This is a well written story, but it was lacking in drama a little. I suppose that has more to do with personal taste than any proscriptions of the critics. I liked the way you described the gas station, but, personally, I had to believe it was going to get robbed or something. To each their own.
I'm sorry, but something is wrong with my head, and I'm having a very hard time reading and writing. I wish I could help, but it isn't a possibility right now.
This caught my interest and kept it. I got inside this woman's head. She seemed to be caught up in the daily chores, and the fact that she was glad she was injured so she could get out of them for a while is more telling than the reader first thinks. But it is nice that she is not bitter. She's just happy to get a break.
This is short and to the point. It needs expansion. Maybe you could mention some kind of conflict between the nephew and the deceased. You might elaborate on what the recipe was for. Seven o'clock in the evening is kind of a bad time to stage a break-in, because people would still be up and active. Maybe you could show what the nephew is doing up until the time he stages the break-in. Is he alienated from something? This needs a lot of fleshing out.
I don't think the gift points I sent with my first rating went through, so I'm sending some more. If my first rating did go through don't worry about the extra gift points. I have more than enough.
This is an entertaining yarn, something to bring along on camping trips. It would remind the kids to watch out for bears and other wildlife. You could tell it around a campfire. It also made me long for some of the boy scout camping trips I went on many years ago. We were a little more reckless, though. One night a couple of the scouts were on top of the roof of our tent/cabin and trying to pour white gas down the chimney in order to get flame to shoot out of the top of the chimney. They tried and tried, but they just couldn't get flame to shoot out. Then one of them filled up a paper cup and dropped the whole cup down the chimney, and there was a big roar in the fireplace and fire shot out about five feet high from the chimney. We were fortunate that no one got burned. We did lots of crazy stuff like that in the boy scouts. Now that I am old I cringe to think about what could have happened.
Your rhymes and rhythms drew me into this poem. That is something I try to attain in my poetry. It makes reading the work of art more enjoyable. There are a few minor usage mistakes in this poem. For instance, in the third line of the first stanza you wrote: "your eyes 'were trying' to say". These days I think they want you to write "your eyes 'tried' to say". In the fourth line you wrote 'drift off into'. You could have done better without the 'off'.
This brings to mind a poem by the Irish poet "Yeats" titled "Things Fall Apart". It says, "The best lack all conviction. The worst are filled with a passionate intensity". I like the line in the poem here, "Trust no one." I would go one further and say, "Don't even trust yourself". Most things that are thought to be true are true only within a certain range of experience. The most common trick of bad leaders is to seize on a single example of "the truth", and apply it in ways that lead many people astray. In a democracy it spawns a "sound bite". In a dictatorship it is enforced by the secret police. It brings to my mind the three most evil men in history - Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. I tend to avoid strident people. One time I heard a woman say, "I don't believe in violence, and anybody who does ought to be shot down like a dirty dog". God save us from our saviors.
This is an intriguing prompt. I've heard stories on television about lottery winners who very foolishly blew all their money in a short amount of time. One guy had a bunch of cars do a demolition derby in his backyard. What an idiot. Money can be a blessing or a curse. It depends on what you do with it. That demolition derby guy could have fed a bunch of starving people in East Africa with the money he had, and he could have been comfortable and secure afterwards.
This shows a lot of originality. I like it! It also touches on the issue of how much parents can, and should, know about what their children are doing. It also shows how situations can have an unexpected outcome. Nice work!
I liked the opening of this story. You have a good "hook" there. The language could have been more dramatic though, not so much by using noun and verb modifiers as by simply stating problems in the starkest way possible. For instance, when she is examining her broken leg instead of saying "It was fractured" say, "She looked down and saw a bulge in her leg that wasn't there before her fall. A sudden wave of pain hit her leg, and she tried not to cry. She had to think clearly. How would she get out of here?" The last sentence in the story needs work. Instead of saying "She was going to be all right" you could write "She would be all right." That moment in this story could be more dramatic. You could have written, "Though the throbbing in her leg was killing her, she knew that her life had been saved, and she felt the greatest gratitude she had ever felt." This story has many of the mistakes people make when they are beginning to write. Regardless of how many reams of paper with writing scribbled on them you have in your desk drawer, the best way to learn how to write is by constructive criticism. I have a long way to go myself.
