Comments for Thretom the wolf healer.

[Mad Maudie McBurl]

Sorry I forgot to add this to the comments.

[Badrang3]

The biggest thing you need to work on in description. We know the name of your character, we know he's a wolf, but other then that, he's pretty lifeless. Try to expand upon his thoughts, actions, personality, etc. And don't rely too much on dialogue to convey plot; try to throw in thoughts, reactions, and perhaps even memories, if you feel like it. Also, with the dialogue, try to make the conversations a little less planned; it seems like your characters are reading off a script. Imagine what your reaction would be if confronted by a strange looking crew, and try to convert that into your characters.

There's also spelling and grammar issues, but I'm less interested in that.

[Mad Maudie McBurl]

Yeah I know I need to work on description. Next part I'll try to add more discription.

[Lady Constance]

Wonderful! I love the accents!
And don't worry about spelling. The more you practice, the better you'll get at it. Description is important. Just add a bit of that and It'll be great.

[Folgrimeo]

I couldn't make much sense of this one. Too many problems to mention. Really good descriptions take a long time to do, and for a beginner, any sort of description isn't easy to come by. But I'd expect something, any attempt at all to describe who Thretom was, and I didn't see that (but I'm one to talk. In a spectacularly failed writing of mine, which I'm doomed to mention for every passing month that I don't rewrite it, I somehow completely forgot to describe what the main character looked like. Described his basic thoughts, but nothing else).

Problems I saw:
- No attempt to describe what Thretom looked like.
- Thretom's ballad was confusing. Cut to the next line at inappropriate times, so the ballad had no rhythm, and half the time I didn't know whether it was a song or if it was a narrative. And "I must get Redwall Abbey" could either mean "I must capture Redwall Abbey" or "I must get to Redwall Abbey".
- Where did he pull the flask of water out from? Where did he pull the bread out from. I assumed he was wearing a backpack or belt or something, so I'd expect to see that described before he starts pulling out food.
- You know, I never did believe that any Redwaller could bring along hotroot soup (one, there'd need to be a strong container with a lid that doesn't let liquid seep through. And two, unless the thing's airtight, I'd expect it'd go cold after a while).
- Thretom admitting that he was pretending to have the stuff was kind of good, but didn't help smooth over that weak scene.
- Not sure what "You d'ra" would translate to. Maybe "you there".
- “ sorry I didn’t know I was trespassing.” “I’m on my way to RedWall Abbey, If you tell me the way I’ll be on my way.” Two problems there. One, the separate quote makes it look like someone else is speaking the second line. Second, I don't like that "way" is used three times in one sentence.
- Inappropriate capitalization throughout (words being capitalized when they shouldn't).

I still believe that a good exercise would be to take some character or scenery or any one thing at all, and just practice describing it in as much detail as you can. Then show it to someone else, hopefully someone who's able to describe things in greater detail than you, and have that person describe the character/scenery/whatever they see in their mind as precisely as possible. The key is to see how much the two visions match, or rather, to hear a vision from the person that you think is an acceptable interpretation. Readers can't see into your mind when you're writing your characters, so your job is to describe them to the point that you can show the readers what was in your mind. Same for scenery and everything else. Upon hearing the interpretation from the other person, you're able to correct details or add new details, which might be appropriate for including in the story.

[Mad Maudie McBurl]

I'm just going to rewrite it. I'll try to do better with my spelling. I know I need to add more descriptive words. So I'll just rewrite it.
Thanks everybody for telling me my faults. Maybe when I get it rewritten it will be better. Try try again as they say.

[Mama Hedgehog]

You're obviously new at this, but what a great start! You have an idea for a story, you have characters, you have the desire to write. Now all you have to do is practice and improve. DON'T give up on your desire to write! Listen to the critques, take away the information you can use and discard the rest. We want to hear more from you about this wolf healer!

[Mad Maudie McBurl]

I know thats why I'm rewriting it.
hopfully it will be better than the first part.