Well, that was an entertaining read. I will totally watch the show when it comes out. I like the idea of Gwen being flighty and well-intentioned yet agreeing to become an assassin. The person I find funniest, though, is Suzy. How many seven-year-olds are into hostile corporate takeovers? Suzy also seems to have a better grasp on reality than Gwen does. I think you do a great job of showing a couple of bright kids who lack the actual worldliness to grasp the magnitude of what they are actually doing. It all adds up to a very funny premise -- in a kind of sick, dark sort of way. Just my kind of show!
I'd spend time talking about spelling and grammar, but honestly, your error rate is pretty low. There is the extra exclamation point in Gwen's name when she introduces herself to Bob. There is also the lack of capitalization in the word "mom." Really nothing of any consequence and since scripts are more sets of instructions for actors and directors, I'm not sure if your intended audience would care.
A couple of things that might make a difference to your audience:
(1) Would anyone be confused by the word "squee?" Would using "squeal" be more universally understood?
(2) Double-check your line spacing. Are you using some of the spacing for pauses? It seems like there are blank lines in odd places now and then.
That's all I have. Not a whole lot of feedback, I know, but hopefully my vote of confidence is worth something for morale anyway.
This came up as a random review. Love poems seem so quaint as a concept, but people keep writing them -- myself included! (Now I have a Paul McCartney song running through my head. ) This poem seems to be about a fairly new relationship. I get this from the line "We envision a bright and promising future." A young relationship (regardless of what the age of the lovers might be) is truly a thing that gives one hope for the future. This could be a poem for a new marriage as it weaves in thoughts of "wondrous design," and "God's gifted, vivacious plan." It reads almost like a wedding vow.
The free verse format of this poem works for me. Free verse seems more powerful for this subject than rhythm and rhyme. Your spelling and punctuation are very good.
Please Note: The following comments are just one guy's opinion. I am no expert by any means; all I have are my impressions as a reader coming in cold.
Hi, Jamie.
This is a very interesting article. It is obvious you have done your homework. I enjoyed the exchange with the Supreme Court justices especially, and I think your analysis of the exchange was very effective.
Now for my feedback:
(1) I might not have used the clause " the favorite dead person of the conservative right," when describing the late Justice Scalia. It seemed a bit gratuitous. Funny, but gratuitous.
(2) I saw some typos. Plugging this into Word or Google Docs with the spell checker on should point those out fairly quickly.
(3) I am assuming you want to publish this. What sort of publication are you targeting? The reason I ask is I picked up on occasional sarcasm. I can point to, "Here is a teaser of their neutral and scientific relationship:" and "This is another example of a neutral chemist, giving an ADA some very helpful tips on what kind of testimony." Depending on your audience, you might be able to get away with this, but if your readership is more middle-of-the-road or hard-line on the drug issue, you might face some criticism on your reporting. You also sprinkle some rhetorical questions throughout the article that seem to make this more of an essay of advocacy than a news piece. It all depends on what you are going for, I guess.
(4) I also am not sure what to make of the following: "HERE'S A WHOLE NEW SECTION BEGINNING INTRODUCING DOOKHAN. DO WE WANT TO GO THERE ALREADY?" Is this an editorial note to yourself?
(5) Finally, you alternately refer to the MA atty general as Martha and Ms. Coakley. I might suggest sticking to the last name to try to make you look respectful as a reporter and letting the facts speak for themselves. Similarly, you seem to belittle Dookhan with "The ruling should have meant six-thousand court appearances a year for Li'l Annie, a virtual impossibility." I think the facts you present are compelling enough that your point carries itself, and familiarity or mild contempt in your tone could possibly hurt your message more than help.
In summary, I think you have a good start here. I enjoyed reading it. With some attention to tone and to your intended audience, I think you could turn this into a very powerful piece of journalism without much trouble. I wish you every success in getting this out to a general readership. You are so close!
Good story. I like how you set things up with mostly dialogue. My take on what happened: (Let me know if I get this right.) As you build it, I see a couple of young adult siblings who are roommates, but they also get on each other's nerves. The sister seems to have self-worth issues. The brother does too but in a different way. I am not sure why they think so little of themselves except perhaps they have lost their parents too soon and are both kind of depressed. Jasmine seems to be worse off since she is so affected by Darien's comments that she finally contemplates suicide. Her clue and her standing on the dock with a bottle of wine seem to be a cry for help. I'm not sure if she actually jumped in the water or if she fell in by accident.
