Hooves - Sara's Port - Chapter 1
               
Hi everyone. Any of my comments or suggestions are just that: comments or suggestions. They are always given with respect and the hopes that they will be helpful. If you don’t agree with them, just ignore them; after all, you know what is best for your story. 
What I liked best: As the chapter moved along, I felt the author's sincere thoughts, and that pulled me further into the chapter.
Plot: Oliver Kelly wants to meet his soulmate, and he finds her on WDC. Now, he needs to find the courage to IM her.
Hook: Yes. I had to chuckle.
Tension: Higher as the chapter progressed.
Confusions: Only in the beginning when I was trying to figure out who the pov character was.
Questions: Are you Sara?
Style & Voice -- Concerning style: My comments will assume that you would like to write either in first person or third person limited. However, I would like to point out that many, if not most, of the books that I have bought recently use the omniscient point of view. Ultimately, style is the author's choice. Includes author’s/narrator’s voice, but also hitting truly unique voices for each character
Style: There is a lot of telling. It would be stronger with showing. See example within the chapter.
POV: Omniscient. It would be stronger if it were tightly in third person limited.
Scene/Setting: Too much it drags? Too little? Confused? Did they use 3 senses? Almost none, so yes, it needs more setting.
Characters:
Oliver (Lane) Kelly: He is waiting to find just the right woman.
David: Oliver's friend, a director, who wants to fix Oliver up with a woman, any woman
Sara: Girl that Ollie will meet on WDC.
Grammar: Please see line by line review. Mainly missing commas.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/02/...
http://www.englishgrammarsecrets.com/questionstags...
http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/which_that_...
http://wps.ablongman.com/long_faigley_penguinhb_1/...
http://grammartips.homestead.com/compoundsentences...
Just My Personal Opinion: tell them what you liked/didn't like. How did it make you feel and all other misc.!
Hi ya Hooves,
I was fooling around on WDC this morning and fell into your port. My first chuckle hooked me into your story. As the chapter progressed, I felt closer and closer to Ollie and was rooting for him to find his Sara.
Thank you for the happy moment I passed reading the chapter with Ollie and his hopes of finding Sara.
Smiles,
Tadpole1
Tadpole1 
Sara's Port - Chapter 1
Oliver Kelly couldn't quite remember the exact moment he fell in love with Sara, but it was very soon after discovering her portfolio of writing on the internet.
Thanks for the chuckle. Good hook for a WDC member. Grin.
It happened over the course of several autumn months while he was on location in California, during the filming of his third consecutive best selling novel, the legal thriller, Simon's Choice. Although he normally lived in Virginia, Hollywood was his home away from home, during filming.
Suggestion: …during the filming of his third, consecutive, best selling novel: The Legal Thriller.
With final approval of all script changes, he felt the need to be telling
on the set to work effectively with the Director, David Aaronson, and all the other screenwriters.
"Ollie, would this happen?" and "Ollie what do you think of this script change?"
were questions most frequently asked during his days on the set. telling
Director David relied heavily on Oliver's opinion and they shared a mutual respect as well as a good working relationship.
Pov: omniscient
With Oliver's law school education and varied, although limited, experience as a litigator, he was an invaluable consultant when it came to the particulars of the law and everyday practice. He worked as a lawyer just over a year when he found his way to what he really excelled at - writing fiction.
Confusion/flow: While it is not exactly head-hopping, or exactly changing pov, still let's call it pov. First, we are talking about Oliver, then David, then Oliver. Since it is not strongly anchored in a particular character's point of view, it creates a slight confusion, requiring increased concentration and slowing the flow.
Suggestion: Anchor it strongly in one character's pov.
While in Hollywood, most of his time was spent hanging around the set waiting to help David and the others. It was during such a stretch, the previous Spring, that Oliver initially joined Writing.Com - so he could spend the time constructively - writing for fun and encouraging other writers. telling
He wanted to stay as far away as possible from the "social life" offered by Hollywood - that was certain.
He avoided it like the plague, cliché
Suggestion: Something original. He avoided it like (adjective) stinging nettles.
preferring to spend quiet time in his trailer or hotel room on the internet.
"Let's go out for a drink, Ollie," David Aaronson suggested more than once. telling (It's not actively happening right now.)
"No, thanks. I have some reading to do," was Oliver's standard reply.
