krystalynn03

Well, then the person most affected by this then is you, and you're allowed to work at whatever pace is best for your process. Otherwise, I think your 'leap of faith' phrasing is interesting. I don't think we ask readers to take a leap of faith when the read fantasy. I think the conventions built into the genre itself allow fantasy readers to suspend their disbelief in ways that actually gives us more creative freedom. The only thing is that were there is license there is accountability, so you have to not only write the rules but play by the rules you write. A leap of of faith implies that the reader is risking something. When I sit down to a fantasy book, I don't feel like I'm more at risk than I am with any other book. There's more risk for the author, because he/she has to construct everything in a way that feels real within the context, but I'd say the only time the author asks the reader to take a leap of faith is when he/she actually parts with money to read the thing! (Disagreeing for the sake of interesting conversation--not for the sake of being disagreeable. )

I don't think your integrity would be questioned--just maybe your accuracy. Besides, if the context is fantasy, not everything has to line up exactly perfectly to reality. It just has to be consistent within itself and not jar the reader. IMHO

Also, if I have a word, number, or name when I'm making a first draft, I like to use ### to mark it out. I'm not trying to look like Twitter, but the hashtag symbol is so foreign to any normal fiction conventions of punctuation that it makes it really, really easy to notice what I marked later. (as opposed to parenthesis or brackets, which can blend in better)

I think a whole lot of things depend on context and the mindset of the reader. I might be surprised by a word I don't know (as fiction is written for entertainment and doesn't have a lot of high academic vocabulary), but if the story has me pulled in, I won't slow down for a single term, especially if the author provides some context clues to help me know what I need to know. Otherwise, keep plugging on.

I would also like to request to submit on the 16th.

Keep going! Every word feel so valuable after being stuck for a while!

Hey there Spieles, I read through the sub earlier this week, and I’m making notes as I go on read through number dos. ‘elongated to the end’ – extra wording padding to a long sentence when you’ve already given me plenty of visual info ‘sitting with the pack of Brides’ – This is confusing because it sounds like the Brides’ table is already full, considering you just said all the tables in the room are occupied ‘taking up whole bench’ – If you need the ‘legs elongated’ for clarity, this would be a better place for the phrase ‘mouth is turned, ‘almost-smiling’ ‘smile grows’ ‘smile disappears’ – seems like too much in a small space. I can already tell he’s smitten without the play by play of smiles to this degree ‘What starts?’ ‘The whispers’ etc – And the Brides have now gone from being Bad-A’s in my head to being a bunch of shallow high school girls with nothing better to think about. Disappointing move. And now Clair is moneyed. This isn’t doing anything for me one way or the other. ‘Didn’t feel like fitting in’ – Is this necessary? Is it setting something else up? Firstly, it pushed me from the narrative both readings because it makes me wonder why a military outfit like the Brides doesn’t have specific rules in place, and secondly, Hayden has done enough weird stuff that I don’t need her to change her clothes for her to show she has a one-off personality from everybody else. Even knowing the ‘reveal’ of her family connections from later in the submission, I don’t dig stretching an inference to think she gets away with this childish stuff because of it. ‘You can’t work for yourself’ – I like that you’re trying to get this out of her mouth in an angsty teen way, but with Oz’s line about price gouging, it feels off beat that she’s still continuing the thought after Oz and the reader have already moved on to something else. ‘bitter smoky laugh’ – Hm. ‘Night leaves’ – I haven’t really gotten a good feel for time passing, but that might be because I’m reading each of these subs one or two weeks apart, so that might be the problem, not the narrative. ‘under slept’ – Dictionary.com says you can make this ‘underslept’ but Merriam Webster doesn’t. I think it looks odd as two words, like I was expecting you to describe her sleeping in an uncomfortable location. Safe bet is sleep-deprived, although I’d like to see underslept become common usage! Uh, why is he eating dirt? ‘shuttered’ – Did the trading posts have enormous windows…? What did I miss or forget? How does Oz know all this stuff about Panama? ‘Del Reyes, I warn’ – This is starting to sound reversed. Like Oz is saying all the things Penton should and Penton what Oz should say. Five years ago. – Odd fragment when it could pin onto the next sentence with ease. ‘He’s not circumspect’ – I’m still bothered that most of Calgary’s characterization is other characters talking about him rather than his own dialogue or actions proving it. I’m not going to say a word on the pseudo-science because it doesn’t bother me one way or the other in the least. If you say a magnite grid could throw off an asteroid in a Sci-Fi setting, I’ll take that at face value and move on. That’ s not the big plot of this book—surviving in the wreckage it caused is. ‘miss the Brides uniform’ – Oh you mean the one you weren’t actually wearing at breakfast…? ‘did our private bridal lessons together’ – How old is Penton? Don’t tell me she’s a teen, too. I like the fish tank comparison. Been watching a funal infection from fish I bought last week ravage my poor tank. Make out scene is make out scene. Not my favorite. Johnny saves the story for me in the chapter. He really does. Overall, there are some tropey-self-indulgent YA bits that grate on me, and if Hayden’s quirks turn into weaknesses she’ll be interesting, but if they’re there just to make her ‘different’ then I won’t be impressed. Oz really didn’t do much other than react here: react to Hayden at breakfast, react to Penton’s offer, react to Hayden acting like a nympho, and then react to Johnny’s call for help. This is going to be hard on my tastes to get through as a reader if the book strays too far into teen angst/self/sexual discovery. Johnny saves this submission for me. I don’t care for Hayden right now (could turn into something more interesting) and Oz didn’t do anything great this time, but hanging in there to see how things develop with Mona, Raj, and Johnny. That was a good place to cut because I needed my interest level to be brought back. Thanks for submitting. Look forward to what develops out of Raj charging Oz.

