Breaking Out
A safe life can be a lonely one6 total reviews
Comment from reconciled
She is either God sent...or a grifter. Nobodys that confident unless they're sure...they're supposed to try.
All day your reply has been with me...and I read a review of your latest release, I hope and pray she is heaven sent it would do me a world of good to you two lived happily ever after.
An absolute pleasure to read this Sir. Mike
reply by the author on 20-Nov-2019
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She is either God sent...or a grifter. Nobodys that confident unless they're sure...they're supposed to try.
All day your reply has been with me...and I read a review of your latest release, I hope and pray she is heaven sent it would do me a world of good to you two lived happily ever after.
An absolute pleasure to read this Sir. Mike
Comment Written 19-Nov-2019
reply by the author on 20-Nov-2019
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Mr. Mike, as always I genuinely appreciate all your great comments. It?s taking me a while to get my head and heart realigned but I think I?m getting close. I cannot thank you enough for hanging in there with me on FanStory. I always Look for your name and smile when I see it on one of my writings. You are a true friend. Mossmouse
Comment from giraffmang
Hi there,
there are some lovely touches of characterisation in here and the emotion and feeling come through very well in places.
there are also several technical bits & pieces which you may or may not wish to have a look at.
I made some notes as I read through-
and soft blurs of conversations- blurs feels a little out of place here when talking of conversation. perhaps burrs would work?
Quite a few of the sentences are fragmented or have no subject to them initially. It makes the read a little disjointed. I get it's told in first person and you can get away with imperfect sentence structure to a certain degree, but it does stick out a bit.
I got up to see if the local paper was sitting on the counter and it was, - given that they'd just been at the counter they may have noticed this already.
pretended to read my paper, but all the words were sort of blurry. - this sort of re-enforces my first point about blurred conversation. to use it for both feels odd.
Doesn't she know sugar isn't good for you? - says the guy spooning loads of jam on a cinnamon roll - both of which contain a crap load of sugar! lol
towards me and sat down. Sat down quietly and efficiently. - do you need the repetition here, you could do away with it.
be careful of adverb usage as it can signal lazy writing and weak verb choices. pairing adverbs is not usually a good sign. ( Sat down quietly and efficiently. )
one of black lace about �???�??�?�¾" wide and flecked with gold, - needs edited for code.
felt as if someone had a hose spraying my armpits, someone else wrinkling my shirt and did my socks match? - the last article feels a little out of place. the first two being 'someone'.
She stated, "Been a while, Huh?" - huh doesn't need the capital here.
how it would turn out, "she softly spoke thru clear lip gloss, almost glowing it seemed. - space should be after the closing speech marks. Also, it's probably best to spell the full through rather than thru.
Oh my, I must look like a deer in the headlights right now, - this is present tense whereas most of the rest is past. There are some other minor fluctuations in tense as well.
I'm over thinking this maybe. - overthinking could be a single word here.
In the latter half, it gets a bit repetitive. the feeling of falling, being lost and the use of familiar words repeats such as softly.
"Are you ready? She softly spoke.- need closing speech marks in here.
"To restart your life, to poke the embers of your heart, to do something you don't know how it will turn out" she whispered to me. the second part of this is a direct repetition of earlier on, also punctuation is needed before the closing speech marks.
"No" I said. - missing punctuation here as well before the closing speech marks.
When using more than one paragraph in dialogue, you don't need closing speech marks at the end of each paragraph. this is confusing and gives the impression of a different speaker. only one set of closing speech marks at the very end. Each paragraph though does need opening ones.
"No" I said again. - punctuation needed after 'no'.
be to disruptive, - too.
"No" I said again. "Aren't you listening to me?" I protested. - punctuation needed after no and the two tags aren't necessary.
and re-assembled them before my eyes. - no need for the hyphen.
"Can we get a cup of coffee to go" I asked? - question mark should come inside the speech marks.
"An answer to prayer" I stated loudly,- punctuation needed after prayer.
I initially bought into this piece pretty well, although the conversation with the woman fell a bit flat for me. how did they know all of these things about him? At first I though maybe it was an imagined conversation but that's not the case. It just stretched things a little too far.
I think you have something here but I feel it needs a bit more work and ironing out.
