Shred my story

Quote:

Original post by stro Be harsh.

OK [smile]

Dodgy spelling in many places

Bad sentence structure (some sentences were a bit clunky, could have done with being broken down via commas etc)

Paragraphs were maybe a little bit too long (although it's probably just OpenOffice being difficult rather than a problem with your writing)

Cheesy descriptions - "... like a swimming pool..." - cringe [oh]

Well, you did say "Be harsh". So there you go.

HTH,

ukdeveloper.

Very decent writing overall, I'd say. A few spelling/grammar mistakes on the low level (carefull->careful, infront->in front, left most->leftmost, propperly->properly, mannage->manage, loby->lobby, occassional->occasional, sepparated->separated, chassing->chasing, batton->baton), but it's way above the average high-school (or even university) writing you encounter nowadays. There are some places where appropriate commas were left out, some places where they could be cut, and some places where you need to change a comma for a semicolon and vice versa, but this is normal even in professional authors' writing; the editors catch them.

You did ask for it to be shredded, though, so here are the rest of the thoughts that came to my mind:
- Especially noticeable in the first paragraph are a few terse sentences. This happens. That happens. This is like this. Use some of the fancier constructs to make it flow a little more smoothly, for example "As the cab sped down the empty road, Chen watched the large residential blocks sliding past."
- This is a "story", carrying more of an informal tone, rather than an essay or research paper or such. You have quite a few more distinct thoughts to be communicated, and this usually means more (but smaller) paragraphs. So I'd say a lot of your longer paragraphs could be broken up.
- "Chen enjoyed taking the cab at night; it was rare to arrive right infront of the building, it was usually reserved for those playing in the game of the day." -- not strung together right; I'd insert "because": "Chen enjoyed taking the cab at night; it was rare to arrive right in front of the building, because it was usually reserved for those playing in the game of the day."
"It reminded Chen of those snails he sometimes saw." -- a short description of the snails, or a simile, would go well here; otherwise it's almost a non sequitur: "It reminded Chen of those snails he sometimes saw: rounded, smooth layers spiralling to meet at the edges; only this was a thousand times larger with a striking deep green hue, usually offset above and around by the blue sky. On nights like this, silhouetted against the moon, it gained a new attractiveness."
- "The main loby was stunning, which is often forgotten in the mad dash to get the best seats." -- feels like a tense switch from "was" to "is"; I'd change it to something like "The main lobby was stunning, though often forgotten in the mad dash to get the best seats."
- "Chen reached the top of the stairs into a juntion of 3 corridors, leading to various grounds." -- not quite the right usage; also, what kind of "grounds"? Perhaps use a different word?: "At the top of the stairs, Chen reached a junction of three corridors, leading to various *descriptor* grounds."
- "Chen started towards the signal again, being carefull to avoid the insane papers strewn across the floor." -- "insane papers" implies that the papers themselves are insane, rather than the writings on them or the writer of them. Perhaps something like "Chen started towards the signal again, being careful to avoid the scribblings of insanity strewn across the floor."
- "..., and he had obviously been collecting score sheets for days from the stacks of them shoved down beside his legs" -- "from" is not quite the right word to use here; I'd reword to something like "..., and the stacks of score sheets shove down beside his legs evidenced that he had been collecting them for days"

Beyond that, I don't quite get the point of the story; maybe there isn't one? Is it something to do with poetry?

Cheers,
Twilight Dragon

It sucked. Utter and complete crap. You should never write anything again, whatsoever. In fact, it would probably be best for the human race if you just curled up and died right now.


I'll read it when I get off work.

Quote:

Original post by ApochPiQ It sucked. Utter and complete crap. You should never write anything again, whatsoever. In fact, it would probably be best for the human race if you just curled up and died right now. I'll read it when I get off work.

That'll teach me to react before reading the whole post... Now to figure out how to de-curlify.

ukdeveloper -

Spellings, sigh. Yup.

I've been told about the sentence structure thing before. I tend to abuse the concept of the subclause. A good few of the sentences could use de-convoluting.

The paragraphs are too long. I'll keep an eye on that in my next essay. Its a horrible trait that our school system has built into us. You are told to write a paragraph on something with a minimum length of a half page every day for a year and you get used to looking at big chunks o' text.

"like a swimming pool". I agree there. Need to figure out what separated good metaphores/similes from the bad.

TDragon -

Spellings, again. I know I tend to abuse punctuation. Looks like its time to start playing it by the rules and not by ear.

