User talk:WolfyDrake95/Finding Himself - Revision history

ShadowWolf: /* Editorial Comments/Critique */

2009-07-01T01:03:57Z

Editorial Comments/Critique

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:03, 30 June 2009
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	:Actually, I was considering avoiding the mention of the name until, at the very least, he finds the parcel. I find that gives a nice effect on the reader by keeping him/her wondering who the character is. Your other suggestions are great! I'll look into them and make some changes. I agree that by placing the effect before the cause, in the case of that paragraph you mentioned, the sentence seems to "grab" the reader better than vice-versa. I'm not much for the Wizard of Oz, though...Still, a huge thanks for the confidence you place in me by adding me. --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]], 08:45, 29 June 2009		:Actually, I was considering avoiding the mention of the name until, at the very least, he finds the parcel. I find that gives a nice effect on the reader by keeping him/her wondering who the character is. Your other suggestions are great! I'll look into them and make some changes. I agree that by placing the effect before the cause, in the case of that paragraph you mentioned, the sentence seems to "grab" the reader better than vice-versa. I'm not much for the Wizard of Oz, though...Still, a huge thanks for the confidence you place in me by adding me. --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]], 08:45, 29 June 2009

			Good job with the latest edits. I still think that you are using the characters name a lot more than necessary, but you are showing a skill at taking suggestions and making positive changes from them. Keep up the good work, Wolfy! -- [[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 01:03, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

WolfyDrake95: /* Editorial Comments/Critique */

2009-06-29T00:48:07Z

Editorial Comments/Critique

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:48, 28 June 2009
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	But over all you've made a good effort at addressing the problems. Time to go edit the Pack and give you the credit you deserve.		But over all you've made a good effort at addressing the problems. Time to go edit the Pack and give you the credit you deserve.
	--[[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 13:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)		--[[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 13:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)


			:Actually, I was considering avoiding the mention of the name until, at the very least, he finds the parcel. I find that gives a nice effect on the reader by keeping him/her wondering who the character is. Your other suggestions are great! I'll look into them and make some changes. I agree that by placing the effect before the cause, in the case of that paragraph you mentioned, the sentence seems to "grab" the reader better than vice-versa. I'm not much for the Wizard of Oz, though...Still, a huge thanks for the confidence you place in me by adding me. --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]], 08:45, 29 June 2009

ShadowWolf: /* Editorial Comments/Critique */ more comments and critique

2009-06-28T13:49:08Z

Editorial Comments/Critique: more comments and critique

← Older revision		Revision as of 08:49, 28 June 2009
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	:Not a problem. It takes getting a very deep separation from a work to be able to see its flaws. I have managed it only with a couple of my stories, and only then by walking away from them for a decent period. And you exhibit a great quality in your work - you understand the characters and have a mastery of making them come alive. It is also very telling that you do not fall into the "trap" of considering your stories "masterpieces" that I went into detail about in [[From Thesis to Synthesis]] a while back. Keep up the good work and... if I didn't say it before, this one will be going into the "ranked" section of [[ShadowWolfs Pack\|the Pack]] at three and a half stars (when you have had a chance to address some of the critique). -- [[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 13:19, 28 June 2009 (UTC)		:Not a problem. It takes getting a very deep separation from a work to be able to see its flaws. I have managed it only with a couple of my stories, and only then by walking away from them for a decent period. And you exhibit a great quality in your work - you understand the characters and have a mastery of making them come alive. It is also very telling that you do not fall into the "trap" of considering your stories "masterpieces" that I went into detail about in [[From Thesis to Synthesis]] a while back. Keep up the good work and... if I didn't say it before, this one will be going into the "ranked" section of [[ShadowWolfs Pack\|the Pack]] at three and a half stars (when you have had a chance to address some of the critique). -- [[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 13:19, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

