Okay, so here goes. Bear in mind that this will be very sketchy, since I'm doing this
between classes and don't have time for an in-depth review.

First off. A minor thing, but one of the most important: Line wrapping. If you don't
wrap the lines to <80 columns, it will affect people's opinions of it. It becomes a
hassle to read, and that's not good. There are a number of ways to fix this... if you
need help, email me and I'll go over it in detail.

Second. POV. The first segment was third-person. The second was first. I'd really
rather it return to the original viewpoint. It's a tricky situation, but the original
intent of the starter was third-person, so I'd stick with that.

Third. Tense agreement. You switch from past tense to present and back almost casually,
which muddies the narrative flow. Find one and be careful to stick with it.

Fourth. Punctuation. Ellipses are three dots, unseparated by spaces. "...", Not ". .
.". Also, you misuse dashes and semicolons. Like I tell everyone, semicolons are tricky
to use well, and there are usually better off not using them until you're much more
comfortable with writing. Here, in the third paragraph, you use it to separate a
sentence and a fragment, when they should only be used between two related sentences.
In this case a colon would have been best.
Another thing to remember is that in first person, you should probably trying to avoid
semi-colons. Very few people actually speak with them (especially in this genre).

Fifth. Articles. As in, where are they? I understand the attempt to create a certain
feel with the text, but roughening the narrative and writing rough prose are two
different things.

sugg: "Okay, the upper story has five rooms and a central bath, the ground floor has
four."

instead of: "OK, the upper story has 5 rooms and central bath, ground floor has four
room"

Also notice, spelling out certain words is important. "Okay" and "five". The general
rule of thumb is to write out any numbers less than one thousand, unless it's being
used with symbols (like $4.25).

Plotwise, it was fairly good... setting up the next scene, fleshing out the transition.
Jarhead seems to be the kind of person Drake would know, and could be useful in the
future.

Hm. Looking back, I probably came across as very negative. I didn't intend to be...
this was a good attempt, with a few problems that could easily be fixed.

ravi


duvvuri@uiuc.edu
M.E.T.A. 1, Scene 3 Review
http://www.chaoseed.com/btr/meta/
3/30/00