Strom Pack Discussion

[Dalek Fur]

This is the place to discuss my stroy Strom Pack. If you see soemthing that is wrong, tell me and I will try to fix it.

[W0NWILL]

You'll need to refine your highlander accent, be sure not to put too many good vermin, other than that, I'll keep an eye on it. Oh, and welcome to the forum.

[Dalek Fur]

Well, it'll be just those two and I'll make sure to refine that highlander accent.

[Skyblade]

Very nice. Keep it up!

[cairn destop]

This needs a bit of working.  First off, the opening comes across as a book report.  You want to jump right into the story.  Your best option would be starting with Arrow in the woods just prior to the fight.  Notice how you duplicated some of the information in the opening with the dialogue.  

If the opening report is purged, you can expand the initial meeting between the two characters.  This allows you to insert some, not all, of the information revealed in the telling segment.  

Second, try to keep your chapters over the thousand word mark.  Too short and you don't have the time to develop the characters or the setting.

The story itself is starting out fine. 






1 --- Arrow Fastshaft ... target. -- First and foremost, this is all telling.  The current thought is that you want to show, not tell, a story.  

2 --- practice shooting, he could -- semicolon, not comma

3 --- Far south ... time. -- I know what you are saying, but it needs work on the wording.

4 --- Where ever -- compound word "Wherever"

5 --- over night -- compound word "overnight"

6 --- first woke up in the mornings. -- verbose. also the word "up" is a redundancy and "mornings" is assumed.  Consider "first awoke"

7 --- the first sight is always terrified of him, -- awkward.  Think this needs editing.  Consider "their first impression terrified them,"

8 --- "Mah ... lawst!" -- Eliminate those exclamation points.  Too many reduces them to a fancy period; they lose their impact.  Since you have provided a lead-in line saying he is shouting, there is no need for them.

9 --- "Truce!" Arrow yelled, slinging -- Several things here.  1 -- dialogue is a paragraph.  2 -- the words "Arrow yelled" becomes a dialogue tag.  Proper way -- "Truce," Arrow yelled.  3 -- the rest is the start of the next paragraph.  (note that the proper punctuation if a tag is used is a comma, not the exclamation point.)  You can also use just the one-word, "Truce."  However, the dialogue tag must be removed via rewording.  LIke before, lose those exclamation points.

10 --- Both ferret ... in. -- two things.  1 -- fragmented sentence.  2 -- ending in a preposition.  (it can cause readers to combine this sentence with the next, which sometimes creates conflicts.)

[Dalek Fur]

Well, I'll try to make it better. I am horrible at writing stories

[cairn destop]

I'll tell you a big secret regarding longer stories.  An outline can be the difference between a mish-mash of words and a coherent storyline.  Also, forget everything your teachers have taught you about outlines.  They are wrong.  An outline is a flexable road map, not the hard a rigid structure the schools teach.  The idea is to get a general idea of Point A (the start) and Point Z (the destination).  Once you know that, you fill in the details and hunt down the holes. 

Writing a good story is hard work.  For some, it comes natural, which makes it fun.  The rest of us, it's a labor of love.  Emphasis on the labor.