RuneScape Forum Archive | ||...Agony...||

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13-Apr-2009 17:02:37

Yrolg

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Hello, Carrotmain714. The following, as requested, is my review of your story “Agony”. Please feel free to respond to any point that I made, and question any of my decisions. Please also be aware of the necessary information needed to have me change your overall score.
“"Mummy...?" one child cried out, disturbed by their parent's disappearance. “
The word “their” is a plural possessive. You should use it when the subject possessing the object(s) is plural. For example: “The boys remembered their shoes.” In your usage of this word, you were showing the possession of “one child”. This is singular and you should therefore use the phrase “his or her”:
““Mummy…?” one child cried out, disturbed by her parents’ disappearance.”
You will notice also that I changed the location of the apostrophe. You should note that apostrophes, with relation to possession, are to be used as follows:
Singular possession is to be shown by the addition of ‘s at the end of the noun, regardless of the final consonant.
“Marissa’s sarcasm earned her those three days of detention with Ms. M*Clair.”
Plural possession is to be shown by the addition of s’ at the end of the noun, regardless of the final consonant, constrained to abstinence for irregulars.
“The boys’ desks were a display of artful graffiti whilst nature and kindness adorned the girls’ desks.”

13-Apr-2009 17:42:47

Yrolg

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The following are quotes from “The Elements of Style”.
“The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and oneself have no apostrophe.”
“They. A common inaccuracy is the use of the plural pronoun when the antecedent is a distributive expression such as each, each one, everybody, every one, many a man,which, though implying more than one person, requires the pronoun to be in the singular. Similar to this, but with even less justification, is the use of the plural pronoun with the antecedent anybody, any one, somebody, some one, the intention being either to avoid the awkward "he or she," or to avoid committing oneself to either. Some bashful speakers even say, "A friend of mine told me that they, etc."”

“"MUMMY!!" the terrified child from before cried fiercely from inside one of the houses south of the bank, breaking the bunch into a horrified frenzy and bringing the topic of Veronica's presence to a halt. Mad dashes towards the house were made, Veronica and Jaden being swept up in their parents arms to avoid them being trampled by anxious citizens.”
I am not fond of this particular paragraph. The first mistake I note is that you include two exclamation marks at the end of “MUMMY”. You should reserve using this style of punctuation for only the most appropriate circumstances. Using two exclamation marks emphasizes to a great extent the magnitude of the yell. Your following commentary on whence this cry came and the ensuing action is, to be frank, not at all complimentary to this.
Secondly, I really find the line “child from before” to be execrable. It is utterly vague, nondescript, and confusing to the reader. The child from before could be Veronica, who you are now not naming, or it could be any other child thus-far insinuated into the story.

13-Apr-2009 17:43:04

Yrolg

Posts: 25,296 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

You also have this commentary as a run-on sentence. You tried to incorporate too many ideas in between full-stops. Sentences should contain the minimum number of topics needed to conduct flow properly. This sentence contains three main ideas, each completely separate. As a sequence of events, I would suggest putting each action into its own sentence:
“MUMMY!” a terrified child, way up in one of the southern houses, bellowed. Breaking the crowd into a horrified frenzy, the cry also brought the topic of Veronica’s presence to a complete and utter halt.”
Your second sentence I also dislike. Whilst I appreciate that you are trying to convey the panic, imbroglio, and disarray formed from the sudden cry, I must begin to question exaggeration when you use such phrases as “Mad dashes” and “trampled by anxious citizens”. I suggest rethinking the ferocity of panic in this particular scene. If indeed the level of panic is at such a level as to cause the children to be trampled, I don’t mind this. I think, however, that it would be best to not use my above quote or anything similar to it; fiercer, more exaggerative words are more called for.
“Written on the wall below the window in blood was one word.
Agony.
And that's when it all began.
From then on, Edgeville became a haunted town.”
I think that you were doing a wonderful job leading up to a very ground-breaking, question-answering (and –forming) pinnacle in this prologue until you did what I like to explain as the following:
“The End.
But not really.
There’s actually more.
Or is there?
No, really, there’s more.
It was a good trick, though, eh?”
Your prologue is meant to introduce the topic of your story to the audience. It is generally a good idea to end in a very impacting manner. Personally, I would have simply left the prologue at “Agony”, and I would have incorporated the following information into a later portion of the story, where it is more appropriate and less distracting.