I looked those lyrics up and now I have that stuck in my head. Ears. Bleeding. Argh.

INs for the win! (The ES's are probably all running around with people even now...lol)

"Getting to know you, getting to know all about you..." Julie Andrews and "The King and I" songs aside, I'm curious: what's the breakdown of MBTI here? (Meyers Briggs) I'm curious whether we're all similar 'writerly' types or not... INFJ here. (Those song lyrics sound creepier on the internet and out of context of old musicals...lol)

Hey spieles, At first I wasn't sure what LBL was and wikipedia suggested "light bladder leakage" and I'm sure that wasn't what you meant. Line by line. Right. Also, your response to my concerns about Calgary have really jarred me more than anything in the text. Nothing about him (at least the way I interpret him on page) reads at all like the way you meta-described him in blue here. If you mean for Calgary to be a cold, punk of a pseudo-father...none of that came through for me. At all. What came through was that Oz is young and doesn't understand adults well at all. I can find no textual evidence of Calgary being 'cold,' 'immature', 'annoying' yet 'lovable'. I can find evidence of an edgy man taking care of a kid who wasn't really meant to be his responsibility when he's still (probably?) young enough to be doing his own thing without a stubborn teenager around the house. If he were cold, he wouldn't care about whether Oz got hurt out there or how late he comes home or whether he comes home. Also, immature people don't waste their time worrying about others; they worry about themselves. I can see how Oz would be annoyed at Calgary (typical teen broadening circle of control conflict), but I don't see evidence of Calgary doing immature things. Seriously, did I miss something? Otherwise, what you describe here and what I read in text seem like two different people. That doesn't have to be a criticism in a bad way. People read texts all the time and come away with very different impressions, and that very phenomenon is what can make book discussions so much fun, but I thought you should know. If it's important that he have these flaws later in the book, then I will be really jarred by a sudden, unexpected change in what I perceived here.

Hey, so I do like to go back and read other 'crit'ters and comments back when I like a story, and Robinski pointed out something I don't think I said but it reminded me that I thought it also at the time: I was a bit disappointed that it was pearls missing. If I already told you and forgot, sorry, but I think missing pearls feels like the first episode to every cartoon mystery show ever. I want it to be something more interesting gone unless you're going to play with the trope in an interesting way and surprise me somewhere along the line. (2 cents!)

