Lol--that was a long trip! I like the way you let this unfold--very original and funny.
It's not the same plotline as your story, but have you seen the show "Journeyman" yet? This reminded me of some of the situations the main character (a time-traveler who can't control his ability) gets into. He disappears at really bad times a lot, but I don't think going to find a restroom has been one of them yet. It's a pretty good show if you haven't seen it yet.
Great job with this! I would definitely recommend this to people reading this review on the public forum.
Insurance is one of those things we're not taught in school, so I'm glad there's people like you around who aren't afraid to be honest about it.
Working at home during the day, I often have our TV on in the background. It is amazing to me how many whole life insurance commercials there still are--sometimes they're even back to back!
I'm assuming the main target markets for whole life now are people who are retired or are home with their young children. Those people may or may not know the difference of what they're really buying.
Knowing the math and how whole life is handled, it makes me think less of the companies that are doing that. Individual agents may not know any better, but the people running the companies know it's something where the company wins and the policy owner loses. Ethically, insurance needs to be win-win.
I do believe term life will eventually phase it all out completely, but those companies aren't in any hurry. It looks like they'll keep doing it until it's common knowledge how bad of a deal it is for consumers.
You're probably making some insurance salespeople mad, but your math is right and you're trying to help people keep more of their money. I want to encourage other people to check this out, especially if you have the types of insurance policies he discusses.
This is a cool poll--it's interesting how 2 names have over double the votes as 3rd place and the rest of them. It's just going to be a matter of you deciding which of those two I guess.
My only suggestion is maybe adding an (Other) category and allow people to make suggestions of a name that's not listed. None of these names are bad of course, but it helps in these things to have as many options as possible.
Growing up in a smaller town, homelessness seemed like something that rarely happened to people. It wasn't until I moved to a larger city as an adult before I realized the true extent of it here in the U.S.
I personally believe there is no one solution to the issue. The range of situations is too broad. Some people sadly have psychological problems and don't have anyone to help them. Others want out and just need the right education or opportunity. Money alone won't solve it--it's the example of giving someone a fish but not teaching them how to fish.
One of my favorite recent movies is The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith. Chris Johnson's story is very inspiring. My husband and I have a friend who went through something similar as a teenager and found his way out.
Great job on this poem! I don't have any suggestions on how to make it better.
You've done an excellent job with this. It's a creative perspective and very touching. You write clearly and the transitions are well-done. I don't have any suggetions on how to make it better.
I want to suggest this to other people who are seeing this on the review page.
I could definitely see young children giggling at this story, especially the second ending. I think if you teamed up with a good illustrator this could be published as a book, if you wanted to go that route.
I found a few minor things you may want to look over:
A Fairy wish--just need to capitalize wish.
“Why don’t we ask Mum and Dad for a puppy for Christmas.”--need a question mark at the end instead of a period.
What’s wrong” asked Poppet.--just need a question mark after wrong.
“Would you do that, I’d be ever so grateful.”--divide this into two sentences, with a question mark after "that."
I can definitely see this as the first chapter of a longer story if you want to go in that direction. You have the right combination of character information and action--great job on that.
I really don't see anything you can improve in this, unless you just want to expand it. It would be an interesting story--you can go forward from here or have a story leading up to how things got to this point for either character.
I feel so sad for the narrator of the poem in this--I'm assuming they're talking about a parent. I get the impression that the narrator is young--maybe a teenager and that he or she is hasn't really grieved yet--still in a state of shock over the loss.
I found one minor thing:
"By staring in to the sun-"--typo, into the sun.
You may want to experiment with the pacing and division points a little more. This almost has a "start and stop" kind of feel to it--I'm not sure that's what you're wanting or not. It's not necessarily bad, but you may like it if you try a version with a smoother flow to it.
In your description of the poem, don't let the reader know there's going to be an unusual ending. I would have rather been surprised by it.
This is surprising in the fact that it starts off so sunny and normal and then turns dark and horrific. There's also enough mystery in this where you know something terrible happened, but it can all depend on the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps of the story.
My only suggestions are pretty minor. You have a stray period between your last two stanzas. This is also just personal opinion, but it can kind of draw out the beginning a little more if you divide the first stanza into two, with the divide starting at the line that begins "Coloring in her cheeks..."
I hope that's helpful and doesn't seem overcritical--when people give out this many GPs for a review, I try to find as much as I can to be helpful to them. Overall you've done a great job--I've honestly never seen anything like this with poetry. It's unique.
One of the things that impressed me the most with this is how this entire story flows very smoothly. It was very interesting to read.
