“Oh yeah sure, you new here?” The girl asks slamming her locker. “Yeah, unfortunately, I’m Jen Allgood” Jen said following her down the hall. “Oh Hendrix High hasn’t made that bad of an impression has it?” The girl asks jokingly. “Because TRUST me I no that some of the people here can have attitudes.” She says as they take a turn and Jen sees an office marked Chorus. “Well, I’m Aubrey by the way. You seem cool if you need a friend talk to me.” Then Jen says bye wondering what Aubrey meant by the comment she made. “Um, hello, Mr. Breckenridge? You asked me to come by Jennifer Allgood.” Jen said opening the door and walking in to a huge room with flights of bleachers to sing on. Half way threw her meeting Mr. Breck that is what he is called; apparently, they have done scales, put chorus into one of her electives, and now are figuring out what she is going to do about the contest. “You see, every student is required to compete in this competition and well I think you stand a really good chance of winning. The first place winner gets a chance for a cd contract. The other students have had much longer to practice and it is only 2 weekends away, but I think if you bring in a piece you know and like I could help you tune it up. So, what do you say? Give it a chance?”
1. You switch tenses and voices at points in the writing. This really detracts from the story.
2. Paragraphs are your friends.
3. God, even if one is a nonbeliever, is spelled with a capital 'g'.
4. You frequently tell instead of show.
5. Mistaking homonyms is one of the worst, most humiliating things one can do--check the difference between there/their/they're, your/you're, to/two/too, etc.
6. You cram a lot of unnecessary detail into sentences, particularly those in which you are describing the physical appearance of another.
7. You often state intent of a speaker after the dialogue when the dialogue alone would suffice.
8. Mechanical errors.
9. Instead of adding tag lines to everyone sentence of dialogue, you can make whom is speaking clear and have the speaker perform an action.
10. I am assuming that you are writing this "on the fly". There's nothing wrong with that, but I'd suggest that you print off a copy and see if there are things you have written that could be revised to be more concise and, well, better.
I'd like to see what this piece would look like if it was cleaned up--why don't you type it all in Microsoft Word and post the compiled, fixed-up story into one post?
If you want, I can give you examples of all this stuff. I don't mean to be rude, but it's bad when one sees a story such as this that has such glaring errors--no offense, my writing does the same thing at times--and just say, "Good job! This is great!" when you could be giving suggestions to remedy these flaws. And, as a writer, it is your responsibility to put our suggestions into action to improve your writing. Otherwise, all you are looking for is a bunch of yes-men to stroke your ego.
__________________ Ask me about my "obvious and unpleasant agenda of hatred."
Your point being? She may not be a "nobel prized author", but that is no excuse for horrendous grammar. Everything I said is all within the grasp of the neophyte writer--I am also in high school. If one will not put effort into improving one's writing, then one should not blemish the literary world with one's writing. It is similar to the way rappers have shamed actual music with their pathetic attempts at music--rhyming words forced into lyrical format set to music is NOT a genre of music...but I shall stop before ranting.
__________________ Ask me about my "obvious and unpleasant agenda of hatred."
To the original poster: Do you always express "attractive" as blue eyes and clear skin (oh, right, like an Abercrombie model)? And seriously, why do you keep switching from third person (she says) to first person (I say)?
Errors:
- Her dad SCREAMED (past tense) at her than she ROLLS (present tense) out of bed.
- She ROLLS (not roles) out of bed
- MY (should be Her) naturally calm, nonfrizzy...
OMG, I have to stop, otherwise I'll be here forever. You switch between third person and first person 5 times in the first post, even within the same sentence. This is how they teach you to write in high school? Wait until you get to junior year, darling, have a good time eliminating all be verbs out of your AP paper.
KMC Community Forums
Apr 12th, 2005 12:03 AM