Stay strong, Shadowfax! We'll all still be here once you're done settling in to a new place. (Dat metered internet, tho...)

If the slots don't fill, could I submit this week? Chapter 14 is really long, so I'd like to submit just 13 this week (less than 2000 words) so that 14 can stand alone later.

Kuiper, Preference: Could you mark out or denote who you're responding to somehow in your comments back? I would have missed that you answered/responded to some of my concerns if I hadn't scanned through the stuff before it and caught the Japanese words. Also, I don't mind not knowing how the magic system works. I didn't say that in my response, but just so you know it didn't bother everyone, I'll give you my opinion, too. First of all, you gave me all I needed to know in the preface. I know this is a second chapter, and if it had been a first, I expect we would have gotten a little explanation in text of how it works. Even so, I wouldn't expect a whole explanation nor do I need one. The magical conceit you're constructing is a bar where the dead and living can enter. That's it. That's all I need to know. Digging any deeper than that would be like reading "The Hobbit" and asking to know how come Smaug exists. It's a fantasy world, and dragons happen. (Hm, I might like that on a bumper sticker.) Otherwise, if anything had affected the plot of the story you told us that felt odd, I would question it--like if there were rules that would have made the characters act differently, I would need to know them. As it stands, I could dispel my disbelief because everything flowed naturally within the confines of a short piece and the nature of the genre. If you put a lot of talk about the "rules", it might telegraph the ending or just make the text bulkier. I'd let this concern sit on the back burner for a while and decide it based on the broader scope of the work rather than flash impression of a partial text, if I were you. Hope that helps balance your thoughts on the issue.

Bartender: I think she can keep her name. Just make sure in that second instance where Nakamoto asks her name, that her name isn't used by the narrator until after he asks her and then it'll be fine. That way, you can have your apple and eat it, too!

Glad I didn't ask for any...

This review's going to be short, but honestly, in some ways it's a lot harder to give than some long reviews I've done. Last week, there were some quirks in the narrative that stood out as sequences of text that need to be fixed, but those problems have gone deeper in this submission rather than going away. The things that I didn't care for about Moon and Salane have become their defining features in this next chapter, making me dislike both of them. Eclipse himself has gotten such a varied description between Moon's dialogue previously and then his rather blah presence in the scene that I'm not interested in him at all anymore. The magic system is still interesting, and the promise of an interesting world to adventure through sounds great, but delving into a fantasy book with characters that annoy me isn't going to keep me going. I thought last week, perhaps, that your characters were going to have weaknesses inherent to being young, naiive, and self-absorbed, but the author was going to keep that in check somehow, but I'm not sensing that anymore. By the time Moon and Salane were bickering/whining at each other about how to get down at the end of the chapter, I was done with the characters. I scanned through the comments other people had left already on the board to see if the next chapter improved, but it seems that it's an exbo-bomb, so I checked out. This is hard feedback for me to leave, but it's honest and constructive. If you work Moon into an interesting character and make Salane not whiny and weak or at least make their flaws feel purposeful, then I'd come back to the story, but right now this is not something I'd keep reading. Characters are the biggest thing for me in a book and they've crossed over the line into do-not-like territory. Keep writing. Just because I don't like this iteration doesn't mean revisions can't turn it into something I'd give a very different of.

