Description- can I see the setting? Do you show me your world, or just tell me what happens? 39/40
You have some great descriptions, sprinkled throughout your story. Some of the following I really liked:
“The woman scowled, with a glare that could melt steel.”
“The blood-red blade glinted in the candlelight. It almost looked as though it was smiling at the prospect of bloodshed.”
“so it reeked and was now a dark brown. It had once matched the walls.”
“his stomach felt like it had been mauled by a pit-bull”
One thing I would change is the description of the Duke’s murder. The sword pushing his heart out of his chest just did*’t make sense to me. If it were sharp, wouldn’* it just cut right through the heart instead of pushing it? Or do hearts somehow stick to Zamorak’s sword?
Besides this, Well done!
Mechanics- grammar, syntax, all that fun stuff. 26/40
This is where your story falls. There were quite a few typos/grammatical mistakes. The good news is that this is the easiest area of your story to fix, and you obviously have the skill to do so:
First, some major issues. I pointed out some instances of these in the following minor issues section.
When saying ‘he said’, ‘he replied’, ‘he stated’ or other instances where the part following the speech is the character doing an action on the speech, use a comma at the end of what he/she says: “People are certainly busy this morning,” Sorel stated happily. – or - “People are certainly busy this morning,” replied Sorel.
If you want to use a period, say “People are certainly busy this morning.” Sorel sounded happy. In this case, the second sentence is completely separate from the quote (if you took away the quote, the second sentence could stand on its own).
You seemed to do very well with speech ending in question marks, it’s when to include commas instead of periods at the end of characters’ speech that you need to be aware of.
01-Jul-2008 23:28:11
