Comments on: A Fresh Start

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:12:14 +0000

Yum, your rewrite contains the following:
“At home, the thermostat was always set to a warm, comfortable temperature during the night; but my dorm room only had a heater underneath the window, but that thing was long out of commission.”

Here you have incorrectly used a semicolon and used “but” twice in a row which is actually much more irritating to read than the heavy over-phrasing in the original.

By: Yum22Yum23

Yum22Yum23 — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:12:18 +0000

As long as you enjoy what you do, I don’t see a problem.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:31:31 +0000

Actually, I agree with you. One of the things I was going for with that beginning part was to sort of make the reader feel a little disoriented like the character. That’s kind of the problem with me, I’m not much of a story writer, I much prefer to write articles. I always seem to take a more visual approach when it comes to my creative writing, but I know that sometimes that approach can create problems. I guess I should just be a director then. lol.

By: Yum22Yum23

Yum22Yum23 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:41:38 +0000

last part of the 1st paragraph, remove the 2 but s and switch them with respectively nothing and “and/unfortunately”

By: Yum22Yum23

Yum22Yum23 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:39:57 +0000

I won’t hide it, I find the beginning of the story extremely tedious, with quite heavy overphrasing, I took the liberty to change a few things to it thus:
I woke up today at around seven in the morning to the rude and incessant buzzing sound of my cell phone. I had had a late night and felt a bit groggy. At home, the thermostat was always set to a warm, comfortable temperature during the night; but my dorm room only had a heater underneath the window, but that thing was long out of commission.
“Dude, turn that alarm off.” My roommate John mumbled as he buried his pudgy face into his pillow. He had a very definite look of someone who spent the whole night drinking. His hair was damp and I noticed sweat spots on his dark blue shirt. I fumbled around for the small device and knocked it off the dresser. The phone fell to the ground amidst a pile of my clothes. I cursed under my breath for a moment and grabbed it off the ground. I switched the alarm off and the room became peaceful again. A weak light filtered through the curtains. It was very cold and my covers had slipped off my body during the night. I was freezing cold. I set my feet on the hard tile floor and a shiver ran throughout my body. I put on a pair of socks and decided to sit there for a moment. I ran my hand over my face as a feeble attempt to awaken myself. My body was unresponsive and I felt like collapsing back into my comfortable bed.

this is of course just an idea, I’m nowhere near close of being a writer, even less a good one, but sometimes a tedious beginning makes it impossible to finish a story.