Story Review
Hello Roy   :
I'm flyfishercacher and I found your story on:
I am reviewing it for:
"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group" 
I enjoyed reading it and hope you find this feedback useful.
Title: "Nosedive No More"
 Objective / Notes from the author:
– Children's fiction.
– A young bat has to master the art of landing... Bat Style!
– Basil, a young bat whom everyone calls Nosedive, must learn to land before he can return to Grandpa Owl's story time.
Was this written for a contest? If so, what were the constraints:
– Unknown
Word Count:
– My count: 3,268
Clarification:
– To help us stay oriented, I have numbered the paragraphs as you have assigned them.
– The text beginning “Look Out!” is paragraph 1
– The text beginning “Because it looks cool” is the last paragraph which becomes paragraph 141.
– The text “***” (2 instances) are not numbered
— Major Divisions (chapter equivalents?)
— "Look Out!" becomes paragraph 1.
— "Big News" becomes paragraph 26.
— "Let's Get Started" becomes paragraph 44.
— "If at First You Don't Succeed ..." becomes paragraph 65.
— "Not Again!" becomes paragraph 76.
— "Goodbye Meadow" becomes paragraph 88.
— "Where's Nosedive?" becomes paragraph 103.
— "The Great Escape" becomes paragraph 115.
— "Nosedive No More" becomes paragraph 129.
Overall Impression:
– I applaud your willingness to step out and take some heat. What follows may seem harsh, partly because I am not into frilly words and sugar coating rather prefer communicating thoughts that I hope will help you (and me) improve our writing.
– I’m not into writing for children, so maybe my comments are completely off base. But I’ll give you what I can.
Presentation / Appearance: (What I see first. The look of the piece.)
– What the reader/viewer sees when opening your work for the first time will make an impression, good or bad, no matter the quality of the writing. Font type, font size, use of bold and italics, line spacing, paragraph spacing, all play a part in convincing the reader to continue. I believe the reviewer owes the writer a comment on this matter.
– Presentation deals with the first impression your story makes when a reader clicks on the title. Call it the cosmetics. It looks 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!
– You ran afoul (badly) of WdC formatting. I’m not sure what happened, but the product that appeared on my screen was a real mess.
– Did you try tp upload a whole file from your Word Processor into WdC? I have found that to be a disaster.
– There were many large spaces in your text. I suspect you had illustrations in those locations that did not transfer properly.
– Random changes in font face and size.
Images
– Let me spend a few words on images. If my comments above about you having images in your story are incorrect, then disregard this and move on.
– What you can do with images/photos/clipart depends on your membership level. I have a ‘Premium’ membership, so my ability to use images is pretty broad. My advice may not help you, but here it is anyway.
– First, there is no connection possible between images you put in your ‘Photo Album’ and images you use in your stories and covers. I had a difficult time learning that one.
– I have setup in my portfolio a folder I labeled ‘Images.’ Into that folder goes every image for every story I write. I’ll let you and WdC work out how to do that.
– Once in that folder, the image picks up a seven digit identifier.
– In my stories, I use this line of text to insert the image
{center}{image:xxxxxxx}{/center}
– If that capability does not exist for your membership level, then you must delete all images from your file before posting.
Readability
– Readability is a measure of how easy a piece of text is to read. The level of complexity of the text, its familiarity, legibility and typography all feed into how readable your text is. Who is your target audience? Readability is a key factor in user experience. Accessible content builds trust with your audience.
– A readability score can tell you what level of education someone will need to be able to read your text easily. The score identifies a grade level approximate to the number of years of education a person has had. If the score is too high or too low, your reader will quickly close the book and your message will never reach them.
– Here is a website you can use to check the readability of your text:
– Using that website, here is the Readability score for this work.
– Based on (7) readability formulas, your text has scored:
– Grade Level: 5
– Reading Level: easy to read.
– Reader's Age: 8-9 yrs. old (Fourth and Fifth graders)
– You have classified this story as ‘Children’s Fiction.’ That’s a WdC genre. My sense is that is too broad.
