'd like to read more of your writing.
In my opinion, this story is complete and perfect. I can't see any problems with the grammar or spelling, the characters are all believable and the events occur in a logical sequence.
I grew up reading Ray Bradbury's stories and I think he'd have been happy if he'd written this one. I'd like to give you some suggestions for improvement but I don''t think it needs improvement. I think this is ready for publication.
This is really interesting. As a prologue, it's long, but it kept me reading to find out how it was going to end. It reminds me a little of the recruitment part of "Men in Black" but I'm not saying you copied because, apart from the fact that one guy recruits another, there's no similarity between the two scenes.
I like the way you introduce the main character and his present mission before showing us his earlier recruitment. Once, we're interested, you leave us guessing about the true nature of his mission so we have to read on. And then this excerpt ends and we have to wait...
Some suggestions:
I wasn't happy with the description of the middle eastern guy. This might have been based on someone you met but it would probably put off any middle eastern readers. You could use all the description, which is great, if you just omitted to mention his ethnicity. All your other descriptions are perfect.
Some of the sentences are slightly wordy or seem like two sentences joined together. My creative writing teacher taught me to read my writing aloud; if I run out of breath, the sentence is too long. Otherwise, you could use punctuation where you need to breathe. Reading aloud also helps you pick up transposed or missing words.
A couple of grammatical points, which you might already have noticed:
1 - commas follow word directly then there's a space before the next word - I think you already know this because I spotted just one of these.
2 - second paragraph, about train, you use its' instead of it's for it is - I try to write these phrases out in full and then abbreviate them later but I still mistype them occasionally. Apostrophes weren't in the curriculum at my school.
3 - For dialogue, you need a new line for each new speaker. This makes it much easier to tell who's speaking. It also spreads out the text and makes it less forbidding for readers who lack confidence.
Last comment:
You've built up a great atmosphere in this piece of writing and you've got me interested in the main character so I hope to see him in print someday.
Thanks for sharing ... and keep writing.
This is a very good, clear explanation, of two poetry forms, with two excellent examples and no unnecessary words. It seems to be part of a larger set of explanations of poetry forms and I will certainly look in this book for other relevent form-explanations when I need to find out how to do them. Thank you for this very useful writing-aid.
Wow. I've really enjoyed reading this. There is so much background to your thoughts and so many glimpses into your life. When I crept into the item, I was interested from the moment I saw the lovely script in your heading, but your words overtook that excitement and built on it. This is so beautiful but also so well thought-out that I'm sure you'll meet your targets. Thank you for sharing it.
I like your rosy-tinted poem about love. It gives me a good feeling when I read it.
There are a few too many syllables in the second line of the second verse and possibly one syllable too many in the last line. "Others" needs an apostrophy; it comes before the 's' if you meant one other person, and after it if you meant more than one, always assuming you meant "the others care" as the care which belongs to the other person or people.
Your poem appears very simple and easy to read but, despite its feel-good appearance, you've managed to include deeper meanings. For instance, the first verse suggests there might be times when patience is needed and when the loved one tests his or her lover's sanity. The second verse advises us to look after our loved one's needs. The third and final verse reminds us to make good memories, without dwelling on the past, because we'll remember this relationship for the rest of our lives.
This poem should be recommended reading for people considering romantic relationships. However, there are many instances of love which are never intended to be romantic, such as the relationship between a father and his teenage son and I think your poem describes those situations, too. Thank you for sharing.
I'm not au fait with the grade system in the USA but this seems like a very skilful piece of work by a school-age teenager.
In my opinion, there are minor faults in the rhythm in the fourth, fifth and eighth couplets and a larger rhythm disturbance in the sixth couplet.
The other clue to your youth, when you wrote this, is the way you handled the subject matter; I would expect an adult to write about a specific horse set in a particular time and geographical location. An adult might add some opinions or feelings gained from personal experience but young people, with their shorter experience tend to generalise about the idea of, say, a horse as a physical object and tend not to write about their feelings or opinions in a poem of this type. I do not count this as a fault but it did affect my appreciation of your poem.
The spelling and grammar seem faultless and your rhymes work well. I'm looking forward to reading more of your work. Thank you for sharing this poem.
My overall impression is of someone who feels let down by the end of a relationship which he/she was not ready to end.
The rhymes come and go. I don't know if you intended this or if the rhyming, or non-rhyming, happened by accident.