All the best
GMG
reply by the author on 19-Nov-2019
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Hi there,
there are some lovely touches of characterisation in here and the emotion and feeling come through very well in places.
there are also several technical bits & pieces which you may or may not wish to have a look at.
I made some notes as I read through-
and soft blurs of conversations- blurs feels a little out of place here when talking of conversation. perhaps burrs would work?
Quite a few of the sentences are fragmented or have no subject to them initially. It makes the read a little disjointed. I get it's told in first person and you can get away with imperfect sentence structure to a certain degree, but it does stick out a bit.
I got up to see if the local paper was sitting on the counter and it was, - given that they'd just been at the counter they may have noticed this already.
pretended to read my paper, but all the words were sort of blurry. - this sort of re-enforces my first point about blurred conversation. to use it for both feels odd.
Doesn't she know sugar isn't good for you? - says the guy spooning loads of jam on a cinnamon roll - both of which contain a crap load of sugar! lol
towards me and sat down. Sat down quietly and efficiently. - do you need the repetition here, you could do away with it.
be careful of adverb usage as it can signal lazy writing and weak verb choices. pairing adverbs is not usually a good sign. ( Sat down quietly and efficiently. )
one of black lace about �???�??�?�¾" wide and flecked with gold, - needs edited for code.
felt as if someone had a hose spraying my armpits, someone else wrinkling my shirt and did my socks match? - the last article feels a little out of place. the first two being 'someone'.
She stated, "Been a while, Huh?" - huh doesn't need the capital here.
how it would turn out, "she softly spoke thru clear lip gloss, almost glowing it seemed. - space should be after the closing speech marks. Also, it's probably best to spell the full through rather than thru.
Oh my, I must look like a deer in the headlights right now, - this is present tense whereas most of the rest is past. There are some other minor fluctuations in tense as well.
I'm over thinking this maybe. - overthinking could be a single word here.
In the latter half, it gets a bit repetitive. the feeling of falling, being lost and the use of familiar words repeats such as softly.
"Are you ready? She softly spoke.- need closing speech marks in here.
"To restart your life, to poke the embers of your heart, to do something you don't know how it will turn out" she whispered to me. the second part of this is a direct repetition of earlier on, also punctuation is needed before the closing speech marks.
"No" I said. - missing punctuation here as well before the closing speech marks.
When using more than one paragraph in dialogue, you don't need closing speech marks at the end of each paragraph. this is confusing and gives the impression of a different speaker. only one set of closing speech marks at the very end. Each paragraph though does need opening ones.
"No" I said again. - punctuation needed after 'no'.
be to disruptive, - too.
"No" I said again. "Aren't you listening to me?" I protested. - punctuation needed after no and the two tags aren't necessary.
and re-assembled them before my eyes. - no need for the hyphen.
"Can we get a cup of coffee to go" I asked? - question mark should come inside the speech marks.
"An answer to prayer" I stated loudly,- punctuation needed after prayer.
I initially bought into this piece pretty well, although the conversation with the woman fell a bit flat for me. how did they know all of these things about him? At first I though maybe it was an imagined conversation but that's not the case. It just stretched things a little too far.
I think you have something here but I feel it needs a bit more work and ironing out.
All the best
GMG
Comment Written 16-Jul-2019
reply by the author on 19-Nov-2019
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I plan on getting the iron out soon...LOL. I lost the love of my life not too long ago and just can't get my mind and heart reconnected...
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if I can iron it out to your satisfaction might you consider a revised rating?
Comment from Sylvia Page
Hello Mossmouse,
I got the feeling of apprehension in this story. The imagery is good but a little too much fluff. You can cut this down pretty much if you edit and reword some areas. I'll be happy to help.
Here's a typo
turned around to see who see(she) was looking at
Best to you
Sylvia
reply by the author on 18-Jul-2019
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Hello Mossmouse,
I got the feeling of apprehension in this story. The imagery is good but a little too much fluff. You can cut this down pretty much if you edit and reword some areas. I'll be happy to help.
