Active player (441)
Joined: 3/21/2006
Posts: 940
Location: Toronto, Canada
Gone.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!) My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
Post subject: Re: I'm writing a short story!
Former player
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1286
Location: Finland
theenglishman wrote:
Well, it's not technically a short story, it's in limbo somewhere between a short story and a novel (not quite long enough for a novel, too long for a SS).
That's called a novella. As for your summary, I don't have time to read it right now but maybe I'll come back to it later.
Former player
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
You should definitely work on your prose and syntax. I suggest you pick up The Brief English Handbook by Dornan and Dawe if you plan to stick with this. Otherwise, the story was... eh. Exposition, as fun as it may be, is not the best way to get readers excited about your story. Maybe if you gave a more enticing passage as a taste of your work, you might garner more interest all around.
hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine
Active player (441)
Joined: 3/21/2006
Posts: 940
Location: Toronto, Canada
Zurreco wrote:
You should definitely work on your prose and syntax.
Lack of editing = idiocy :(.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!) My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203
Dialect is really hard to pull off well. I consider myself to be an excellent writer but I won't touch dialect with 40-foot pole. I hope you aren't insulted by this, but I didn't read the whole thing, I quit after the fourth or fifth paragraph. Because of that, I don't really have anything else specific to say about your writing, but I do have some general pointers on how to improve:
  • Get a bunch of famous or well-received books from many authors and many genres.
  • Read them, and every time you encounter a sentence you enjoy very much, write it down in a notebook, or on a notecard, or perhaps in a file on your computer.
  • Also write down every sentence you encounter with a word whose definition or usage you didn't know or weren't certain about.
  • Periodically read over your lists of sentences and take some time to think about each one. Perhaps you can read them out loud, or relocate them in the original source and reread a few pages.
In this way you may slowly internalize a vast body of text better than what you are currently capable of writing. Ultimately it may help your writing to mature. P.S. Here's an old thread with some reading suggestions from various forum members.
Active player (441)
Joined: 3/21/2006
Posts: 940
Location: Toronto, Canada
I'll put the novella chapter back up once I've done some grammattical proofreading and pondering about where to place backstory. In the meantime, discuss my inability to write. :(
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!) My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(