Talk:Into the Wild (novel)/GA1

GA Review

I am failing this article because I believe it neither meets the Good Article criteria nor is sufficiently close to be brought in line via trivial improvements. Among my issues with the current article are the following:

The lead provides an inadequate summary of the article. I would suggest expanding the lead to at least two full paragraphs, giving more detail on all points.
Various grammar problems. As is, the article is comprehensible, but it has very poor flow. For example, the first paragraph of the Background section right now reads

"Into the Wild was intended to be a single volume, but later changed to be the first book in a series.[2] The reason for writing this book was that HarperCollins asked Victoria Holmes to write a story about wild cats, which she initially was not enthusiastic about.[3] Victoria Holmes decided to use human issues, like starting at a new school, falling in love when you shouldn't, being bullied by someone who you should look up to, and even knowing a deep secret that you only tell your friends. This helped her overlook the fact that it was a fantasy, and let the characters flow through.[1] Once Holmes had finished writing down her ideas, she sent them to Kate Cary, who actually wrote Into the Wild. Then Holmes did the editing for the novel.[4]"

If I were to rewrite this paragraph so that it read more easily, I would word it as follows:

"Into the Wild was originally intended to be a stand-alone novel.[2] The book was conceived by publisher HarperCollins, who asked Victoria Holmes to write a story about wild cats. Holmes was originally unenthusiastic about the idea,[3] as she did not like the thought of writing a fantasy story. However, she was able to construct a plot based around human issues such as starting at a new school, falling in love when you shouldn't, being bullied by someone who you should look up to, and knowing a deep secret that you only tell your friends which helped her overlook the fantasy aspects and let the characters flow through.[1] After the initial planning phase Holmes took on an editorial role for the rest of Into the Wild's production while Kate Cary did the actual writing.[4] Following the commercial success of the novel, a number of sequels and spin-offs were written, and Into the Wild became the first book of the Warriors series.[2]"

This is just an example, and everyone will obviously write somewhat differently, but as it stands the page's writing style does not quite fit the encyclopedic tone found in most articles.

You are missing a characters section. When written, this section should describe the role played by each of the book's major figures. Good novel articles usually have a character section with roughly one full paragraph per character of detailed information and one to two paragraphs of introduction. They are traditionally formatted as definition lists.
The themes section needs expanded to not just be a restatement of the production section.

Once these issues are cleared up, feel free to nominate the page once more. Good luck! --erachima talk 07:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]