Growing up, my family basically stayed in the same geographical area. We moved a few times, but it was places no more than an hour away from the previous house. With the exception of a few neighbors and our other family members, my parents basically kept to themselves and wanted my brother and I to be the same way. I grew up yearning to travel and meet new people--funny how thing work out like that. I think there's a balance to it--with either extreme having its advantages and disadvantages.
I'm sorry about your brother Yehudi. I know it's hard when you lose someone that close to you. That part made me cry.
Wow! You've done a great job with this--the ending was very surprising, and I didn't see it coming at all! As far as overall content, this is a 5.0.
You do have a few minor things that you may need to look over. The suggestions I have mainly have to do with just sentence flow and a few typos:
"The smell of bleach and floor cleaner, fill my nostrils."--You would not need the comma (breaking your pace) if you reworded it "The smell of bleach and floor cleaner fills my nostrils."
"The white blistering light from the spotted plate glass windows onto the contrasting white walls makes it hard for my eyes to continue adjusting."--hyphen plate-glass; you may also want to shorten this just slightly or divide it into two sentences. (It's easier to capture the confusion and panic your character is likely feeling if you keep your pace fast in this beginning section.)
"A thin wood slab, containing dried foods and jello, rest overtop of my torso."--rests instead of rest.
Non sense--nonsense
I've honestly never seen anything like this from that point-of-view. I don't want to give it away to any reviewers on the reviewing page, but this was impressive to me how you did this.
Overall this is a really sweet and funny moment. You've done a great job of capturing the kind of "daydreaming"-type thoughts that a lot of us have sometimes.
I mostly just found minor things. You have a few thought sentences that run-on from a grammar standpoint, but we don't think in perfect grammar so it made sense. There were also two typo places that you may want to look at:
"Only thirty five minutes left"--just need to hyphenate thirty-five.
"...in a man's right ear means?"--"mean" instead of "means"
The Great Writing.com Moral Dilemma of 2007--do I publicly promote a raffle for a wonderful cause that I've likely spent 100,000GPs entering myself? The suspense is killing, isn't it?
Seriously, everyone who's reading this on the review page: This is for a great cause and the only raffle on this site I've ever put a lot of GPs into. Check it out and be my competition.
There's a lot of great prizes available, and the proceeds benefit RAOK--Random Acts of Kindness--Upgrade Brigade Group, which helps a lot of our fellow writers on the site.
The way this is set up is very fair--there are a lot of prizes and everyone has a good chance of winning something--these aren't state lottery odds or anything like that.
Great job to everyone involved in this! Even if I don't win anything, it won't bother me. I'll be happy that I indirectly helped someone.
There's a definition of hope that I really like: it's the substance of things unseen. Having hope is a choice, and a lot of times it takes a lot of effort--espeically when everything around you seems like it's falling apart. I know--I've been there. I think the true importance of hope is that it can see you through things that logically could break your spirit if you let them.
As a child, I had people let me down--over and over and over again. Over time, it made me bitter, and as a teenager I closed myself off to people because it meant I couldn't get hurt emotionally if I just didn't care. Good people would try to be nice to me, and I just couldn't trust them. Through it all though I did have just a tiny bit of hope that things could get better. I didn't let myself keep blaming God, my parents, or anyone else for where my life was.
I've found through experience that if you can't hope for something better that you'll look over the very things that can help you out of your situation. People's minds just work like that.
I realize I don't even know you or the full extent of what's going on, but I hope that helps. I know you're hurting, but it doesn't have to be like that for the rest of your life.
As far as the technical side of this, my main recommendation would just be to divide it up into several paragraphs. This definitely triggers emotions--you definitely got me writing as far as this review.
I sincerely hope (no pun intended) that things get better for you.
Overall you have a great start to an interesting story. Your characters seem very realistic and well-developed. As far as content, this is more in the 4.5-5.0 range, but there's just a lot of small minor things that need to be corrected.
I swept through the Prologue for you. I hope this doesn't seem like I'm tearing the whole thing apart, but I know a lot of readers just quit reading if they run into a lot of minor errors. I don't want that to happen with you, and hopefully this will get you more reviews. Here's what I found:
"...Academy’s Administrative Building, smiling ,despite the..."--need to look at the comma after smiling.
"The mid morning sun pushed through the east windows..."--need to hyphen mid-morning; looks like there's an extra space between sun and pushed.
"...freshman jogged in front of him, a pair in he front waving at him."--typo; in the front
"...Pitcher ushered his guest into his office."--extra space between ushered and his
"The girl is incredibly detailed oriented and quick witted..."--detailed-oriented; quick-witted
Mostly for internet terrorism.--Internet
How dare he risk the project by offering a senators daughter,--typo; senator's daughter; I'd also end this with maybe an exclamation point and then start the following dialogue as a new paragraph
Intelligent, combat and technically oriented--technically-oriented.
