| Hcomment
| - average of scores
*intro: 7
the intro is promising. you certainly establish your tone and direction: a first-person narrative of the awesomeness that is fruitopia, and a nostalgic sadness due to its lack of current existence. you might want to be clearer about oreo-o's, as i had to look it up to remember that particular breakfast cereal. when in doubt, just link the whole thing to the wikipedia page, like this: Oreo O's. also concerning clarity, you say 'Yeah, forget Oreo-o's, THAT was the best product to come out of the 90s.' i think you should replace 'THAT' with 'Fruitopia', as it seems unclear which product you mean. i really like the inferiroity complex with snapple, i think you can use that throughout the article to great effect. sections of dialogue like this: 'Whaaat? You DON'T remember it? No kidding! You were, like, missing out, man' sort of get a bit choppy and tend to break up the flow. try to avoid little interjections like 'no kidding; if you can.
*history: 6
hmm well if the narrator was only one, he wouldn't be able to remember indeed, and perhaps a more vague date would suffice. maybe a little more speculation on the flavors would serve well, perhaps even a few quick made-up crazy-sounding ones would do. i like the description, but again, the interruptions like 'yeah' tend to chop it up a bit. i think they serve to illustrate the immaturity/youth/excitement of the narrator, but there are other ways to do that as well. i like the interruption in the middle of the description, but the conversation with the teacher was sort of tedious. i would try to trim it a bit. and the last line about her walking away wasn't really necessary, i think you can just open the next section with something like 'anyway...'. what's HFCS?
*now, where were we: 5
hmmm, this section starts with more straight-up nostalgia without anything else added in. the strength of your other sections is in the other things added alongside the nostalgia, like the snapple bit or the overlong description. this section is basically just an account from a baseball game, followed by a real list of their flavors, followed by another mostly tedious conversation with the spanish teacher. i think the fruitopia flavors are ripe for parody with their crazy-sounding names. make up a few of your own or distort some existing ones. throw in another detail or two about the ball games. again, i would cut down on the conversation with the teacher, or maybe try to work fruitopia into thos conversations, as they kind of break up the rest of the article. i think this section should lead with 'now where were we' and the title should be changed to 'flavors' or some other official-sounding name, to line up with the 'history' and 'criticism' sections.
*criticism: 5
i do like the ending, with the realization that they sell fruitopia in canada and the immediate reaction, but the rest doesn't seem to fit together and wrap up with the other parts of the article. if the narrator is affected by the sugar, shouldn't we see some sign of this earlier? i think a bit more history, in particular the fate of strawberry passion awareness, could serve well here. i think that, again, the spanish teacher parts are sort of disruptive, but that can be remedied if fruitopia were mentioned even in passing. i really don't like the last few sentneces; your ending should be one of the strong points in your article.
|
| Fcomment
| - my preview button tells me that your score is a nice, round 36, placing you solidly in 'adequate; the average article' territory. i do like this article, and agree that it is certainly adequate at the very least. i think to push it to that next level, you should focus on integrating the two sides of the article. also, i think running with the 'snapple sucks' angle could net you some large humor gains. finally, trim the dialogue to read a bit easier . good work thus far, and good luck!
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)