This is a really interesting start to a novel! I like the concept, and you do a good job keeping up a level of suspense throughout, telling me enough to keep me interested without giving everything away. There are some inconsistencies with tense. I would suggest a more thorough read through for tense and grammar, and googling the phrase 'sequence of tenses' wouldn't hurt. Those rules are difficult to get straight, so don't worry if you don't quite recall them from primary school. I only know them because of ten years of Latin. You have a great facility with simile and metaphor which I really enjoyed. Another thing you do need to keep an eye out for are those run-on sentences. Anytime you have a sentence with the following structure: "She stumbles forward, kicking the broken glass out of the way," you need a comma right before the -ing verb, like I did here. Whenever you have a character addressing another character by name, such as, "What's wrong, honey?" You need a comma before the name, again, as shown. Any time you have a sentence with two clauses, you need commas in between, like I did just now. Every time you add a new verb with its own subject, that's a new clause. These are kind of difficult grammar rules, so don't worry about having to review them. Tons of writers do, and I think you've got the start to something really interesting here. Keep up the good work!
1) Is the title too obvious -- I think that's up to you. Emily Dickinson wrote some riddle poems, and the titles were the answers (although now I think of it, it's possible she's not the one who named them.) I do think that it's a mistake to explicitly answer the question in the last two lines. This, of course, is a matter of opinion, but I think it's clear and well written enough for the reader to guess the point.
2) Punctuation/grammar: Very good, actually. I would move the comma after the second line to after the first line, but that's the only change I would make. :)
3) Interesting: Yes! Long winded: Not at all. :)
4) This goes to personal opinion again -- I would cut the last two lines of the second stanza. I think it's stronger to leave it a list of specific thing and let us implicitly understand a more encompassing list than to introduce that vagueness.
Really nice little piece! I enjoy riddle poems. :)
This is great. It's really interesting to hear the other perspective from a song I've heard so many times. It's so true too -- I know way too many girls who cling to boys who clearly don't really care about them. It's really interesting to hear Jolene as a real character, a confident woman, instead of some vague man-stealing hottie. The one thing I would change is in the second to last stanza, it's a little confusing to change the order of the clauses like that. If this were actually being sung, I think it would go by too quickly for a listener to really understand.
Nice work!
This is a great start to a story! I'm definitely interested to read on, which is the most important thing. The characters are also developing really nicely. I already have a sense of Ireland's hard-headedness and self-confidence.The one thing I would recommend is that you google 'sequence of tenses' and read a bit about that. You're having a little bit of trouble with which past tense to use -- simple past, perfect, pluperfect, etc. Other than that, great work.
Good luck with your writing!
I love your poem. It's such a beautiful cross-section of the ups and downs of life. Even though this is very personal to you, it definitely resonated with me, and I'm sure it will with other people as well. One grammar note: who's is a contraction of who is, not a possessive. Whose is the possessive form. It's a tricky one to keep straight. :)
Good luck with your writing and nice work!
Hi Skylar! I think you've introduced a really interesting character here! I was intrigued right from the start. Of course this is an early draft and there are one or two typos, like ablee instead of able in the third paragraph, but that's nothing to worry about so early on.
I do think you want to introduce something concrete a little earlier here. You've got seven paragraphs of contextless musing at the moment, which is great character building, but it leaves the reader kind of floating about. Maybe segue into a memory to start establishing backstory, or else establish setting by having the character describe where he/she is and what he/she is doing, feeling, seeing, etc.
I definitely think this is a character worth pursuing. Both despicable and relatable, this one's a winner!
Good luck!
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