Ooooh, I like this a lot. I think you did a really nice job of fleshing out your characters and giving them detailed histories -- I especially enjoyed the section where you talk about their friendship and how it lasted throughout high school, tiny details that discuss how their friendship kind of deteriorated as they went to different colleges. One kind of small thing: when Ryan calls Nina from his closet in the flashback, I would rephrase that somehow, because when he says "I'm in the closet" all scared like that, I thought at first he meant the metaphorical closet, that he was afraid to come out to his parents or something. I figured it out pretty quickly, but I somehow couldn't shake the impression throughout the story that he was a closeted gay man, even though that's clearly not what you were going for
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Yeah, I wondered about the "closet" line too, but I just liked the idea of a tough 16-year-old in the closet because he doesn't know how else to deal with what's happening. I'll working on finding another way to phrase that.
That line about how she looks like her mother was as much of a surprise to me as it was to Ryan, to be honest.
Boy-girl friendships are unbelievably complex. So I toyed with the idea of having them kiss, but their friendship is special and delicate and I wanted to preserve that.
I hope so, as my poetry for that class sucked, and I would like to gain my classmates' respect before we're done... we'll see.
I liked it! I can't come up with any constructive criticism, just one small typo: "he was angry at himself for wasting a whole night oh her"- I'm assuming that should be "on" not "oh!" :) ps. check your Facebook wall!
Could just be that I haven't written or read anything in past tense in a long time, but that threw me off a bit.
What else. Some very nitpicky, general pet-peevish things. You used the word 'softly' a lot, and a lot of adverbs. That would just be me, cause I've started to treat adverbs like a mortal sin. Also, the word 'suddenly' is bad. I don't like it. Also, I'd steer away from anything that's not 'said' in dialogue as much as possible. I mean, it is really hard to move away from it and you're not bad about it and it's not that noticeable, but it's one of those things I noticed.
All of the above are just little habits of mine, so you don't have to mind them too much.
There's also a few other things that I think are redundant, like the line- She fingered her short brown hair and made a pained expression to the mirror. “I did like my long hair though,” she admitted- except, we just learned she cut off her hair. Just small instances of things like that. And you could probably omit the 'she admitted'. Just little redundancies like
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I mean, I understand the reason why you have there, but I feel like you don't need to have all it there. Cause it does feel a little too awkward. Personally, I'd cut out the prom section and move it down lower, or something, and just generally split it up more to make it feel less like an infodump. Cause otherwise, it sort of sits there and glares 'INFODUMP K'. Which is not what you want- try integrating it into the story more. Or if that doesn't work, redesign the story to integrate it
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Yeah, I wondered about the "closet" line too, but I just liked the idea of a tough 16-year-old in the closet because he doesn't know how else to deal with what's happening. I'll working on finding another way to phrase that.
That line about how she looks like her mother was as much of a surprise to me as it was to Ryan, to be honest.
Boy-girl friendships are unbelievably complex. So I toyed with the idea of having them kiss, but their friendship is special and delicate and I wanted to preserve that.
I hope so, as my poetry for that class sucked, and I would like to gain my classmates' respect before we're done... we'll see.
I miss you!!
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What else. Some very nitpicky, general pet-peevish things. You used the word 'softly' a lot, and a lot of adverbs. That would just be me, cause I've started to treat adverbs like a mortal sin. Also, the word 'suddenly' is bad. I don't like it. Also, I'd steer away from anything that's not 'said' in dialogue as much as possible. I mean, it is really hard to move away from it and you're not bad about it and it's not that noticeable, but it's one of those things I noticed.
All of the above are just little habits of mine, so you don't have to mind them too much.
There's also a few other things that I think are redundant, like the line-
She fingered her short brown hair and made a pained expression to the mirror. “I did like my long hair though,” she admitted- except, we just learned she cut off her hair. Just small instances of things like that. And you could probably omit the 'she admitted'. Just little redundancies like ( ... )
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