into-to my novel tell me what i need to fix and what punctiations to add - Writers Forum

dagger120 · 09-09-2007, 06:15 PM

"Drowning in the dark has a price,The things that are precious to you are slowly taken away both physically and mentally.The dark can change your view on life, making you think that chaos, anger,death,and torture are the answer to everything in life.It sloly begins to take control of your Heart and Mind, consuming your memories and causing psychological trauma.Casting aside your mind's and heart's freedom until you drown,drown in the dark.Its only going to cause a future of demise.Until eventually,you lose sight on who you really are to just lose all sanity, die, and drift away.

Lost in Some Story · 09-09-2007, 06:16 PM

What? A paragraph? Are you serious?

dagger120 · 09-09-2007, 06:18 PM

NO, no, no, its only the intro ive written way more than that.

Wiggin · 09-09-2007, 06:20 PM

Sometimes after a comma you have a space, sometimes you don't. Even if you don't know which is the right way to do it, the inconsistency should tell you that you're doing something wrong.

Read some books. It will help your writing.

Smiling Hobo · 09-09-2007, 06:21 PM

Post more...there's not much to say about this.

dagger120 · 09-09-2007, 06:33 PM

allright how about now and tell me what comes into your head mainly when the sentence of My name is Merrick begins i need to know your thoughts

"Drowning in the dark has a price,The things that are precious to you are slowly taken away both physically and mentally.The dark can change your view on life, making you think that chaos, anger,death,and torture are the answer to everything in life.It slowly begins to take control of your Heart and Mind, consuming your memories and causing psychological trauma.Casting aside your mind's and heart's freedom until you drown,drown in the dark.Its only going to cause a future of demise.Until eventually,you lose sight on who you really are and just lose all sanity and die or drift away.Its said those who willingly ope their hear and mind to the dark have gained unimagniable power but the death of someone in this state is unknown the events can be catastrophic.I need to know, i need the power, i crave the dark.I will cast aside fragments of my memories to recieve.My name is Merrick it seems to me i have no past or i just dont remember.

Lost in Some Story · 09-09-2007, 06:46 PM

Seriously, if you have it hidden away somewhere, post it. 1000 words of it at least. No one will ever take the critique seriously if they can't read it.

wrdsmth · 09-10-2007, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Seriously, if you have it hidden away somewhere, post it. 1000 words of it at least. No one will ever take the critique seriously if they can't read it.

Seriously, you have so many basic problems with this tiny excerpt I cringe at the thought of reading 1,000 words of it. You ask, what you "need to fix and what punctuations to add." Well, to start with, you need to learn basic sentence structure.

Your very first sentence has a comma followed by a capital "T" in "the". You begin sentences without benefit of a space after the preceding period and you have misspelled and incorrect words and sentences that, quite frankly, make no sense whatsoever. You begin words with capital letters in the middle of a sentence, fail to space after commas, and the paragraph rambles without seeming to go anywhere. Your opening sentence screams out a huge DUH! "Drowning... has a price." Well, duh. Thanks for sharing.

Were this intended to be profound, it failed. And the last line, about Merrick did as well. There is no internal punctuation to give the sentence meaning and, while a first-person personal pronoun "I" in lower case may be commonplace in txtg ur bf, it is not acceptable in professional writing. (And one may assume, since you are posting here, that is likely the goal of your creative writing endeavors.)

Quote:

"My name is Merrick it seems to me i have no past or i just dont remember."

There is a wonderful book on writing (and the vital importance of correct punctuation). The cover shows a drawing of a panda. The title?

"Eats Shoots and Leaves."

Now, the question we are left to answer here is, is this a commentary on the panda's dietary habits or its social practices?

What you need to do is proofread carefully before you post anything. How you post for critique from other writers reflects your approach to writing as a whole, i.e. how you approach professional submissions. If you are willing to post haphazard excerpts here, where hundreds of people may read and comment on them, it seems likely you will exercise the same lack of care in agent/publisher submissions. If you get in the habit of being more conscientious in your work overall, you will have fewer errors for others to find. This doesn't mean that anyone would expect your work to be perfect before posting here. But it does mean that you should take care to make it reasonably clean before posting. And, this is not the place to seek help in punctuation and spelling... that belongs in a classroom. If you ask people here to tell you how to punctuate and fix basic structure and spelling problems, then you are no writer.

