Varen6398
Friendly!, Constructive!
Creative!
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Margus how are you? Here is the critique I promised (note that it is still in the making). I am deeply sorry if you are offended by anything I put. If you need any more info, feel free to PM me. I will bold any errors, and number them. After the quote, I will post a list of the problems.
quote:
20 years before DF...
This sentence is rather blunt and to the point. Perhaps try and expand on it a little?
quote:
1. At midnight in old shabby muddy Falconreach wind was howling and 2.wooden houses were crunching from it.
1. I assume that you are trying to describe Falconreach at this point. There seems to be a few commas missing. The first is between ‘old’ and ‘shabby’. The second is between the words ‘Falconreach’ and ‘Wind’. Perhaps put a connective between ‘Shabby’ and ‘Muddy’ to make the sentence flow a little more.
2. Perhaps specify on the houses a bit? The way you say it means that all the wooden houses were making noises. Perhaps say that it was the wooden houses around you or maybe a specific type of wooden houses. Also the word ‘Crunching’ implies that it is making huge cracking/snapping sounds. Another word could be used instead.
quote:
1.Only few people who 2.weren't still in bed were 3.still 4.outside shivering in the winter winds.
I have deleted the un-needed commas. The sentence would work if the following mistakes are addressed, but it wouldn’t make complete sense.
1. Between these two words you are forgetting the word ‘A’.
2. These two words are the wrong way round.
3. The repetition of a word in the same sentence, or even in two sentences next to each other, makes the language seem a bit...unusual.
4. These words need a comma in between them, if you listened to my previous advice.
quote:
1.Me the poor merchant 2.who came back from South and 3.who hadn't 4.found vacant room 5.in small decaying inn6., where I would have7. liken to stay 8.at night, Frida the young pet shop owner9., who talked to almost everyone about her dream of having many children and grandchildren 10.and who was at the nighttime searching for her recently opened store new species from bushes...11.I think pointlessly..,12.and moglin Twilly13., who liked to sleep on his precious stump even14. Turning harsh winter15., 16. theywere all cursing 17.that cold winter weather and hoping18. for better days with warmer wind and sunnier days19. in future in center of town.
Well...this is a bit long for a single sentence. It is a whole paragraph in itself.
1. There should be a comma in-between these two words.
2. You never implied that you had been to the South, so saying that you were back from the South is a bit...strange. Perhaps explain a little about when you were in the South?
3. This word is un-necessary. It would make more sense without it.
4. ‘Any vacant rooms’
5. You seem to be talking about a single inn in particular. You also missed out the word ‘A’, but if you change it to talk about more than one inn then it wouldn’t matter. Just to note, if you describe something then it will specify. Not all the inns in Falconreach are small and decaying (I think...). Describing tends to mean that the thing you are describing is important. The inns aren’t too important so you could leave off the description of them.
6. Un-necessary comma.
7. Liked
8. If you are talking about staying more than one night, then this is fine. If you are talking about staying one night, then it is probably better to use the word ‘the’ instead of ‘at’.
9. Un-needed comma.
10. This part of the sentence doesn’t really make sense. First of all ‘nighttime’ is spelt ‘night-time’. Now I will get on with the bulk of the sentence. It doesn’t seem to make sense. Why would someone be looking for there recently opened store? Where do bushes come into this? The only way I think it would all link together, is if the sentence was this:
‘And who was out at night-time, searching for a recently opened shop that sold a new species of bush.’
11. In a story, it is best not to put your opinion on things in the 3rd person. You seem to be swapping between 1st and 3rd person throughout the story, but you should only put opinion in the 1st person. If you listen to this advice, then take away the ellipses that are there currently.
12. ‘And the moglin Twilly’
13. Un-necessary comma.
14. Should be ‘During’ not ‘Turning’.
15. Un-necessary comma.
16. ‘And’ should be in front of the word ‘they’. I’ve added in one of the two missing words to help out a bit.
17. ‘That’ should be replaced with ‘about the’.
18. I’ve added in the missing word.
19. This part of the sentence is a bit un-necessary. You might just want to get rid of it.
quote:
But what we didn't 1.knew at the time, was that these winds brought not only cold but also a war,2. bloodiest war in Falconreach and3. whole Lore's history. Our childish dream of better weather and sunnier days 4.proofed us the childishness of 5.it very6. very soon...
