Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Little]

Any comments on mine, btw?   

[Mulch Diggums]

Oh, right . I realy enjoyed it, but the last two lines confuse me a bit, whats that about?

[JoshuaFH]

I also really liked it, I thought it ended rather abruptly though. How did the police know he did it?

and the last couple lines confused me as well.

[Strife26]

I liked it, and I think that the last lines were supposed to be confusing. If you were to make it longer, some description of the investagation would be in order, although I rather like the protaginist not knowing that he was about to be arrested.

[penguinofhonor]

I like the story too, and I get what the last lines are supposed to mean, but they could really be worded better.

[Little]

Description of investigation it is! 

And they were supposed to be mildly confusing. They refer to the unknown author to start having that little voice that says, ‘I wonder what it would look like on fire.’   

How could they be worded better?

[deadlycairn]

I didn't find the last two lines confusing (though i may be reading it wrong). From what I read, it seems the story of Jason Narson is actually being narrated to you (by a reporter who covered the story), and the final lines are of the narrator speaking - basically saying that the same thing is happening to him. This suggests some kind of outside influence causing the arson perhaps? Ask Little, I'm sure he knows more than me.

Oh, and I'll try to have something up within a week - either a short story, or a chapter from something bigger. School's coming up shortly, and boredom is my greatest motivator 

Also, Little, I'm amazed you managed to churn that out in a day, it was great!

Dangit, ninja'd twice, including one that ruins my explanation! I'll keep it anyway.

[Little]

I was thinking maybe outside influence. I wanted it slightly...unknown.

Updated with a bit of investigation.

Thank you very much, Cairn. Churned it out in about an hour and a half

Edit: If anyone wants to read a few more Little () stories, just PM me and I'll send you some of my older works.

[penguinofhonor]

About the last bit:

He was unavailable for interview, which isn’t good. I woke up last night smelling like gas. The news is covering a massive fire which consumed multiple beach houses live, and I can’t recall where I was last night. The voices in my head aren’t my own…

Okay, the main problem is this:

The news is covering a massive fire which consumed multiple beach houses live

Is the news currently covering the burning beach houses? Because if so, then the fire is still consuming the beach houses, and therefore it shouldn't be past tense.
Or if you mean the news is live, covering the beach houses that were burned last night? If this is it, then you should take out "live" as it emphasizes that something is going on right now, and this would be drawing attention away from the main action.

The second problem is this:

He was unavailable for interview, which isn’t good. I woke up last night smelling like gas.

The first sentence hits the reader with a bit of confusion (not the good kind) which isn't resolved immediately. It's hard to explain, but the end result is that this part seems awkward, and that would be solved by linking them together into "...which isn't good, because I woke..." because this emphasizes that they're related and makes the reader stop wondering about your grammar and start wondering about the events in the story.

[Little]

Edited. Thank you Penguin! 

[Jim Groovester]

I have some recommendations for critiquing someone's story: be honest and thorough. It serves them no good if you tell them you like it without telling them why, and likewise, it serves them no good if you tell them you dislike it without further elaboration.

As an example of what I think should be done (to some extent, anyway), I will critique Little's story.

Spoiler: Critique ahead! (click to show/hide)

Little: You are brave being the first person to post something in this thread. Firstly,

First Entry Enjoy! Not my best, but meh. Needs some editing.

This is not meant to be disparaging, but I don't want to review a half-effort. If you know you can improve something, or polish it up, or edit it in places, do all that before you put it up for review. Whether or not it's your best work is not my concern, whether it's your best effort is.

Moving on.

...the only light he had was from the moon’s pale light the house was black,...

He poured gas over his muddy foot prints, and takes a step towards the house...

Grammar mistakes. Fix those. What's wrong in the first example should be obvious. In the second, your verbs must agree in tense, especially if they are describing a sequence of events. Your work is filled with other mistakes, so fix them all.

Jason sat at his desk, ...

This paragraph is unnecessary. I briefly grappled with it, trying to justify its existence by rationalizing that Jason needs a moment where he considers the magnitude of his crime, but he already had second thoughts in the previous paragraph. Your tale will flow better without this redundant paragraph.

The building explodes in a cataclysmic explosion of fire...

So the building explodes in an explosion? This phrase is redundant within itself. Edit it with that in mind, and examine the rest of your work for redundant phrases and descriptions.

Jason Larson was sentenced...

This paragraph bugs me. While most of it makes sense, the police searching his apartment comes after his sentence and media coverage? The sequence of events needs to be reorganized.

Your last paragraph annoys me. The point of view switches from an omniscient third-person narrator to a non-omniscient narrator afflicted with Jason's same itch. Also,

The voices in my head aren’t my own…

ARGH CLICHE

On the whole, yours is a decent tale that suffers from being hastily constructed. This causes it to have grammar and other structural mistakes that could be avoided with a more thorough examination of your work before posting.

There, I'm done. I'm sure that we can hone our critiquing skills as we hone our writing skills.

[deadlycairn]

I think I've read too much H.P Lovecraft. I'm seeing it - or references/allusions to it, in everything. Your ending reminds me of his stories, even though I know that kind of ending is common in short stories. His works were the thing that sprang to mind when I thought of 'outside influences' affecting the narrator.

And it has been months since I read one of his stories.

This has nothing to do with my story. However, I find it slightly disturbing that Mr Lovecraft's stories could affect me in such a manner.

[Strife26]

That must have been what made the tale unsettling, the tense switched places a few times I think. It's the sort of thing that I have a bad habit of doing.

[Aqizzar]

I was going to rattle off some critiques of Little's story with the friendly admonishment that critiquing is by definition pointing out problems, but Jim Groovester beat me to all of it.

My addition to this- Your story suffers from the same sort of problem I see in a lot of amateur (not an insult) writing.  Even when it's grammatically correct (and there are problems there), there's lines in the text that just don't sound like the normal way the language would be used.  My biggest piece of advice to writing is, periodically step back and read the whole thing out loud.  Don't just scan it with your eyes, however meticulously, actually speak all the words in the order you wrote them.  That's a good way to catch both grammatical errors, and weird constructions like "exploded in an explosion".


Anyway, I guess I should make a writing commitment myself, given that I spurred this thing on.  However, I'm taking a couple essay-heavy classes, and writing for my Martian survival forum game, which takes more effort than it looks like.  At least for a slacker like me.  On that note, I should mention my short lived stint as GM of Evolution, which involved a lot of writing as well.

But I had an idea for a story today, one I can write bits and pieces of and come back to as I please.  It's not a terribly original idea (in fact, I could swear I was inspired by a similar work somewhere), but I like it, and it'll let me branch my thinking.  I will tell the story of a rambling band of goblins, zombies, gargoyles, and other fantasy baddies and cannon fodder, settling dungeons and being slaughtered by heroic adventurers.  I know I want to use first-person journals to tell some of the story, if not the whole thing.  Just not sure when I'll have time to get to it.

[Fenrir]

I hate when I get an idea for one character or a single scene and have no plot for it, like right now.