What a great way to plug your own work and to help promote the sense of community here! I'm happy to share the spotlight and help another author get one more bit of exposure. I think this will be very positive!
I hope you get a lot of traffic in your new forum! Good work!
I think this is an interesting beginning. It's a different spin from the beginning of Sleeping Beauty with which many readers are likely familiar.
The lack of any explanation as to why everyone is horrified would have made this feel more complete.
I'm also curious why you have saddled her with this formal name which needs a pronunciation note.
I see you've only attached one genre to this piece. You could also label it as family, children/young adult or relationships. It depends where you want to go with this. Keep going!
I think this started off as a stronger piece. You seemed to get angrier and angrier as the piece went on. The profanity level definitely increased. Some of it fits and some of it is wasted.
One thing I think you missed entirely in this is that some traditions are outdated. The whole wedding shower and wedding gifts were designed to furnish a new home for the couple moving out of their parents home for the first time.
I think you make a good point about being brainwashed from early in life.
I like the calm manner with which you approach this letter. It is easy to get emotional in an editorial. I think your comparison to the cat and the dining room table really brings it to a level anyone can relate to.
It seems a little repetitive to me around the description of the clinical director. You call him astute and very wise clinical director and shortly after our wise mentor. I don't think his character needs to be discussed much, but, since you have chosen to, I felt a need to address it.
You have some excellent descriptions. My favourites were: adults harvest corn, and kids harvest candy corn, I ate about a metric ton of candy and propelled myself into the next month and Then the trading began. It was like a commodity pit.
I found the run-around-the-house paragraph was wordy and confusing. The middle section is full of many sentences beginning with "___ was.." or "___were...". It is repetitive and was/were is not a strong verb.
You capture the emotion well. I think point about the lesson of unfairness is one many can relate to. Good work!
This is a fun snapshot. I could imagine the situation and guess you probably have a photo of this moment somewhere.
I was a bit disappointed that you didn't go into much detail. It has the potential of a Chicken Soup for the Sibling's Soul story. Allow yourself to capture the smallest details. (And if you do add to this, please let me know!)
I like the seriousness her mother approaches the situation with even though DD is imaginery. The daughter's anxiety seems very real.
I was disappointed to find many errors in this piece as if it had not been proofread. That led me to reduce my rating. With the dialogue, the punctuation is missing from the end of the sentence or the punctuation is outside the quotation marks instead of inside. There are some run on setences. It is wordy. Her mother is referred to as mommy as mom which is inconsistent.
Adding blank lines between paragraphs would make this easier to read.
Interesting poll! I hope that the majority of your votes are positive. I expect they will be but I guess everyone has bad days.
I thought it was interesting that you had more negative choices than positive ones. It made me wonder if you were trying to get more vote options. You could have included I'm new and not sure yet or I've been away and just getting back into things/too soon to say.
I'm feeling pretty good about this community although I would like a few more reviews! Isn't that always the way! Good work!
The lack of emotion in this piece seems to work. It fits with how she is frozen to the spot.
This felt like it hadn't been proofread. There are a few errors even though it is a very short piece.
who were stood watching the blaze -- was something lost in editing?
Typo: nrver die down -- did you mean "never"?
Adding a third genre might help it get more views; you could add family, emotional or drama, depending where you intend to go with this. I'm curious why you've labelled it gangster as you haven't made any references that way.
I like the title for this piece. It was what drew me to read the piece. I like that you don't bog the story down with a lot of football jargon, something easy to do when talking about a game.
This piece has a lot of passive sentences which weaken the piece. For example, I had put my time. It would help to add a blank line between paragraphs to help show where the breaks are. It seems like some of the paragraphs should be broken into 2, but I'm not positive since I may not be seeing breaks.
Typo: A feet that no one could (feat)
Error: we managed to do good.(x} (well, not good)
Typo: Load rock music (loud?)
Typo: quarterbacks hands (quarterback's)
I like the visuals of the celebration at the end. This needs some work but is a promising start.
I think this is set in an interesting time with him going into the car. His thoughts make the guilt and sadness seem fake and artificial, even insincere. That works well.
This piece felt like it hadn't been proofread. There are spelling errors (wines and loliness), inconsistent tense flipping between past and present and incomplete sentences. The incomplete sentences didn't seem intentional. I was confused in the first half about what was going on and realized what you were getting at in the second half.
I like that you include it takes an ordinary person to be a killer. I think that's so true. Ordinary people do commit awful crimes.
This is a cute spin on Star Wars that will appeal to animal lovers. Depending on the level of violence you intend to have in this, children's genre might be another place it would fit.
I was disappointed that, for a short piece, it does not seem to be proofread. The capitalization of names like Darth Cat and Cat Empire is not consistent. There are spelling errors, like sistem, and missing capitals on sentences, like fortunately. These basic errors led me to reduce the rating.
One option to consider would be to separate your last line with a couple of blank lines and put it in italics since it is an author's note and not part of the story.
I think it's wonderful that you have captured this bit of your history, especially since it was something you carry forward with you in your attitude.
