Overall: I really could feel the despair of your main character (Ashley) in this piece. I'm assuming that English is not your first language because of some of the errors in your writing - but those errors did not obscure an interesting heroine or a basically strong structure in the story. Sometimes a lack of familiarity with English is actually helpful and makes your descriptions unique- like the line that was my favorite.
Favorite Part: His smiles send a lot of people into fits of smiles I like this image of a popular boy.
Suggestions:
Overall, the main thing that detracts from the story is the improper use of verb tense throughout. I've included a few examples below for you. To help you further, I'm including this link to a site that helps you with working on verb tenses in English. You could also see if you could get a buddy on WDC who could help you with a line edit before you post a story while you get more familiar with using different forms of the past tense.
A mix of good mornings or even simple greetings like hey or hi flows around cheerfully.
Try putting quotation marks "" around phrases that are being said ("hey" "hi") even if you don't have an identified speaker - so that the phrases stand out.
The students are either outside playing till the bell ring or in class talking to their friends.
"'til the bell rings"
No one seems to notice a girl with long black hair, dressed neatly in uniform walked into the room.
The verb walked doesn't work here - could be "as she walks" or "walking".
No one ever send a hey or good morning towards the dark haired girl and in return she remain silent as a mouse.
"sends" and "remains" Or "sent" and "remained"
Her aura was very depressing and dark and every time she did tried to talk; she will only stumble over her words.
Poor thing, she sounds very lonely. "did try" "she only stumbled"
He smiled sluggishly and reply kindly, “Good morning everyone”
"replied"
I reviewed this item because your port was posted on:
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I offer my review in the spirit of constructive and honest criticism to help a fellow writer with my thoughts. My review is based on only one opinion, my own, so take from it only what is helpful to you.
Okay, that wasn’t what I was expecting. “Sooo, you were arrested for running a red light?” I asked.
You have a very convincing conversation going in the piece!
Based on your request in the review request heading I love this story line, but something just doesn't feel right, & I can't put my finger on it. Any insight would be appreciated - my thought is that the pacing of the piece is off, both because of the emotional state of the male character and because there's too much build-up to the clever ending. It raised the stakes high for me - I was expecting family violence toward the middle of the piece, so the end was a relief, but not as comic as it could be.
I shot up in bed at the sound of my husband’s voice, vibrating with barely controlled anger.
This is in the second paragraph - barely controlled anger.
I had never heard him this angry.
Just four lines later. Then he stays in that state all the way through the rest of the piece. I think if you could build up his anger rather than have him at the same emotional state all through the piece it would help. Like maybe he starts off resigned, then gets annoyed again while describing what happened - then gets indignant etc...
Yes! I just grinned, rolled over and went to sleep!
This ending is a little too quick. I like the character's internal observations throughout the piece about how she "uses" certain techniques for responding to her husband, but all of the sudden she just grins and rolls over and sleeps? I think I wanted a little more anticipation of how she's going to use this new information or even how good she feels about having another line of attack.
Overall: Very believable interaction and nice way to capture the negotiated relations of a marriage. The anger of the husband is a little monotonous and the ending seems a little too brusque.
Overall: What a wonderful concept in your story. Your mirror gave me a true picture of this young girl's life. I think you could extend this story into much more than the sketch it is right now.
Favorite Part: I have seen her mother dancing before me, with the newborn baby cuddled in her arms. I have seen my mistress, learning to walk with her father. The teenager took her first steps in the room where I reside.
Suggestions: Most of these are just word preferences or other picky things. I did notice that you switch between past and present tense though and I think it might be best to use the present at the end of the piece.
see an eight year old happily
eight-year-old (to match your style below)
Instead, a seventeen-year-old Aphrodite appears before me nowadays.
I thought "nowadays" was a little too informal for the voice of the mirror (based on what was said previously) I don't think you need it either because we know that the mirror is stating what is in front of her NOW. But i would just say "now" if you're going to say anything.
She has got a terrible addiction towards gold jewelry.
Word preference: change "towards" to "to"
I know I’m a non living thing
"non-living" or perhaps "I know I'm inanimate,"
She did have loving parents. Yet, she had a silent craving for a sibling.
This is one of the places the tense gets strange. I thought you meant "She did have loving parents (at one time)." But I think you mean "She has loving parents. Yet, she has a silent craving for a sibling."
but what else can one do?
