As many of you know from my sharing in the past, I strive (ok, more of sit around on my butt think about a lot) to hone my literary skills inorder to one day be published.
My close friends are in no way a source of review seeing as how bias they are towards liking my work; so once again I ask of you, my peers, to judge my work:
http://www.angelfire.com/vamp/youkaideimos/hhj.html
This time I give you no gore filled sudo-goth atempt at being deep, but instead a "classic horror" theme.
Batz Kage Wrote:My close friends are in no way a source of review seeing as how bias they are towards liking my work; so once again I ask of you, my peers, to judge my work:
http://www.angelfire.com/vamp/youkaideimos/hhj.html
This time I give you no gore filled sudo-goth atempt at being deep, but instead a "classic horror" theme.
Well I didn't vote... I think it needs some work to be considered good... but it's not bad either... so somewhere in between would be my vote... as to what it needs... for one, it needs to be spell checked, spelling and gramatical errors do not make for good reading.... but that aside... the story was somewhat believable...although it tends to be done to death... school, psychotic killer, etc... but that isn't the part that needs work...
The story jumps around with way too many points of view... you have like 7 or more characters and you jump from one to the other instead of combining them into a flowing story... Perhaps if you cut the viewpoint to one or two characters instead? Or make each point of view longer or cover more time... it reminds me of Boogie Pop Phantom... which tended to be rather confusing, but that's just my opinion, just like this is... laugh...
The ending was rather abrupt... and didn't quite finish out the story... but then that may be because you weren't finished with it yet... or didn't quite know where to go with it... Perhaps you could shorten the story and make it more succinct.
But then I'm not a writer, although I've written a thing or two and posted them on my web page... and this is just my opinion as I stated earlier, and you did ask for a review.
Thanks
all advice is welcome & you're not the only to point out that it jumps around to much; only the other person who pointed that out thought that Henry was the only survivur -_-...
And that's not really the end, but yet it is; I mean there's more to it, but it's very little & written in another story. But, it was done that way because it was based around the Evil Dead ending, which is based on Shakespears' (sp?) idea of a tragedy. Ok, bad spelling over with, I need sleep now
Anyone else care to comment???
Batz Kage Wrote:My close friends are in no way a source of review seeing as how bias they are towards liking my work
damn those pesky friends! DAMN THEM I SAYS !!!
DAMN!!!
rav96 Wrote:damn those pesky friends! DAMN THEM I SAYS !!!
DAMN!!!
Is that an unobvious way of saying you're not biased?
I voted no my kind of story, but I can still give a few pointers on things that might help it out.
First, the story doesn?t really have any suspense. There are times when you are too direct in the narration. Try to infuse some subtly and foreshadowing into events early on. But remember being subtle isn?t the same as being vague. I don?t know how comfortable you are using dialog but there seemed to be a lack of character interaction at the beginning which made me think why bother at the end.
The second problem is the flow of the story. While I agree that it jumps around a lot that can be fixed by simple expanding on the already existing POV. A trick I use to add specifics in a dry function paragraph is to take a broad term, like food, and make it more specific, like apple. Then add some adjectives, like shinny red apple, and you can really flesh out a dry sentence or paragraph. And there is a lot of explaining in the beginning and then there is killing all of a sudden. There needs to be some middle ground there.
Something I liked about the story was the guy that tried to fight back. Not a usual character in these stories, even though he was a little bizarre. I hope you fix her up and repost it after some work.
Dialog is the devil!
, yeah I really don't work go with it, hence why there's character introductions rather than interactment; that why you just know who they are rather than learn.
"And there is a lot of explaining in the beginning and then there is killing all of a sudden. There needs to be some middle ground there."
Sadly, if I changed this the story would lose all meaning to me; save for the missing plot, it was writen like that of a "classic" horror in which we meet the characters...good few minutes of boringness, them bame, one death a little more junk, a few more kills, & then a "sad" ending.
Hope I don't sound ungrateful to your advice, becuase I know sometimes I get defencive, but really, I thank you for the suggestions & tips.
Another thing, do you think point of view would be easier if I listed the time at each chapter break?
Yeah, I wasn?t even sure how good my advice would be because I work with plot more and this is definitely not my style, but I dug it nonetheless. Don?t worry about not liking my suggestions because I well understand not wanting other people to poke and prod my work.
I couldn?t really tell when chapter breaks were but rather than use time, use the position of the sun (or how light/dark it is out side) so you can elaborate on the setting as well in the same entry. Like a lunchtime we know it?s some where around noon, but later on don?t really know what time it is.
Blight Wrote:I couldn?t really tell when chapter breaks were but rather than use time, use the position of the sun (or how light/dark it is out side) so you can elaborate on the setting as well in the same entry. Like a lunchtime we know it?s some where around noon, but later on don?t really know what time it is.
Yeah, that's mostly due to the fact that I got a little lasy while writing
; same reason I usually try to stay awafrom any writing in which thestory's plot deals with years. Which is also kind of the reason I don't work well with adventure type stuff; writing out small maps has never been my fancy & I personally only describe north south, southeast & the sort just as that.
I know I have some honing to do
I guess I just have to put my mind to it; for a long while I wanted to write stuff & get published at least as a part time thing & then when I read Lotus Rose's book & learned how many copies he'd sold, I knew I could do it, but at the same time I kinda slacked off on making quaility stuff, which is also when I changed over to plotless horror.
I typed out comments while I was reading it:
-It's weird the way you did your paragraphs, too little sentences. I felt I wasn't getting enough details in each paragraph. The focus keep shifting in each paragraph as if you were in a hurry or didn't have much more to say.
-I don't think you should have given a mini character summary in the beginning.. it made me think I was about to read a play.. so I was disappointed it wasn't a play. And then going through the story, I'm trying to remember which character name was goth/nerd/etc.. when you could have taken those characteristics and placed them in the story.
-Calculator/game/ this is weird.. using / to seperate words
I stopped reading half way through because it seemed to jump too quickly. Seems like you're missing a lot of details that could have been put in - like characterization or scenery details. I would read your collection of short stories if you finished this... seems like it could turn into a novel too. I like the topic and it shows promise. I think the writing is good.. and needs a lot more time and details put into.
So far everyone has told me to work on the chapter breaks,
all but one says character indroductions & grammar.
& one gal I let read it said it wasn't nearly as gorey as my oter works & that needed to be fixed
I thank yall for the adivce, & next chance I get (likely Christmas break) I plan to re-work the story.
But, might I ask, did anyone catch the B rate movie or the R.L. Stevenson refferances?