It took nearly losing her to cause Darien to not want her to go away. At the same time, it may be Darien's selfless act of jumping in and showing that he didn't really care about his phone and social contacts more than he did his sister that caused her to think maybe she could move out. In a way, maybe they were both trying to save each other. He was trying to save her from killing herself, and she was trying to save him on throwing his life into things that don't matter. In the end, it looks like they are going to be okay.
The clue in the middle: Was that the text message she left, or was it the banana peel on the counter when she wasn't supposed to have been in the apartment that day? Both tipped Darien off that something was very wrong. What built up to it was her obvious deflation at his uncaring comments. The stunts at the end: Her suicide attempt and his jumping in the water to save her. Both were signs of their disregard for their own lives and regard for the lives of the other person. I think the signs and the stunts seemed realistic, and if I'm summarizing the story right, then they were effective. Well done.
I like the premise here of making Jonathan Livingston Seagull the agent for a muse. Your style, spelling, and grammar are impeccable. From what I could tell from your review of my work, you use Grammarly. That's a good call. I should start doing that. I might have capitalized the first word in "light the fuse," but that probably isn't necessary. A person has some license after a colon, I suppose.
I'll have to read more to see what Jonathan says about Torey Campbell. I am marking this group of stories so I can come back to it and read more. Nice work! Keep it up.
This is a very good continuation of the Windmill story. You did a great job of relaying the sensations of Sigrud allowing herself to be possessed. From the first story, it was pretty obvious that Lorelei was already gone. The father's possession, however, was a surprise. I liked how the possessing spirits are dispatched at the hands of a more powerful demon. I had to read the last section a few times. I got a little confused. I get that Lorelei's companions probably feel betrayed. I'm not sure, though, what Sigrud is going to tell Oliver in the way of a lie. The last sentence is particularly confusing. Is 'Devil made me' the lie, and she is just leaving out that she willingly entered into the deal? Also, you refer to Oliver as a fat little man more than once in the story, but in the last sentence you refer to him as a boy. What is the significance of that?
Overall, I enjoyed reading this. Thanks for spinning a great tale!
Hi, Joto-Kai. It took me a bit to get my bearings in this universe. After a while, I got the hang of the characters and the situation, and then the story started to flow. At this point (the end of part 1), I want to find out what happens next, so you have my interest. Fantasy is a little tough as far as dialog. Do you go overboard on archaic language as Erik does (and you mention as much in Sigrud's thoughts), or do you go overly modern as in Sigrud's comment: "Forget money. It's your daughter that counts." I don't know how long ago people would have actually talked like that. At least it isn't as bad as dialog from episodes of Xena. *big* I found one or two typos or misused homophones. Pasting this into a spelling and grammar checker might find those for you. These were few and far between, though. I'd say the editing was quite good for a piece of this length. I am eager to read more. Thanks for sharing this, and keep on writing!
Hmmm. "Blinkered" as in narrow-minded or with something similar to blinders on? I'm not sure I get it. What I thought of with this story is the axiom that the easiest way to get people to do something is to tell them not to.
I guess the person just should have stuck to the mission. What I've seen so far are great ideas for longer stories. Keep going with these, and I do hope you expand on some of them.
Nice twist at the end. At the beginning, I was assuming people on Earth found another world and were going there. I got this idea from the use of radio telescopes. Imagine my surprise when I found the travelers had landed in our desert and were being taken to Area 51.
This is a very short piece, but it stands together quite well. I wonder if we tantalize other worlds with our broadcasts only to have them fall into the trap of landing here.
This seems like a really good premise for a longer story. You open the story well with a very quick synopsis of Thanatos's sadness. The story while good, could stand to be a lot longer. The first part says that he is the only one left, but then it turns out that he has living children -- which he constructed. What are they like? Do they look human? Do they have human emotions?
How did they bring everyone back? Are they constructed like Thanatos's children, or did they actually find a way to resurrect people? The "children's" growth in knowledge could be a story in and of itself.
I would give the premise a five, but I'm giving the story a four since I'm left wanting more.
I hope you choose to develop this one further. It would be fun to read. Keep on writing!
This short piece is introspective in nature, and in it you do a great job of expressing the desire for something deeper than just a physical relationship with a woman.
My favorite line is “Ok — so just that she’ll have some damned thick lips.” It shows a movement beyond expectations of many beautiful physical attributes a woman can have. It also struck me funny for some reason.
