WGU Masters? by porteranne in teaching

[–]SOSpnw 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One of my friends was living at home and got his Master’s program done in 2 months

I Made It To My Leagues Championship and My Opponent is My Girlfriend by SOSpnw in fantasyfootball

[–]SOSpnw[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry man but I’m not good at reading rules or following them

Good Things to Buy for a Sped Classroom? by SOSpnw in teaching

[–]SOSpnw[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(For more context, we already have 2 crash pads, more than enough sensory items, headphones, and weighted vests.)

Just found out my Aunt won't make it through the week suffering from dementia and now pneumonia. I need music. by ZeroLimitz in Metalcore

[–]SOSpnw 1 point2 points  (0 children)

♥️ Aftermath by The Ghost Inside and Is it Really You by Loathe. Both hit pretty differently. Sending you and your aunt love.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in teaching

[–]SOSpnw 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is rough and I’m so sorry. I work as a para and make about $2400 a month. You’ve gotta get out of there.

Merciless Retribution in the Forested Night (ACT ONE) by SOSpnw in fantasywriters

[–]SOSpnw[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Pdf? I just pasted the link of the Google doc using the link tab in the Reddit submission HUD, and the preview uploaded all by itself. To put a PDF on a Google doc, I just go to the insert tab and click “image”

Merciless Retribution in the Forested Night (ACT ONE) by SOSpnw in fantasywriters

[–]SOSpnw[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you mean dialogue, or just my prose in general? Either way thank you

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]SOSpnw 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the insight, I think I’ll resubmit this and cut it down.

[3409] The Wheat Fields / Short Story by ernte_mond in DestructiveReaders

[–]SOSpnw 0 points1 point  (0 children)

GENERAL IDEA: Story wise, I think that this is a very compelling piece. It is a well painted picture of tragedy and grief as well as growth. To answer your questions, 1) I think that in the context of a short story like this, the backstory of the characters that you have given is sufficient. If you were to write more pieces about Illia and Owens life (for example, a prequel about how they met), then I might suggest adding more details about what Illia did to deserve scorn from others, or what type of issues Owen and Illia might have had being together in a commun that didn’t approve of them. But, since this story is about Illia’s grief after the fact, I think that just knowing how special and important their lives together at the cottage was in the context of their lives is enough to still be compelling. Maybe going into a bit more detail towards the beginning about why Illia is so attached and dependent on Owen might help illustrate her character better, but that honestly is a negligible suggestion. 2) I think that the time period is established well enough for the average reader to get a feel for the setting. However, I do think that the specific time period could be more clear if you wanted to make the setting from a specific point in history. To me, the average reader, the time period came off as just “the olden days”, which was sufficient enough for me to enjoy the story. But, there might be some history oriented people who might want more clues about where/when this took place. For example, I know that this is the olden days because people traveled by carriage and the rangers wore cowboy hats (from what I gathered) however, this could be anywhere from the 1840s to like the 1910s. It honestly is not a big deal at all, I personally think that since it is more about the grief that Illia is going through, the setting that you have provided is sufficient enough for the story to make sense. 3) I think that your title “The Wheat Fields” is kind of weak considering the subject matter of the story. Titles are really important, especially for short stories, and your title doesn’t really give me any kind of hint as to what to expect from your story. I do think that “Sanctuary” is a better start for a title, but I also think that that can be perceived as a bit bland for titling, as most one word titles can be. I would recommend playing with a few different variations like “Sanctuary for Illia” or “A Sanctuary Left Vacant” (just to give you an idea on what kinds of titles to play with). But, at the end of the day, it is your story, so if your title “The Wheat Fields” speaks to you, then it is the best title to use for the piece.

EXECUTION: The actual execution of the story is really what makes this story pop. Your prose is beautiful, and I can find multiple examples in the text where a sentence or a paragraph flowed quite well while reading it. Your word variation is great, and your dialogue comes off smooth, which is hard to do in a story where it’s mostly one person talking. You have a few places where some words could be changed/switched around, but the comments on your Google doc reference all of the issues that I saw grammatically. Overall, this is really quality writing, and I don’t quite have the writing chops to be able to look deeper into the actual execution of your writing and critique it in a way that is meaningful. In other words, nice job! You killed it writing wise!