I think this is the only time you switch into the impersonal "one" I think the mirror is familiar enough with the girl to say "she".
She sometimes took refuge to her reading table,
Word preference: "to" change to "at".
The mother could do nothing save heaving sighs of sorrow
Word preference: "save heaving" change to "except heave"
Nice job and story!
I reviewed this item because your port was posted on:
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I offer my review in the spirit of constructive and honest criticism to help a fellow writer with my thoughts. My review is based on only one opinion, my own, so take from it only what is helpful to you.
Overall: An interesting introduction to a search to understand the history of an early settlement. I like the feel of the piece. It needs more substance to really make a statement and I felt like you were experimenting and shifting directions a bit brusquely in the last paragraph. Keep working on it - with development I think it could be very interesting.
Favorite Part: No memories existed to guide them as they began routines that were familiar and comforting in the homes they’d left behind. Nice juxtoposition of "routines" without "memories".
Suggestions:
The fog crawls and covers enough to let casual observers recognize the possibility of something indefinable smoldering beneath it.
I wonder if the fog "lets" casual observers recognize anything. Somehow these concepts are at odds to me. I would think that fog would obscure from "casual" observers and only entice a careful observer to recognize that there was something smoldering beneath it.
Also, I think it would be nice if you decided whether to insert your own interest from the beginning of the piece. You only have one paragraph in which you speak from the first person - perhaps the whole piece would benfit from your point of view rather than a third person description.
I want to slip the curtain to show me their faces,
I think to "see" their faces would work better in this sentence.
Finally, throughout the piece you have, of necessity, used a lot of plural pronouns "their, them, etc." I think you should try to edit the piece and fill in some of those pronouns with proper nouns describing the people you mean.
ex. They’re still out there, some of them.
Could be "The witches and sailors are still out there, some of them." or "They're still out there, some of the witches and sailors."
There are other examples in the piece that could also be filled in this way and would make the piece stronger.
Keep working on it- sounds like the history of your town is indeed interesting.
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: Very dark but evocative piece. I enjoyed the transition element/chorus. The vignettes of the wife and the writer could use a little more development to allow the characters to shine as much as the traveler and the homeless man. Interesting conceptually.
Favorite Part: The sun extorted a flood of moisture from his skin I like that the sun acts as an extortionist here - it works well with the beating heart of the earth at the end..
Suggestions:
it was unchallenging, but he had been content work.
Just a little grammar issue there at the end of the sentence.
I felt like the wife and writer characters could use a bit more flesh before you describe their "issues". A little more introduction like in the previous pieces with the homeless and traveler.
Nice piece.
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: A very personal piece that captures the angst of 19 quite well.
Favorite Part:A friend of mine once told me, and I quote: “good girls aren’t in demand.” What does that mean? I’ll tell you what that means. It means, get with the program baby.
Suggestions: While the casual language choice is great for the voice of a 19-yr-old, I think it might be better to still spell out words like "you" instead of "u". Although I suppose it depends on where you're taking this piece - if it is a journal story then you could leave it.
You skip from subject to subject in the piece a little too quickly in my opinion - you might want to identify only one issue that really drives the character and try to highlight that more. Right now I think that it's the lack of boyfriend and what that means to her.
Good first piece!
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: Wonderful build-up to a forbidden or at least non-traditional love. The characters are interesting. You've asked if you could publish - but I have to say - please give us the climax of the story and the resolution before you do!
Favorite Part: Great insight into the characters - Loved this line: "Um... hey man. You need a ride?" except the words came out more like "Heymanyewneedaride?"
And this . . I was confused and frightened at the prospect that he might crawl across me and lean out of my window.
You've really started to build the tension between the two main characters at this point.
Suggestions: In this sentence at the beginning of the piece you've got a lot going on: Every prospective, every well-thought out (and not so well-though out) action, every feeling and every aspect of my life changed for the better. Because this is the very beginning of your piece, I would suggest you simplify. Something like "Every thought and prospective action (ill conceived or not), was enhanced."
When you first introduce Lee as your friend, I had a hard time figuring out who he was. I'd suggest adding the name to this sentence: I stiffened in my seat and had to thank God that only one of my friends, Lee, had taken this class and was sitting in alphabetical order across the room.