Here's a typo
turned around to see who see(she) was looking at
Best to you
Sylvia
Comment Written 16-Jul-2019
reply by the author on 18-Jul-2019
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If you would like to assist on this piece I would welcome it. Your words were kind. Another reviewer who is highly ranked was too brutal for me. I read a lot of his work and it was nicely laid out, grammatically correct, some humor but had no ❤️ which to me is a failure to connect to the audience. Let me know. I have about 30 or so items on FanStory.
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Hello, I would be very happy to help you time permitting. I will be busy the whole of the next two weeks with a wedding and visiting foreign dignitaries. I'll be free after all that.
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If you would like to assist on this piece I would welcome it. Your words were kind. Another reviewer who is highly ranked was too brutal for me. I read a lot of his work and it was nicely laid out, grammatically correct, some humor but had no ❤️ which to me is a failure to connect to the audience. Let me know. I have about 30 or so items on FanStory.
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Ok. I?ll catch up with you then. Thanks for the reply.
Mike
Comment from Mystic Angel 7777
This is a very well written story. I saw no obvious evidence of SPAG which made it a smooth and enjoyable read. The content is uplifting as the spiritual leaning toward the power of prayer becomes more and more evident the further one proceeds into the story. If I had any recommendation to improve it, it would be to cull this down as t is far too long to hold the reader's attention once they have figured out where this is headed. Maybe less backstory at the front end as you could relate the same information in fewer words by selecting those words more carefully. Well done and thank you very much for sharing it.
reply by the author on 15-Jul-2019
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This is a very well written story. I saw no obvious evidence of SPAG which made it a smooth and enjoyable read. The content is uplifting as the spiritual leaning toward the power of prayer becomes more and more evident the further one proceeds into the story. If I had any recommendation to improve it, it would be to cull this down as t is far too long to hold the reader's attention once they have figured out where this is headed. Maybe less backstory at the front end as you could relate the same information in fewer words by selecting those words more carefully. Well done and thank you very much for sharing it.
Comment Written 12-Jul-2019
reply by the author on 15-Jul-2019
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Thank you so much for your time to read my piece. I spent some time today cleaning it up a little bit. I had a friend that wanted to read it and I've been putting her off, so another lesson learned, let 'em wait! Again, thank you. I've got a lot of other good stuff on here too if you ever have any free time. Mossmouse
Comment from humpwhistle
I hope you will edit this. So many unnecessary words.
If you're serious about writing, you need to be serious about editing, too. I'm thinking you can reduce this by 40% without losing anything important. Separate the wheat from the chaff.
Peace, Lee
Walked to the counter and Alice presented me with my usual calico clay mug with medium roast mountain blend coffee with a liberal helping of half and half followed soon by a heated cinnamon roll with strawberry jam on the side. --this is a rather long sentence containing four 'with's. I suggest you reconfigure.
saw a few and nodded with a tilt of my head. --having said 'nodded', do you need 'with a tilt of my head'?
reply by the author on 15-Jul-2019
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I hope you will edit this. So many unnecessary words.
If you're serious about writing, you need to be serious about editing, too. I'm thinking you can reduce this by 40% without losing anything important. Separate the wheat from the chaff.
Peace, Lee
Walked to the counter and Alice presented me with my usual calico clay mug with medium roast mountain blend coffee with a liberal helping of half and half followed soon by a heated cinnamon roll with strawberry jam on the side. --this is a rather long sentence containing four 'with's. I suggest you reconfigure.
saw a few and nodded with a tilt of my head. --having said 'nodded', do you need 'with a tilt of my head'?
Comment Written 12-Jul-2019
reply by the author on 15-Jul-2019
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I did. Thanks or taking the time to make your observations.
Mossmouse
Comment from JLR
Sucha well-crafted piece for your readers. The dialogue is engaging and pulls the reader along. There is a hint of anticipation and at the same moment apprehension. Thanks for sharing your work.
reply by the author on 15-Jul-2019
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Sucha well-crafted piece for your readers. The dialogue is engaging and pulls the reader along. There is a hint of anticipation and at the same moment apprehension. Thanks for sharing your work.
Comment Written 12-Jul-2019
reply by the author on 15-Jul-2019
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Thank you so much for taking the time to read my work. I cleaned it up a little bit today, rushed it some because someone wanted to read it on the site, lesson learned. Again, thank you! I have many other pieces on here also.
Mossmouse...