His response was virtually the same whenever David offered to fix Oliver up with an actress or one of his wife's many friends. Although, there was no shortage of available, attractive women in Los Angeles, Oliver wasn't interested in dating starlets or models, or David's wife's array of divorced and single friends. Realizing that the women he met were primarily interested in his money and fame, he did his best to avoid potential entanglements whenever possible. This is telling, but if you turn it into dialogue, it becomes showing.
David twirled his whisky, rattling the ice against his glass. "Ollie, you can't stay locked up all the time in your room. Look," he pointed with a nod, "who just strutted in."
Oliver glanced past the smelly lilies on the table toward the hotel's entrance. The redhead flashed David a chalky-white smile and headed toward the elevator, heeling clicking on the marble floor. David knew all the rising starlets.
"Yeah, I see her."
After a sip of his scotch, David tilted his head toward the bar. "If you don't like gingers, then maybe she's more your style?"
He grinned at the leggy blonde, and she tossed her hair over her shoulders and smiled back.
"Give it up. I'm just not interested in any of these girls or any of your wife's divorced friends either." David drained his sparkling water. "I've got a chapter to finish, so see you in the morning?"
Do you see how this is showing the action rather than telling us about it? Do you see how the information is slipped in? Notice the bits of setting dribbled in with the action and dialogue, just bits and pieced here and there, no big blocks. Notice that the pov is Oliver's. He thinks that David knows all the rising starlets, and he thinks the lilies are smelly.
After many such attempts, in a moment of loneliness and weakness, Oliver finally gave in. By his reckoning, the night was an unmitigated disaster, confirming all his worst fears and suspicions about the dating scene in Hollywood.
At the age of thirty-two, he still couldn't find the woman of his dreams, but it wasn't because he was unattractive.
Standing six foot three, Oliver was engagingly handsome, with curly brown hair and lively green eyes. After writing three bestsellers, he was also more recognizable than he cared to be, especially when he discarded his glasses, and wore his contact lenses.
I won't mark about telling anymore.
Style: Repetition: Notice that the above paragraphs are staring with the same format?
Xxxx xxx xxxx xx xxxx, yyy yyyy yy yyyy
So, on those rare times he did go out in the public view, he opted for his wire-rim glasses so as not to attract unwanted attention. lol
He was tall, and attractive in a shy sort of way - wealthy and smart - characteristics which did not go unnoticed by the women around him, especially in Hollywood.
But Oliver was searching for something more - someone he could connect with on a deeper level. At heart he was a pure romantic, longing for his soulmate - his one true love. He didn't find her in law school comma between independent clauses with a conjunction like: and, so, but, … and he was all but certain that she wasn't to be found on any movie set in California.
Back east, Oliver lived his normal life in a university town, where no one but his best friend Ben, knew his real identity. Oliver wore the same glasses at home to correct his near sightedness and to avoid being recognized from the dust jackets of his novels. He dated a few local women casually, now and then, but nothing seriously romantic ever developed.
No one recognized the somewhat awkward, shy young man as the media portrayed him - as a dashing, world-renowned author - and he liked it that way. Using his mother's maiden name for his novels was, as far as he was concerned, a stroke of genius. Anything that helped him to remain below the radar and low-key was just fine with Oliver.
Oliver Lane was the famous one, not Oliver Kelly. I like the name Oliver Lane. It has a nice ring.
At home in Virginia, he could be just plain Ollie - the guy who purchased a Video Lovers franchise comma so he could spend time doing what he enjoyed almost as much as writing - watching movies and meeting people and not having to deal with all the trappings of fame that surrounded him in Hollywood.
To the people in Shannon, Virginia, he was the shy man with the self-deprecating sense of humor who ran the video store. When he was home, he and his friend, Ben, hung out together, playing on the pickup softball and basketball teams with the guys from the Fire Department.
He realized that most of the women he met were not interested in dating a manager at a video store - not with the University of Virginia a stone's throw away. Pretty area. There were plenty of aspiring professionals to compete with comma and Oliver knew it would take a special woman to pick him over the competition comma and that was the way he wanted it.
A woman would truly have to look past appearances and first impressions and find the real Ollie in order to fall in love with him.
To everyone other than Ben, he was a nice, quiet, easy-going guy, who worked hard and kept to himself. If anyone needed help, though, Ollie was the first one to lend a hand. They explained his absences by saying he periodically went to corporate headquarters for training comma and no one seemed to question that. The truth was no one was all that interested in the whereabouts of the video store owner, as long as the store was open and the videos were there for the renting.
