correction of short passage

no longer in its usual place.


What room?



This type of cruelty is sickening and wrong. Furthermore, it borders on being unacceptable because descriptions of boy's buttocks being hit with canes are relished by a certain kind of pervert.

If you have to include such deplorable things in your writing, just say "she hit them with a cane". Better still, rewrite the story. Say she witheld their pocket money or something.



not to play ball games indoors again.

You put this in the middle of the passage, so I only commented on the text which followed it:

Also,



One does not 'do' a move. One makes a move.

Many thanks, Contrex, for your constructive comments. I've inadvertently inserted the request in the middle instead of the beginning of the passage.

Could you please go through the earlier part of the passage and tell me how to improve on it?

Thank you very much for your help.

It was raining heavily. Tom and Mat could not go out to play. The two brothers were very bored. Their parents had gone to work. They soon decided to play ‘soccer’ at home.

They were kicking and passing the ball to each other happily. In his eagerness to score, Tom kicked the ball so hard that it hit the vase on the table. Their mother’s favourite vase broke into many pieces. Tom had an idea. “You should sweep away the pieces of vase on the floor and threw them into the rubbish bin, so Mother won’t notice that the vase is gone.” Mat thought it was a good idea. After doing what they thought was a wise move, they watched television.

In the evening, they heard a knock on the door. It was their mother, all right! Tom opened the door quickly. True enough, the boys’ mother did not notice that the vase was no longer on the table.

The next morning, when she was dusting the furniture, she realised that her favourite vase was no longer at the usual place.

Since neither Tom nor Mat admitted to the wrongdoing, the mother went into the room and came out with a cane. She gave each of them a hard stroke of the cane on the buttocks. They apologised to her and promised not to play any ball game at home again.

Please see my previous post.

My two previous posts include the changes I feel are worth considering.

In my society, beating children with canes is widely considered unacceptable. Such treatment might well form the basis of a prosecution in court for cruelty, particularly if visible weals were noted by a doctor. Your society may differ. I should, perhaps, not make judgements. However I would be failing in my duty as a guide if I did not make these things clear.

Furthermore, writing in those words about caning on the buttocks would be considered excessively explicit, in the same way that an exact, anatomical description of sexual intercourse would be. Unless the text was for inclusion in a work of perverted pornography or an account of a very cruel and strict mother.

Consider the following:

They made love that night.

He eagerly thrust his penis into her vagina that night.

The first would be acceptable in normal, non-pornographic writing, the second is much too shocking and unneccesarily voyeuristic.

Hi Contrex

I deeply appreciate your constructive comments.

sweep UP the pieces ...and THROW them...

usually spelled MATT. A mat is something you wipe your feet on at the door.

"True enough" is a bit strange. "As Tom had suspected" might work better

"and promised not to play ball in the house again".

Many thanks, Contrex and Monterey, for the constructive comments.