Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/The company of myself

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The company of myself

This is the first article that I feel I truly worked on. This is my masterpiece! I'm joking, but still.CluelessPedestrian 06:20, March 1, 2010 (UTC)

I'd be happy to do this one for you CP, I can get it to you in 24-48 hours --Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 22:42 EST 1 Mar, 2010

I think it's been more than 48 hours, at least in my timezone. I think in the guidelines there's a time limit. I don't want to rush you, but...you know, guidelines.--CluelessPedestrian 21:37, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

He is right, if this is still here tomorrow I'll do it. --ChiefjusticePS2 22:53, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

I'm actually in the middle of doing it. I've needed to go to class in between and stuff and I have evening formation soon, but it'll be done within the next few hours. --Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 18:03 EST 3 Mar, 2010

Excellent, carry on then. --ChiefjusticePS2 23:04, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

Humour:	3	As you may recall the way I review, I generally put the majority of my comments and suggestions in the humor section. This allows me to be lazy keep all of my thoughts organized. I'll give you my first impressions after one read through and then go in for a more detailed look. Initial Impressions Well, this article started out interesting and I was wondering where the progression was going to go... and well, it didn't really go anywhere. The article quickened in pace and then abruptly ended, and not a good classic ending sort of abruptly. There were also numerous grammar and syntax errors that I noticed upfront. This article was fairly confusing to be honest, I wasn't quite sure what you were intending to convey here. The other thing that really stuck out to me was that it's interesting, but this really isn't that funny. It reads like an ambiguous noir more than an intelligent and funny piece. Also, I feel that going through section by section is going to be more difficult here, but I'll still do it. Section by Section Section Uno Starts out good enough, introductions generally set up in order to introduce the concept of you article, and you've done that fairly well. Now, the way you've set this up, there isn't really a conventional approach, such as an introduction that generally summarizes your article. What you've done is good in terms of what you're trying to do with this unconventional article. There isn't much humor here, which is understandable as I figure you were trying to set up the situation and then draw the humor out of the interaction of the traveler and the strange man in the cave. Section Dos This section is pretty good too in developing your exposition. The quirkiness of the strange man creates a sort of humorous atmosphere, but for the most part, there really aren't any specific jokes. This is ok at this point for the most part, like I said, because of the need for exposition. Section Tres Ok, so here's the man's story. It was at this point that I felt you had made a reasonable amount of expositionary remarks and were ready to move onto the humor. Instead we get a very serious story about a girl named Katheryn, with out many details in between. I was a little disappointed that you hadn't really developed the article the way I thought you intended to; a quirky, strange, but funny conversation between a lost person and a strange man in a cave. Since there was more text in the article, I assumed you would get to that in the next section. Section Cuatro And at this point it became clear that there wouldn't be much more to the article when the blood splatter was visible. The only thing I wondered at that point was whether one of three things would happen, a) the man kills the traveler, b) the traveler kills the man, or c) the man kills himself. I would like to point out too that the first half of your article was generally well thought out and well written, but the second half was hectic, felt rushed (in literary terms and in implied speed of completion). At this point it's fairly obvious that you intend for someone to die, most likely the crazy man. Everything else The main problem I see with this is your lack of jokes and humor and the fact that the article is too short for its own good. The last part of the story seems like a half-baked idea that was hastily put together during a writing block. I'm just trying to be honest so you can make this into a better story, and believe me I think it has potential. I would encourage you to rethink the second part of your article. I'll go into this in much more depth under concept.
