Great stuff! Has a wonderful vibe, very Tom Holt. I enjoyed this very much as it is, but if you're after feedback (I'm an editor by trade and can be a bit of a Nazi, so bear in mind this is a very strict critique - only given because I think you have such marvellous promise!):
"now and then... The smoke faded" - To me, this felt a bit abrupt - are we in a new scene? Was Michael surrounded by smoke while he was explaining the first part? Perhaps add some contextualisation, like a place/time?
"Who iss it... cheerful wave" - I loved this, great play on genre tropes.
"the universe finally woke up" - Technicality, but I think perhaps 'the universe had finally woken up' might work better.
The 'She was young' paragraph could perhaps use some tightening up - I love the detail in it, but it almost felt a little repetitive to me.
"the clearest... scowl" - love it!
"Telepathy ... ever seen" - I was really impressed by this, it gives a great sense of the world you're creating, whilst still furthering the plot.
Emma's five minutes - OK, so Emma's super reluctant and only giving him five minutes, right? To my mind, from what it seems we know about her character, she'd set the clock running at her first mention of 'five minutes' - but there's actually a bit more conversation & a little narrative, and then she's saying 'five minutes' again - to me, this negated some of the urgency.
"... I rest my case" - personally, I'd be inclined to put a bit more punctuation in the last sentence, e.g. '.. duration of these here proceedings today. Verily I have spoken; I rest my case.'
I found myself starting to skim at around 'I extracted myself' - not sure if it's actually a pacing issue or just my s***ty attention span!
All in all though, this was an amazing job - much better than most stuff I've come across on here. Congratulations!
Haha, very cute story, I certainly didn't see the ending coming! I'm definitely more like the protagonist than her friend :)
If you're after notes, one thing I thought while reading it is that there's a fair amount of repetition of words:
"One day she asked me to dinner at her house. On the way to her house, " (I think the italicised part is implied by the preceding sentence)
"Thank goodness she served wine with our meal. I tried to drown out the whine of the electric broom by taking big gulps of wine. Each time, she would return to her chair as if nothing had happened. When she began a discourse on house cleaning products, I immediately reached for my wine glass, and in my hurry to imbibe, splashed some wine on the front of my shirt, over my right bosom, to be exact." (that's a lot of 'wine' [and a 'whine' too!] - could maybe cut a few, or specify a type of wine, like Merlot or something to give extra detail to the scene and give you a word other than 'wine' to play with)
" she couldn’t see the wine stain very well. With her face nearly touching my shirt, she began dabbing the wine stain, " (ditto with 'wine stain' - to me, it stands out even more when two or more words are repeated in sequence)
Hehe, very cute piece - it's always great when the reader knows something the protagonist doesn't. I really like your command of the vernacular as well, the speech sounds authentic.
A couple of little things I noticed:
Seems to be some confusion as to whether there's one photo ('and then back at the photo', 'I took the picture') or multiple ('when he saw the photos', 'they ain't enough evidence').
Also, not sure if "He suddenly had his attention overtaken by a crawling caterpillar across the sandy ground. " makes sense, or if it should be "... caterpillar crawling..."?
But don't mind me, I'm a strict critic. Keep it up :)
Another lovely piece - I'm so intrigued to find out what happened to her in those 12 years! And nicely done on bringing it all back 'round to the name at the end :)
One thing that stuck in my mind at the start: I'm all for using short sentences - great for pacing - but when we use too many, it can make the writing seem a little stilted. I also noticed you used a 'But' to start these short sentences 6 times. This can be a really effective technique (I think it works brilliantly in "In some ways, he expected it. But this girl was different"), but again, it can break up the writing and make it a little stilted, and since it's not technically correct English, I'd be inclined to use it more sparingly.
“We also have a witness that can place you inside the building just before 22:00.” - because the last place mentioned was the 'bar', I automatically assumed that was the 'building' alluded to, and then I got confused, especially with the man's name being Mr Bär, heh
"His partner was a titan of a man, dwarfing Monroe by at least a foot" - I'm guessing Fitz is the protagonist's partner? Since the previous sentence was about Fitz, I was initially under the impression that 'his' meant Fitz's
Haha! Really loved that, brilliant! 'OK, standard military story.. wait, why's he with his parents? Bombshell (pun a little bit intended)' - brilliantly constructed, and perfect pacing too, well done!
Some thoughts, if you're after notes:
The line " It’s always amazed me how unfazed they are by the nocturnal assaults." kind of made me pause, because of its different tense from the rest of the paragraph. Makes it hard to tell if it's being written by a kid who's still scared of fireworks, or an adult reminiscing on the terror - if that makes sense?
"The first rafts of explosions were quickly followed by another." - Perhaps it's just me, but I found it strange to have a plural followed by a singular - 'followed by another rafts' wouldn't make sense, so I'm not sure if this sentence does?
"moonlight casting shadows and light across the stone floor" - Not really sure what bugged me about this (helpful, I know!) perhaps you'd normally say that an object 'casts' a shadow, rather than the light source, so it seemed strange to say the moonlight was casting the shadow? Or perhaps the repetition of 'light' in quick succession? I don't know, I'm probably just being weird, but it's something my brain flagged up :)
Really great piece though, well done indeed and good luck with the competition :)
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