You wrote the story of my life. I enjoyed it immensely. I'm glad you didn't depict it as a total waste. I think the majority of writers spend a lot of time in that chair letting their minds roam. You do have some issues with usage here. Some of the sentences are sloppy. For example, in the second sentence you wrote - "others 'just' sort of sit around. It's very hard for amateur writings to get the word "just" out of their writing, and this sentence would have been so much better without that word in it. But don't beat yourself up over that. The word "just" sometimes creeps into my writing too. What you wrote is very good. Just watch out for the word "just".
This gives me food for thought. Everyone is special in their own way, but "being special" can also be a put down too. It scares me a little when someone tells me they think I am special. This is a nice bit of writing. Keep it up.
This held my interest, but it could be better. It is a poem that doesn't use rhyme, so the language needs to be more vivid. You could have been more descriptive, with a joyous family gathering driving the narrative. This poem is lacking joy. I wanted to see people hugging and looking at each other with smiling faces. In one place you wrote, "In what was a sleepy town" when it would have been better to dispense with the second and third two words, and write "In a sleepy town". The last sentence is problematic, too. You need to replace it with something like, "Which provided a delicious meal". Something like that. Also, I have never been in a pizza joint that didn't have the smell of oregano. Mentioning that would draw your readers into the story.
This poem does a good job of describing most poets' lives. You hit the nail on the head. There might be poets from other walks of lives, but it seems like they all have this frame of mind at least to some extent. I particularly liked the last stanza. That expressed it perfectly - "Whatever it is / it cannot be denied ,,, ". Keep writing. I'd like to hear more from you.
This is a nice bit of poetic writing. But the two words almost at the end of the fourth line "all over" could be replaced with the word "covering". I liked the first two lines. They are good poetry. I also like the last two lines: "a wound caused / By falling in love". I liked this poem in general. Good work.
I could relate to Shanye. I felt the cold she felt. I understood her frustration. The prose in this piece could be tightened up considerably, though. For instance, in the first sentence you used two words - "out into". I think you could have done better without the "out", leaving just the "into". For some reason the verb "shivered" seems out of place. It seems like it doesn't agree with the first verb, "stepped". Maybe you should get another opinion on that. Further along in the story you wrote "her stepmother would just drop dead". The word "just" needs to be removed. It seems like every writer lets that word slip into places where it should not be, me included. It's a bad habit that should be resisted, most of the time. With some tightening up and polishing this could work very well.
This is a well crafted story. It got my interest from the beginning. I would have liked something a little more dramatic, though. This story is resolved too easily, but that could be just me. It builds tension, but then the conflict deflates like a balloon. I would have liked it to be a little edgier.
This is good. The way you build tension in the story got me. I was starting to feel lost myself. I have been lost in the woods a few times. It's kind of an irksome feeling. One possible angle if you want to expand this story is to have her shown to know that money is in the backpack, and it's bulky to carry, so that she was increasing her chances of never being found by hanging on to the money. I don't know. That's just a thought. This is very good as it is.
I like the image of the fern in this poem. It sets the mood and invokes a feeling of engagement with the grace and the beauty of the plant. The rhymes are good, though I think you should have labored a little harder over a couple of them. That's just my opinion though. This is really well done.
This got my attention. That whole business of the wormholes is intriguing. Using wormholes is the only way I see to travel the vast distances of space, but we never know. There are probably brilliant scientists around who are thinking up ways to navigate the universe. Some of the new technologies they're working on are incredible.
This is well imagined, exciting writing. I really enjoyed the scene in the temple. It held my interest. But you could be more economical with your language. For instance, in the beginning you wrote - "the watery beer she'd been contemplating drinking." This is not good writing. It is enough to say she had a watery beer in front of her. The fact that it is there is a good indication that she's thinking about drinking it. You might write - "She regarded her beer", or something like that. You make similar mistakes throughout this story. This story has some real strengths, but like they say, "the key to good writing is revision."
This is good, but it might need just a little bit more description. I think most of your audience does not know what those vehicles are like to ride on because many people in the U.S. don't use buses. You might add a couple of sentences about the bus rocking as it pulls away from the curb, and add some description about the color of the bus, and/or the shape the tires of the bus are in. This story does hang together well, but it could use a little polishing here and there.
This gives an interesting perspective on the fable of the "Three Little Pigs". The wolf looks almost human in this story, but underneath it all he might still have a ravenous appetite for pork. Part of me was waiting for the wolf to bare his teeth, but that probably says more about me than it does about the wolf in the story. It is really good the way you told this story from the perspective of the big, bad wolf.
I like this. It gave me insight into how special education programs work. There is a quote by Albert Einstein that went something like this: "Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will believe its entire life that it is stupid." Who knows, you might put some of those classroom bullies to shame when you get older.
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