WOTM #22 Voting (Casual)

**Jorick** · 02-16-2013

First off, congratulations Kaizen. With that disturbingly creative concept and your highly descriptive writing, I can certainly see why voters chose yours out of all the worthy entries this month.

To everyone else, thanks for entering and/or voting in the contest this much. We had plenty of great entries this month; I'm actually kind of glad I was spared the task of choosing a favorite due to being unable to vote. Those few of you who took time to write out reviews are wonderful and have my thanks, and I'm sure the contest entrants feel the same way.

Now, my reviews. In order to simplify the process of reviewing so many entries, I'll be giving them in the form of lists of positives, negatives, and any general comments I have. Poems didn't receive this format because I had less to say about those, but I did give them each at least a paragraph with my opinion on the piece. If the explanation for an item on one of the negatives list says something like "see Grammar note," it means I suggest you take a look at the Rules section of the Grammar hider at the bottom of this post and read the piece I've written there to explain what exactly that kind of mistake is and how to spot, fix, or prevent it. It was much quicker to just write out explanations for these common errors once than to explain them multiple times.

Oh, and don't be put off by my reviews just because they may look heavily weighted toward the negative. I aim for them to be constructive, thus I focused more on things that can be improved than things you're already doing well. I don't bother pointing out all the positives of the mechanics of your writing because that would be a ridiculously huge list in many cases, but you should assume that if I don't mention something in the negatives then it means I thought it was at least decent. Without further ado, here are my reviews.

Positives:
Hook - The first paragraph grabs attention and makes the reader want to know what caused all this anguish. Strong hooks are always good.

Descriptive Language - You used a ton of descriptive language, and that's a good thing. The more information the reader gets about how the character is feeling, the more they have to relate to and the more they have to draw them into the story. You also used some good metaphors in your entry, which are always nice to see.

Negatives:
Awkward Phrasing - This is the term I use for any sentences that just don't feel right; they may not break any rules of grammar, but they're still off because of the syntax or a word/phrase choice. For example: "I had never experienced such a feeling as this in my life." It's specifically the 'such a feeling as this' that makes this one feel off; I would have gone with something like 'such pain' or 'such anguish' to make it clearer and less clunky. This is a really subjective negative thing, since some people would probably say those phrases I find iffy are just fine and I should shut up with my criticism, but they struck me as being a bit off so onto the negatives list they go. All I can say for this issue is to make use of the reading your work aloud trick, see if your sentences sound like something someone might actually say, and altering them as needed if you decide they sound wrong. But subjective things are subjective, so whatever, on to the other stuff.

Unnecessary Commas - Example: "Perhaps, it was..." in the second paragraph. These commas need not be there and serve only to break up the flow of the sentence.

Typos - They happen, not a big issue. The one thing that was confusing and might have been a typo was the word 'purple' in the first sentence of your sixth sentence. I dunno what that's supposed to say, or what it means if the word purple is meant to be there, so it caused a bit of confusion.

General Notes:
Length - This entry was rather short. It's perfectly within the bounds of the word limit for the contest, but I think more could have been done with this story if it was fleshed out and given more detail. I think the shortness worked well enough for you since I enjoyed the entry overall, but the brevity was worth noting.

Positives:
Hook - Opening with a question generally works to grab interest, though as with all hooks the effectiveness is quite subjective.

Descriptive Language - Your use of descriptive language was rather subdued, but that's just fine considering the tone of the story.

Tone - This is something I don't see often enough. You set a very fitting tone with your words, with the way you chose to phrase things and the way you described things. It felt like I was reading about the beginning spark of a revolution, not just reading words that stated as much. That tone of mixed disgust and anger did a lot to enhance the story and it was consistently present all the way up until the abrupt ending. Very nicely done.

Negatives:
Tense - You had one spot of minor trouble with tenses, that being the memory segment. There wasn't a clear enough transition into memory to make the basic past tense work. The kind of tense you want to use for a quick memory, for something in the past of the past tense time, is the variety you used in this sentence: "My mother had been a sweet woman..." I believe it's called the past perfect tense. This 'had verbed' setup make it clear that the events being referenced happened farther back in the past than the "current" time of the story you're telling. It wasn't a huge issue since there was enough of a transition to be able to discern that it was a memory, but it's still worth looking out for and doing properly in the future to avoid any possible confusion.

General Notes:
Abrupt Twist Ending - Your bait and switch ending was an interesting choice. Tons of built up toward vigilante justice, then bam, irony right in the chest. Beware the use of these sorts of endings, because many people hate them with a passion. It's a perfectly legitimate choice, but it often smells of deus ex machina rather than proper story building, like you couldn't think of a fitting ending that went with the rest of the story so you magicked one on to end the story in another way. I think it worked here since it rather suited the bleak outlook of the story, but others may disagree.

Positives:
Descriptive Language - You used some nice description here. I especially liked the bit were the soldier is moving backwards from death, ramming arrows into himself. It's a gruesomely amusing bit of imagery. However, it could have been a little better at some points during the rewind. Some of the ways you described things (the soldier's skin being "cut, broken, and healed" for instance) went in chronological order rather than backwards as they should have been. Still, it was good despite the problems with the time shenanigans.

Full Circle - The starting and ending lines of your story make it feel as if everything has come full circle, which is a nice way to conclude the story. Slightly confusing because it sounds like the looter was looking for that ring specifically, but it works nonetheless.

