genx_geny

You touch a nerve with this subject. I guess because I often get "wordy" in my writing and it kills the flow. At times I wish I could be more like Hemingway was: I;ve heard he was unrelenting in cutting out all unnessecary words which allows for a fast pace, but at the expense of developing characters that seem shallow in their thoughts, unreflective and pragmatic to the extreme. At the other end of the spectrum is David Foster Wallace; his writing is awesome, but also infuriating in detail and vocabulary. I have to keep a dictionary by my side while reading his novels. It's a slow tedious process. So, I guess there needs to be a balance.

You tell a story real well. This one has absorbed my day as I've read nonstop. It's been a hell of a roller coaster ride. Laughter and tears of great sadness... that the story touches a nerve so deep as to cause me tears, that's powerful. you've done well in developing Shane's character (I pray it isn't from first hand knowledge). I'm also glad you haven't turned Tad and Don into sex perverts. It's honestly refreshing to see an older couple in the light of normalacy, closer to real life I think. I don't know where this story is headed, but I'm hoping for the best for Shane. On technical points, the words flow well. I like the dialouge (something I have trouble with in my own writing). There's a few problems with typos and misplaced puncuation, but the story itself is so compelling, I ignored them --trust me, I'm have an eye for mistakes; I spot them all the time when I read newspapers I look forward to reading the rest of the story as soon as I can. Cheers, Marcus.