1. Know
2. ‘The bloodiest’
3. ‘The whole of Lore’s’
4. ‘Would proof to’
5. I think that the word ‘ourselves’ would be a better choice of word here.
6. Missing comma
quote:
1.Turning that cold night someone came to our hometown, someone strange and foreign on a road from2. capital StoneFang. 3.Guy with4. hooded cloak on his shoulders and rusty5. muddy6. old knights armor7. defending his hunger-worn and way-worn scraggy body. After entering 8.to town he came forthrightly 9.toward me. He watched me as he walked with 10.blear-eyed vision 11.as he was recognizing something in me. Had I seen him before? Even if I had, his scrawny face with mud-brown hair covering his eyes didn't seem familiar to me. 12.Maybe I knew him before some kind a downfall, that ruined him and wiped out his previous gallant and brave characteristics. But suddenly it hit me.. It was 13.no one else than 14.previous king's guardians' leader Alteon15., brave and young man. But what happened 16.with him? Why 17.isn't he defending his king? 18.At the time when I was still reasoning over my question he had already got to me and started to speak with me.
I thought I might just start tackling these one paragraph at a time.
1. ‘During’
2. ‘The capital’
3. ‘It was a guy’ would be the correct way of putting it, but perhaps think of replacing ‘guy’ with ‘man’.
4. You are missing the word ‘a’.
5. Missing comma
6. Missing comma OR you are missing the word ‘and’.
7. ‘That defended’
8. ‘The’ rather than ‘to’.
9. Put an ‘s’ on the end of that word and you will be fine.
10. ‘Blear’ is not the word I believe you wanted to use. ‘Bleary’ is.
11. The word ‘if’ needs to go in-between these two words.
12. This sentence suggests that you know what has happened to him, thus confusing matters. It also suggests that you know what he looked like before what he looked like now (if that makes sense...); that suggests that you have already realised who he is.
13. Rather than saying ‘No one else’ you could say ‘none other’.
14. First off the post, you are missing the word ‘the’ before this chunk of the sentence. The second is that this part is a bit of a mouthful. Perhaps make it a little easier to say by removing the word ‘previous’? That will also get rid of some other confusion that readers might face at this point.
15. This part of the sentence isn’t particularly necessary. If you want, remove it. If not then you will have to change it a little to ‘,who was a brave and young man.’
16. ‘To him’ not ‘with him’
17. You are speaking in the present tense when you should be speaking in the past tense. Turn the word ‘isn’t’ into ‘wasn’t’ to solve this.
18. You’re probably thinking that you got the whole sentence wrong because I bolded it all. Don’t worry though, I only bolded this part of the sentence to explain it better. You seem to be missing a few things here and there. The sentence would probably be better as ‘At that moment in time, when I was reasoning over my question, he had already got to me and started speaking with me.’
quote:
"...and so I started to come to you. At first 1.I searched you..."
"Wait...what2.??" said I, who 3.didn't had heard 4.his first part of speech.. I heard but very briefly5...
"6.From start I saw that you were strangely dreamy..."said Alteon,7. who was little bit blue because of pointlessly speaking to me, who had previously been in head-in-the-clouds state..."Anyway as I said before I came here because I quit from king Slugwrath's defending position. I started to dislike him because he started to act sadistically. He ordered beating of innocent people, whose only crime was not bowing to him, 8.when he passed crowed turning last ruler's birthday celebrations. He also lopped off arms and legs from9. neighboring king, who opposed him, when he wanted to occupy that country by 10.brutal force. I said that I didn't become a knight and guardian of king 11.for seeing brutal 12.people murders and sadistic tortures. He didn't say anything against it to me face-to-face, but I fear he plans to kill or even torture me for this deed. I wasn't the first one...Tom, who also left from guardian position, has strangely disappeared. No one has seen him 13.after quitting from his position. I fear the worst and I fear the same will happen to me too. So I ran off 14.from capital in hope to find more time to live as a free man with hands and legs strongly attached to my body15..... 16.At first I didn't know where to go, but then I remembered you, my good friend from the past. That's why I came to you... 17.At first I searched you in Moonridge, where you were last time, but there I heard that you had already left. But then I remembered that you talked about some old wooden shabby town with very few houses, that hardly 18.stay up 19.very against the strong northern shore winds. The town where you were born20.(?). The town was called Raven... Eaglereach or something like that...21.Anyway I found my way to here and here you are22...23.But why are you 24.on streets?25.? What happened with your parents' house?26.?..."
1. I searched you? That means that Alteon went up to the main character and looked through their belongings. I believe what you meant to say was ‘I searched for you’.
2. You are meant to have only one ‘?’ if you want to be grammatically correct.
3. ‘Didn’t had’ doesn’t make sense. ‘Hadn’t’ would make sense though.
4. A few words are missing and some are in the wrong order. A correct way to say it would be ‘the first part of his speech’ or something of the like.
5. An ellipse has 3 ‘dots’ in it. An example of an ellipse would be ‘...’
6. ‘From the start’ is the correct way of saying it.
7. As much as I dislike this sentence (because of the way you have put it) there is actually no grammatical mistakes. Perhaps think about changing it a little so it isn’t so...unusual.