13-Apr-2009 17:43:20

Yrolg

Posts: 25,296 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“Three years had past since the first occurrence…”
Note that “past* should read “passed.*. Past is a portion of a timeline; passed is the past ( O_o

) tense of the verb “to pass”. Passed means that the subject has gone by, moved past, gone away, undergone transfer, or rendered judgment.
“… in which a frightening message was inscripted in blood…”
I dislike the word “inscripted”. To me, it always seems to mean of conscripted than inscribed. I suggest instead using “inscribed”.
“… of the then eight year old Tristan Tele’s bedroom wall.”
Hyphens are needed here: “eight-year-old”.

“disembodied eye sockets, that would vanish the instant a parent arrived to inspect.”
The word ‘that’ is often used incorrectly. It is to be used in order to specify which of a group is the subject or to identify the subject period. When used after a comma, however, it should be replaced by “which”. ‘That’ is more specific, and, if used, does not require a comma, being tangential in nature.

“hastening away like rabbits do upon sighting the fox.”
I suggest altering this to read as follows:
“hastening away as rabbits do upon sighting a fox.”
The word “like” is very colloquial and should be used with the utmost rarity. It degrades your piece. Additionally, “the” defines the object as singular, definite and permanent; “a” allows the reader to imagine any scenario rather than the scenario provided.
“the first leaf of it's kind, red and crisp, fluttered off the branch and drifted downwards”
As mentioned above, “its” does not require the ‘s identified with possession. Also, rethink this sentence. It is rather long and prolixious. Excess description gets us nowhere but bored.

13-Apr-2009 17:43:39

Yrolg

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“Accompanying her, scattered around the grand, old tree were her best and only friends.”
You should read the following, as it is one of the most commonly committed mistakes in writing, and is, as well, perhaps the most unforgivable. The following is a quote from “The Elements of Style”.
“3. Enclose parenthetic expression between commas.”
“This rule is difficult to apply; it is frequently hard to decide whether a single word, such as however, or a brief phrase, is or is not parenthetic. If the interruption to the flow of the sentence is but slight, the writer may safely omit the commas. But whether the interruption be slight or considerable, he must never omit one comma and leave the other. Such punctuation as
Marjorie’s husband, Colonel Nelson paid us a visit yesterday,
or
My brother you will be pleased to hear, is now in perfect health,
IS INDEFENSIBLE.”
As a characteristic of your writing, I have noticed excessive usage of commas. You prefer to include as many points into a sentence as possible before bringing forth the full-stop. I suggest against this. One side-effect of this manner of writing is that parenthetical expressions are very much present in your piece. You, however, commit the errors defined as indefensible.
Fix this.

“Jaden Cole lay at the base of the trunk, hands behind his head and eyes closed in a state of drowsiness.”
This is prolix. Remove “state of”; it is unnecessary and is depletory of the sentence’s flow and impact.
“(though not as small as Veronica)”
Your repetition of “though” is inhibitive of flow.
“Veronica sat beside him, plucking the leaf from her smooth, well combed brown hair.”
There should be a hyphen in “well combed”, so as to read “well-combed”. Additionally, brown is an adjective describing hair. You therefore have a list of three or more items. You should add “, and” before “brown”. This is harsh on the flow, so I suggest removing one of the descriptive adjectives for now. Include it later.

13-Apr-2009 17:44:00

Yrolg

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“Veronica was small, as petite as she was three years ago, hardly growing at all. “
This is very redundant. I suggest removing the last clause, “, hardly growing at all”.
“The other five members of the group lounged around the base of the tree as Jaden and Veronica were doing,”
I dislike “as Jaden and Veronica were doing”. It is the passive voice, it is redundant, and it is prolixious. These are three bad qualities, so I suggest fixing it.
“long dead and detatched from the yew tree above her. “
As this is common sense, part of this is prolixious. If the stick was dead, it was obviously detached from the tree above Natalie. Furthermore, of course it came from the yew tree above her. It is irrelevant to note this; unless it had come from elsewhere or had a deeper meaning (which it doesn’t), you needn’t describe this twig with such detail.
You have considerable trouble with describing unnecessary details. Whilst description is a great quality in writing, readers really don’t care if the cloud way out in the distance was cirrus, with a slight pink hue. Unless it’s relevant, they don’t care. This is a quality that could really be worked on: it could help drastically with your run-on issue.
“Natalie was in a long sleeved, lime green, woolen jumper, an orange, knee length skirt warming her legs.”
First: you need a conjunction when listing three or more items: “long-sleeved, lime green and woolen jumper.”. I doubt this is what you intended, so remove the comma before woolen.
Second: when listing items with commas in the items, separate each item with a semicolon:
“Natalie was in a long-sleeved, lime green woolen jumper; an orange, knee-length skirt, which warmed her legs; with blue-rimmed spectacles that she lifted up whenever she was drawing.”
If you will not connect these sentences, remove the semicolon and instead place first the word “and” and second a period.