You've made some things obvious through "telling" in your story that you may be able to show with the action of the story. For Example, one of my favorite lines from above is followed by: I wouldn't have known what to do with myself. I don't think you need to tell the reader this, and I don't think it adds as much as the sentence that follows it: I was prepared to push the seat back as far away from him as possible if he decided to, but I was relieved to watch him get out of my car and punch in the numbers himself. I'd suggest that you re-read and look for sentences without any action, like this, and ask if they're necessary and move the story forward.
Finally, while I love the idea that Michah is not as "aware" of Julien as Julien is of Michah - the idea that Michah doesn't remember his name seems a little far-fetched at that point in the story, especially because of the project thing. Perhaps a lighter touch would still imply the same thing: "Your name's Julien right? It's hard for me to get everyone's names straight."
Thanks for sharing the beginning of a romance with us! Write on!
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: Ack! It's terrible to have something stolen - especially in such an intimate way! There are some very nice moments in the story, although the details make it drag at points.
Favorite Part: The description of Senor Carabinero; his movements, dialogue and smile were very evocative.
Suggestions: I suppose it depends on the audience for this article, but in my opinion, the piece is a little boring at times because of the amount of detail that you include and the dry presentation of that detail. If you want to sell it as an article about being careful while traveling, then you could probably leave it as is.
I see potential though for a more unique travelogue and I'd suggest the way to get there is by re-reading through the piece and trying to find ways to express some of the more mundane facts with as much character as the Senor!
Example: I discovered that three attempts had already been made to use my card for the equivalent of about $90, $65, and $40 in various Santiago locations. Becomes . .
"I discovered that the hands of fallen angels had already delicately swiped my card for purchases of $40, $65, and $90 throughout Santiago's shaded terrazas."
Also, the bit in the middle about Bush and Obama is a little distracting because the election is still so fresh. I might just skip to the "how are the police" bit.
Finally, I like the first sentence being about fingers - but the word supple somehow seems a little too erotic for this particular scene - strong, sinewy? strong, smooth? I don't know, probably fine, see what others think.
Good luck! Glad you didn't have too terrible of an experience.
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: The casual language and meandering subject matter make this piece difficult to follow. I think the idea is sound, but it needs restructuring and editing.
Most Amusing Part:I would have a work life during the day, a social life and fun in the afternoon and a romantic life in the evenings.
Somehow this particular line really made the character of the speaker jump out at me. I thought of a cafe in Europe or a bar in Africa and the guy that's always there, who tells people all of his "beliefs" and then never really acts on them. A classic dreamer.
Suggestions:
My suggestions are geared toward taking the piece as an essay about how to live the perfect life. You haven't said what the target audience is for the piece, so I've chosen an audience that is interested in a little navel-gazing and philosophizing.
First, I think you need to choose whether to write in the first person or the third person. You start the piece off with the third person: Can a person have it all? then switch to first person: I don’t mean owning things. We do this all the time in conversation, but it's a bit jarring in writing. I think you want to be in first person, since that's the choice you've made a majority of the time. Imagine the impact if the piece started, "Can I have it all?"
Second, you've used deomonstrative and indefinate pronouns too much, especially in the second paragraph. ex. This is the story and This however is not the plot
If you try replacing the pronoun with the correct noun, you'll end up with stronger statements. I'll try the first one for you: The story by Finney inspired my essay.
Third, you should give the reader a hint at the beginning about where you are taking them. You could do this in answer to your own question by stating, Yes, if I'm organized and know myself well, I can have it all.
Fourth, the pieces you describe having read sound interesting, but you really didn't give much information about how they relate to the topic. I think you could add more information about each piece and the issues raised by your reading of the pieces to draw the reader in.
Finally, I noticed a few minor technical errors:
Notice the punctuation:
All we must do is stick to the following four things:[. L]love life, social relations, work life and recreation.
and whether [weather] or not you know that yourself.
Hope this gives you a helpful jumping-off point to continue working the piece!
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: The piece draws you into the bad day of this clerk and asks the reader to join in his emotions throughout. It was alternately frustrating and humorous. Great start!
Favorite Part: By far I enjoyed the imagined death of the poor hourly worker by his manager's fat-powered plastic projectile. (His shirt button)
Loved this description of tuna from Subway just how could a gray mass of ground up fish stored in a bucket and portioned out with an ice cream scoop be so delectable?