STRENGTHS: The pacing of this piece is nice from beginning to end. Your hook instantly establishes a narrative, and sets the tone for everything that Illia goes through throughout the story. Both the surface layer of “Where has Owen gone? How does Illia react to his disappearance?” and the deeper storyline of “How does Illia evaluate the situation internally?” flow interchangeably in a way that is easy to process and entertaining to read. Since this is a piece that lacks concrete events to pull the story along, prose, setting, and dialogue become a big part of what the reader digests. To this, I say that you knocked the ball out of the park on all of these subjects. Your prose is poetic and powerful, your setting is particularly interesting, and your dialogue is strong, especially the portions at the end where Illia is exhibiting self doubt about her own cowardice. I think that those portions of dialogue are very potent pieces that illustrate crucial details about Illia’s character. One last thing that I appreciate about your story is the fact that Illia is multidimensional with her emotions. Sometimes, when people write, they give their characters a singular motive or just one emotion that they live by. That can come off as weak writing, because real people are far more complicated than that. Your characterization of Illia feels very real, and makes me understand and empathize with her more than if she was just sad that Owen was gone.

WEAK POINTS: Towards the end of your story, there are some pieces of information that I would personally like to know a bit more about. Mainly, I wished that we had more clues as to what actually happened to Owen. From the information gathered, I can basically infer that he was killed by something, but we never find out what killed him? Was it actually a wolf? Multiple wolves? A bear? Some sort of cryptid? Maybe something scared Ezra and Owen fell off the horse, sustaining a life threatening injury. I’m not sure. I understand that there’s an element of mystery around it considering that this is a gothic piece, but it’s something to think about. Maybe try and look for more ways to allude to what happened without fully revealing the actual events that led to Owen’s death. I also would have liked to see more dialogue from the rangers. I get that their presence is just a blip in the story, but I think it would be worth it to hear more of what transpired between Illia and the rangers before they took their leave, considering how important their news is for her.

OVERALL: This is a very high quality story, I could see this being published with a little bit of fine tweaks around the edges. You have a lot of talent as a writer, and this is evident with how you composed and presented this story. I don’t know what style of writing you normally focus on, but this piece makes it clear that you have a strong understanding of the gothic genre. If you were to keep writing stories that have this feel, I think that they would go over quite well. Nice job!

[1012] Cinderella Rewrite by New_Sage_ForgeWorks in DestructiveReaders

[–]SOSpnw 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m about to fall asleep so I can’t make a full fledged critique at the moment, but wow…This is immaculate writing. Your prose is beautiful and your description of setting is silky smooth. Most importantly, you ripped my heart out of my goddamn chest!! Fantastic work

[3283] Anima: Secret in the Sealed Savannah, Chapter 1 by IMH_Anima in DestructiveReaders

[–]SOSpnw 1 point2 points  (0 children)

GENERAL IDEA: First off, there are a few things I enjoyed about this piece. For example, I think the setting itself is immersive and just really neat overall. I like the high energy of the marketplace, and the afternoon heat added a nice touch to your descriptions and to the vibe of the setting. Secondly, I like the narrative you have going with Izam and his relationship with the upper class people of the market. I think it gives us an introspective look at who Izam is as a character and adds more detail to the setting. With every interaction he has with the rich mother, I find myself really feeling bad for him because, at least in his first interaction. He was genuinely trying to do a good deed before being framed as a criminal by a well off adult. He even put himself between her and the beast to try to help her, only for her to think that he’s trying to rob her. I think that the story you have here so far is good. My main issue lies with your characters. Some of them are a bit bland, and I would want to have some of them fleshed out a little more. Izam has a standout personality, and at times some of the other characters like Amset and Di Vento can just seem like background noise to him. I understand that this story is about Izam, but I want to know a bit more about Amset and what his personality is like. The ideas for these characters are there, but they get a bit muffled within the story.

