Coop's reviews
Garage of Horrors #1 - Haloween - tyler2513
Disqualified for not reaching the word limit.
26 hours into the competition and one can't help but feel that this was rushed. With six weeks to spend getting the writing correct, you need to give this piece much more love, care and attention.
The way that the writing progresses with a string of hard fact, almost like a police captain giving one of the detectives a file and listing the points of the case, as photos and more files are dumped systematically on the desk. That would have been a nice narrative point, but from the first person perspective and with this writing style being the whole of the piece, it does feel let down.
A good use of sound to build a picture was a nice touch, but sadly, the writing let you down on this occasion. More time, more attention to detail and frankly, more practice will help you a lot.
The Assassin - Manuel TacoFace (Legodude2000)
Disjointed and ugly from the outset - you put in stage directions with the *ring* *ring* of the telephone. That doesn't need to be there and it's a poor excuse for filler material, especially when you passed the 1,000 word limit by so much.
In the early going, you've made it third person, then suddenly pulled the narrator into the fore of the tale, by making him the main character. A lot of work is required, after you've made the decision on first or third person narrative. First is more difficult, from my point of view, as you can be more descriptive in third, not having to use the character's own 'voice' to tell the tale.
There is a distinct lack of punctuation and capitalisation: ''Hey Jack, its me'' i heard from my phone, it was my companion Draster. Draster is really weird, is one perfect example, corrected below:
"Hey Jack, it's me", I heard from the phone - it was my companion, [first name] Draster. He's really weird, Contraction of it is [it's]; comma use; capital I used to indicate the self; please identify the character properly in the first instance, then shorten it to Draster, but since you've identified him, in the first sentence, a simple he will suffice following on.
You've got errors with formatting - take your time when posting to the BBS, as it looks ugly. I would certainly suggest that you take the time to download OpenOffice, or some sort of Word Processing program, as spelling errors dominate the piece, which scan reading can't even begin to comprehend.
All in all, this was never really in contention, which may sound harsh, but allow me to be positive for a moment - you have here a skeleton of a story that with careful editing and a lot more time taken can be expanded into something more fulfilling. You had the story prepared in this first draft form by 2 days into the contest - I would expect for someone that is going to pick up the plaudits for this, that they can develop it more, rather than submitting a work in progress. 6 weeks were available, please use them.
2/10, for effort
Untitled - cactus011
A dark and somewhat mysterious tale, which does have a few issues. Overall this is a decent read. Sometimes, the pace gets a little disjointed, as it goes quite quick through parts of the narrative and then it slows down, but I appreciate that finding a balance can be difficult.
The submission does look like a wall of text on the forum, so consider for future submissions having double spaces between paragraphs. This breaks up the text and gives you a much better looking piece, which can get people to stick around and read it from start to finish. The writing is genuinely good enough to do this, with a few tweaks here and there.
I think that sticking solely to first person let you down here - I personally would have made a stab for the 3rd person to narrate and 1st person for when the main character recounts what is going on. This would certainly help with the terminology that you chose - you're unlikely to get people using that sort of language in everyday conversations with police.
Naming the secondary characters can help with flow - you don't have to refer to them as "the first cop" and "the second cop" all the time and that really helps, as it gives people attachment to the piece, as they can develop an affinity for the characters, as difficult as that may seem in 1,000 - 5,000 words. Oh, and while you're at it, put a title in there, there's a good chap.
6/10
The Razors - Loushan McCrea (biglou2128)
While I'm not entirely sure that you've interpreted the story just as how I'd seen it, you've done a very good job in pursuing a suspenseful narrative. One slightly deranged old man, that drugs, rapes and murders his victims, "curing" them of their fear. I love the way that his house is constructed and the scene is set, but the one young girl that resists the fear before being administered by the cure could well have sent the old man over the edge.
If there was something that I didn't agree with in the story, it was that the old man was being evil, at least a little, by killing or entrapping youngsters. His delusion made him believe that he was right in doing this, which missed my point for the topic. What never happened was someone stopping him. Perhaps he is going to stop because of seeing this girl, but we cannot see evidence of his cessation, which was a shame, considering that there was much more space for expansion here.
7/10
The Darkness Within - RMJMYBURGH
Probably the shortest piece that we have ever received with less than 1,000 words, at 1,006, this piece, but there was the beginning of a chilling take there. Cut off in the prime, you could have expanded upon this and made it much more.
There are simple spelling and grammatical errors within the piece which must be picked out. "Too" needs to be used, instead of "to", for example and be wary of accidentally typing "out" in place of "our", since the T and R are placed adjacent to one another.
Expansion of the piece could happen if the paragraphs were fragmented a little more. Granted, the monologue of the dark spirit flowed well, except for the "A loud evil laugh filled the space." Term put in there to break it up. You can continue the monologue in a new paragraph and can progress from there. I feel that putting in your narration there just served to derail it a little.
More work on the simple side of things, combined with extending the tale a little longer, giving life to the characters would help, so working on those would seem to be a boon for you. Not there yet, but someone to watch for the future.
6/10
Untitled - wolfgirl30007
Disqualified for not reaching the word limit.
Short, and sad, this piece is a great lead into something else, so I would certainly consider doing more for it, rather than just leaving it at this stage. The obvious next scene is when she either comes around in hospital, or with her boyfriend maintaining a vigil at her bedside, reminding her of why he loves her (If you're up for that sort of scene)
I'd say that you certainly don't need to give up on this - while it was never destined to win the contest here, it is certainly worth looking further at and seeing if you can make another stab at expanding on this tale.