I saw a verb tense mismatch in the last paragraph, but overall, your spelling and grammar were pretty good. Keep up the great work!
This is a very nice poem. I thought it was just a nature poem until I got to the end, and then I thought maybe you could give this to your Valentine this week.
My favorite line(s):
"And the year's pool is aswirling
like a wheel travels round"
What I liked best: As you describe in your intro, this has kind of an old-fashioned sound and feel to it. Sometimes when we resurrect older styles, they are fresh again.
Opportunity: Your meter drops off a bit when you leave out a syllable here and there. I still enjoyed the poem. I just got a little tripped up on the meter sometimes.
Hi, Wesley. I think this is worth pursuing. Of course it wasn't all cigarette smoke. The industrial revolution belched a lot of coal and fossil fuel smoke into the air as well. I think our climate actually cooled a bit in the 19th and 20th centuries due to the amount of air pollution. So, besides the smoking, our lack of catalytic converters and smoke stack scrubbers was bad as well. I'm not sure why the aliens would be angry with us. They built the pyramids; might they also have had something to do with our other technology? One angle might be to write about how they had a hand in our cessation of smoking and in developing technology to clean up our atmosphere. Another question I have is why they waited so long between the pyramids and when we started smoking. What were they doing between pre-Biblical times and the time of Sir Walter Raleigh?
You can see I have a lot of questions on this, but the answers could be pretty interesting. I still think the aliens have plenty to be angry about. We've done a pretty good job of messing things up, but the smoking may have just been the last straw.
As usual, you have a good piece of flash fiction here. The trick, I have found, with flash fiction is to build up a situation where the reader is puzzled or thinks that the story is going one direction and then there is a twist at the end. In this case, I guessed that you were talking about a marathon, but I didn't anticipate the part about the squirrels. That was good for a chuckle.
General: Bravo. This is a very well-written story!
Favorite part: I should have seen the haunting coming -- there were so many hints, but the note on the picture was still a surprise.
Grammar/style/spelling: I found nothing distracting. The story seems to be well edited. If I wanted to be extra picky, I could point out some passive voice in the first paragraph having to do with his not having fed the cat, but I'm not sure that would be improved by putting it in active voice. It makes for a bit of humor at the beginning of a story that turns dark later on. You might take a scan through the story looking for end punctuation as well. These are all minor points. Well done!
Very interesting piece. I like the way you have everything seeming to go south for Tiffany after she kissed the dark Buddha, but then they worked out in the end.
My favorite part was the turning point paragraph: '"Oh God! Why was she even born! Then the voice came again, the voice from the awful statue. But the voice wasn't awful at all: it was deep and comforting. "Daughter, be at peace. I am here."'
It is like the Buddha had to break everything to fix everything.
I saw no style, grammar, or punctuation errors, just good writing.
What a mind-bending story! I really like the way you develop the situation over the course of the story. The beginning is confusing, much like it must have been for the main character the first time he discovered he could change things. I didn't really get the meaning of the title until the end. It seems like he is trying to solve the puzzle so that Naomi would be back to the way she was at the beginning. It could take a lot of tries.
I didn't find anything in the way of style, spelling, or grammar that I would change, but since you wrote this nine years ago, I'm guessing it is pretty well-edited.
This is some really good advice. Even as a fella, I could totally see myself giving much of this advice to my younger self. Even the relationship advice, with some modifications, would work! Your writing style is very readable. Nothing tripped me up as I read.
The last line is so true. My parents would give me advice like this, or I would know what I should do and do the opposite anyway. Sometimes experience is the only teacher we listen to, and some of the the lessons can definitely take their toll.
This is a good poem. It seems to talk about the risk and conflict that come with being in love. I've broken hearts and have had mine broken, so I can identify with this, although I think the nature of how one views love changes as people enter different stages of life and as a relationship or marriage matures over the years. When I was young, love certainly was a struggle. It can still be a struggle, now that I am older, but in different ways.
I like how you repeat words or phrases within this poem ("his eyes, his touch" and "I can live with.")
The only punctuation error that jumped out at me is at the end of stanza 8: "on the others throat." I think it should be "other's." So, overall, great job!
Dizzydreamer, your poem seems to have three parts. First, you have the listing of the things that are no longer happening. The structure of the phrasing is similar, and the meter and rhyme are mostly regular.
