Dear Sailor Bill
I saw your suitcase on the Anniversary Review page and thought I'd drop in to honor this occasion, your 7th WDC Anniversary!
I found your story to be very interesting. Being a retired Submariner (Nuclear Trained), I can relate well to stories about our military personnel. I was also an avid reader of WWII in high school, and wanted to be a SEAL when I joined the Navy. Life took me elsewhere, and it's all for the better.
This is a lead-in to a much larger work, so we just start to know your characters in this story. The dialog between the characters was well written, you consistently used the lingo that sailors would use, though I don't recall reading any 4-letter words one associates with them.  Maybe those will pop up later on.
in your story, you had a tendency to move between tenses. It seems the story is written in the past tense, yet there were several instances where you jumped to present tense as you wrote it. I will try to provide a few examples in general comments below.
Title: Good for this story, but hard to tell if it will be appropriate for work once it is completed.
Description: Very good, but it seems that escaped should be escapes.
General Comments:
1. Some of your paragraphs are indented, some are not. Here's an example.
“Maggie is the Boss in?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Kirby. He was complaining about the heat, but seems to be in a good mood. I’ll tell him you are here.”
If you use the {indent} command in WritingML, it will indent the line for automatically.
“Maggie is the Boss in?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Kirby. He was complaining about the heat, but seems to be in a good mood. I’ll tell him you are here.”
For on line reading, it is considered to be more appropriate if you double space paragraphs. Each time a different character speaks, a new paragraph should be started, as I've shown above. It just makes a story a little easier to read on a computer screen.
2. Your Introduction seems a bit more detailed that necessary. You go into a lot of detail about a mission they are assigned, so it seems that would be better as a first chapter, with the section you label as 'The Story' being chapter two, a flashback of what led up to the Introduction.
3. He stopped , looked up at the blazing sun, and with a sweat rag, wiped the burning beads of moisture from his eyes. Geez it’s hot. Since Massoni is thinking 'Geez it's hot', you need to highlight this in some fashion. Perhaps in italics and single quotation marks as I've shown.
4. In June he deploys to Vietnam with his newly formed platoon of SEAL Team Two. Each weekend becomes more precious as the days keep rapidly moving toward deployment day, the 22nd. Running was a ritual that he took very seriously five, sometimes six days a week. He is concerned about his weight, and his 36th birthday last week didn’t make him feel any better. His previous years of tough assignments with the Underwater Demolition Teams, and later with the SEALs, are beginning to show on his ruddy face. This is one of the areas where you moved between present and past tense. The word 'deploys' is present tense. Until now, you've done a good job staying in the past tense, and that seems best for this story. Becomes is also present tense. yet 'was' is past tense. If I may offer a suggestion on wording....
In June he will deploy to Vietnam with his newly formed platoon of SEAL Team Two. Running was a ritual that he took very seriously, spending two hours a day, five and sometimes six days a week to stay in shape. He was concerned about his weight, and his 36th birthday last week didn’t make him feel any better about his conditioning. His previous years of tough assignments with the Underwater Demolition Teams, and later with the SEALs, are beginning to show on his ruddy face.
Notice that I removed the reference to the days moving towards deployment. The reason I did that, is that this is all about him running/conditioning, then returning to the office. The days moving rapidly would be more appropriate in a separate paragraph, where you describe his love for his family, and a natural desire to not leave them again. But I have no idea where you would put that in this part of the story.
5. His green shorts and T-shirt were soaked with sweat as he walked into the training Office. Massoni is the Assistant Training Officer for SEAL Team Two, and will be relieved in two weeks in order to spend full time with his platoon. 'Were' - past tense, 'is' - present tense, 'will' - present tense. Perhaps this would work for you.
His green shorts and T-shirt were soaked with sweat as he walked into the training Office. Massoni was the Assistant Training Officer for SEAL Team Two, and would be relieved in two weeks in order to spend full time with his platoon. There are more, but I have no desire to seemingly pick this apart.
Overall impressions: A nice start to what seems to be a much longer story. You have captured my interest, making me want to read more.
Sum1
 WDC POWER RAIDER
|
| (4.0)
| (4.5)
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
My review has been submitted for consideration in "
WDC POWER REVIEWERS 