Hey there Kuiper, I have not read the first chapter, but the info gave in the beginning was plenty to make everything that followed easy to comprehend. First italicized Scene: I don’t know how I feel about this as an opening, even after having read the whole thing at one go this morning. (This is read-through 2 for comment purpose). I didn’t like having one named and one unnamed character then and now on read two, knowing where the story is going, I’m not sure that it was necessary. It does ramp the tension a little as I was supposing that the line about stress killing her or not was foreshadowing, but knowing that the premise is a bar for the afterlife and life to meet, I don’t think you need such a structured hook. This isn’t the first chapter; it’s the second. Chances are your reader has already decided whether your writing is their kind of thing or not. ‘gaudy and sterile’ was a really weird juxtaposition for me. If you accompanied it with some specific details to explain what you meant maybe it would work better. Otherwise, those two things don’t mesh well together as stand alone adjectives. ‘The fact she was a customer now…’ This made it sound like she had worked at this particular bar. Probably should tweak the wording to make it clearer. ‘fell out of her seat’ – Firstly, I think this is not as good a description as most of your other imagery is. I won’t call it cliché, but it’s certainly stock. Also, in retrospect of the double twists at the end, I’m not sure how it can make sense seeing as how she seems to be purposefully staking the place out for this guy. ‘Chinese-American’ bartender: I have two problems with this bit. First, you just introduced a Japanese named character that I haven’t quite got a handle on as a character yet and then you throw in a background character and describe them with Chinese. After seeing the rest of plot, it’s obvious that the bartender’s nationality has no bearing on the plot at all, so I’m not sure why you used that detail to characterize her. In the moment, it made me think I had misread something. Furthermore, referring to the bartender this way makes it doubly confusing when the narrator magically knows the bartender’s name later in the narrative. ‘Hay-ou’ This bothered me a bit. Hey you isn’t idiomatic or figurative speech, so why doesn’t Nakamoto understand it when he speaks with relatively advanced language structures later. It’s inconsistent with language development stages. If Samantha used something more colloquial or figurative, I’d believe this interaction was real, but here, it feels like good writing trying to fake knowledge of language acquisition. The topic of women is weird in this entire situation. I understand that as a mob boss he’s totally acting alpha male to max, but it was still weird that none of it flustered Samantha at all. I wish ‘He rubbed his fingers together’ came before ‘Why do you think we always pay in cash?’ I would enjoy the dialogue there better if I could picture his hands at work while he’s talking, rather than adding it afterwards. ‘I know I should take responsibility…’ Samantha’s dialogue here seems to betray her here. She speaks like a sophisticated thinker, but then things like sexual equality don’t bother her, and furthermore, if she’s Interpol playing at being someone not educated enough to do more than make money as a bartender, shouldn’t she play her role a little more authentically? I’m not sure entirely sure, but I think it’s worth questioning and considering. ‘Especially not with you…’ Sleaze level to the max here. I mean that as a compliment to the writing. The flashback jolted me out of the narrative a bit. Maybe because I didn’t want to leave the conversation? Question: If she’s with Interpol afterall…why didn’t she get a heads up that something was going down tonight? Is that normal undercover protocol? (I really have no clue) I like that her ability to note details a normal bartender wouldn’t foreshadows what she really is, but why is she dropping the tray of drinks? This feels weird just like her ‘almost falling out her chair’ at the beginning of the narrative. Odd reactions for someone who’s supposed to play their part and keep their cool under dangerous circumstances. If she were dropping the tree to cause a distraction or something then maybe? I don’t know. I’m struggling with her characterization. ‘his right hand was near his chest’ I had to stop and reread this phrase several times and I think you mean the holster thing that sometimes loops around shoulder/armpit region? ‘bleeping Yakuza’ I like that this misleads Nakamoto/reader to think she died, although I wish I know at what moment a bullet hit her. I can chalk that up to shock I guess. ‘Eileen walked up’--- This is the bit that was weird. Narrator didn’t know the character name before, but now they do, and then you bother to get the name in dialogue. Odd. (maybe just a rough draft oversight?) Why the paragraph change between “Ah well…” and “It may be my deceased…” It’s the same character acting and talking with no interlude to anyone else’s actions or reactions. ‘Forbidden fruit…’ She’s throwing insinuating language at him but then evil eyeing him when he acts on it? Again, Samantha’s dialogue and actions don’t always seem to match. The second flashback was easier to accept once the pattern had been established. Sorry, but the name Kiyoshi makes me think of the Kiyoshi warriors in Avatar the Last Airbender… The Kojiri comedic break was good and needed. ‘I know contempt’ Another bit of dialogue that doesn’t seem to agree with something established earlier. Nakamoto said that he thought she would be drawn to him, drawn to a man of power, but now he’s saying he knew all along that she held him in contempt. Well, which was it? The use of Japanese here with no translation really made me feel cheated out of something important. I know ‘Omae wa’ is You…but the rest? Okay, so she’s showing off she knew Japanese after all, but I still felt cheated out of content in the moment. Creeped? You mean crept? I’d take ‘creeped’ as in creeped out where the long e is preserved but not here. It looks wrong. Love the switcheroo with Nakamoto and Kiyoshi. Great twist. So Kiyoshi/Nakamoto was playing her, suggested by the sinister smile, but I feel a little cheated by skipping to no resolution on how that conversation ended or what Samantha thought was going on with that man in the interim after he found out she was Interpol. The final twist of her not being dead was also great for me; however, the ending image lost some bang with the use of the verb fading. With the quick pace of all the reveals at the ending, the slow verb made the impact lose something for me. Overall, I enjoyed the chapter, but want to see some character motives and sentences tightened up. Thanks for sharing.

