Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-9041013-20170201195638/@comment-9041013-20170203162936

ChristianWallis wrote: “Ruby, your breakfast’s ready”, shouted Ruby’s mom in the direction of her daughter’s room. Ruby's room was located at the second floor of the O’reilly’s privately owned Glasgow house.

Ruby yelled back, “I’ll be down in a moment”, as she is pulling her hair into a high ponytail.

'[Right, first few lines, and quite a few things to note. First, comma goes inside speech marks e.g. “Ruby, your breakfast’s ready,”. '

'Second, be parsimonious. If the speech includes Ruby’s name we don’t need to know that the mother is shouting in the direction of her room. Similarly, there’s repetition of “Ruby” within twenty words and it feels weird to read. There are snappier, more elegant, ways to word this. '

'Third, I cannot say if you are writing to mean Glasgow Scotland, or Glasgow US (a tiny town in Kentucky, Google tells me), but immediately it doesn’t feel right; what’s it matter if the house is privately owned? What’s it matter what floor the room is on? And if it does matter you need to be clear whether you mean ‘second floor’ in the way the Americans use it (i.e. first floor < ground floor) or the way we use it in Britain (Ground floor< first floor< second floor)). Now, just because you set a story in the UK doesn’t mean you have to write in UK English, but if the floor of Ruby’s bedroom actually matters to the following events then you need to be clear about where it is. If it doesn’t matter then… why include it? Similarly, when you say a Glasgow House, do you mean a house in Glasgow, or the new super-duper energy efficient homes dubbed “Glasgow Houses” because they were first built by the Scottish government? You include a load of details, but they actually confuse more than they clarify. This is what I mean by 'parsimony'; don't include it unless it actually contributes to the story, and this goes for every last single word. It doesn't take long for readers to see that you're wasting their time and they'll just quit before your story even gets interesting.'

'Fifth - New Speaker, New Line. Super simple rule. Really super simple. Someone new speaking? Give them a new line.'

'Sixth – Tense. You swap tenses. Specifically – “as she is pulling her hair into…” should be “as she pulled her hair into…”] '

She looked at the mirror, and with her sleepy green eyes, she sighed to herself, "Oh another day…" Ruby grabbed her school backpack and skipped downstairs into the kitchen.

“Good morning”, said her father, James.

“Morning, daddy”, the teenage girl answered to her father. '[This is redundant. She’s hardly going to be beaming “morning daddy” at the toaster.]'

James looked at her face and asked, “Why don’t you ever smile, darling?”

As she was gently petting her dog, Duke, Ruby looked at her father once more and said, “Well, I just woke up and I’ve to go to school, with all the quote on quote smart kids, I don’t see anything to smile about yet” [yet."]

Before he could answer, Ruby’s mom said, “Well our girl is right, considering she's an Einstein amongst her peers”

-

I don’t have it in me to finish. The mechanical errors ruin this story. It’s a shame that you’d put so much work into something and then show such flagrant disregard for your own time. No one’s going to read something if it’s written like dribble.

Moving on from here I skim read the rest and wasn’t impressed. The style is awkward (e.g. “a toast”/“her screaming was cut short as the object held against her neck was a knife and she accidentally committed suicide”), the dialogue is forced (e.g. “Why don’t you ever smile, darling?”) and the plotline is typical bullied kid gets revenge. I recommend you focus on improving your literacy and read the various guides and blogs on this wikia.

Its fine that you dont have it in you to finish and all that, but seems like your memory is horribly short. I mean you've been through a bunch of my works, and yet you can't even remember anything that you read and had my name on it. Tell me what kind of "teenager gets revenge on bullies" does include the detailing of several real life mental conditions with some sense of realism in them. I can defend my choices by telling you to watch Rob Zombie's first Halloween remake where he turns Michael Myers into a man with a bunch of mental issues including Antisocial personality disorder, which starts the story of a legendery serial killer character with "a kid got revenge on his bullies".

You contradict yourself saying "nobody's going to read that.... but I ended up reading it" Oh and people did read that... and liked it, in a couple of languages.. woops

Anyhow, I kind of stopped replying to your reviews some time ago because you mostly focus on the asthetics of a piece when you review it. At least with some of my works... but yeah when you go around telling people to work on their story telling its kind of ironic... considering the only work you've made that I got to lay my eyes on does actually lack in "great" storytelling. Your "Give It everything" story is constructed well and is appealing to the eye but the plot is meh. The main character comes out in the end as some sort of a moron who has philosophical thoughts about the phrase "Give It everything" while the phrase has like two meanings... you either put a lot into something (figurative) or "give it all" actually... The story loses it's grip on reality once it's said that the monster left around a foot of shit all over the house and later the pratagonist says windows were busted out... I wonder how the hell did shit learn to fly or how come there was no shitload of shit outside if windows were smashed... Oh wait... The monster probably broke the windows trying to take it's shit - and then came back inside to do the deed.

While the story in it's nature isn't supposed to be a psychological horror piece, you definitely have no idea how to play with the psychology of your readers as a story teller if you have to result to random bits of child sexuality being exploited, considering thats like of the things people would be universally shocked by in western societies.

With that being said, I hope you get to read some more works of fiction to avoid these mistakes and thank you for your review