My first published work

Kudos for the effort, but in all honesty, the article didn't do anything special for me. It was choppy, had a handful of grammar mistakes, and I thought the toy analogy was kind of lame.

 

not shabby

 

Yeah my last comment was nicer but I agree with this

 

You're using too many hip/attention-grabbing phrases.

The capitalization of Y on young is unnecessary.

You said 'the toy' too many times with too little space between them.

"An" extension.

There's too much to nitpick.

Also, it didn't interest me. Sorry

 

Edited version:

I know you might catch flak given your previous posts (hair gel, DeVry, what have you), but if you're honestly interested in sports journalism, here's some advice:

(1) Punctuation. It's a little thing that gets overlooked, but it's one of those things that you don't really notice unless it's wrong. Commas and apostrophes were missing from your article in many crucial spots.

(2) Tone. I understand you were trying to be conversational with the "but oh wait do we have a dark horse" line but it really came off...well, flat. It's like you were trying too hard to be buddies with the reader instead of providing information. There were also quite a few unnecessary phrases that seemed to just be thrown in there for the sake of transition or as an afterthought.

(3) Theme. The baby/toy analogy didn't do much, if anything for me. It also didn't really seem to do anything for you. This is just a basic thing and many journalists get away from it as they become more comfortable in who they are as writers, but you should try to tie in your beginning analogy/story into the ending. Otherwise it's just out there for really no good reason. The baby/toy analogy was a bad one to begin with, but it was only there in the beginning and wasn't really, IMO, tied into the rest of the story well.

(4) Edit. Just for future reference, try to go through and proofread/edit your articles. I know you're an amateur, and this is your first published work, but that doesn't mean that you want to come off as unprofessional. This felt very thrown together and last minute without any proper editing or oversight.

 

The whole thing sounds really awkward. You take too long with your 'toy' story which makes me lose attention from the beginning. After that it was a chore to have to read the rest. Your grammar and punctuation is effy.

 

Not bad, but you need to do a better job of checking the grammar, etc. (I'm pretty bad, myself... edit all the time), and here's something I did for fun:

Let's get one thing straight. Carmelo Anthony will not re-sign with the Nuggets. You see, Carmelo Anthony is like a 5 year old baby finished playing with his favorite toy. The toy gets boring for Baby Melo, and he no longer enjoys it. After a while, the toy finds its way under the bed, where it stays for months, parked there for so long that Baby Melo forgets he even has that toy. The toy gets old, rusty and so dilapidated that Baby Melo decides that he wants a new one.

Putting this into a basketball context, the "old toy" is the Denver Nuggets. Knowing that the face of the franchise will not return, what should Masai Ujiri, the Denver general manager, do? Should he keep Carmelo for the rest of the season for a playoff run, with the hope that he'll accept a new contract with the Nuggets, or trade him before the deadline in order to get some value out of their departing superstar?

If I'm Masai Ujiri, I would definitely try to trade Carmelo Anthony, but the question is whether other teams want Carmelo, knowing that it's just for the remainder of the season. Carmelo Anthony has already announced the he would sign a extension only if he were traded to the Knicks, or possibly the Nets. The New Jersey Nets have recently announced that they are out of talks with the Nuggets to acquire Carmelo Anthony, so that leaves the Knicks. Oh Wait! Do we have a dark horse team in this conversation? Sure we do. We have the Houston Rockets, who have decided they will still try to acquire Carmelo Anthony, even if he doesn't commit to a contract extension. What can the Rockets offer, you ask? The Rockets can offer young, talented players such as Aaron Brooks and Jordan Hill, draft picks, and expiring contracts.

Masai Ujiri will have a lot of thinking to do before the February 24th trade deadline. For now, we will all play the waiting game.

 

Feedback*

 

I thought you were in a journal.

 

Published = hit the submit button?

I'm kidding. Practice and dedication will make you a glorious victor in the literary wars. If you ever doubt yourself, just remember that Richard Justice gets paid to "write". :grin:

godspeed.

 

First step

 

Carmelo Anthony will not resign with the Nuggets.
_____

It's good to know he won't quit.

 

Ouch! I'll change the spelling in my effort at fiddling with GlenRice's opus.

 

Why is it that you can call your money your monies? That's always puzzled me.

 

I thought you did some scientific research for DeVry on the effectiveness of hair gel and you got published in their scientific journal.

 

you must of written that while you were drunk.

 

you're welcome.

 

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This counts as being published nowadays? Not to pile on but if you are going to put published in the thread title it should actually be published by a third party independant source, i.e. you submitted an article to an editor and they liked it enough to post to thier page or publication.