Basic writing skills are, for a writer, much like the tools of any other trade. If a lumberjack has dull blades and climbers, and there is no gasoline for his chainsaw, he is not going to be able to do his job successfully. If a lawyer goes into court without studying the facts of his case, he will not be able to successfully argue why his client is innocent. If a writer does not have a solid knowledge of the basic skills of writing, he will never be able to write successfully in order to convince anyone else that he is serious. If, therefor, you believe you do have the makings of a good writer, then you need to get those basic tools in working order.

Hopeful_Author · 09-10-2007, 02:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WordWeaver

The kid is 13, give him a break. I think he should focus more on graduating middle school than worrying about submissions right now.

Want some honest, pure advice? Pay attention in English class. You will be fine.

I don't want to say that I never make mistakes but WordWeaver is right. There is some fundamentals that are really lacking in your writing. Keep writing though, just edit...ALOT.

dagger120 · 09-10-2007, 05:48 PM

i may be only 13 but im really smart in Language Arts.The problem is there not teaching what i need to know.They are teaching what i already know so its nothing and really i have to realize the main problem i have is i just don't know what punctiations to put during certain sentences i know about ? ! . ' yeah thats obvious but the other ones are the one i have problems with

sdavis2k · 09-10-2007, 08:09 PM

I commend you first off, atleast your writing, instead of playing video games or other such nonsense, so that is a good thing. Secondly go here:

sentence punctuation - Google Search

That is a link to the results you get when you Google "sentence punctuation", now not to be rude in the least, but people (especially me) do not want to read stuff that looks like it has not been spell/grammar checked at all. I personally feel it shows poor taste on the poster to think what they have "written" is so profound that simple things like grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation can be ignored.

Work on the different between a comma and a period. Period ends a sentence, comma usually indicates a pause in the sentence, to make it easier to read. Capitailize the first letter of the first word of a sentence, you have words in the middle of a sentence capitalized. Read the rules on spacing, as someone said before, sometimes you have a space after a comma or period sometimes you do not. You always need a space or else it makes whatever you write look cluttered and jumbled together. Personally if this is in the Intro, the thread title says Into, it does not make me want to read more.

Hope that helps.

dagger120 · 09-10-2007, 08:48 PM

thanks guys at least your not being really harsh on me.Though if you think i get the punctuations right then i can really start on my novel cause my ideas have just been building up in my mind.

sdavis2k · 09-10-2007, 09:21 PM

As someone who started scribbling stories in high school, I will say just stick with it. I recently ran across some horrible story I was working on in like 9th grade. Spelling errors, punctuation problems, weak plot, and ideas I thought were profound but really were just pompous on my part. I am a firm believer you will write lots of garbage, before you finally write something good. At that point I revisit some of the ideas I had on the garbage and see about re-working them into my new better story.

I have since re-worked the story, polished it up, and am now working on chapter 8, and it has almost 9000 words so far, and it just keeps going.

dagger120 · 09-10-2007, 09:31 PM

Thanks for all the help and i really think im getting the hang of this.Ok this is like a little summary very little i don't want it to be big let me start off easy. So im going to get my punctuations in order and understand them before i continue on my novel.Tell me what you think.

These friends together plan on to fight the dark,but their all taking on opponent that is always around them.The road ahead is deadly,and unforgiving.The hardships they will face:death,torture,physical and mental situations.This battle is not only physical,but psychological.Fragments of their own being,and memories can be oblirated or be cosumed by the darkness.

is it right?

dagger120 · 09-10-2007, 09:59 PM

These friends together plan on to fight the dark,but their all taking on opponent that is always around them.The road ahead is deadly,and unforgiving.The hardships they will face:death,torture,physical and mental situations.This battle is not only physical,but psychological.Fragments of their own being,and memories can be oblirated or be cosumed by the darkness.