Andy (Formerly Apemann)

There is a certain pleasing quality about your story-telling prowess, which is quasi-Victorian in style. Unfortunately your erratic punctuation and mind-boggling looseness with the principal character's name undermines much of what you are trying to achieve. Coupled with the rather overwhelming length of the opening couple of paragraphs of your story and your reader is left with a scary challenge to continue with your story. Personally, after the first couple of paragraphs I lost interest somewhat.

You need to introduce your main character by his FULL name from the off. It is disconcerting as a reader to initially meet "Mister Gray" and a few sentences later be confronted with "Peter Gray". This is clumsy writing and needs to be redressed.

Some of your punctuation is baffling. Inserting colons, semi-colons and commas in what appears to be random places throws-out the flow of the piece, making it much harder as a reader to really engage with the story of the characters. The somewhat 'stop-start' feel of your writing is uncomfortable to read in places. If you read your own work out loud you will gain a greater insight into how it actually reads. It's a useful technique to employ when trying to learn whether what you've written actually makes sense.

Edit you story into shorter paragraphs. Shorter 'bite-size' paragraphs are more easily digested and absorbed than long rambling ones. In addition any dialogue should preferably be written separately to the body of the paragraph.

You have talent, that much is clear. You also have some bad habits that with advice and guidance you can easily overcome. Keep writing!

I do wish you would CHECK your work before submitting it! There are numerous spelling mistakes in this piece, which are unforgivable as it is unnecessary. You spoil your work through your laziness. Make the effort to use the spell-check facility on your computer!

On the whole you write well and entertain. You are often better than the work you submit. This piece is not your finest hour, neither is it your worst.

A very thoughtful few lines. Well done :-)

Some large philosophical questions :-) Nicely written and presented.

The clear problem with your story is the solid block of text. It would have been helpful if you'd broken it into smaller, more 'manageable' paragraphs. Also, take the time to use your computer's spell-check facility as it will pick up mistakes before you submit your work.

Overall, not a bad piece of work. :-)

Hi. Nice to read something new from you :-)

Having read some of your more recent works I can see the improvement in your writing style. Your inexperience when you wrote this shows through with the repetition of words and phrases, especially at the beginning. On the whole, though, it's another of your engaging and action-filled adventure/fantasy stories that keeps one reading right to the end. Good stuff!

Your lack of spell-checking spoils this interesting and creative piece of work. Remember: if YOU don't respect your own work how can you expect other's to? Overall a good piece but please take more care with future submissions...

Your last confusing, incoherent paragraph completely undermines everything you had written before it! Up to that point it was an interesting and engaging story. Perhaps an edit would be a good idea? If you do, please take care with your spelling and punctuation as there are several errors.