Much to Ollie's amusement, Ben did his best to spread the rumor that his friend was not the brightest bulb in the pack, although everyone knew pretty quickly that Ollie was a big hearted guy, who would go out of his way to help anyone in need. The ideas in the two parts of the sentence don't seem to go together.
When Oliver questioned him about it, Ben said he was merely trying to help conceal his friend's identity comma and that suited Oliver just fine. Besides helping the people of Shannon, Oliver always thoroughly enjoyed encouraging other writers when he was on the sets of his movies.
From here on, I will stop pointing out that a comma is needed when a conjunction joins to independent clauses.
It was his drive to help writers that led him to the internet. One of the younger screenwriters mentioned the encouragement he received on Writing.Com. Interested, Oliver decided to check it out. What he found was a thriving young site with many new authors of all ages to encourage with helpful reviews. From the first, he was amazed and astounded at the vast array of talented authors he found posting their work on the web. No other writing site could compare to Writing.Com - dash instead of hyphen he could see it right away.
So, Writing.Com offered Oliver the best of both worlds - writers to encourage and anonymity to protect his privacy. Nice.
He found a lot of excellent work, but no writing ever
effected him affected
the way Sara's did, that September evening when he first found it and her.....
That Friday proved to be a long comma tedious day on the set for Oliver. He was tired, but looking forward to a quiet evening in his hotel, reading new authors on Writing.Com. He was fed up with script revisions and editing his own writing for one day, so the fresh reading was a welcome respite. Sounds like it's coming from the author. Sounds authentic. Good.
The work he did in his own portfolio consisted primarily of romantic poetry and opinion pieces. Occasionally he tried short story ideas or outlines just to get them down on the screen and play with them.
There was nothing he enjoyed more than reading new authors - it was like opening presents - Sweet! finding so many talented writers of all ages and skill levels online. Oliver loved encouraging them, but most of the time comma he did it anonymously so the writers wouldn't feel obligated to thank him or compelled to reciprocate.
Sweet, and again, it sounds authentic.
I will now ignore all commas.
.....
That September night, Oliver navigated through the site as usual, reading a couple of his favorite authors' latest works. His own handle was "Ollie." As he perused the updated list of authors online, a new name caught his eye.
It was simply "Sara." Lots of Saras around here. (Or, is it Sara's?)
He always loved the name, Sara, so much so that he gave that name to his favorite female character in his very first novel, "Revelations." I love the name Sara too, so much that our daughter would have been Sara had her aunt not just named her cousin Sara. Roll eyes.
Grinning to himself, he eagerly clicked on to Sara's portfolio and was pleasantly surprised. Although, she'd only been writing online for a few weeks, Sara already created a number of items in her portfolio, including a folder full of reviews - movie reviews. In addition, there were quite a few short stories and poems.
As he read further, he grew more and more intrigued. Sara's reviews were well thought-out, insightful and witty. He carefully read everything she wrote, sending an evaluation and detailed comment for each item. I'm more pulled in to this part of the chapter than the beginning of the chapter.
Departing from his usual practice, he didn't review anonymously, not this time. And he couldn't quite bring himself to leave her portfolio. He devoured everything - her poetry, short stories and opinion pieces in addition to her movie reviews.
"This is amazing!" he exclaimed more than once.
Her writing spoke to him - awakening feelings long submerged, deep inside Oliver, propelling him to do something he never did before. he had never done
For the first time ever, he combed the list of people online carefully to see if by some chance Sara might be online too. IM time!
Normally he would just glance at the list now and then to see who might be adding to their work that day. But her name wasn't there, so he had to be content with sending her more than thirty excellent ratings and rave reviews, along with accompanying gift points. Gift points were tokens that could be purchased on the site to, in turn, pass on to others.
In fact, he gave Sara so many gift points, he needed to buy more. Lol! And, a happy StoryMistress!
Oliver wasn't exactly sure what he would do if she was online, since he never exchanged instant messages with anyone on the internet before. All he knew was he wanted to find Sara and reach out to her -the sooner the better. ....... This is so sweet!
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your work. Please take any suggestions you like and disregard the rest because only you know what is right for your writing.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/02/...
http://www.englishgrammarsecrets.com/questionstags...
http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/which_that_...
|
|
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
