Subject: Re: [FFML][FF][R.5][slightly revised] A chinese ghost story Chapters 1 - 4
From: David Johnston
Date: 8/27/1998, 7:00 PM
To: Noriega
CC: fanfic@fanfic.com

I'd say you're a great deal stronger in the artistic sense than you are 
in the craftsmanship end of writing.  You've still got many sentence 
fragments in your descriptive passages, and abrupt changes in tense 
within your paragraphs.  I'm prepared to go through the whole thing and 
identify all the errors I spot.  Before I do, though, I have a few  
questions to ask.

1.  Do you want me to?

2.  Do you want to keep your sentence fragments to create a specific 
effect?  If so, I won't mention them, although I don't much like the 
effect myself. 

3.  What tense did you intend to write your story in?  While the 
sentence fragments could be a legitimate stylistic choice, shifting 
tenses in the course of a single sentence or paragraph isn't, really.
However, I'm having trouble determining which tense you intended.

4.  Would you prefer a private detailed commentary?  

I'm writing this publicly to get one important message out to everyone 
else writing:  

Pick a tense for your story and stick to it, unless you are doing 
something like a flashback, dream, or shifting from narration to 
character monologue.  Tense confusion is the bane of many otherwise good 
writers.