Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-10502460-20180704080810/@comment-35711173-20180704180339

Dear HopelessNightOwl,

What category will it be under? Objects/items? That is what it feels like to me. There is something. It causes a supernatural reaction to anyone around it. The category influences my expectations for the story.

If something is worth criticizing I will. If it isn't I won't bother. I am giving a number of points of basic criticism here.

You said dozens of meters from the edge of the cliff in the next to last paragraph. Three dozen, four dozen? That's quite a distance. If I think that I am 40 meters (130 feet) away from a danger and then suddenly by my subjective time and without any knowledge of having moved I am at a point of deadly danger, I am going to have a strong emotional reaction.

You mixed meters and feet in this paragraph. I'd think you'd use one or the other. You said 4th of July. That sounds like the USA since it is a big local holiday involving fireworks. Since the USA is the last country on Earth using the antique Imperial measurements, I would expect the whole story to be in Imperial feet and yards.

I spotted a lot of errors with usage of commas. Most were missing commas but some were unnecessary commas. You also have one tense error that I spotted. This is fairly minor stuff.

Paragraph 3, last sentence. Should be "Personally, I go to lantern festivals sometimes for a change of pace."

Paragraph 6, last sentence. Should be "At first, I thought maybe they were called that because they sounded like a siren when they went off, but now I know that's not the case."

Paragraph 8, first sentence. Should be "Apparently, Siren Fireworks made a small blip on the national news radar when it turned out lots of kids were getting injured from using them, even compared to other fireworks."

Paragraph 12, last sentence. Should be "I talked him down to $400 and received the package a couple days later."

Paragraph 14, first sentence. Should be "Eventually, I decided to though, and I got two of my friends to come with me."

Paragraph 15, last sentence. Should be "The explosion was actually pretty faint to my memory, but the colors, the colors. It was like a field of wildflowers projected into the sky or a giant splatter-paint wheel..."

Paragraph sixteen, first sentence. The rest of the story is in the past. You have "come to" - which is present. May I suggest "My friends and I awoke from our, trance, if you will, at the edge of a ravine."

I suggest that you seriously consider these points and do a clean-up and post it.

Respectfully yours,

DrBobSmith (talk) 18:03, July 4, 2018 (UTC)