In addition, this poem has a confusion with the word "your" meaning "belonging to you" and the word "you're" meaning "you are".
You put across very well the idea of a person who is drowning, literally or metaphorically, as punishment to the person who he/she feels is the cause of his/her emotional distress.
My overall impression is of a person who is deeply in love with another person and who wants to tell them how much he or she loves them. It's possible that one person speaks first and then the other speaks but it could be just one of them speaking twice.
I like your poem because it reminds me of the first months of my time with my husband. It's gentle and caring and shows them quietly just enjoying loving each other.
I can't find any faults so I would rate it as 5.0.
My overall impression is:
Actually, I'm familiar with filk songs because, years ago, I bought a copy each of "On Filkley Moor" and "The Old Grey Wassail Test". However, I can't say how well or otherwise you've done with this because I haven't seen "Highlander" or heard "Who wants to live forever". Sorry I can't be of more help but, because of my ignorance, I don't know what's from the Queen song and what's your own words.
One grammatical point: "Who wants to live forever" doesn't need the apostrophe. Putting it in suggests that some creature called "want" owns/is something.
Because I'm unable to compare this with the Queen version, I also can't grade it but the system doesn't allow me to omit a grade so just consider my 2.5 as a starting point because you know which words are yours.
If it's okay with you, I'll pop into your portfolio sometime and have a look at some of your other work. Feel free to look in mine.
My overall impression is that this is a poem about the way negative thoughts affect you, in that you're emotionally strong enough to withstand them and you're confident that you always will be.
It has a nice, strong structure and guides us through from the first statement to the concludion. It's like reading an essay in a poem.
I've graded it 4.5 because I think it does all the things you want it to do but I'd feel happier with some punctuation, although I think it's part of your style to leave out the punctuation. Remember, however, that this is just my opinion and there will be other readers who think differently.
Welcome to Writing dot Come. I've been here since July and I love it. I hope you do, too.
My overall impression of your poem is that you are speaking to me about being a lone but not lonely voice in a place where no one can hear your words. You express your thoughts on paper and this is your joyful release from the constraintsset on you by your daily life. You are reaching out to me, asking me to listen to you.
There is one grammatical error ("here" instead of "hear") unless you mean "Here my voice soars" with a repetition of "my voice" to emphasise that it's YOUR voice which now has a place to be heard in freedom.
I love the line "I sing to myself with ink, on a flat sky". There is so much happiness in this line and it's like a verbal painting of the way we all feel when our writing is going well.
My overall impression is that this poem tells a good story excellently.
Because of your summary, I was expecting your bug to do something unexpected. However, it came along late enough for me to think you'd changed your mind and decided just to describe all the other bugs instead.
One spelling point: first time it's 'praying' and the next it's 'preying'. I'm not sure whether you need to change one of the spellings.
Finally, your poem made me laugh out loud, which I don't often do. Well done, and thanks for sharing.
My overall impression is of a very good, very well-written, very descriptive poem which really does seem to describe the feeling of fragility at the end of a relationship, particularly where the writer wasn't ready for the end.
The rhyme and rhythm schemes are very easy to read except for the first four lines of the final verse. These might split better after 'hope' and 'contemplate'. But then, you might be deliberately breaking the comfortable easy-to-read schemes in order to make us slow down and think about the meaning of the words instead of being carried along by the rhythm.
I enjoyed reading your poem and I hope you do well in the contest with it. Thank you for sharing it.
I like this poem. You make it clear from the start that you're talking about a book and sometimes you seem angry, sometimes sarcastic but always very clear. I enjoyed the humor such as 'don't turn your back on me ...'. The form is very clear and quick to read. You make it seem effortless to write. Thank you for sharing.
This isn't my usual style of poetry or prose and it feels, to me, more like preaching than educating. However, I am Anglo-Irish and experienced prejudice during the IRA bombings in England so I understand that you have very strong emotions about Jihadi and about the way Middle-Eastern and Asian people are assumed to be terrorists. You made the point well, that Jihadi and other religious wars have a basis in past treatment of believers, and that misinformation is a weapon which is often wielded in order to justify violence against other people. I was confused by 'A' and 'I', as I expected 'A' and 'B', for the speakers. On second glance, I realise it is 'A' for 'American' and 'I' for 'Iraqi' so now it make sense to me.
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