Prologue and Story first up

[OhCrap]

I just got my prologue and start of my first story up earlier today. I've already received a commentary on the prologue before posting in the forums for a potential review and constructive criticism. Key word being constructive of course and yes the commentary was anonymous. Due to the nature and presentation of the commentary's wording I'm actually quite happy to leave it as it is in place.

In any case, my experience in writing comes from an extensive first person narrative role player's perspective. As such I know that I tend to smoothly dip in and out of character while switching between descriptiveness and interacting with others or the environment/surroundings.

Any thoughts and ideas, constructively of course, would be appreciated.

The prologue can be found here.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=501134

And on to the main story found here.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=501582

Thanks in advance, and although for some it might take a bit of time to get used to the role play style, I appreciate the gander your tossing in my direction.

 

[sr71plt]

Yeah, as seen from the very first paragraph, the mistakes come often enough to disrupt the read to an irritating degree:

Damn. Where do I begin? High School? Well just a little bit before[comma] actually[comma] but that would only cover half the story that lead[led] to where I'm at now.

I don't get the part about role-playing making this different/special. All first-person writing and much third-person writing are role-playing modes.

 

[OhCrap]

I see what you're saying on that. It's the punctuation that makes the difference between "I'm hungry. Lets eat grandma" and I'm hungry. Let's eat, grandma"

The intention I think I had when it came to mind was something like.

"Well just a little bit before actually[comma] but that would only cover half the story.."

I must do some homework on this, and dust off the rust.

 

[Sanichi]

You need a comma after "Well" as well, or it might imply that if he is "Well just a little bit before", he is now sick.

 

[OhCrap]

Yea I'm kind of seeing that. It sounds perfectly fine as it is in my head, and can use a bit of adjustment when I read it out loud. The thing is. I passed it through a text to speech and it went kind of all different on me.

Leaving the text to speech's lack of differentiating between U, you, ewe, and yew out of it, the story's grammatical dials and switches do need to be tweaked.

I'm going to pass it through the TTS a few times and see what I can do about it until I can catch one of those fuzzy creatures you all refer to as editors. In the mean time, strobe a 100x100 assembly of flash bulbs at your eyes so you see dots and commas throughout the screen. That way they can be placed where needed visually.

 

[VanLuke]

If you're breaking up a thought or going off tangent mid sentence--and especially with consideration that you're writing in first person--you should be using an em dash instead of a comma.

An example where you go off tangent but use the wrong punctation in your story:

Aaron, a friend of mine who at the time was a chemist, alright as he'd put it, biological chemical engineer was having a weekend party.

Aaron, a friend of mine who at the time was a chemist--alright, as he'd put it, biological engineer--was having a weekend party.

People, including me, tend to over use it though. So you want to keep it in check. It makes the reader pause and redirect and if you do it too often people get frustrated at not being allowed to move forward easily.

I can remember it clearly, but then again, I've always been known to be able to remember any and everything.

Now this statement is a better of example of what you should be doing. You're not going off tangent and it flows despite the small pause. But you want to replace any with anything. They're two different words.

 

[Sanichi]

VanLuke, I'm sure the input will be appreciated but pointing out the punctuation errors in those stories is like sticking your finger in the dyke. That baby is gonna blow [em dash] stand back.

As sr71plt pointed out with examples from the first paragraph, the whole thing is littered with punctuation errors, and he didn't highlight every one. You have found a different punctuation issue in the second paragraph, partly addressed in the third.

If you filled a shotgun with commas and dashes, and fired it at the page there would be more in the right places than there are now. The point is that OhCrap knows that and accepts it. He is asking us to look past punctuation. It took only an hour to write, and it's hardly surprising there are spelling mistakes and grammatical errors as well, but should OhCrap find an editor, these things can be fixed.

The story is that a mid-forties party guy accidentally drinks a witches brew and wakes ("for absolutely zero logical reason") as a schoolgirl. A schoolgirl! Who cares about punctuation?

 

[OhCrap]

Thank

Ha! Sanchi. That cracked me up. And yea, I guess looking past the punctuation is appreciated. I'm already on the project of looking for an editor. I have about 6 more in the set to upload so far, and I'm going through them with the TTS just to make an editor's job easier.

 

[RedJohnny]

Although the following poem is about the hazards of using spell check, it's even more relevant when using a text-to-speech program:

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

 

[OhCrap]

Catchy poem, and quite true. The TTS is somewhat helpful I find though. I can place and replace commas and other punctuation repeating the speak of the TTS till it sounds somewhat right.