What's the cookie joke about?

Hey there Valthyr welcome to (back?) the group! Your opening line is short, and the simplicity of it seems to be meant to be the hook for the reader, but you know, I think I might like it better if you gave me that description of her hair as the first line and then the man’s reaction. It would bring me into the world with an engaging image, and it would be charming if the man messed up buttering his croissant or spread too much or some other action that showed the magnitude of his distraction. I don’t know if this threw anybody else, but the description of her skin as white followed by other people seeming ‘less’ rubbed me a little odd. I know you’re not making a racist comment or anything of the like, but it almost sounds like that when you use the word ‘white’ in English in the context of comparing the quality of human beings. I know you’re working in L2, but it would be a huge oversight for nobody to steer you toward grammar rules on dialogue for the English language. Most of your dialogue tags are punctuated incorrectly. I could write out a grammar lesson here, but you could google one a whole lot faster. If you plan to continue writing in English, this is a must. The way the man (sometimes gentleman?) talks to the Stranger makes it seem like he knows him. Does he? And if he does know him, then why is he the Stranger? If this is third person omniscient then this could be glossed over for a time as using the names chosen by the narrator’s voice, but the way the characters are interacting leaves me scratching my head in a disoriented, not intrigued, kind of confusion. I really like that the crow is the odd thing out. It’s the first element in the narrative that hooks me enough to read on and find out. Mountain: We’re in a city, and all of a sudden there’s a mountain. This was confusing. I need you to segue this better or the mountain just appears out of nowhere! In that first paragraph it seems that you’re going into third person limited narrative in Kaya’s head, but then you seem to pull out to omniscient to describe the mountain…confusing. I do like the imagery in the street, even if the narrative voice is vacillating. Distractedly stared at the lights – Hm, are you hinting Kaya has an alcohol problem or is this just a throwaway description of the town? Hm. “Bastard!” – Since we’ve not had any other mention of people around, it seems with no dialogue tags at all that this must be Kaya talking, and it’s disorienting to find it wasn’t her in the next paragraph when I thought she was reacting the register not having a cashier! Why does Kaya relax at the sound of domestic violence? If I had some insight into what she feared it might have been, that reaction would make more sense. Something snapped…and then Kaya shakes her head and loses herself in the sound of her own boots? I’m not seeing the cause effect here. Why does she look up at the strengthening scent of blood? How far up is she looking? She was looking at a second floor a paragraph ago. Is she still looking that high? When did she look down? Veil’s first bit of dialogue should really include that he’s the crow in the same sentence. I saw it coming because I can sweep my eyes across that many words that fast, but the wording should still be clearer since you’re introducing a character. I do like the idea of the crow as an important character, though, especially after the mention of in the first scene. He wasn’t always around. –Is this referring to the crow or the mouse? If Mus’ accent is American…what is everybody else speaking? “I don’t think this one’s for us” – This is great dialogue. I really want to know what kind of dead body is for them. ‘lithe frame’ –If the narrative is 3rd limited, this should be taken out because girls don’t stand around and think about themselves as lithe. If you go with omniscient you could leave it there, but it’s still kind of annoying phrase when you’ve already shown yourself able to give more poignant descriptions. Mus’ conversation about the wine: Good! That bit about staring at the alcohol was a little character building after all “Look at the license, love” – Please be careful not to overdo ‘love’… So far Veil’s winning the best character for me—he’s giving up the best dialogue but I do appreciate that I can feel he’s a very different personality from Kaya or Mus Kaya spinning: Is she drunk or does she have some kind of sixth sense…? You didn’t put any specific questions in your commentary or critique requests, but you did mention being concerned about writing from a female POV. I did not know whether I was reading a man writing a woman or a woman writing a woman until I went back to your email and checked to see what feedback you wanted and saw your name tagged to email, indicating that you’re male. So I would so far so good on that front.