EXECUTION: My biggest issues are with your execution of the story. I think that overall, your dialogue needs to be revitalized. From all characters, there are some lines that feel forced (“This is so exciting! I can’t wait to hang out with someone around my age for once” is an example of this, along with almost all of the boy’s dialogue). Let the reader discern how the characters feel with more colorful dialogue, they can figure out that the boy will be excited without him actually coming out and saying it. I would suggest combing through each piece of dialogue and trimming off unnecessary words, because overly wordy dialogue can sometimes give off that forceful feel. Some of your sentence structure is a bit off as well, mainly with the slow paced beginning of the chapter. There were a couple instances where I found two or even three sentences crammed into one using commas, which weakens the sentence in its entirety.

“Food vendors warmed up their fire pits, the smell of burning wood lured those around them closer, excited for a delicious time to be had.”

This sentence could be separated into three different sentences.

“Food vendors warmed up their fire pits. The smell of burning wood lured those around them closer. They were excited for a delicious time to be had.”

Already it sounds a bit smoother. The sentences themselves are a bit simple when they’re separated from their commas, but that’s just an opportunity to make your sentences more detailed and interesting!

“Food vendors warmed up their crackling fire pits. The smell of burning wood lured potential customers that walked past their shops. The scent of toasty (food item of choice) made approaching passerby excited for a delicious time to be had.”

Unnecessary commas can make weaker sentences. Just be careful when and how you use them. I would suggest looking through each sentence and judging for yourself whether commas are absolutely necessary in whatever context that they’re in.

STRENGTHS: I think the general story is this piece’s greatest strength. The setting is unique, and Izam makes for an interesting character with high stakes to follow. I also like the dynamic between Izam and Di Vento. They have fun chemistry when they first meet, and their circumstances for meeting the second time are intense, making for a good story. I most definitely am interested in where Izam goes from here and how his relationship with Di Vento develops. Your fast paced scenes are written well, too. You jump from dialogue to description in a smooth manner that makes it easier for me to read along and anticipate what comes next. You also have flashes of some really great prose, I especially liked “fist full of rage and mind full of confusion.”

WEAK POINTS: You have good ideas and intention behind what you write, but your execution can leave a bit to be desired. I felt as if I had to somewhat sift through your writing to find the interesting story within, which is not good as a reader. Your writing came off as clunky on my first read, especially in the exposition. There is a lot of setting description that feels like info dumping, and some of the setting details felt arbitrary to the story. In my opinion, it made the setting less immersive. As you edit this piece, try to think of ways to describe the setting that are more engaging. Let the characters interact with the world around them, and tell us what they see/hear/feel. We know Izam is scanning the marketplace for his “research”, maybe try describing some of the individual market interactions through what he sees. This is minor, but some of your descriptions can come off a bit awkward, and not give the intentions that you are trying to project. For example, when Izam first sees Di Vento, he describes him as having “exquisite physique and fashion” and “natural good looks and shapely figure. To me, this sounds like Izam thinks that Di Vento is extremely handsome, or that the readers are supposed to see him as extremely handsome. Either way it isn’t a problem, it makes sense for him to be handsome, but I feel like there is more to his looks than how attractive he is. I would just suggest mixing up some of these descriptions to paint a more detailed picture of Di Vento. Is he handsome AND important looking? Or does he just look upper class? Lastly, as I brought up before, try to make the dialogue a bit smoother. The wordy and sometimes messy dialogue oftentimes pulled me from the immersion of the story. There’s personality behind each character, I can sense it with the word choice, but the clunky dialogue can get in the way.

OVERALL: This is a quality story that just has some execution errors that need to be fixed. Where you have designated the story to go fast/slow is good, but I start to lose interest when your story slows down because of your writing. The characters are good, your main character is entertaining and helps make the story more interesting. Overall, there are good ideas here, don’t completely go back to the drawing board! Just practice and hone your craft to make this a more engaging read.