Sentence structure, check. I see what you mean about the terse sentences. These are a direct response to my horribly obtuse sentences. So I end up with horrible long sentences interspersed with horrible short senteces.

Paragraphs again, check.

Nice catch on that sentence. The "because" really makes it groove better. I noticed that it wasn't really working but wasn't really struck by a solution so I left it.

Again, good catch on the snails. I initially had no solid descriptionof the shape of the building so I inserted the snail. Your version really made the image concrete and much more effective.

The top of the stairs section was plain badly written in my mind. I didn't have a firm view of it in my mind and that meant the resulting image was stupidly vague.

"Insane", again, good catch.

Papers, check.

As for the point of the story, there was one. Quite a good one in fact. It seems I was writing above my means - several people have noted on the lack of point. I seemed to have devolved down into a description of the world, losing the actual point which was to be presented through the characters. The lack of concrete resolution was supposed to be the "punch line" of the story but ended up being a bad ending.

Live and learn.

Thanks for reading and commenting. You guys rock.

I'm glad you didn't take it too badly either; I did rather rip it to shreds, and I noticed that I didn't even answer some of your original concerns -- characterization, appropriateness of register, consistancy of tone. Just so you know, each of these was decent -- done just about as well as you could have for such a short story. And finally, the fact that I couldn't find a point isn't necessarily a bad thing; but that a "lack of resolution" is supposed to be the point or "punchline" might be. You throw an interesting, drawing-in concept at the reader -- the man may be simply insane, or there may be a deeper meaning behind his "ravings" -- but you never even hint as to what the resolution of that is. Even the most pointless-seeming shorts should have a conclusion buried in them somewhere, an underlying theme that the reader is supposed to gain from them.

You did rip it appart but most of your comments were about the writing style which is the most easilly improved. I was really most interested in how the story came across, so the comment on the lack of resolution and clear theme along with the danger of using the lack of resolution as punchline is really good material - which I'm going to definately try to learn as much as I can from.

In fact, it reminds me a lot of the first game I designed / wrote completely by myself. I intended for there to be a kind of emergant gameplay. I was hoping that by providing enough gamepley elements the game and the fun would shine through, kind of like I did here with descriptions of facets of the world. What I learned from that game was that I needed to be sure the core point, the fun and the gameplay hooks, are clear throughout. Just so in this, I need to make sure I keep the theme and the point clear. Don't hope that the readers interpretation of the piece results in what I'm trying to convey - actually make sure that what I want to convey is down clearly on the page.

The specific request was to "be harsh".

"Clunky" was used above, and it's a good word. Reading your paper was a lot like speeding down the hi-way in a sleek corvette, which has a *nasty* shimmy because of a restricter plate. The ride could be so good if it didn't stutter so bad.

You don't need to say the name of the main character in every sentence. When you say "Chen does this" in one sentence, it's ok to use pronouns for at least the majority of that following paragraph. Same for nouns (like "the cab").

That said, you mention that "writing style" is the easiest thing to correct, and that is where I feel you are wrong. This paper is lacking one thing which, if it had it, would have made it prose.

Metaphor.

Adverbs are totally useless in prose; look at every instance you have of a word ending in "-ly" in your story. In every instance, you could have used a metaphor to describe what was happening instead. "Slowly". Slow like what? And words like "Obviously" or the dreaded phrase "most likely"...you can leave those out at least, at best plop in a metaphor. "As" and "like" are what differentiates a fiction from an encyclopedia entry. Metaphor is a large part of the art that writing is.

That said, know that I get all much of my writing philosophy from three sources...
1. Reading constantly
2. Stephen King's "On Writing" (while I don't like much of what the man writes - horror isn't my thing - he has very good style, and his memoir does a great job about talking about it.
3. Strunk and White. Remember Rule 27. Omit needless words.

The feel has potential to it. Read a lot, man. Get a feel for the way peeps say things, and eventually you'll find your own way. Good luck.

Thanks for the comments,

I have Strunk and White's Elements of style - great book. I bought it on the merit of hearing that rule being quoted from it a while back. I read voraciously, but to be honest to date I've mostly read crap. Usually fantasy which has rarely been noted for the technical ability of its writers. I'll check out On Writing, I have heard that it's good.

Now that I've finished defending my rapidly deflating ego, onto the criticisms [smile]

The clunkyness is a result of my admitedly poor ability to balance sentence legths and structure.

