Your story telling and writing is fine - I'm impressed that you do so well as a non-native English speaker. If you were to make any single improvement, work on paragraph structure as noted in the example.
Story Review: "The Reality Show"
Vopeviji's "The Reality Show" is a short story with a neat concept. The setup is delighfully silly and I liked the fact that the popping wasn't gory or even permanent. I'm a big fan of helium and floating, so I enjoyed his treatment of it.
Some constructive criticism:
- The interaction between the brother an sister in the prologue is a litte extraneous - it didn't add anything to the story.
- For being a non-native English speaker, he's done a good job with syntax and is improving with every story. There are some odd usages of words, but nothing major. The "wall of text" makes it difficult to read, though. When each character speaks, their line of dialogue should begin at a new paragraph. Airtankgirl5 humorously demonstrated that in this post: http://bodyinflation.org/node/26248#comment-23305
- The final inflating could stand to be drawn out a little longer.
- The end was a little bit too much deus ex machina. One way to help this would be to play on the emotions of the remaining house guests by demonstrating that they thought the "popped" woman's fate was much worse and that they realize that they're next - it would help make it a better cliffhanger.
Overall, a very good effort - I hope he keeps writing.
Thu, 09/20/2012 - 19:20
#3
SvenS
Thanks a lot sven! I really appriciate your effort to help!
Unfortunally.. I have never been very good at the writing part. I believe I'm excelent at coming up with new ideas, but it usually ends with that. This first outcast was just suposed to be a little test, to see if people were interestested in the consept and I will keep writing more "episodes" of the show.
Because I'm not a native english speaker, I often have a hard time to find words to describe inflation scenes. But again, I'll try to figure something out when I get time to write the second episode.
For the ending with popping. My self I'm not a really big fan of thinking of death or the consquenses of popping. Originally the plan was to let theire fate be much worse than being teleported out of the house, but my current mood made that unfortunate change.
So far I've planned to put the next one up at the end of next week, but excpect some delay, as this doesn't have first priority.
Anyway! I'm always glad to get feedback, so I can improve further and beyond! again, Thank you! :)