The second part keeps the rhyme and meter, but the phrasing structure differs. In this part, you talk about a hope that the lost lover will come back and things will be as they were.
In the third part, the rhyme and meter decay. This comes with the realization that things will not go back to the way they were. This is also where you start planning to take action, "I will try in vain to paint you..."
I like the last two lines, "But our luck does not run twice; / You were my slow and sweet demise." As dismal as things seem on the surface, it points to your starting to be ready to more on rather than allowing the breakup to put your life on hold any longer. It reminds me of the Bob Dylan lyric, "You just sorta wasted my precious time. Don't think twice, it's alright."
I'm not sure what I think of the three different parts. They seem incongruous in structure, but maybe that's precisely how they should be given the subject matter and the thought process the speaker is going through.
I like the juxtapostions you have of night/light and lies/truth. The way I read it, you are describing something that is common to us, and yet difficult to understand -- our inability to sort things out in the world of night and sleep, and our coherency in the daytime that gives us the refreshment of reason to do battle again with the night. I often think of sleep being our way of sorting out what happens in the daytime, but this poem, to me, brings the opposite perspective. Intriguing.
The free verse you choose seems appropriate for the subject matter, and I think it is the kind of poem I would continue to get more out of the more times I read it. Thanks for writing.
This is a good draft. You do a very good job of introducing the character and giving background. I like how you flash from one point in his life to another. As you refine it, you might want to weave it into more of a story. This draft lacked a hook. It was more contemplative, and really the only thing that happens is that Rory arrives back in his home city, has a series of memories, and tries to make contact with his friends.
Don't get me wrong... the writing is good. I enjoyed reading it. It just starts kind of slow. I notice this because others have said the same thing about a piece that I've been wrestling with for a while, so I'm right there with you. Keep writing. I can see a lot of potential in this!
I like the twist you put on this prompt, telling it from the point of view of the one I am guessing caused the disaster, not just technological but utter destruction of the population. You do a very good job of showing some of what is going on, explaining a little more, and revealing yet more with the dialogue. You didn't mention that the narrator was a little winded. I would have been after climbing 47 flights of stairs.
I'm a little concerned about the prompt. It says, "you and he agreed..." but the story seems to be told from the point of him. I hope the judges don't count it against you because the story makes a very good piece of flash fiction.
I like the message and the rhyme in this poem. I can see a number of possible meanings in this poem. It could be a poem of personal reinvention. It could be a poem of reincarnation. Either way, it is thought-provoking.
Mechanically, there were a couple of tweaks you might want to make. The meter isn't terribly regular, but that may or may not be a big deal. That's up to you as the poet. You might want to check your punctuation. For instance, in the first stanza, you probably don't need a comma between "in" and "and" because it really isn't a compound sentence. In the last stanza, "under" is the end of an introductory clause, so you probably want a comma there rather than a period.
My favorite part of the poem is, "And if wonder's what you search for,
Wonder's what you will attract." These are words of hope and they inspire me to seek wonder.
Overall, I enjoyed this poem very much. With a little mechanical tweaking, you will have a very polished product. Thanks for sharing!
This poem drew an emotional response from me. I have been there, despondent. I have also felt so complete in love with another, only to feel the loneliness and isolation when the relationship ceased to be the blissful thing it had once been. I think this is a common experience to which many can relate. You have articulated it very well in this poem.
I particularly liked this part:
"One by one
drops of pressured truth
Fell heavily
Burdened us
The thunderous truth woke her
Relevatory lightning opened her eyes" [Did you mean "revelatory" here? No big deal; I got what you meant.]
This was the turning point of the poem, and it is an excellent portrayal of the honeymoon coming to an end. I am left wondering, though, what the pressured truth is. Was it seeing things that begged to be overlooked in the beginning?
All Writing.Com images are copyrighted and may not be copied / modified in any way. All other brand names & trademarks are owned by their respective companies.
Generated in 0.29 seconds at 12:57am on Apr 19, 2024 via server web1.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
I like the idea of Gwen being flighty and well-intentioned yet agreeing to become an assassin. The person I find funniest, though, is Suzy. How many seven-year-olds are into hostile corporate takeovers? Suzy also seems to have a better grasp on reality than Gwen does. I think you do a great job of showing a couple of bright kids who lack the actual worldliness to grasp the magnitude of what they are actually doing. It all adds up to a very funny premise -- in a kind of sick, dark sort of way. Just my kind of show! 
My review has been submitted for consideration in "