I really see what you mean about metaphor - slowly may as well not be there, whereas a strong metaphor would spice up the line.

Adverbs, sigh. Earlier in the day that I wrote this I had a nice conversation about how well chosen verbs and metaphor are so much supperior to adverbs, I even read about it in my fiction writers book the night before, and I jumped right in sloshing adverbs all over the place. So it seems propper use of metaphor is going to have to emphasised.

Thanks for these comments, they are really useful.

I'm the unofficial Master of Anal Retentiveness over at Egosoft, so be prepared for some genuinely excessive nitpicking [smile]

- Quotes around the very first sentence: you forgot a terminating punctuation mark.

- "slid the slip" is a cumbersome phrase. A good rule of thumb for wording is that you should repeat beginning sounds of words as rarely as possible unless you are using the words for a deliberate dramatic effect. Find a synonym for either "slid" or "slip" and replace whichever one of those words you think is less important to the visualization you want to create with that sentence. Personally I'd opt for "tucked the slip" or "slid the scrap of paper" or something like that.

- "Acceleration" only has one L.

- Why can't he feel acceleration? That means some extremely high technology, and you haven't done enough exposition yet to justify that much tech in your story. The "cab computer" suggests a little bit of technology development past what we have today, but not enough to be utterly defying the laws of physics yet. Either explicitly explain the technology's presence, or remove the allusion. I'd probably opt to make it a small revelation of the character's personality: "Sometimes the vision of speed made him think wistfully of the days when the sensations of fast travel were not yet obliterated by the inventions of sophisticated society."

- "Littered with glowing windows" doesn't sound right. "Littered" implies haphazard, chaotic distribution, and that clashes with our impressions of proper architecture. It also conflicts with the sense of being in a high-technology, futuristic setting, as we're more or less conditioned to expect order from such a scene. This especially becomes disruptive to use "littered" and then in the same sentence describe "regularly placed street lamps."

- That entire sentence is severely awkward. Suggest a restructuring to something like "The floor of the dark cab glistened, reflecting the of passing street lamps and the glowing windows speckling the dark, curved facades of the buildings." Even better if you can mention what kind of buildings they are - how big, what happens inside them, etc.

- At this point I have a bit of confusion. I only know it is dark out because I have had to infer that from your adjectives. It is jarring to be reading exposition, develop a mental image of what is going on, and then suddenly realize that the author meant something totally different. A slightly more explicit allusion to the time of day would be useful earlier on.

- "looking at the floor shimmer like a swimming pool" is bad on two counts. First and most importantly, it sounds awkward. Suggest using something like "watching" instead of "looking at." Secondly, as has been mentioned, "shimmer like a swimming pool" isn't really a very solid simile, and the notion of a swimming pool is completely out of place against the backdrop of the setting that you're working on establishing.

- "He was going to win today, yesterday had been an off-day." This is a run-on sentence. Split it into two sentences and have it begin a new paragraph - the subject has changed. Also, "he was going to win today" has some tense problems; it's not strictly incorrect (AFAIK) but it is confusing to read.

- Another run-on at "be a human, he had lost..."

- The use of the term "slip" in that sentence is very inconsistent and confusing. Even after reading the paragraph four times I don't know if a "slip" is a piece of paper or something that can be fit in a jacket pocket, or a person (the "she" that is suddently and abruptly introduced here).

- "Properly" only has two Ps.

- "She had injured her hip stupidly" - doesn't sound good. Drop the "stupidly" - the fact that it was dumb is more than amply apparent from the following sentences.

- "is no reason to abandon" - tense problem. You've written up to here in past tense; don't switch tenses in the middle of writing.

- "Sure she would" - informal. Remove "sure."

- "Careful" has only one L.

- "but careful practice and she..." - non sequitur. You need another word or something here to explain the thought. "With some careful practice" or something would be good.

- "isn't much of a life" - tense again.

- The first paragraph has at least three distinct subjects, focuses, and trains of thought. Each time you change any one of those things, you should start a new paragraph, generally speaking. A single page of three paragraphs is very uncomfortable to read, as the eye becomes accustomed to using indentation and blank space as anchors to help keep accurate positioning and not get lost.

- "The floor stopped shimmering as the cab came to a stop" - this is a bad construction. The stopping of shimmering has nothing to do with coming to a stop directly, so connecting the two ideas is unclear. Make the thoughts disjoint in grammar as they are in subject matter; e.g. "Chen saw the floor gradually stop shimmering, and suddenly realized that the cab had come to a stop..."