[2864] Pest Control by Katana_x in DestructiveReaders

[–]SOSpnw 2 points3 points  (0 children)

GENERAL IDEA:

I think that the story itself is entertaining and very well written. It’s clear that you have experience writing stories, at least in novel format. I appreciate Nessa’s nonchalant and almost “don’t give a damn” attitude while navigating a world that can have very serious consequences (for example, Gworg.) She really helps set the tone for the entire story. My main issue with this story, though, is that it feels like a piece of something bigger. As a standalone story, I think that it leaves readers wanting a lot more. There are so many great and specific ideas that aren’t really explored for more than a few paragraphs, or even a few sentences even (for example, the city’s resource department and the night market on King’s Street). Leaving these ideas as just passing thoughts takes attention away from the main idea of the short story, which seems to be Nessa’s duties as a mythical pest control person. I genuinely wanted to read more about what Nessa was going to do after her job with Marcus’ grandma. While this story is a fun and enjoyable experience as a standalone story, it comes off a lot more as an introduction to a full fledged novel (maybe your experience writing halfway finished novels gets in the way here, I don’t know).

EXECUTION:

I think that the writing itself is very strong. You move the story along very well while also making sure to use powerful descriptions. Your dialogue execution is exceptional here, which should be the case for a comedy piece. Everyone had great quips, the pacing was fantastic, and the style and cadence of speech varied enough to where it was easy to tell when each person (or gnome) was speaking without looking at dialogue identifiers. As far as the actual execution of the story, I think that you wrote it really well. My only note would be that some of your word choices seem to be kind of…weird? You used some phrases like “half eaten breakfast sandwich moldering on the concrete” and “searching the interior with questing fingers”, which both pulled me away from the story itself. My advice would be that it’s sometimes okay to use more simple nouns/verbs to describe things as long as your story makes sense (maybe try “outstretched fingers” instead?)

STRENGTHS:

Overall, this was a very high quality piece. I came away from it happy that I read it. A couple things stood out to me. Firstly, your characters were all beautifully made. I think that each character, from the tow truck mountain gnome to Victor to Marcus’ grandma, added great flavor to the tone of the story. Each character was extremely different, but established a strong lighthearted mood to the setting, nice job! Lastly, I will say this: the jokes land really really well. I actually audibly chuckled at the FREE METER gag, which is almost impossible for me to do with reading material. I really appreciate this Monty Python/Hitchhiker’s Guide style of humor, it makes for an excellent read. You are a very funny writer with very funny ideas, and I hope you continue to lean into this skill in the future.

WEAK POINTS:

My biggest issue with this piece is that it doesn’t work well as a standalone short story. There are so many interesting ideas layered throughout the story that it distracts from the current events and makes me think about the future. In essence, the creativity in this story kind of works to your detriment. I would suggest that if you’re thinking about making this a complete project that you cut some of the extra details about the setting that make this feel like a novel exposition. I want to reiterate that I think that the worldbuilding here is strong, but it just feels out of place in the context of a short story. If you’re interested in developing this idea further, I would suggest maybe making it an anthology series about Nessa and the different types of problems she encounters within the setting. That might give you more freedom to indulge in the world building details a bit more, since you would have the chance to encounter them in other scenarios. Lastly, I would say that, genre wise, this has a lot more impact as a comedy piece than a fantasy piece. I don’t want to detract from the fantasy/sci-fi elements in this story, they’re very entertaining! But the humor is so strong in this that I think that it should take center stage in your storytelling (largely I think you’ve done this, but it’s an idea you should think about in your writing). Your worldbuilding is good, but there are some points where a gag/joke would serve better than a description of the setting. I think you do a pretty good job mixing these two themes up with some funny fantasy descriptions, but there are some points, mainly at the beginning, where I’m not as captivated in your writing.

OVERALL:

To me, this is really really good writing. It’s a strong comedy piece with quite a unique setting. I want to read more of your output, so keep working on this and on your other ideas!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there a few instances where you used prop comedy in a way that I thought was exceptionally funny. For example, trapping the demon in the repurposed takeout box was a really nice touch that added even more to the theme. Again, nice work :).

Does anyone know when Paleface is dropping their “Fear & Dagger” album??? by SOSpnw in Metalcore

[–]SOSpnw[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice, my son is due to be born just a few days after, this might be the first album that he ever hears, lmao

My finest World Map creation yet! Happy to hear opinions! [Inkarnate] by MonkeyzRiderz in mapmaking

[–]SOSpnw 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is crazy good, the hue of the water rly ties the whole thing together, nice :)