Concept:	8.5	I have to say, this is interesting an unconventional. up front and right away I would suggest you move this out of the mainspace and into UnBooks, as you seem to have a story to tell rather than an encyclopedic article to write. That's why UnBooks is there, for ideas such as this that don't really constitute encyclopedic articles. If you do this, you need to lengthen your article quite a bit, and regardless of what you do, I would encourage you to do this. You need to brainstorm exactly where you want this to go, because right now it just isn't working. The exposition is fine up to the point where the crazy man claims that their meeting is ordained by God himself and that he can help the "reader." This is where I thought the article was going to go, but instead it veered into a short story about the mans personal sorrows and afterward he kills himself, which has nothing to do with the two things I mentioned above. I also think having the section headings as the dialogue of the reader is an interesting idea and it's fairly original. However, this imposes a limitation upon yourself that is very apparent when you read the story: you are cutting out potential dialogue, story development, and jokes by cutting out the other character in the conversation. You are effectively limiting yourself to only having the crazy man speak, and in turn this limits your possibility for jokes and for story development. You are essentially cutting out potentially a full half of the story by doing this. So you need to decide whether this is something you want to keep. I would suggest finding a way to add the traveler into the story here. Focus less on the traveler being the reader and focus on him being the character. A way to do section headings under this appraoch would be to have the article be the recovered diary of the travehttp://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/index.php?title=Uncyclopedia:Pee_Review/The_company_of_myself&action=submit"ler and the section headings could be entries in the diary. You can even keep the ending with the blood splat and have it literally be a blood splat in the diary. I leave all of this up to you since it's your story, but I think if you do something along those lines you will come up with not only a great article, but maybe a feature-able piece too. One last thing. The BloCkY tExt parts really confused me. I wasn't sure what relevance they had to the story nor who they were coming from, the author (you), the "reader's" thoughts, or the crazy man, verbally or mentally. To be honest it's a little strange, I would completely get rid of those. Overall a very interesting idea you have here, poorly executed in the second half and lacking in overt humor.
Prose and formatting:	6.5	You have numerous spelling and grammar errors throughout. I feel as though you did not proofread your piece. I would encourage you to go through your article and carefully proofread. Read the article to yourself as if you were someone who had stumbled upon it rather than as the person who wrote it. Reading out loud can really help in finding those little syntax errors that make reading it a challenge. sticking the text in MS word for grammar and spelling check would be a good idea too. specific examples include: in the first section you say, "but I was taught by myself." The word "by" should not be included, it should simply read, 'I taught myself.' in the same section, "the first step to complete insanity" this should probably be 'the first sign' not step. "twenty-two in-a-half years" should be 'twenty two and half years.' "I would like to fancy myself as differently..." you need to include the word 'being' and drop the 'ing' so that it reads, 'I would like to fancy myself as being different.' This in only the first section, there are many errors like this throughout. Again, I strongly encourage you to proofread this. As I stated in the concept section, making the section heading the dialogue of the "reader" is clever, but I'm not so sure it works to your advantage. if you were to implement the diary idea I posed for you, making the sections into diary entries for different days would be a good idea. Also, and I'll mention this again under images, maybe including a picture for each diary entry to sum it up would be a good idea.
Images:	4	Right, so you have the dark woods and the blood splatter. fairly good images, but thinking of the big picture here I think you miss a bunch of good opportunities to include pictures, perhaps from the perspective of the "reader." The blood splatter as is is revealed too soon. It is obvious to the reader about halfway through reading that something violent is going to happen since the blood splatter is visible while you read. You need to format ii so that it is in a place on the page that the reader needs to scroll to. I've also seen the blood splatter elsewhere on uncyc, so its not especially original (for all I know that's a coincidence, and if so I apologize). Now as I said earlier, I think if you do the diary idea, you should include a picture for each entry. If at all possible, I would find pictures that resemble pencil sketches that convey whats going on in each entry.
Miscellaneous:	5.5	my overall enjoyment from reading the article. I was mostly disappointed with the lack of humor and the hasty ending.
Final Score:	27.5	If I could only make a few bulleted suggestions for how to improve this, I would say: re-think your ending, and possibly the entire underlying appraoch you take to your concept. lengthen this article add jokes possibly move it to UnBooks. If you do this, you will most likely need to expand it for sure. a good idea that lost steam toward the end. Spend time crafting and thinking about how best to present this and it will come out as a pretty good article. If you have any specific questions about this review or about anything in general, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.
Reviewer:	--Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 21:27 EST 3 Mar, 2010