The man i never knew

A fifteen/sixteen year old on another site commented on the story of mine above, i thought it might give you a laugh.

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This piece is a brave attempt to explore and summarise some complex issues, but for all its audacity it lacks the skill of expression. It's obvious that you tried hard to make this work, but you just didn't try hard enough. This story leaves much to be desired in many aspects.

With the beginning you acted a bit too boldly. You jumped straight into the middle, as many writers are wont to do, instead of started where you should - at the beginning. This confuses the reader and complicates the story. What you need to do is add more description to the opening sentences, perhaps about something that seems slightly irrelevant to the story, but something that will make the reader say, "Oh! Now I know what that was about!" later on. Maybe something that symbolises your father or someone who is similar to him?

This story is sorely lacking in proper and varied punctuation. You know the basics - commas and full-stops - but you're still hesitating to use them for all their worth.
E.g. "Yes my dear you're talking to a dead man who doesn't smeel, see or hear, he's a man you don't know, he's part of a family you'd never want to be near." There are about ten examples of where punctution is missing or wrongly used in that sentence alone.
You are also shying away from the harder forms of punctuation, such as hyphens and semi-colons which would actually prove very useful if you understood them. There are plenty of websites that could help you with this; all you need to do is make the effort to look for them.

You struggled to use as many language techniques (metaphors, similes, etc) as you could, but there are too many cracks in your veneer to allow their usage to be truly effective. For example, when you tried to form metaphors and similes you used too many words, which made the story even clunkier, if possible: e.g. " A blood clot fist pummelled inside his head, like inner bared knuckles inflicting hammer blows." Don't try too hard in this aspect. It doesn't matter how little words you use as long as you get the message across. But when you use too many words the message seems to be hammered into the reader's head with a giant mallet!

Another thing that bothers me is that you used a lot of rhyme in this piece. If I'm not mistaken, this is a short story, not a poem. Therefore, rhyme does not belong; it only makes the story more baffling and detracts from its beauty because the reader is too confused to properly understand what's going on. Make up your mind - either rhyme in a poem or don't rhyme in a short story!

The dialogue virtually made no impression on me because there was so little of it. What you need to understand is that although dialogue is difficult to handle in short stories, it can always only be one of two things: useful or pointless. In this case, it was definitely pointless. Seems that you used it for the sole purpose of rhyming, or even just because you wanted to include it.

The ending of this piece is like a mule - potentially useful yet extremely annoying. You're repeating yourself unnecessarily, and it's very irritating because the reader does not understand the point you're trying to make. Repetition is like dialogue - either useful or pointless. As with dialogue in this case, it was indubitably pointless. You could have just written, "It's my disgrace that in this bed was a man I never knew." Then you should explain the meaning of the sentence either before or after the thing itself, in as few words as possible. Sometimes readers immediately get the idea, but sometimes you have to prod them towards the right path.

Perhaps one day you will be able to broach the issues raised in this story and develop them in an imaginative and impressive manner, but for now I suggest you stick to the simple things and work on developing those. You have tried to walk before you crawled with this piece, and the only impressive thing about the matter is your courage. Next time use the brain, not the brawn.

beginning: 1
characters: 2
dialogue: 1
language: 3
plot: 3
pacing: 2
ending: 1
ideas: 3
originality: 2
overall: 2

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I have of course kidnapped him and am thinking of burying him alive somewhere near Wick. Am i being harsh?