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 :)
Printed from https://web1.writing.com/main/profile/reviews/neohippy
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 0.08 seconds at 3:27pm on Apr 26, 2025 via server WEBX1.
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
My review has been submitted for consideration in "