			{{separator}}

			"Blazing overhead was the afternoon sun, but the trees lining the path provided shelter from the heat."
			:Please, no Yoda-speech - you have the initial clauses of the sentence mixed up. You could try…
			::"Overhead the afternoon sun was blazing" or even…
			::"The tree-lined path provided shelter from the wild heat of the blazing afternoon sun"
			:This ties into the whole "No flavor" bit - this sentence does have flavor, but in playing with the word order of the sentence you've managed to make the first clause sound like it is spoken by Yoda. I'd suggest the second variation—which changes it from a compound to simple sentence—because you follow it with a compound sentence using the same conjunction.
			"Dan resented the life he led. Even with each passing day, nothing would change: just the same mindless banality that he and the rest of the world spent every waking moment living in. The route home represented, to him, the mind-blowing sameness in which he lived each day. The never-ending cycle of his meaningless life: a life so filled with the pressure and stress of having to excel that the fun had been drained away, the excitement ruthlessly brushed aside by the mundanity of each passing day."
			:This paragraph holds so much promise! But the passive-voice used hurts it. I'd rework it more as…
			"He resented the life he led, the never-changing mindless banality of the world. That was what the route home represented—A mind-blowing sameness, the unalterable mundanity of a world that pressures people from their earliest memories to do more. Like the black and white version of Kansas from the start of "The Wizard of Oz" all fun had been stripped from the world, brushed away by the stress of having to excel."
			:It presents the same picture, but provides more flavor and gives more of that "angry" edge the character has to the reader instead of just drowning them in the characters utter depression.
			"Outside, he heard a click of a lock, then the creak of a door opening."
			:Until right around that sentence there is no real need to ever repeat the characters name after you first give it to the reader. In fact… Well, it might be detrimental to do so. You are, after all, looking at one single character there and the character never changes. And he is depressed, bitter and feels trapped… Basically what I'm saying is that you can get that feeling across better with only the single reference to his name up at the start. Of course even that reference is un-necessary and you could wait until his mother first speaks in the next line—losing even the revelation of his full name when he first gets the package.
			:And again, in the whole of the next section, you can skip mentioning the characters name. By that point it is an unwritten implication that you are going to remain focused on him until and unless you introduce a new (male) character and have that character appear in the scene. And even then you don't really have to refer to "Dan" by name until you've switched focus, however temporarily, to said character.
			"Sunlight was pouring into his room when Dan woke up. Sitting up in his bed, Dan spent a moment rubbing the sleep from his eyes."
			:Another example of a place where you get clunky and refer to the character by name a bit too much. Try something like:
			"Sunlight was pouring into his room when he woke up. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes he sat up and yawned."
			:This eliminates the doubled use of the name and gives some flavor and variation to the sentence structure at the same time.
			But over all you've made a good effort at addressing the problems. Time to go edit the Pack and give you the credit you deserve.
			--[[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 13:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

ShadowWolf: /* Editorial Comments/Critique */ keep up the good work

2009-06-28T13:19:46Z

Editorial Comments/Critique: keep up the good work

← Older revision		Revision as of 08:19, 28 June 2009
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	It's more than enough! I never really noticed all that myself, even when I reread it. Kinda strange how I need somebody to point out mistakes before I can notice any. I'll work on it right now. In the meantime, any more crit. is still welcome. Thanks for the critique! --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]], 14:05, 28 June 2009 (+0800 GMT)		It's more than enough! I never really noticed all that myself, even when I reread it. Kinda strange how I need somebody to point out mistakes before I can notice any. I'll work on it right now. In the meantime, any more crit. is still welcome. Thanks for the critique! --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]], 14:05, 28 June 2009 (+0800 GMT)

			:Not a problem. It takes getting a very deep separation from a work to be able to see its flaws. I have managed it only with a couple of my stories, and only then by walking away from them for a decent period. And you exhibit a great quality in your work - you understand the characters and have a mastery of making them come alive. It is also very telling that you do not fall into the "trap" of considering your stories "masterpieces" that I went into detail about in [[From Thesis to Synthesis]] a while back. Keep up the good work and... if I didn't say it before, this one will be going into the "ranked" section of [[ShadowWolfs Pack\|the Pack]] at three and a half stars (when you have had a chance to address some of the critique). -- [[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 13:19, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

WolfyDrake95: /* Editorial Comments/Critique */

2009-06-28T06:06:20Z

Editorial Comments/Critique

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:06, 28 June 2009
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	There would be more to this - even examples - but I am rather burned out after putting in nine hours of work yesterday to de-clutter, dust, vacuum, build shelves and re-arrange my room. Hopefully what is above is enough to help you out.		There would be more to this - even examples - but I am rather burned out after putting in nine hours of work yesterday to de-clutter, dust, vacuum, build shelves and re-arrange my room. Hopefully what is above is enough to help you out.
	:::--[[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 17:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)		:::--[[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 17:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