I found much of this piece is grounded in action and lacks emotion. It tells us what happened like a bystander might tell it, but not what the experiences felt like with the exception of the pain in one paragraph.
I liked the way you wrapped it up at the end with what you learned and how it affects you now. That says a lot about who you are, whether you intended that or not.
I found it very easy to believe Eileen's frustration with her situation, both in terms of her health and her living arrangement. You made it easy to sympathize with her and cheer for her at the same time.
You use a lot of compound sentences connected with "and" as well as have a few run-on sentences. It felt a little repetitive to me. Varying your sentence length and adding a few more period would strengthen this piece. I also was confused by the bold type. I found myself looking to see if those phrases were required for a contest.
Typo: threw the long halls (should be through)
I like your author's note at the end about why you wrote this. Your use of italics sets it apart well. Kudos!
I think this is an interesting poll that will show who is here in our community. My ultimate goal is to become published so I want honest feedback. What doesn't work is very helpful, but it's also good if a reviewer tells me specifically what elements work well.
Interesting idea for a story. The personality of the harmonica was unexpected.
The tense is inconsistent in the opening section, changing back and forth between past and present. I also found the piece very choppy; the sentences are mostly short. The rhythm makes it hard to read. Varying sentence length and using pronouns instead of always using proper names might help.
I like the way the ending echoes the beginning. It is very fitting.
Hmmm, I can only vote for one? That's a tough one. i can keep my son away from Barney and Teletubbies thankfully, but Sesame Street is such a part of growing up that Elmo is my hated one I fight to avoid. People assume, since he is Sesame Street, he is acceptable. How does a baby-talking character become a hero? Yuck!
Interesting poll. It's a different topic! Kudos for that! I wonder if it's cringing parents voting or general members.
Great idea to put these shorter pieces in one folder. It looks like August is your Flash fiction month! It's a good challenge for all writers. Kudos for continuing with it!
I would like to see you add something more to the description inside the folder at the top of the contents. But that's very minor!
What a choice for soup! In 40 days and nights, rabbit stew would have been an easy choice. Your choice made me laugh.
I found the introduction a little redundant. The information is mostly revealed by the archaeologists. As well, it is odd to me that the first one to pick up the tablets could read them. The odds are good the tablets would not be in English.
This is a nice spin on archaeology and religion. There is a lot of writing about the ark, but diet is not often an aspect we think about.
I think this is such an interesting poll. It amazes me there is anyone who can vote they don't know who he is. I think anyone who voted he is purely a horror writer hasn't read much. I loved his non-fiction book On Writing; it's not easy to write honesty within the confines of autobiography.
Glad to see the right answer is winning your poll.
This piece feels far more like the original fairy tales, back before they were sanitized and subdued.
I find this very wordy, possibly because of the language used. There are many less than common words in this piece (pomaded, churning, ideated). It feels more about the language than any story.
Typo: in which the swirls were trapped in -- Edit out one of the two "in"s
This is a little cold and the end is a little unclear. I was confused by the witch's screaming.
I always find it interesting to read what motivates other writers to continue! I think the tone of this works well.
In the section about your early embarassing stuff, the brackets are distracting. Is there a way to add the title in otherwise? The section about The Chronicles of Gatean doesn't need the last section separated in brackets.
I find this piece a little wordy in places. For example, Then there followed really bad stories. Then is an often useless word and, in this case, leaving it out wouldn't change the meaning. The verb tells us the same thing. Another example, It had some sparks of decency but wasn’t really good, but it was nearly three hundred pages.
I love this: bring me to the brink of tears. Then I am angry later when that emotion doesn’t come through. I want people to feel, to anguish, to cry, to laugh, to sympathize, to hate. Writing is about emotion and I always want my readers to feel something. I also liked that you explain the influence of one of the icons you list. It's filler if you don't.
When I saw this title in your signature, I was far to curious to ignore the link. Good call on your title!
I really like the way you look at reviewing. You make no bones about being honest. I think a lot of reviewers here tend to rate a touch on the high side which often isn't constructive for helping that author improve!
The best way to describe the feel of this story is an Alice in Wonderland kind of vibe. It has great potential for illustrations.
It is a little wordy which is a concern with children's stories. Every word needs to count. For example, It had three eyes that were on stocks protruding out of it's small head and it's body was similar to that of a toad, but it, instead of being brown, it was bright purple that glowed in the dim light. Watch those words that are close, like its (possessive) and it's (contraction); the two in the quote above are wrong.
This piece would be easier to read if you added a blank line between paragraphs or use WritingML coding to add indents to your paragraphs. It's hard to tell where the breaks are.
I think this could be a lovely introduction into a longer piece.
I like your comparison of the blank page and icy water. I think we've all felt that at some time. The blank page can be worse than anything.
I liked the idea you were going for here: I am addicted to that split second when you lurch ... However, when the point of view changes midsentence from first to second person, something is lost. It isn't as strong and loses some of the emotion. This led to a decrease in the rating. It also feels a little jumpy since you are comparing to so many other things.
I think ending on a positive note is effective. As you say starting points are tricky, but then, so are endings.
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