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Public Reviews
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1
Review by Ghagiel Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (3.5)
A simplistic but effective children’s tale, “Lookout the Moose” starts with a feeling of dread. The beginning of the story seems to foreshadow something bad happening to Lookout (perhaps a life lesson about talking to strangers). However, as the story goes on, it progresses into something far sweeter and more rewarding – a simple tale about how doing good and trusting others despite the prejudices passed on by your parents rewards people (or a moose, in this case) with friendship.

However, in doing so, I fear that the story could encourage children to approach those that it would not be a good idea to approach. Then again, children get enough schooling about stranger danger from worried parents that it is nice to see a story taking something positive from interacting with people and trying to make friends – especially when attempting to make friends with other children.

The story could perhaps be told more succinctly – it drags a little. It doesn’t need as many words as it has. I feel that it could be trimmed down a bit, but it’s not so dragged down by clunky writing that it took away from the story. The grammar could use a little work, as could sentence structure. There are some formatting issues, which I expected as the problem was communicated to me by the author.

The content is good – perhaps a little too simplistic. I understand that the piece is meant for children, but children are voracious about knowledge and throwing a few more complicated words or descriptions in wouldn’t hurt the story. There’s a little too much telling, to which I repeat the goldenly obnoxious rule of ‘show, don’t tell’. I feel that the story could benefit from more evocative description.

Over all, it was a sweet attempt at a children’s story and the telling was effective. Well done and write on.

This was a public review for the Drops in the Sand review forum. A private review was also sent dissecting the piece paragraph by paragraph.

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2
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Review by Ghagiel Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (4.5)
I really like the rhyme at the very beginning of the lyric - it's a really good rhyme. Unusual. The start is good for drawing you into the lyrics, you can almost hear the music in your head. However, throughout this piece you constantly make the mistake of writing 'can't' as 'cant', and I suggest you fix that.

'And now its just a pain I cant relive.' You should never start a sentance with 'and' - it's bad grammar. I suggest changing this to 'Now it's just a pain I can't relieve', as relive doesn't make much sense in the context and you also need to change 'its' into 'it's'.

'And you should know at the very least,' Again with the 'and' thing, although I think that 'You should know at the very least' flow more smoothly, anyway. I did like the chorus, though. It's a very solid chorus, slightly melancholy and yet filled with slight wonder and hope. Very good.

'And what I would give just to make you mine.' Again, taking the 'and' out actually makes it flow better, though later on in the second verse I suggest taking out the period so this:

'Oh, if you only knew the strength of those words you said.
And now I know my life will lack.'

Turns into this:
'Oh, if you only knew the strength of those words you said,
And now I know my life will lack.'

Because the and is necessary to keep the rhythm. Just a simple punctuation change, there.

'Your my everything!!!!!!' Here, 'your' should be 'you're', and I know you want to emphasise your point, here, but one exclamation mark should be enough. You could always put 'everything' in bold using WritingHTML, if you think it needs more.

I really like the third verse - again with the melancholy touch. I see this with a haunting tune, I think. This verse is very sad. I really like the rhyming you use in it, too.

'Oh you were once my beauty,
in your heart though I’ll always remain a beast.
Your were once my greatest...
Yet I remain your least....
And still, you’re my everything...' The 'in' needs to be capitalised in accordance with the rest of the poem and the 'and' in the last line would do better with not being there. It would make the last line stronger, as it sort of feels like a weak end.

However, overall, I really liked the sad love story that this poem told. Well done.

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Shredded Rose
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