In the Background - Comments

  • I'm liking this so far and you did listen to my advice. Still some errors but much less noticeable and some of those can be corrected if you just use microsoft word and use their spellcheck. However, they're not really a distraction, which is a good things.You never want your errors to impede the reader. My next piece of advice to you is to try to make your sentences flow a little bit better. Read them out loud and see if they sound choppy. Mix up the sentence structure a bit. You almost seem afraid most of the time to do anything other than the noun + verb formula for a sentence. Also, try to add a little more detail to your story.

    I laughed as Kim hid behind me still nibbling at her cookie looking up at Suzy. "This is my litlle sister Kimberly." I introduced her.

    With just some editing, you can make it have a little bit more detail and emotion behind it, like such:

    I laughed as Kim hid behind me, still nibbling at her cookie while looking up at Suzy, her eyes wide. Smiling, I gently smoothed her hair and squeezed her shoulder before introducing her, "This is my little sister Kimberly."
    May 13th, 2011 at 04:03am
  • I'm liking it so far, but I have a few grammatical and structural comments.

    1.) Put space after punctuation. You seem to write like, 'She walked to the bus.He followed her.' when you should be putting it like, 'She walked to the bus. He followed her.'

    2.) your/you're

    Your: Possessive. "Are those YOUR shoes?" "Yes, these are MY shoes."
    You're: Contraction of 'you are'. "You're going to the movies, right?" is the same thing as "You are going to the movies, right?"

    The easiest way to tell the difference between these two is just to read it out loud and replace the word with 'you are'. If it makes zero sense (exe. Are these you are shoes?) then you know to use 'your', but if it makes sense, use you're.

    3.) They're/their/there
    They're: Contraction. They are. "They're weird." is the same as "They are weird."
    Their: Possessive. "Why do some guys wear their pants so low?"
    There: Location. "We went over there to study."

    Easiest way to do this one is to start out with the same way you did you're and your. Replace the word with 'they are' and if it makes sense use it, if it doesn't, you've eliminated one form. Then look at it and decide if you could make the sentence about yourself and use 'my' and if it makes like, absolutely no sense (exe. "Go over my.") then you know that it's that you should use 'there'.

    Or, if all else fails, have someone check your writing for you.

    4.) Small thing, but 'I', unless it's inside a word (exe. like smile or frying), is always capitalized. "I am small." "I'm sorry." You seem to, whether accidentally or not, forget to capitalize it when you put it with as 'I'm'.

    I hope that helped and I'm looking forward to your next update.
    May 7th, 2011 at 12:57am