- You now reveal that it is "night," but you've earlier alluded to "today." Now I have no idea at all what time it is. Is it early morning? Is Chen nocturnal? Does he work the night shift? You need to add more clarity with regards to the time portion of your story's setting.

- "It was always something" - informal. Use a less casual expression: "it was always impressive" or "he was always impressed to see..." etc.

- "at night; it was rare... it was usually..." - congratulations! I don't think I've ever seen anyone manage to fit three sentences into one before. Split them up [wink]

- "those snails he sometimes saw" - informal. "Those snails" is something we say aloud in casual conversation, not a proper construction. "The snails" would be better.

- I don't get it. A really tall building reminds Chen of snails? Snails (in my world, as a reader) are small. This comparison doesn't make sense.

- "seemed most striking" - what is that supposed to mean? That's like being "sort of unique." "Most" is a superlative and is not effective with used with an ambiguous qualifier like "seemed." Is it "most striking" or not? Indecisive, vague language makes bad exposition.

- You've started three sentences with "it" or "its" in this block. That's boring; see point #2.

- "in their lives, moments of great joy..." - three things. First, this is again a total change of your line of thought, and should break off into a new paragraph. Second, this sentence is disjoint and incorrectly formed. The bit about "moments" should be a separate, standalone thought. Third, "managed" only has one N.

- The parenthetical phrase is out of place - it doesn't add any value to the thought you're working on in that sentence, and it only disrupts the flow and makes that section of the text annoying to read. In general, you should minimize parentheticals as much as humanly possible when writing fiction or "easy reading" texts. Minimize them both in number and in size. In this particular case, there's no need for a parenthetical at all. Either find a way to fit the thought into the flow of the text around it, or decide whether or not you really care about revealing that detail in the first place.

- "the populatiry [sic] of the badge with the women" - I don't think you really mean that the badge is popular. I think what you're wanting to say is "the popularity that the badge earned him with the women."

- Use of the ambiguous and still unexplained term "slip" again.

- I was beginning to wonder how long it'd be before another paragraph started [wink] Again, each time you change your train of thought or subject matter, split a paragraph.

- "The large arched structure rising overhead, he walked" - bad formation. Suggestion for reworking the sentence (which is, again, run-on): "He strode beneath the imposing arched structure spiring overhead, ignoring the path and crossing the grass to reach the main entrance."

- "He put his hands in his jacket pockets" - it is not normal to put both hands into two different pockets to pull out a single item which can only be put into one pocket at a time.

- "as it had for almost every citizen with an ounce of civil pride" - I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

- "Lobby" has two Bs.

- "which is often forgotten" - tense switch again. Stick to past tense.

- "A vast round room... during the day" - this is a fragment and an incorrect formation.

- That paragraph was much, much better - it was a consistent, singular line of thought and dealt with only one subject: Chen entering the building to find Mr. Ryan.

- "this place well, he'd spent a lot of his time" - run-on sentence extraordinaire. That single sentence is three different thoughts and should be split up in at least two places.

- Why does Chen find it odd for people to do something illogical if he doubts they have any sense? Maybe he finds it ironic, or notes that it is odd, but the current phrasing implies that he has inconsistent thoughts about the subject.

- "His shoes were padded runners but he didn't want Mr. Jerry Ryan to get startled and try to run" - aside from the fact that this should be the end of a sentence (tacking on another sentence with a comma is bad bad bad form!) this doesn't make any sense. Why would his shoes make Jerry want to run? I think what you're getting after is that Chen doesn't expect to have to make use of his shoes - so that should be said instead of making the reader guess what you're driving at.

- "Junction" is spelt with a C.

- "Chen reached the top... various grounds" - as has been noted this is an awkward and unusual construction.

- Somewhere in here we really, really need to split another paragraph. The pacing is now becoming more quick and "action oriented" which means the train of thought changes more rapidly, and thus we need shorter paragraphs on average to help create the right tempo.

- "Leftmost" is a single word.

- "passageways... started down it" - disagreement of number. Are there multiple passageways? If so, which one is "it?"

- "The halls, that seemed" - "which" is the correct term here, not "that." Even better if you can remove either one, e.g. "The halls, normally so natural-looking when filled with moving people, seemed lifeless and plastic now."

