by ~West Wind~ » Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:55 am
Hey Luna! Shadow here. I got to reading your story, and I have to say it is VERY good! I have some adive, if you'll accept it.
Here is something you wrote:
'I made a mistake looking up, because as I look up, my foot slips and I fall, the fall turning into me rolling down the hill.'
Sentences like this are ones you write often, and I like to call them Awkward Sentences, not because they are awkward, but because there are much better ways to write them.
When you write, you tend to not like to start new sentences and then the sentences stretch. You're good at making them make sense, though they are long, but you need to be able to make it flow better, and make shorter sentences.
In the sentence above, you extend from one idea to the next without making a new sentence. You'll want to avoid this. Another, better way to write this sentence would be : 'I look up, which turns out to be a mistake, because my foot slips on the slope and I fall; my clumsy stumble turns into a roll as I come down the slope.' Yes, it's longer than the sentence above, but it makes more sense.
Another thing you tend to do, and this isn't a grammatical error, but rather one having to do with interactions and the way your character thinks, along with your writing style. You're eager for characters to meet, I can kinda tell, because that keeps the story rolling. Characters aren't unsure of other characters, but instead act almost like they've met them before, and they talk and interact like they know the other. For example, when Lysander knocks on Claya's bedroom door and she opens it, she isn't as suspicious of his intentions as she should be, and acts in a way that though she is suspicious, she is completly able to talk to him, and she shouldn't be. For pity's sake, a strange boy knocks on your door with unknown intentions (he could be seeking to kill her for all we know!) and all you accuse him of is sneaking about before moving on to a completely, unrelated topic?
Sorry for squealing at you, but this is something that happens to me a lot and I want to stop it before this turns into a full-scale infection.
Also, maybe this is simply your writing style, but your paragraphs would flow better if you linked sentences that are similiar with
; s, - s, and more commas and periods. You don't need a whole 'nother sentence to describe the sky, when you link it up to the sentence that happened before, that describes the weather.
To simplify it:
Sentence about a dog <-----> Sentence about dog's fur
Link them and they become a perfectly happy couple that helps the story flow.
Sorry again for harassing you with all this picky stuff! Don't have any doubts about it's quality though; it's very good!