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A Lone Boy's Journey

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Chuk

Chuk

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Dangit!
My mom decided she had stuff for me to do, and so the two hours I was going to spend writing your review were spent doing chores. >.<
I have about half of your review completed. Look for it sometime Friday, possibly Saturday.
*sigh*
Sorry to get your hopes up about seeing it tonight...

04-Jul-2008 08:22:09

Chuk

Chuk

Posts: 14,177 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Here it is (finally):
Review of "A Lone Boy's Journey", courtesy of LC's Reviews (now in retirement)

Mechanics [42/50]:
Overall, your mechanics were very good. The only misspelled words I noticed were typos, and your grasp of basic grammar, and some more complex aspects of it as well, was good. However, I saw several run-on sentences, and a lot of places where you mixed up semi-colon and comma usage. These things, because they were fairly common, are what dropped your score. Remember: a comma is used to separate an independent clause (a sentence that can stand by itself), and a subordinate clause (a piece of a sentence that cannot stand alone). A semi-colon separates two independent clauses. In other words, you could replace a semi-colon with a period; with a comma, however, you can't.
Description [33/40]:
I really like that you tried to describe everything, and put in a lot of detail. Description is something I really like to see in a story, so hitting the detail is good. However, it needs to be shown, not told. This is hard to explain well and even harder to do well in your writing, but basically it would follow along an idea similar to this: if a character is angry, don't tell us "John was angry." Instead, say something like "John scowled at his friend and shook his fist." That's a really cheesy example, but I think it kind of gets across the point I'm trying to make.
Throughout your story, I found a lot of places where you would tend to go into a nice long description, but it would be boring because everything was simply told. If you have questions here, ask, and I'll do my best to answer. Maybe with some mind-prodding I can come up with a better explanation.

06-Jul-2008 01:46:34 - Last edited on 06-Jul-2008 01:48:06 by Chuk

Chuk

Chuk

Posts: 14,177 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Characters [35/40]:
Your characters were done fairly well. Except for minor instances, they were very believable, and were almost always easy to relate to. The biggest problem I had was the several-year-break that occurred between Chapters 1 and 2 (I think? Not positive on the chapters). The change from little, just-discovered-my-magical-ability Tash, to the man living outside Seers villages felt…well…for lack of a better word, awkward. It wasn't explained a whole lot which might have led to the feeling as well.
Also, there were a few smaller occasions where the character's actions just didn't feel like something they would do. The biggest example was in the cave where at the end of one post, Tash was talking to his foe, then the next he was shooting -- with magic -- at him. (Don't say I didn't warn you about this.) This wasn't the only instance where this happened, though; the next one that I remember best is when Tash simply let Roscoe leave with a satchel of after seeing him only cast one spell, and not even really knowing him. Would you trust someone like that with that much magic power? I don't think I would.
Writing Style [21/30]:
To be blunt, this was the section of your story that impressed me the least. To start off with, I noticed a lot of sentences where the transition from one part to the next, or from sentence to sentence, or even paragraph to paragraph was not very smooth; any flow you started was interrupted periodically by extra, unneeded words that were thrown in, and confused the sentence. You might try occasionally reading bits and pieces out loud to see if you can discern what sounds unneeded and just weighs your writing down. I'll get some examples for you.

06-Jul-2008 01:46:51 - Last edited on 06-Jul-2008 01:47:44 by Chuk

Chuk

Chuk

Posts: 14,177 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Vocabulary/Word Choice [17/20]:
This was pretty good. I noticed no outstanding vocabulary, however, so that's what you were docked for. Here and there, where it fits in, use a thesaurus to find a different word, one that is not incredibly common. Another good way to add better words -- if you have any form of vocabulary study in your English class at school -- is to challenge yourself to use one or two words from those lists every other add or so. Just something to think about. However, one thing I did notice was almost no awkward repetition of words too close together. That's a mistake many people commonly make, and you avoided it. Well done.
Plot [34/40]:
This plot seems fairly basic so far, yet not *really* cliché. Nor is it particularly boring. It's just, well, plain, I guess would be how I can best describe it. It's not very complicated, or deep, instead seemingly only Tash's search for the guy from the first chapter, with a few incidents to interrupt this and provide entertainment along the way. I couldn't pick out any subplots, though I am curious to see what part Magenta and Roscoe will play. If you still can, throw in some twists and subplots to give it more depth.
Total [182/220] 82.7%:
Your story was good, despite the fact that this review seems somewhat focused on your negatives. You have grasped the basics very well, from what I've read, and you only need slight expansion to become much better. With work, I know you have the potential to become great. Your strongest aspect seemed to be how you created the characters; while, like I told you in that portion of your review, your flow was the worst. Also, remember to check out when and where to use semi-colons versus commas. Nice job. :)
EDIT: Oh, by the way, I'll be coming back with examples of various points I made later on. I thought I'd go ahead and get this part posted for you to see, and start deciding if you had any questions. Then I can relate some of the examples to your questions.

06-Jul-2008 01:47:10 - Last edited on 06-Jul-2008 01:49:52 by Chuk

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