8. You could please explain to me what you’re trying to say here? I don’t quite understand it...
9. Two things here that need help. First is that you need the word ‘the’ in front of the highlighted word. You have also spelt neighbouring wrong.
10. ‘Brute’ not ‘Brutal’.
11. The way to put this it ‘to see’.
12. This word is unnecessary.
13. ‘After quitting’ suggests that everyone also had his job, and haven’t seen him since they quit. A way to fix this is ‘since he quit’.
14. ‘From the capital’
15. Take away one of the ‘dots’ here.
16. You don’t need to capitalise this word as there is an ellipse in front of it not a full stop (.), exclamation mark (!) or question mark (?).
17. See 16. Same mistake.
18. ‘Stayed’ not ‘stay’.
19. Word order is wrong. It should be ‘against the very’.
20. This bit is completely unnecessary. You should remove it.
21. See 16. Same mistake.
22. See 5. Same mistake.
23. See 16. Same mistake.
24. ‘On the streets’.
25. Unnecessary question mark.
26. These marks are unnecessary.
quote:
"I left from 1.last town some time 2.ago"3...I started to answer to Alteon's questions4... "After I had reached back to my home town I heard that my parents died in 5.house burn, 6.what was caused by strange 7.Elementals 8.behavior, who usually don't come to settlements9... 10.So I decided to find another place11., where to spend my night. But when I wanted to stay 12.in inn, 13.then to my surprise14. 15.innkeeper said that all rooms 16.are taken17... 18.All rooms taken in this remote area to where hardly anyone would like to journey?19.? Strange... But I didn't 20.started to fight over21. shabby room in22. old fusty inn... 23.That's why I am spending the night on the streets. It isn't 24.so bad as you might think so... 25.If you want you can stay with me on the streets at night. We both can ask some question about 26.eachother, because we haven't seen each other in ages..."
1. Here it would be better to say the town name. So in your case it would be Moonridge.
2. Put a comma (,) at the end of this word.
3. An ellipse isn’t needed here.
4. See 3. Same mistake.
5. You can say this bit in a few ways. One thing you could call it is ‘a fire’.
6. While you hear this quite a lot when talking to people in Britain, it is actually incorrect. To say it correctly would be ‘that’ rather than ‘what’.
7. This word doesn’t need to be capitalised.
8. If you take away this word then this sentence makes more sense.
9. You need to put another ‘dot’ in the ellipse to make it a proper ellipse.
10. See 7. Any words next to an ellipse (...), comma (,), semi-colon (;) or colon (: )don’t need to be capitalised.
11. Unnecessary comma and word.
12. ‘In the inn’.
13. This word is unnecessary in this particular sentence.
14. Put a comma here.
15. ‘The innkeeper’. Not ‘Innkeeper’.
16. You have changed to the present tense here. The past version of the word is ‘were’.
17. See 9. Same mistake.
18. See 10. Same mistake.
19. Unnecessary question mark (?).
20. It would make the sentence a little better if you just removed these words. However if you don’t want to remove them,
put ‘start to’.
21. You are missing the word ‘a’ here.
22. You are missing the word ‘an’.
23. See 10. Same mistake.
24. ‘As’ not ‘so’.
25. See 10. Same mistake.
26. ‘Eachother’ isn’t a word. ‘Each other’ is the correct way of saying it. Also, you have an unnecessary comma.
quote:
"Good 1.Idea, I will probably stay with you then. When you can't even find a place to stay in your own hometown,2. then how am I as a stranger supposed to find one? 3..."
1. This word doesn’t need to be capitalised.
2. It is unnecessary to have this word. In fact, it would make more sense not to have it.
3. An unneeded ellipse here.
quote:
1.Friends, who hadn't seen each other in a long time2. talked all-night-long. Alteon spoke about his heroic deeds and harsh journey to me. I envied him because 3.for the bravery he showed on his interesting adventures. I spoke about not so interesting economy problems and about me having4. hard time to find clients for my merchandises. But at the same time, when we were distracted by our dialog, someone was lurking in Falconreach. 5.Someone sneaky and deadly. But we didn't know about it at the time. We only heard 6..time-to-time branches cracking and rustle from bushes near of us. We thought that it was only wind. But it wasn't. It was a farewell gift from our beloved king, Slugwrath7.....
1. You are missing the word ‘The’ in front of ‘friends’.
2. You are missing a comma.
3. ‘Of’ not ‘for’.
4. You are missing the word ‘A’.
5. This isn’t a whole sentence on its own. Perhaps consider linking this sentence and the sentence before with a comma (,)?
6. This bit is a little unnecessary. If you want to keep it, then it would be better to put ‘We only heard branches cracking and the rustle from bushes near us from time-to-time.
7. An unnecessary ‘dot’ here. Take one away to make a proper ellipse (...).
< Message edited by Varen6398 -- 2/14/2012 4:57:20 >
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