13-Apr-2009 17:44:19

Yrolg

Posts: 25,296 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“to formulate superior artworks”
Formulate is an awkward word. It should not be used to describe creating artwork: formulate is a derivate of “to form”. This is awkward insinuation to the reader.

“Robert draped himself in an overly large grey jacket, opened revealing his white button up top below,”
The first error is that you do not appropriately address the flow of the sentence after your first comma. The second is that you, again, forgot hyphens. The following is how I would improve the sentence:
“Robert draped himself in an overly large gray jacket whose opening revealed the white button-up top he wore underneath.”
“But only while the sun was up they lived in halycon peace…”
My first thought is that this doesn’t sound quite right: the sentence could end as a fragment, a period after up. Being the tradition of writers to end sentences as soon as possible, I, and most readers, put the emphasis on this. Yet the sentence does not end here; you instead move onwards, explaining, as is your habit, a bit too much into the sentence.
My second thought was that you misspelled halcyon as “halycon".
“But only while the sun…”, “Because as the dusk”, “For something would lurk”
These are three consecutive sentences within your piece. They all begin with a conjunction. Having watched the movie “Finding Forrester” a few weeks ago, I will paraphrase for you one of the rules correctly stated therein:
You must not ever begin a sentence with a conjunction, regardless of any other rule;
Unless beginning the sentence with a conjunction will provide much-needed emphasis to the piece, in which case the rule may be broken sparingly.
You break this rule countless times in your piece. It is what destroyed some major aspects of structure for you. My attached analysis of your story and style should explain this further.

13-Apr-2009 17:44:35

Yrolg

Posts: 25,296 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“Come nightfall the something would arrive”
This is something that you’re rather terrible with: this is another expression where you forget a comma. When expressions begin the sentence, you obviously remove the comma before the expression, but you do not remove the comma following it:
“Indeed, it would seem that April is a busy month.”
“When it came time for practise, he would be ready.”
“Come nightfall, the something would arrive…”
I also have an issue with the attempt at vagueness here. Using “the something” is, to my mind, wrong. Either define it or don’t include it. Definition can be as simple as “the monster would reappear” or “the cause of this agony” or, my personal favourite, “it”.

“Living a life no one should ever have to”
You have a habit of ending scenes with these one-line paragraphs. The first, in the prologue, did*’t work, and neither did this one. This is another case of
“The End.
Tricked ya’!”

“He continued.
"I'm terrified. I want this to end, don't you?" “
Remove the space in between the narrative and the dialogue. As you are introducing the quote, it is appropriate to have the two together.

13-Apr-2009 17:44:50

Yrolg

Posts: 25,296 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

“The town of Edgeville is comprised of only twenty-five houses along with a general store and the bank. The bank and general store and at the east and north end of the town respectively, with five houses surrounding the both of them with the Tele brothers' house south of the bank. The other homes, situated in the west, make up four rows of five.
Georgia's house is the third in the front row from south to north. Robert's is directly behind hers. Natalie lives two doors down from him. Veronica and Jaden both live in the last row next door to each other, Jaden in the first home and Veronica in the second. “
If Mary and Johnny are approaching the left house at the farthest row from opposite sides, and Mary’s pace is one step quicker than Johnny’*, but Johnny is eight feet closer, what is the cosine of the pace of the person reaching the house first?
This really does sound like a math problem. It is far too much flat-out description, with zero emotion and absolutely no action. You should interrupt your description of the layout to comment on the houses. This would also be a great time for a history lesson, if you wanted.

“lying on her bed was by her own judgement the optimum place to do so.”
Judgment is the correct spelling.
“neatly did away with her footwear, leapt upon her bed and gazed at the ceiling.”
I would use “leaped” instead of “leapt”. To me, this latter should sound as “lept”, and it implies a different form of the verb. Though correct in usage, I prefer using less-ambiguous verb forms.

13-Apr-2009 17:45:08

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