"... how is her power structure?"--extra space between her and power.
It was as if Rachel gave the girl a conscience.--extra space between if and Rachel
"...than our countries future."--than our country's future.
"That little cube will overload any electronically..."--extra space between overload and any
"...sent it to the pentagon for..."--Pentagon needs to be capitalized
"...have three more meetings before my plane this afternoon."--might sound better if flight was used in place of plane
I hope this has been helpful. If you just do a similar sweep through your other chapters (look at it in public view first so that way you can see it before going into edit mode), you should be able to catch things. (I would do it on this, but my laptop erases what I've typed so far when I change chapters.)
Overall you've done a great job with this. I didn't find anything wrong with the characters, setting, plotline, etc. Hopefully this has been helpful. I am willing to come back and rate this again after you've made changes. Just e-mail me and let me know.
Whoa--I never thought of things that way! As I was reading it, I was reminded of one of my broadcasting classes a few years ago.
As an anchor, you're usually at least trying to have a subtle upbeat tone to your voice, just so people aren't bored by a monotone. A friend of mine however was a little too happy when he read a story that began "A woman died today..." It was a fake story for practice anyway, so we were able to laugh about it.
The only thing I would maybe change about the overall story is maybe having Mary dream the wish came true. I don't know--it just sits with me weird that peace on earth turns out to be a bad thing in this. Really the wish is in two parts though: No more wars and no more dying. It's the no more dying part that leads to the results really.
Overall this is very well-written. There's a lot of unexpected twists to it that I wasn't expecting in the beginning.
This is very sad--it's heartbreaking when you hear stories like this where a parent uses a child or children as pawns in a divorce situations.
The only part I would leave out is the "Please rave and review..." at the top. I'm not sure if you meant "rate" and that's a typo--your work is really good, but you don't want to come off as arrogant by telling people ahead of time to rave about it, lol. Either way, as serious as the topic is, it would be better to start right into it.
Great job overall! I hope the situation that this is based on has worked out okay.
You definitely picked a scary topic--I can't even watch nuclear war-themed movies for very long because they're really high on the scale on worst ways a person can die--both instantly or the radiation poisioning that follows.
My only suggestion is that if you want, experiment with different points you can break this into more than one stanza--breaks at certain points could give a particular line emphasis, etc. As it is, it's still good. You can feel the desperation in the person's words. Very scary.
Overall this was great. My only suggestion is that you could draw things out a little more if you wanted--add some suspense that Alaura may not succeed in time, etc.
I found one other place you might want to look at:
"...custom-made holster. Although only in her..."--Between these two sentences, I would start a new paragraph.
Overall I liked this--you've got a detailed setting and your characters are solid.
The suggestions I have are general to the entire book and I think will help you tighten the pace. All of these tips I got from a book by Sol Stein, who's a professional editor. They helped me, so I like passing them along:
Check all of your adverbs to see if they're necessary--I'm not saying get rid of all of them, but keep all of the ones that are important to the meaning of the sentence. You'll be amazed at how much stronger your paragraphs become.
Whenever possible, show the reader something instead of telling them. For example, if a corridor is foggy, you can have that expressed in dialogue between two characters as opposed to directly telling the reader. It keeps actions from being paused and having to be picked up again.
I think you've got talent and are very creative. Good luck with your scholarship--I hope you get it. I hope the advice is helpful.
I like the realism in this--you're dialogue is natural, and you can learn a lot about your main character. I would read on if there was more available, so I think you've got the "hook" portion of a first chapter down.
I have some relatively minor suggestions that I think may be helpful to you:
The old man leaned...--I would start a new paragraph with this sentence to seperate it from his words. Plus it will give emphasis to what he's saying. (The same principle can work at other points in this--you don't want dialogue to be lost in the middle of paragraphs if you can help it.)
"What they don't tell you is that it isn't the front yard of God's property, with the nice rolling green grass where children want to play a game of tag."--I'd insert an "and" between "grass" and "where."
Lol--this was funny. You sound a lot like my husband when it comes to shopping--I think most guys have that philosophy.
I especially liked the surprise ending. It makes you want to laugh and shudder at the same time.
My only suggestion is to go back though it and check for little things with your spacing and punctuation. On your very last setence you end with a comma, and I noticed the spacing is needed mainly in the first paragraph.
Wow--this poem has a lot of emotional power to it. The pacing is great, and I kept reading it faster and faster as it got to the end wanting to know what happened. Is this based on your own experiences?
I couldn't find anything in this that I would change.
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You've done a great job with this--the ending was very surprising, and I didn't see it coming at all! As far as overall content, this is a 5.0.
The suspense is killing, isn't it?