Suggestions: I found the use of profanity throughout the piece distracting and jarring. Your descriptions of the horrid customer, frustrating line at Subway, and annoying manager are all so well-drawn that I didn't need the profanity to get the point. At least I would suggest toning down the language where possible - it also would help with the humor and make the protagonist more likeable. For me, profanity indicates the top of the anger scale, and the overuse of it makes a character seem less capable of more subtle versions of the same emotion.
You have a tendency to use run-on sentences. They are wonderfully descriptive, often giving small humorous asides, but in many cases would be stronger if you broke them up into smaller sentences, edited to pare down the number of words, or added commas to indicate clauses that should be read together.
ex. Unless Sean found himself with the time and the money to sit down at a Japanese steakhouse on his break and have a meal grilled up in front of him by an Asian man who probably wouldn’t be Japanese but most defiantly would be capable of wowing feats with a sword-like spatula, he had to drive to this less esteemed town and eat more modestly.
Finally, by the time you returned to Subway I was so on edge, expecting horrible turns of events, that I found it hard to switch into the new "all's right with the world" part of the story. I think you may want to help the reader transition with a little more description of the relief felt from leaving for the day or for getting to finally eat or something. I guess I didn't think the character would be able to so quickly go from the confrontation to relaxed - I needed a little more time to believe the emotion.
A few straight-forward editing issues:
The woman he was helping said she was remodeling remolding one of her bathrooms, With his blood sugar low, his undershirt sticking stinking to his body and , what kind of sandwich he wanted would, which prompted the man to pull out a
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: Read on a lark, intrigued when I realized it was bowling, but lost interest after it became too much like a hallmark card.
Favorite Part: A historic feat accomplished
Most recently by Norm Duke of the
Professional Bowlers Tour,
Suggestions: I suggest that you focus more on the particular accomplishment of doing such a "feat" as a bowler. The subject of your poem is full of promise, but you've chosen to use words and phrases that could apply to a victory in almost any sport.
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: While I enjoyed the humor in the first paragraph, the latter part of your statement became a bit too "resume-y" for me. From the initial paragraph, I got that you have a self-effacing sort of "tell-it-like-it-is" sense of humor about your experiences - it's just that somewhere early on I lost that voice in the piece.
Favorite Part:Everything was great until I became too rich from my $1800 annual salary and no longer qualified for the program. Luckily for me, a position was open in the campus telefundraising center. Nothing like jobless alumni in a hostile economy to brighten your day. I enjoyed the resigned, caustic voice in these humourous bits.
Suggestions: I saw that throughout the piece there was a recurring concern that the reader thinks that you don't have enough experience to go into an MFA program, ex:
I’ve heard that the real world doesn’t begin until you graduate from college and start working. and I don’t think any combination of those experiences necessarily qualifies me to study fiction writing at your University, but I do think that they have been wide enough to dispel the myth that I’ve spent too little time in the real world to have anything to write about.
I personally felt that these asides made your piece feel more like a defense of your application rather than a persuasive argument for what you would be able to provide the program and get from the program. That tone may put a reader on the defensive themselves, ie "so what, you worked your way through school kid, what have you written, why do you want to write?"
I would suggest moving the following quote closer to the beginning of your piece for that reason: My life, my job history and even my transcript, may at first glance seem scattered, but there’s been one important and notable constant: I’ve never put down my pen. I’ve never faced a time when I didn’t feel like tapping my keyboard until 3am. The flow of characters and their stories, and the compulsion to make them into words on paper, have outlasted all my part time jobs and ill-fated career paths.
I think that passage illustrates why you're interested in attending the MFA and is more important than the bit about experience. Also, the passion evident in that quote is convincing after your story about all of the jobs.
Finally, I would suggest getting rid of the pragmatic bit at the end about dreams of a book deal or tenure-track position. It felt too self-defeating to me. I think there's potential at the end to bring back the job theme with some imagined future jobs - either bad or good with that same voice from the beginning, but don't be too tough on yourself.
I'll have to take a look at your portfolio next - I enjoyed the voice in your piece!
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: This is a fast-paced segway straight to the heart of the romance (the reunion). There's still a lot of "telling" going on in the piece though, as well as a few grammar issues (you amazing bilingual writer you).
Favorite Part:Josie nodded to whoever it was on the other end of the line. Blake couldn’t help but smile at that. He used to tease her all the time because of that. This line describes a unique and intimate knowledge that past lovers might have of each other - very touching and believable.
