Another great review for Deceitful Survival, but he was upset over these two sentences.... This one in dialog....“That sounds nice. As soon as I am settled and finish unpacking, Father René is going to show me around.” ..... And this one in the narrative.... And soon he tired of his conversation
Is there more context? Only thing that stands out is that it's "I am" and not the more likely "I'm". Why would anyone be upset? Is Father Rene some creep?
There are readers who get upset over the most ludicrous things. Don't pay it much mind unless you get a lot of people saying the same thing.
Was the critique here that the 'his' doesn't refer back to the same person the 'he' does? That could be a bit off-putting.
It's perfectly fine if it represents a character. I try to use this type of thing to differentiate characters. For narration, keep it simple and clear to let the reader focus on the story instead of the narrator (if narrator is not a character).
Sorry the setting is historical 1802 and the lines are different times and different people. The thing that bugged me so much is he dinged me a point for an edit problem. Here is the critique....Although this story was written well, there were a few grammatical errors and sentence structure errors; “as soon as I am settled and finish unpacking...” and “soon he tired of his conversation.”, this causes the story to lack a small percentage of being a professionally well edited novel. Btw it was professional edited and I still found stuff...Frustrating for a debut novelist.
I would have written it as "soon he tired of the conversation" but that's just me. I don't see the issue with "as soon as I am settled and finish unpacking...” the tenses don't match, but it's dialogue, which often isn't grammatically correct. Is that the problem they had with it?
The form is slightly different. It would match better to say "As soon as I settle in and finish unpacking." or "As soon as I am settled and finished unpacking." Seems awfully nitpicky though to be honest.
That's a garbage review as far as those sentences go. I can't speak for the overall quality, but you can ignore that part.
But that's dialogue, and that's what I meant by tense (I was going to say it wasn't parallel but not sure that's the right term here). People talk like that all the time, so I don't think it's a big deal. Maybe spoken grammar was much better in 1802 though. You could also argue 'settle in and finish unpacking' is redundant no matter how it's conjugated, but it's dialogue so I think it may be fine. Actually, what I wonder is if 'settle and finish unpacking' is how someone in 1802 would talk (I really don't know). Was 'settle' used as a verb like this (for an indoor room) in 1802? Or would someone say something like "As soon as I'm acquainted with my accommodations"? I've got a copy of 'Frankenstein' but I'm too busy to read it.
Yeah, I'm done making changes on this one, or I'll never finish my WIP. Raven Warriors. Many thanks to all the responders.
Forgive me if I missed this, but was this a reader reviewer or an editorial review? If it was an editorial review, I would think making a quick change would be no problem. If it was a reader review, laughing at it is how I would handle it. I LOVE negative reviews. They give me something to smile about.
The only thing I found awkward was "As soon as I am settled..." which sounded stilted. I would have preferred "As soon as I'm settled..." And I agree with Bruce that "tired of the conversation" flows more easily.
I was stuck wiith the idea without contractions I could make the conversation feel like the 1800s and she would be a little formal in the story's beginning. Later I used contractions and learned in writing this piece that historically contractions were the norm in conversation in the 1800s.
I'm trying to wrap my head around someone being "upset" over this. How did the reviewer indicate they were in such a consternation? I could see someone having an emotionally upset reaction to story content they find objectionable, but if someone is actually upset over the examples you provided, ignore them and move on, and don't worry why.