- "He couldn't put... pastel shades." Firstly, this is again a run-on sentence. Secondly, I don't care about the entire thought. As a reader, I already know what makes things look like plastic. IMO this would be better if that entire thought was cut out and replaced with "... plastic now. He shook off the feeling and checked the heat detector again."

- Another change in thought process happens here. Split another paragraph.

- "He increased his pace... still be ahead." This sentence is clumsy; the notion of the "small victory" "reminding" Chen of something feels like it was crammed in and smothered with twine so it wouldn't run off to someplace where it makes more sense [wink]

- "He picked up another 'What does' " - missing punctuation here.

- "Careful" only has one L.

- Why is he avoiding the papers? Are they going to bite his kneecaps off?

- "Careful" only has one L. (Deja vu...)

- "There was no one in the open." This may just be a cultural thing, but to me, "in the open" means outside or in a very, very expansive area. A toilet really isn't the kind of place that I would describe as "open."

- "Jerry must have been in a stall." The tense here is disjoint; even in past tense, "must have been" gives an impression that Jerry has already left. "Must be" would be a better phrasing.

- The term "walk" is used an awful lot. Pick some synonyms that describe Chen's mood and posture - "crept," "tiptoed," "slipped," etc.

- A high pitched cry isn't something that I would expect to be hard to hear in the hallway near a toilet. Sound carries quite well when it is a high-pitched yell, and so the sounds either need to be audible in the hall, or they need to be quieter inside the room (whimpers, moans, etc. - crying would be fine, but a cry is too loud).

- "Separated" only has one P.

- Most of your quotations in the following passage are missing punctuation.

- "hides in a toilet, usually hides" - spurious comma.

- Why is it better to check each stall because Jerry sounds like a lunatic? I don't follow your (or Chen's) reasoning here.

- "Baton" only has one T.

- "Chasing" only has one S.

- I still have no idea what a "slip" is. Are they in jackets? Are they people? Are they on belts? Or is the baton on his belt, in which case you need to reorganize the sentence to make that clear.

- Why is Chen careful, quiet, and slow, and then all of a sudden he slams the door of the stall open?

- "collecting score sheets for days from the stacks..." - makes it sound like he was taking his collection from the stacks themselves. Change to "for days, judging by the stacks..." or something similar.

- Stacks are vertical and at least somewhat orderly. They don't seem to be the kinds of things that get shoved into the cracks around someone's legs in a wheelchair. Find a better term to describe the papers - "wads," "masses," "reams," etc.

- "His dirty hand were still" - disagreement of number.

- You wanker! You cut it off right as it started getting interesting [razz]


Anyways, that should do it... for now.

Wow. I mean, wow.

I'm not even going to respond to each of your points, I have to get up in the morning. But thanks for the comments. From now on I'm just going to have to be much more thoughtful and precise in the language I use.

Thanks for the comments. And I wouldn't quite call you anal retentive, just extremely observant.

I've not got much to add since between TDragon and ApochPiQ I think all the main points have been covered.

While a spellchecker won't necessarily catch all spelling errors, (things like there/their/they're would often go unnoticed) I think all of the ones you made would be. So use a spellchecker.

Some general points:

First of all, I don't have a clue what is going on in the story. I've got some vague notion of a some type of "Logan's Run" scenario going on, maybe something to do with some kind of mandatory sport, but it's not well elucidated. As a result of this confusion, I can't really identify with the main character at all, nor can I really get a solid grasp on what he's doing or why. You need to either drop a few more hints as to what the story is on about, or else spell it out in no uncertain terms.

The beginning is a bit boring. You have to capture the reader's imagination in the first few sentences so they actually bother reading further. However you kind of blew those first few sentences describing a cab trip down a road which doesn't really have any significance to the rest of the story. It's not necessarily the idea of starting with a cab trip that's bad; but you need to cut out some of the irrelevant ramble and establish a bit more of a hook to get the reader interested.

The middle is a bit better, but I do think you need to establish what is going on a bit more clearly. The end is kind of non-existent, so I can't really comment on that. There needs to be something there, be it a resolution or a moment of clarity when the message of the story suddenly gets delivered. As it stands I'm just left thinking "well what was that all that about?"

On the good side, you have a decent vocabulary, even though you don't always spell it correctly. If you can fix the stylistic issues and perhaps get to the point a bit better, this could be an interesting story. I say 'could' because I'm still not sure what the point is. [grin]

Anyway, that's my thoughts. You did ask us to be harsh.