– For your own purposes, you need to cut it much finer, e.g., a story suitable for a fifth grader would not be suilable for a child in kindergarden.
– I think understanding ‘Readability’ will help you there. I suggest you dig into that subject a little more.
– While not mentioned in the subject of ‘Readability’, I think word count/story length comes into play. Will your target audience sit still for a story of this length?
Story/Plot:
– This is a nice plot that flows easily and carries a moral.
Scene/Setting:
– Setting deals with the locations you've established for your action, the ways in which they affect that action, and your ability to describe them clearly and concisely. You could say that this aspect answers (or fails to answer) the first question of fiction, What's going on here? Setting can be used to challenge a character, to highlight a skill or quality, to set the mood of a scene without overtly saying a single thing about it, and a host of lesser impacts too numerous to mention. You might think of it as a print artist's equivalent of a movie's "mood music," always important yet never intrusive. All in all, a pretty big deal.
– I think you did this well.
Structure:
– The basic unit in reading is the chapter. The basic unit in writing is the scene. Write scenes and think about chapter breaks later.
– Did I reformat your story correctly? If so, the structure works fine. If not ?
Characters:
– Characters are clearly identified.
– A few more words of description here and there might be worthwhile.
– Give mother and father names.
Dialog:
– There are many rules for handling dialogue, but these will keep you safe most of the time:
– New paragraph every time speaker/actor changes.
– Action goes in the same paragraph as the words.
– Comma at the end of the speech only if a tag follows. Otherwise a period (? !)
– Speech Tags: As few as possible; as many as necessary.
– Convention seems to be: Thoughts and inner dialogue in italics, without quotation marks. I think it is a good one.
– Review carefully for correct and complete punctuation (especially closing quotation marks). To me this is the hardest part of writing. I hate it.
– “But Ellis was too angry to listen”. Move this last sentence in paragraph 100 to be the first sentence in paragraph 101 to keep action and speaker together.
Mechanics:
– 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.
– Always read your story out loud. Your tongue will force your brain to slow down, allowing you to catch many mistakes that your eye would pass over.
– Paragraph 5: ‘hopper’ s/b ‘Hopper’
– Paragraph 39: calling Basil Nosedive after s/b calling Basil “Nosedive” after
– Paragraph 108: I prefer okay to ok (personal preference)
– Paragraph 113: "Mmm, breakfast," he thought. better as "Mmm, breakfast," the owl thought. (clarify speaker)
– Paragraph 122: “AWESOME”. All caps doesn’t make it louder or more emphatic.
– Paragraph 134: “but Belfry lingered” Why? No follow up.
How did the writing make me feel? Did it invoke any emotions?
– This is a nice story. As my first attempt at reviewing ‘Children’s Literature’, a genre I do not write in, I felt very inadequate.
Can I relate to the writing through a personal experience?
– Don’t know. If my guess about the role of images in this manuscript is correct, I will claim some expertise based on hard lessons learned on WdC.
Did the plot interest me? Were the characters believable? Did the dialog flow naturally?
– Yes.
Is there anything I would change within the writing?
– Create a separate file to format your story for WdC.
Suggestions:
– See above. Pick and choose.
This advice I give always, totally, and without exception or reservation:
– Stories are always richer when characters, places, and events have names – even fictitious ones.
– Always read your story out loud. Your tongue will force your brain to slow down, allowing you to catch many mistakes that your eye would pass over.
My thanks to Jack Tyler blimprider for several of the explanatory paragraphs in this review.
Thank you for sharing your story. I believe that one of the best ways to improve my writing is to review the work of others. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to help both of us write better.
flyfishercacher
 Please remember that you are the best judge of what is right for your story! Whatever another person says -- especially me! -- whether positive or negative, is just their opinion! You are the only one who can decide what is right for your story.
This is my work in progress. Reviews and comments on any part of it are welcome any time.
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| (4.5)
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