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Review of Left or Right  Open in new Window.
Review by KP Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (2.5)
Hi J, I think you have a good start. The prose is fine and there are some sentence structure issues but those can be worked out down the road. What I find missing is the emotion from your character. You have a lot of tangible, physical description from which the reader can infer the emotion but I don't see (or feel) the impact to your character's frame of mind.

For example, you wrote "I shifted in my seat and wrung the steering wheel with my hands". This is a great line but where is the physical aspect of the how the steering wheel felt or what might be happening internally? You could say something like, "My hands were sweating" or "My heart began raciing with anticipation (or dread or excitement)" or "My eyes began to tear." Whatever you pick, using a physical reponse to a situation allows the reader to get inside your character's head. This is especially important when writing a story a first person point of view. You can forgive a narrator for not know what a character may be thinking or feeling, but in a first person point of view there is a huge opportunity to open up the internal dimensions of thought and feeling.

Another example where you could ramp up the emotion is when your character confronts his wife about her affair. "I walked into the bedroom where she had been reading and asked her who Hayden was." How did he feel waiting for the answer? Resigned? Angry? And, then we she confessed, how did he feel at that point? Shocked? Did his knees go weak? Did he clench his jaw or his fists? Did he shake his head and walk away? Did he care? The reader can infer he did care because he drank himself to sleep every night, but what did he care about? Did he feel betrayed?

I hope you find this feedback useful. Best of luck to you.


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