Negatives:
Tense - The tense choice was a little strange. Past tense for the "now" time period of the dying soldier, present tense for the "past" time period of the soldier, then past tense again for the looters. I think you might have been better served doing it all in present tense, honestly. You could have given more emphasis on it being the narrator taking the reader on a journey, as the few lines that make up the third paragraph make it out to be, and made time transitions that way. You do appear to understand how to work with the tenses and keep them in line, so no real need for you to check out the Grammar note on the subject, but your choices in how exactly to use them were a little odd to me, that's all.

Sentence Fragments - You had a lot of sentence fragments, though many of them can be excused as stylistic choices for the tone of the entry. In other places they just seemed to be mistakes, so check out the Grammar note.

General Notes:
Concept - Moving backwards through time is pretty neat. Showing a man's life in reverse is even cooler. A cool concept can make up for a lot of problems and mistakes, because many people just remember the overall story rather than focusing on the details. This is very subjective, of course, so others might think it's nothing special. I think you definitely succeeded with this concept and I'm kind of jealous that I didn't come up with it myself.

Just so I don't have to write it out in every item here, there are two things I can suggest to catch and/or fix these problems. First, acquire a spellchecker program that also looks at grammar. Microsoft Word has a pretty good one built in, but I'm sure there are cheaper or possibly free ones out there as well. Just make sure to actually pay attention to what they're telling you is wrong and how they're fixing it rather than blindly clicking through the prompts to fix errors, that way you can learn from the mistakes and avoid them in the figure. The other way to go about it is to read your writing out loud to catch problems. If you speak English on a regular basis, you're probably better at catching verbal mistakes than you are at catching written ones. This is because you likely speak the language far more than you write it, plus there are some really nice verbal cues (like pauses for commas and periods) that help you catch when people are saying things strangely. Just read your work aloud and fix anything that seems off, it's as simple as that. You might be surprised with just how many mistakes you can catch with such a simple thing.

Tenses: There are two tenses commonly used in fiction writing: past tense and present tense. Past tense makes use of the past tense form of verbs, such as ran, jumped, kicked, slid, and sat. Present tense makes use of the present tense form of verbs, such as run, jump, kick, slide, and sit. For the most part, you'll want to keep your verbs in the same tense throughout your writing. For example: "Amy beat up some dude in an alleyway and took his money. She ran away when she heard police sirens, kicking the chump again for good measure on the way past. Amy gets in her car and drives away." Note the difference between the underlined past tense verbs and bolded present tense verbs. This shouldn't be happening in your writing because it is confusing and conflicting.

Note that there are a couple exceptions to this rule, the main one being dialogue. Whenever someone speaks it should be in the present tense, unless they're talking about events in the past from their perspective. This can be sort of confusing, but think of it like this: reading present tense writing is like watching events happen in real life; reading past tense writing is like watching a recording of events that happened at some point in the past. If someone says "I hate bikes" in real time, they wouldn't magically change to "I hated bikes" on a recording of those words just because it happened in the past. The same thing goes for the opposite sort of thing: somone saying "I crashed my car" on a recording wouldn't say "I crash my car" to your face when telling you about the accident they got into yesterday (unless they're giving you a sort of play-by-play of events from their perspective). Just be sure your verbs associated with the dialogue, such as says/said, match the tense of your non-dialogue verbs. The other exception to this is verb forms that end in -ing, which are called gerunds. When used appropriately, these types of verbs don't mess with the tense of your sentences; see the word 'kicking' in the example in the previous paragraph to see this at work.

Sentence Fragments: A sentence fragment is anything that is written like a full sentence, with periods to separate it from other things, but does not constitute a full sentence by itself. This may be because it lacks a subject or a verb or it's a subordinate clause that needs to be attached to an independent clause to make sense. Fragments can be spotted pretty easily by reading a sentence without looking at anything around it to remove any context that could mask the problems. If the sentence doesn't seem to make any sense, doesn't give a complete thought by itself, it's probably a sentence fragment.

For example: "The students working in the lab last semester. Performed experiments with sulfur." Both of these are sentence fragments. What about the students, what were they doing? Who exacly performed experiments? They should be together in one sentence, separating them is grammatically incorrect. Not all sentence fragments will be that easy to spot, nor will they all be corrected in that same manner, but it makes for a fair example.

Run-on Sentences: Despite the misleading name and the resultant common misconception, run-on sentences have very little to do with the length of a sentence. A run-on sentence is a sentence in which two or more independent clauses are joined without proper punctuation or conjunctions. For example: "I ran to the store I bought ice cream." This is a run-on sentence because there's no separation between the two independent clauses. These can be fixed in a variety of ways: turn them into two sentences ("I ran to the store. I bought ice cream."), use a semicolon("I ran to the store; I bought ice cream."), use a comma and conjunction to separate them ("I ran to the store, and I bought ice cream."), or restructure the ideas so they're no longer both independent clauses ("I ran to the store and bought ice cream." or "I ran to the store to buy ice cream.") Which fix you'll want to use really depends on the exact nature of the run-on sentence, just try to pick whatever seems to fit best and you should be alright.

Comma Splices: These are kind of a form of run-on sentence. Comma splices are places where two independent clauses are separated by just a comma. If you're careful to watch for run-on sentences, you should be able to spot or avoid these just fine. Note that comma splices are sometimes okay for stylistic reasons, especially in poetry and dialogue. The famous sentence "I came, I saw, I conquered" is technically erroneous because of the comma splices, but it flows so much better than alternative ways the sentence could be restructured. You can get away with some splices, but use them sparingly and only where they really make a positive difference in the flow of your writing.

**Kaizen** · 02-17-2013

Thank you everyone who wrote a review, these are my responses to them: