Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-9041013-20180420220610/@comment-34823985-20180424232650

I read this a few days ago, but I had hoped someone else would give it a review before I tackled it. I like the overall story, but it needs editing badly. Tense is off in places, missing words, extra words, awkward sentence structure, etc. Nothing you can't fix easily enough. If you'd like I could point out some of those issues for you.

I think the beginning might flow better if you put the second paragraph first. Also, the 'never getting married' part doesn't seem necessary. I guess you could call it character building, but it offers nothing to the story that I can see.

The murder and suicide(?) that he witnessed as a kid scared him from the village. It gave me plenty to ponder. That's a good thing. The actual beating - The callous and vicious villagers - His lack of action - What other fucked up scenes from his childhood are still hiding in his head?

I found Dasha's scene to be quite chilling, but that kind of thing plays into my fear of crowds/mob mentality, so it may affect me more than others. I do feel it's repetitive, though. I think just one read of the verses can be just as dramatic. This is just copy/paste, but here is an imperfect example of how to do away with the repeated verses:

My sister then began chanting, The crowd repeated after her, she kept repeating the lines over and over as the fat man was being tied to the tree. A piece of rope was fastened around his neck, and then the rope was tied to the horse.

Dasha stopped chanting and then signaled her horse to start walking, pulling the rope tighter and tighter, she began chanting again, "O' Gods, please welcome my gift,- and so on.

I like the idea of a god just dropping by the village to see how the peasants get along, and having a little fun as well. I wonder (this is rhetorical); is Simeon's planting of the willow tree foreshadowing of a blooming devotion to Veles? Plenty of ideas to ponder in this story.

Ok so, it needs work, but you're certainly up for that. If you want to ask me about any specific parts I didn't cover much or at all, then please do. I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this. You always check out my stuff, so I'm happy to do the same for you. :)