Suggestions: Just three:
First, I still think this chapter has a similar issue as the first with a lot of "telling" up-front. I think trying to explain Blake's tortured soul (that leads to his philandering) is difficult to sell to the reader because it's a negative male stereotype. Do we really need to know that he's slept around so much? I think you could just talk about how his friend Chris is fed up with his attitude and partying without having to get as detailed as you do.
Second, you've used "this" in an informal way that isn't necessarily wrong in a couple of places. It could be a sign that you haven't edited the piece yet (as I don't remember the problem in your first chapter.) If so, ignore the examples and explanations below.
Chris dropped Blake off at this fancy building in Hollywood. Although the word "this" can be used in that manner in everyday speech, "I went to this really cool bar last night." I think it's misleading in the above sentence, because you're not distinguishing "this" particular fancy building from amongst other fancy buildings in Hollywood, you're just talking about "a" fancy building in Hollywood.
It had taken a while but he finally understood why he was doing this. Again, colloquially this works, but in the written word it's pretty weak to end on a pronoun and if you were going to end on a pronoun I would suggest "that" instead of "this" because somehow "this" implies that he is currently doing "this" as opposed to looking back at why he was doing "that." (Also "a while" in that sentence should be one word "awhile.")
I would caution you about using pronouns generally anyway, because they don't add much to a story and can confuse the reader. Using a description of the "this" or the "it" makes writing stronger.
Third, in a few places your sentences turn into run-ons and connect ideas that I found odd together.
He had talked to Chris about it and his friend had listened and tried to help but Blake knew Chris wouldn’t take more of his s*** for much longer. At the very least, you'd need some commas to make this sentence work - but I would split up sentences that are this length and contain two very easily separated ideas. "He had talked to Chris about it and he'd listened and tried to help. Blake knew Chris wouldn't take this crap for much longer." (FYI, I dropped the more because I found it somewhat redundant - he wouldn't take more and he wouldn't take it much longer.)
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: A very sweet story within a story. . . within a story.* The formatting distracts the reader and can make it hard to follow.
Favorite Part: I really liked how the defeat of the dragon parallels Justin's defeat of his self-consciousness regarding his feelings.
Wonderful and cringe-worthy line: “Do you ever get that thing, when you want to say something, but you’re not quite sure how to say it, so you just end up saying a lot of random stuff, and feel kinda silly?”
Suggestions: I think you need to break up the dialogue and the blocks of "Clowers" text more to help the reader see the difference. You tried to do this with indentation, but weren't consistent throughout the story. I think an extra blank line at each transition would also help.
Also, you have large blocks of conversation without any prompts indicating who's talking. While I understand the desire not to break up the flow (it reads at a nice clip), you need to indicate the change in speaker more directly because in several places I lost which character was speaking and had to re-read.
Finally, I thought your descriptions of Leah's reactions to Justin were a little too distant to mesh well with her final declaration. At some point she changes to amused observation and that emotion works better from my perspective, perhaps you could adopt that at the beginning.
* I'm a big fan of the Princess Bride, so that may have influenced my enjoyment of your work :)
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Overall: You use beautiful words in your writing, which I would not term descriptive, but poetic. However, the stylistic choices to leave out punctuation and to use archaic sentence structure makes it very difficult to parse the piece as a reader.
Favorite Part: I picked a few phrases that are just beautiful: water ripples between mighty watchtowers of stone
and lost to the digital world beyond this the valley of hidden delight.
Suggestions: I would work on adding punctuation to help your reader understand your meaning. Either that or just drop straight to poetry.
I lost patience trying to parse sentences and match verb tenses to the subject. Ex. Retreating behind heavy lids the world cast into ruby colored blur mind and body drift between worlds scents of fish and earth and flowering things envelope me.
You have a wonderful vocabulary and I think that helping the reader in this way would be very rewarding for your piece.
I prepared my review in the spirit of offering helpful feedback and assistance. Please note that it reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you wish.
Hi Luci,
I read your story tonight and recognized its potential (expanded of course) for a romance novel, a genre I read incessantly. I took a lot of time preparing my review in the spirit of offering assistance to help you refine this piece and continue to improve your writing. Please note that my review reflects my own opinions and you should take from it only what you find helpful.
Overall: The story fits the romance genre well. However, it is currently burdened with too much of the story background in the beginning and errors in the use of language that distract the reader.
Strongest Part: The dialogue throughout the piece is strong and conveys a lot about the characters, especially between the girlfriends while shopping and Chris and Blake during the morning scene.
