Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24833538-20150912024003/@comment-25825682-20150914025345

JohnathanNash wrote: With grammar, I agree with what Loki said, except about the five sentences per paragraph, I have never seen that rule anywhere before. But your paragraphs are a little on the short side. Not because they are under five sentences, but because there are more sentences which would fit fine the the paragraph above it. Here is an example of what I am talking about:

"The sight of the blood opened his eyes, literally, to the sight around him. He sat up and watched a flock of black birds flee from an area of fir trees.

In front of him lay the body of a twelve year old boy in a cub scout uniform. His eyes were wide in fear and stared right through Jacopo. One eye fixed on him, the other’s white drowned in blood."

The references, I do not get, unless the colors in the beginning were talking about eyes, other wise I have no idea. Also the name Jacopo had been a distraction for me, if that is a reference than okay, but I didn't get it and I can't think of anyone who would name their child Jacopo; although there are some strange names out there.

So, for the most part I was kind of lost in this story. Someone with a strange name had either killed two other people or was almost killed himself. Either way, that is all I have gotten from it, which is hopefully the main idea of what you have written so far. I don't know if I would get the references as the story progresses or not, it is still to vague to know for sure. These two paragraphs could be one. About the five pragraph thing, I'm not sure if it's rule here, but the five sentence paragraph notion came from my school life. Every English teacher I had kept saying that, so it kind of stuck to me. It might not apply to fiction, but I research it.