			It's more than enough! I never really noticed all that myself, even when I reread it. Kinda strange how I need somebody to point out mistakes before I can notice any. I'll work on it right now. In the meantime, any more crit. is still welcome. Thanks for the critique! --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]], 14:05, 28 June 2009 (+0800 GMT)

ShadowWolf: /* Editorial Comments/Critique */ new section

2009-06-27T17:45:10Z

Editorial Comments/Critique: new section

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:45, 27 June 2009
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	:Yeah, I know. Still polishing it. But I took it off already. :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]]		:Yeah, I know. Still polishing it. But I took it off already. :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]]

			== Editorial Comments/Critique ==

			First with the good news:
			:This is an excellent story with a lot of good ideas.

			Now on to the critique:
			:Once more you've fallen for the "passive trap" - you are "telling" the story rather than carrying the reader through it by showing the action. I have been there myself - you have the idea and start writing it, but in forcing the words on to the page you wind up doing it as if you are talking to the reader. This can work, but only for short stretches. Doing it for most of a story (at the end you manage to partially get away from it) makes the story hard to read for most people.
			::Solution: Think about each scene and write it out as if you are illustrating it using words instead of pictures.
			:See [[Keeping the Editor Happy]] (part of the [[Writer's School]]). You have variation in length and content of your sentences, but not in structure. More than 80% of them are "subject->verb" constructions with no flavor.
			::Solution: Many possible solutions - some of the best are in the [[Writer's School]] essay [[Keeping the Editor Happy]].
			:Grammatical errors abound. A lot of them appear to be a common form caused by writing slower than you are thinking. (ie: 'words are missing' type errors) The rest are all problems in the dialog - a new speaker gets a new paragraph (among other things) or are all "poor separation of idea" problems, where two different ideas/chunks of text are smashed into a single paragraph because of the "can't have a single line paragraph" thought that a lot of new authors seem to have.
			::Solution: Properly break up the dialog so that new paragraphs happen each time the speaker changes. For the rest a solid copy-editing pass and asking "does this make sense as a single paragraph" will help. However it is sometimes better to have a third party do that pass. (no - not me - I suck so much at copy-editing that I have someone else to do all of mine)
			:Repetition of characters names where a pronoun inference will work. You also had this problem in your first story - and is, IMNSHO, indicative of a new author who is unsure of his/her ability to keep it clear (to the reader) which character, item or place is being referenced by a pronoun.
			::Solution: Re-read each paragraph separately and in related pairs. If the subject of a sentence has not changed since the previous one, use a pronoun instead. To keep from having a "pronoun overload" you can restructure the sentences to carry the same information and not repeat the name of the item or use a pronoun. (this isn't hard, but can cause problems)
			:Spelling, spelling, spelling! There are a number of spelling errors (some common, some not) and at least one place where you mis-spelled "Dan" as "Dam".
			::Solution: Copy-editing. A trick is to re-read each sentence backwards.
			:Finally... Lose the damned "new text added starting here" marks :) Seriously - you seem to have tried to use them to show people where the newly added text starts - but never removed the old ones. A single occurrence at the start of a newly added block of text is fine - but numerous copies strewn through the text, marking large places in that sickly green is jarring.
			::Solution: <nowiki>s/{{add\|(.*)}}/\1/p</nowiki> -- Okay, so that's a geek joke (and not a very good one - no "non-greedy" quantifier, etc...) but it is the only solution - go through and remove the <nowiki>{{add}}</nowiki> tags.