Suggestions/Critique:
1. Your opening sentence has an error in it. "Josie sipped her coffee while she sat on the kitchen table. The newspaper was open in front of her. . ." She should be sitting "at" the table, right - if she was "on" the table and sipping coffee it would be next to impossible to have a newspaper open in front of you. I am only making a big deal out of this (as I assume it's just an oversight) because it's your first line and having a mistake in your first line indicates to me (the reader) that you haven't re-read your piece carefully to edit it. In your case, it may indicate that you're writing in your second language (which is very impressive!) BUT - It also sets the reader up to look for poor writing from that point on. (Another non-substantive error - "What’s wrong with pink? It’s a perfectly color" - should be "perfect".)
2. Within your first five paragraphs you tell the background of the entire story: the main character is about to get married but she's still in love (or has massive issues to resolve) with her ex, she had a secret child by him that he doesn't know about, her family wanted to tell him, and that both of them are successful muscians with good careers living celebrity lifestyles. While this background gives a lot of insight into her character and motivations, it really undermines the reader's ability to believe or care anything about her upcoming marriage. In fact, it left me with a great deal of distaste for her and the ex and a lot of sympathy for poor Alex and her child. If the romance between her and the ex is what you're planning to bring to life, you probably want to have your reader caring about and invested in your heroine from the beginning. So leave her and your audience in the dark about all of these deeply hidden feelings that will obviously reappear when she encounters her ex. She may be nervous about getting married, but don't give us all the background to why until absolutely necessary, otherwise we can't believe that she's so dense not to realize that she's still in love with her ex. If the reader discovers her connection to the ex more naturally, and the convolutedness of the relationship comes out in the story along the way, it will be easier to forgive her when she dumps Alex and more believable that she thought she could marry him in the first place.
3. Beware swearing. It alienates and can be cliche. I think with Blake and Chris, the use is fine - it illustrates their "guy" relationship. But later Josie is "scared s***less" of getting married. This use is cliche and over-the-top at the same time. She still has two months to the wedding and she's already at what most would consider being the peak of fear? How much more scared can she be when she gets to the last week?
Finally: I applaud your efforts in getting this far into a romance. The background you've written is the stuff that great romances are made of - secret child and lost love, sudden, unavoidable reconnection with that lost love, and importantly, a lost love that's been pining away (albeit in a super aplha-male way by sleeping around)for your heroine. Keep it up. I would be happy to re-read your chapter and revise my rating after you've completed more or done some editing.
Invalid Item This item number is not valid. #1396511 by Not Available.
Overall: I loved the feeling of angst that is portrayed in this story. You've captured a teen's perspective very well. It was a little difficult to read because of some of the stream of conciousness style and lack of punctuation.
Suggestion: I think if you re-read this in a week or so and then edit it by adding a little punctuation and perhaps clarifying a few sentences you'll have a great piece. For instance, the conversation says you're on the train but then you're on the bus - I couldn't tell if that was just an error or was meant to have meaning in the story. Also "there are a million people above our beds" don't you mean "heads?"
Overall: I like the idea of painting the story from Eve's point of view, but the formatting and the error in the last line "was barred" distracted from the poem's message.
Positive: The subtle use of "us" in the second stanza reflects Eve's different perspective effectively. I enjoyed the voice of the angry woman that exists in this poem.
Suggestions: Fix the last line by dropping the "was" and perhaps try a different layout of the words in the first and second stanza.
Overall: I was distracted from the emotions and ideas in your poem by some of the technical choices you made with the spelling (O, forrest) and capitalization.
Positive: I really enjoyed the change in depth in the poem when you moved from a literal forest to the "woods" in the soul.
Suggestions: Could you expand on the metaphor of the soul after the last line? Do you need all of the technical pieces in the poem - Rhyming, repetition, capitalization, the "O"? Perhaps dropping one or more of these elements would make it easier to read.
This was really fun to read. I love the picture painted of Deb, which is done without "telling" the reader that she's beautiful. The protein bar is a nice touch as I could imagine just what sort of woman you were creating.
I enjoyed the build up to the "aha" moment at the motel.
Perhaps the transition from there to the bed situation needs a little more explanation for me to "buy in." (I just expected more conflict) But that could be addressed by expanding on the story into a longer format. This is a great beginning to a good romance novel or novella!
Jinks
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