The Shadow Walker - Jacob Carl Novak

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

My apologies. I have to confess, I'd been drinking a bit last night when I read it, and failed to realize that I had only read the intro and first page - I didn't realize there was more when I thought "Well. Short first chapter".

I'm going back to re-read it, the whole thing this time, and will keep your comments and explanation in mind when I do.

Then I'll be back with any comments I may have.

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I've always had trouble with "person". I've always thought first person ran as "I picked up the hammer and nailed the coffin lid down with some vehemence" and third person ran as "Walter picked up the hammer and nailed the coffin lid down with some vehemence", and have never been sure just what second person was, maybe "He picked up the hammer and nailed the coffin lid down with some vehemence."

Another thing I've never gotten down pat is diagramming a sentence. I don't know the intricacies of what the different sorts of words are called, nor the rules of how they are used. I've been reading since I was 3 years old (started by reading road signs on the roads - we traveled a lot), and learned to write by reading what other folks had written. As a result of that, I more or less internalized sentence structure without ever learning what the parts are called or what the rules are for stringing them together.

Because of that, my comments may be something less than entirely helpful.

I did poorly with English classes, but some things were drilled into me. You are helpful, you caused me to, once again, read through the whole first chapter and make even more corrections. The thing is, since I wrote it, I expect and read it the way I thought I wrote it, until I find silly misspellings after the one millionth time I've re-read it. Plus keeping the story in present tense is really difficult for me. I'm used to telling a story after the fact, not in the now as it is happening as I'm trying to do here.

First, second and third person is tricky, maybe I'm using the wrong terms here.

first person

noun

1. The grammatical category of forms that designate a speaker or writer referring to himself or herself. Examples of forms in the first person include English pronouns such as I and we and verb forms such as Spanish hablo “I speak.”
   
2. A discourse or literary style in which the narrator recounts his or her own experiences or impressions using such forms.
   
3. A perspective in a video or computer game that shows only what a character would see.
   

Third Person Narrative. A third-person narrative is a story told using the pronouns "he," "she," "it," or "they" or using nouns. In other words, the story is not told from a personal perspective. A third-person narrative contrasts with a first-person narrative, which is a story told from a personal perspective using the pronoun "I" (and sometimes "we").

Looks like I'm using a 3rd person narrative.