			There would be more to this - even examples - but I am rather burned out after putting in nine hours of work yesterday to de-clutter, dust, vacuum, build shelves and re-arrange my room. Hopefully what is above is enough to help you out.
			:::--[[User:ShadowWolf\|ShadowWolf]] 17:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

WolfyDrake95: /* WIP Tag */

2009-06-22T23:42:54Z

WIP Tag

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:42, 22 June 2009
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	Just a heads up, your story is still flagged as a Work In Progress. --[[User:Lloyd Brunnel\|Lloyd]]		Just a heads up, your story is still flagged as a Work In Progress. --[[User:Lloyd Brunnel\|Lloyd]]

			:Yeah, I know. Still polishing it. But I took it off already. :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]]

Lloyd Brunnel: mispelled my own name XD

2009-06-22T20:35:19Z

mispelled my own name XD

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:35, 22 June 2009
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	== WIP Tag ==		== WIP Tag ==

	Just a heads up, your story is still flagged as a Work In Progress. --[[User:Lloyd ~~Brunenl~~\|Lloyd]]		Just a heads up, your story is still flagged as a Work In Progress. --[[User:Lloyd Brunnel\|Lloyd]]

Lloyd Brunnel: /* WIP Tag */ new section

2009-06-22T20:34:46Z

WIP Tag: new section

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:34, 22 June 2009
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	:::PS I like smileys.--[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]] 23:26, 22 June 2009		:::PS I like smileys.--[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]] 23:26, 22 June 2009

			== WIP Tag ==

			Just a heads up, your story is still flagged as a Work In Progress. --[[User:Lloyd Brunenl\|Lloyd]]

WolfyDrake95 at 15:29, 22 June 2009

2009-06-22T15:29:59Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 10:29, 22 June 2009
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	:If you've honestly, truly enjoyed your life completely without ever feeling hopeless a single time, then you are one hell of a lucky guy. Most people experience serious depression once or twice at the very least. Congratulations, then, on managing to live a happy life. It's a rare man who can say those words. It's cool that you're aiming to be a teacher. Returning to society, that's what it is. I was never much for teaching. I got into a lot of trouble with teachers in my younger days (not that I'm very old now). I hope that when you said "good luck" it meant "I hope you succeed" and not "good luck trying and failing horribly". If it were the latter...I'd be sad. :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]] 22:36, 22 June 2009		:If you've honestly, truly enjoyed your life completely without ever feeling hopeless a single time, then you are one hell of a lucky guy. Most people experience serious depression once or twice at the very least. Congratulations, then, on managing to live a happy life. It's a rare man who can say those words. It's cool that you're aiming to be a teacher. Returning to society, that's what it is. I was never much for teaching. I got into a lot of trouble with teachers in my younger days (not that I'm very old now). I hope that when you said "good luck" it meant "I hope you succeed" and not "good luck trying and failing horribly". If it were the latter...I'd be sad. :) --[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]] 22:36, 22 June 2009

	:Nah, that was real good luck. And when I say "never been depressed" I mean never having that ~~hopless~~ feeling for more then an hour. I just try to be happy. I used to want to be a famous author. That's not going to happen. I wanted to be an engineer. I found out I hate science, but have a passion for history. So there you go. Transformation fiction is an escape for me. I like it, just like I like Science Fiction, because it can be used to express deeper feelings and ideals, or it can simply be fantastic and excting.--[[User:Guvnor Of Space\|Guvnor Of Space]] 15:11, 22 June 2009 (UTC)		::Nah, that was real good luck. And when I say "never been depressed" I mean never having that hopeless feeling for more then an hour. I just try to be happy. I used to want to be a famous author. That's not going to happen. I wanted to be an engineer. I found out I hate science, but have a passion for history. So there you go. Transformation fiction is an escape for me. I like it, just like I like Science Fiction, because it can be used to express deeper feelings and ideals, or it can simply be fantastic and excting.--[[User:Guvnor Of Space\|Guvnor Of Space]] 15:11, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

			:::Yeah, I'm a fan of SF and TF too. It's like a small paradise where I can hide from reality, even if it's only for a while. A place where I can actually be ''me'', and not the person people want me to be. In the end, everyone runs from something. But I guess the "try to be happy" method is worth a shot. Maybe my dreams will change, and I won't want to be a game developer in Bungie when I'm old enough. After all, every teen or kid on Halo wants to join Bungie too, if not for their passion then for [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Flaming_Helmet Flaming Helmet](highly coveted piece of in-game armor that everyone doesn't have). But I do hope that I'll make it to Bungie...It's great that you guys are here to cheer me up. Thanks, you two! You guys have renewed my faith in the world...at least for now. ;)

			:::PS I like smileys.--[[User:WolfyDrake95\|Drake]] 23:26, 22 June 2009