Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/User:Skinfan13/HowTo:Write Good Poetry
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User:Skinfan13/HowTo:Write Good Poetry[edit source]
Something I've been working on. I don't consider it a completed page yet (thus it is still in my userspace), but I think I have it to the point where feedback will be very useful. Experienced reviewer and in-depth please -- 21:42 EST 12 Feb, 2010
- I'm in here now, 24 hours. --ChiefjusticeDS 09:42, February 13, 2010 (UTC)
- Sorry that took a bit longer. Reviewing now. --ChiefjusticeDS 21:32, February 14, 2010 (UTC)
| Humour: | 7 | An enjoyable and amusing take on poems and, indeed, poets, you have a good grasp of what you need to do to make this article excellent though you are running into a couple of problems as far as the execution of this aim goes. The first thing I noticed is that you seem to be driving at having a running joke of subtly suggesting through the things that the poets say that they are essentially doing virtually nothing and they know it, I also like the misery that you emphasise in a couple of the tones. However my concern is that you don't actually seem to have a firm idea throughout the article about how you want the reader to be viewed by the poets they are supposedly interacting with, at times they appear to hold the reader in disdain and at other times they entrust him or her with things to do. As far as writing a How To goes, if you check out the featured How To's and pay close attention to the way that the writer addresses the reader, you will note that writers tend towards considering the reader to be incredibly stupid, the logic being that if they weren't then they would not need to use the guide, thus writers try and gain humour by taking advantage of the reader's stupidity. You should try and adapt your article to follow a similar trend, now I'm not saying "You must do exactly the same, and make it quick and funny" as every article is different, what I am suggesting is that you work on characterising the reader a bit more, you go down this road best when you are supposedly narrating from the point of view of T.S. Elliot. By talking down to the reader you add humour both in that the reader can, hopefully, realise that the narrator in the article is talking rubbish or an incredibly simplified version of what they would normally say and through the way that they do this. My recommendation for implementing such a mechanism into your article would rely on some careful editing from you, read through your T.S. Elliot section and try and identify what marks it out from the first section in particular. I realise you are trying to add some difference between the tones, but I think it would good to have the poets have one thing in common, a patronising attitude towards the reader. You don't have to rewrite to get this in, you just need to make some careful edits here and there in order to change the feel of the narrative; this is an opportunity for humour you don't get very often with other types of article's and you should not neglect the potential it has to improve a How To. Consider a sentence like "At this point, you need to think about your concept", you can change this to "At this point, you need to think about your concept, a long and challenging word, but bear with me" now that may not be the apex of humour, but I hope it gets the point across. As I believe I already said, you have already done some good work in this area and I recommend this in order to compliment your existing text, not replace it.
The other problem I noticed you ran into was that at times the humour feels a little strained, some jokes aren't very necessary and adding them can take more from the humour than they add, now some of what I objected to in your article may just be because I do not like that particular kind of joke, but I can recommend to you with a little more security that a badly executed joke has much more of an effect on a reader than a well executed one. This was the one that I felt was having the biggest effect "If you're black like me, and affirmative action hasn't been invented yet in the 60's" my feeling was that there was no real need to make that point and it could be made in a better way, you may even wish to try adopting the style I mentioned above to fill this gap, remember that you don't have to fill every part of your article with top notch jokes and humour, you can have some sentences that are just that. Overall you have some minor problems on this one, take a second look and make sure everything is as you want it to be and be careful when making edits. |
| Concept: | 7 | Again, pretty good on this one, you are just being held back by a couple of problems. I like the general concept of having poetry taught by some well known poets, and you have obviously tried your best to try and make them sound different and I would say that you have partially succeeded and not done so well in other ways. Obviously the problem is that text doesn't carry across the differences in voice so you have to find a good way to demonstrate the differences, and you are almost there and you signpost well. However the difference between the first two poets is hardly striking and I would really recommend you work at separating the two, the main problem I saw here is that you seem unsure of how to characterise the first poet, my recommendation is that you try and come up with a more obvious way to set him apart from the others. Otherwise not too bad here. |
| Prose and formatting: | 8 | Much better than I was anticipating. When I took a cursory glance at your article I thought you may run into difficulties with the formatting as you have all the quotes and images, the end product is pleasingly surprising. The formatting does hit difficulty on a couple of occasions with images crushing the text in, and I would recommend you try shuffling things around to avoid this; you do well to take advantage of the quote at the bottom to fit two images on either side. The spelling and grammar is pretty good too, just proofread carefully to make sure any errors are sorted out, or, should you be seized by cannot be arsedness, then the proofreading service can help out. Generally you have done well here. |
| Images: | 9 | Good work here, I enjoyed your captions and some of the original image choices. I was pleased to see you linking images to jokes in the article, though think that you could make more of this in a couple of cases. As far as your captions go you should bear in mind my comments above about your tone and you should try to reflect any changes in tonal style in the captions as much as you can. Not much to say here as you have done the majority of things right, just keep it up and make careful changes where they become necessary. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7 | My overall grade of the article. |
| Final Score: | 38 | An excellent idea with some execution problems, rather like Obama's healthcare bill, your article is being held back by a number of minor problems. My best advice is that you take your time and read through your article slowly and search for problems, when you find problems, take your time correcting them and don't be afraid to experiment with different ways to change things. You can always ask someone for an opinion if you need it. If you have any questions or comments for me then you can leave them on my talk page. Good luck making any changes. |
| Reviewer: | --ChiefjusticeDS 23:13, February 14, 2010 (UTC) | |