Hey Spieles, Last week was terribly busy for me, but I did read your submission. I’m reading it again now for the second time, and I’m going to make comments as I go and reflect on the sub as a whole. I’m not going to read what other people wrote, because I’ve found it useful even when people mention the same things because if something gets noticed or bothers more than one person that has helped me know which parts really needed more attention. I like the description of Eleanor, although after two weeks, I don’t remember exactly why she’s significant compared to the other brides, were I a reader with the whole book in front of me, this wouldn’t happen, so no worries or changes needed there I shouldn’t think. I do hope I find out why she’s breathing so hard. I like the shorn napes, although the image of the fleur de lis threw me the first time. I thought to myself that design seemed to complicated to put on for each single kill they make, unless they’re not killing as many I would think. Maybe if you mentioned that size of the fleurs I’d picture it better? ‘to be a private airport’ --- missing the word ‘a’ Why is it rude to be at the door yanking the handle? He’s a gentleman—maybe he was opening the door for them? ‘since St. Louis’ and ‘stay on their Greens’ I don’t remember from three weeks ago if this was explained in the first submission… ‘overly crowded home’ etc. I know you gave us the image of the digital sign, but I don’t really have anything specific to visualize about the place. Is there any imagery here you could insert to give me a feeling, a tone, for what life feels like in this place? You’ve been awfully vivid about characters, but places seem not to get as much attention. I’m not advising you slow down the plot for this, but I wish I had a little something for my imagination to nibble on here. A single phrase or sentence would do, I think. ‘not-father’ Ouch. Awe to glare: Wonder what happened between them? (good reader question) Now I remember Eleanor…kinda. She’s famous for running/starting the Brides or something. ‘spell it out’—Really hostile here or rather…teen scorn ‘Oz’ I know the name was here in the first sub, but I am hoping that there’s a good reason why his name is Oz when it keeps triggering yellow brick roads or HBO series from childhood when he promises. “We’ll make room.” Shouldn’t that be a comma there since you’re using promise as a dialogue tag verb? ‘side step’ Merriam Webster thinks this can be a single word. ‘if I want out’ would be clearer if I knew he meant out of the market room…almost seemed like out of the conversation or out of the town completely ‘trading post etc’ I think I would have liked this kind of info before the dialogue exchange, especially since you draw a contrast with the inside of the six-wheeler ‘high powered visitors’ How would Johnny know? As far as I can tell he didn’t come from inside the post where Oz just left. ‘the kitchen’ Why is it ‘the’ and not his mom’s kitchen? Does everyone share just one? ‘hand mill’ Shouldn’t it be: ‘I hear the grind of hand mills’ or ‘I hear the grind of a hand mill’? Cricket bars: This is a fabulous detail. If I wondered about the quality of life of these people before, this tells me all in two words. This almost makes me think of the shrimp/krill factories in ‘The House of the Scorpion’ by Nancy Farmer, and in a post-apocalyptic YA sense, that’s a compliment. I really, really liked her books. ‘guests’ Again…how does she know? (Forgive if this was made clear in the sub several weeks ago) ‘solar panel eyes’ I don’t care for this description. It’s stretching the metaphor farther than I’d say it should go. I’ve got a sense of the techy-ness of the society without this here. ‘From when I shot him.’ I’m cool with fragments sometimes as it adds to the chain of thought voice of the present tense, but right here it just feels like a mess-up rather than an intention break in thought and addition. ‘a long rectangle’ …of what? Are cricket bars crunchy such that she can snap it? I was picturing something kinda’ gooey until now. There’s no description of how the food feels in Oz’s mouth, so this threw my visuals here as I have to rewrite what I thought cricket bars look like—that is, if I’m reading this right. I picked on a lot of wording details and so on, but the characterization is just right. I can really feel the dynamic of Oz’s relationship with Mona and Johnny through the brief conversation. I like it. ‘Otherwise he’s one of those people you can’t get to shut up’ …Why? Because he’s chatty? Because he’s constantly barking orders? Or what? “Even better, sleep deprived, you risked your next.” –It’s acceptable for the narrator to move an adverbial phrase like that in front of the subject phrase, but people don’t speak like that too often. I’m not saying you just have to change it, but it sounds a little odd for dialogue level language. Maybe you could move it to the end or have him repeat it in disgusted surprise: “Sleep deprived? You risked your neck sleep deprived(?)(.) Even better.” (Forgive me if this oversteps creative bounds…just tossing around idea—you could leave it as is and I wouldn’t fuss about it if I weren’t in editor mode—I’d be reading it too quickly to notice at all) [Calgary’s inspection of wound] I like Calgary a lot better than Oz does. Yup, Oz feels like a real teen. The hair bit: I’m getting a weird read here. I can’t wholly tell if this is more banter-like, like the better part of their relationship is showing through or if this just a continuation of how they grate on each other’s nerves. I’d like it to be playful, so that it gives their relationship more dimension, which would make Oz more likeable than just a surly teen who can’t see when someone wants to protect him. Also, I’d appreciate you replacing the use of Jesus’ name as a swear word and find something else. ‘Still others have major science components’ Again, the wording here feels more like a narrator talking. ‘tentatively back’ read weird for me. Prefer: ‘returns tentatively’ ‘Onto the slimy bathroom floor’ This is another fragment that slows down the narrative without adding the rhythm of thought, imho Food from a canteen…? Ah, Oz for Oscar. The test is a great way to sneak in some expo without doing maid and butler Also, I appreciate the immediate test results and pack instructions—it’s keeping the pace moving What was his purpose in going to the shed? there’s something angelic about her small nose and the soft pout of her lips –I like most of the writing you’ve done, but this just made me cringe. I wouldn’t like the wording anywhere you put, but if you put it after he crouches down next to her, it might be a little less odd than noticing those details on a stranger who’s randomly setting fire in part of your home area… Oz seems easily impressed by girls…willing to overlook getting heady from not even O2 just so the girl can keep being pretty and making a pretty thing happen. I’ll feel better about this if it turns out to be a weakness later. ‘A smile slashes her mouth.’ This does work for me. Maybe, just maybe a smile could slash her face, but smile slashing her mouth just doesn’t translate to any real kind of picture that makes sense. Mona at the end: are the barrels empty? That bothered me while trying visualize it—also, is it normal for her to be up this late? Overall, this is a good progression. There’s some bits that feel mandatory to the hero’s journey—the bit with Calgary—but you keep things rolling quickly enough and the characters varied enough that it feels like it’s going at a good, organic pace. I’m hoping that Oz doesn’t turn out to do some annoying shallow teen things: overly criticize Calgary/fall for every girl he lays eyes on, etc. I’m trusting you as a narrator not to do that to me as a reader, but so far, I’d still keep diving into the story.

I haven't read the book, but I wouldn't be surprised if I liked the movie better, too. There's a level of visual charm achieved by the actor choices and some of the purposefully cheesy 80's effects that wouldn't exist on paper, regardless of Goldman's abilities as a writer.

I think (?) I count five for this week, but if somebody bows out last minute because of circumstances, I'd like to submit.

Clay pot: that makes sense I suppose but I also thought of it as a poverty marker possibly rather than just a tech marker... If the hair becomes important then it's good that it distracted me because I'll remember it. Either way, I'm in for the ride!