Categories > Original > Fantasy > The Price
Reviews
The Price
(#) dw110 2012-03-11
Tit for tat, I am critiquing your story.
While the concept is interesting and not overly done like most of the so-called "literature" on this website, you've given so little information that I still have little to no idea of what is actually going on.
As for the prose itself, you seem to have a knack for wordy and run-on sentences. I had to re-read more than half of it because the sentences held far too much, contained split infinitives or, more often than not, were just confusing due to a lack of commas or semi-colons. Try to use fewer large words. Larger words lend themselves to wordiness and tend to distract the reader from what's being said.
Something else I noticed is that you don't seem to do much "show" writing, but instead rely on "tell" writing. You don't give much real feeling as much as just telling us how it feels. Let the reader feel how cold it is. Don't just say that it's cold, tell us that, much like her teeth sinking into the apple, the cold bit its teeth into her, each serrated edge catching on her tendons as it reached for her bones. Less adjectives does the trick nicely. Like Mark Twain said, "Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream."
You also use a great deal of passive sentences, "would be", "have been", and so on are not friendly sentences when it comes to getting the point. "...And her soul screamed at the foul deed that had been done" is a perfect example. Obviously it was her doing the deed that caused her soul to scream, but syntax and implication points to an outside source doing something to her, instead of her to the child.
All of that being said, this isn't that bad. If you were to continue writing this, I would probably continue to read it.Author's response
If by run-on you mean comma splices, then yes I do have a big problem with that. Commas in general give me trouble. I'll be sure to pay more attention to that area.
As for the split infinitives, they're generally well-accepted now by most authorities. They weren't even mentioned in my English textbooks. I really had to Google that to find out what you meant.
At that last part, my fault for not being clear. That's actually a second character. XD
Thank you for the feedback. This has really been the best I've gotten in a long while. This one's going in for a rewrite and expansion. Again, thanks!
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