Squashing The Love Bug

[Typhus]

No point anymore.

Edited March 20, 2009 by Typhus

[Lochie_old]

This is excellent. That's all I can really say.

[Oxidizer]

I lol'd, I loved. I like.

 

And again, this has the most adorabubble title.

[Typhus]

This is excellent. That's all I can really say.

What is excellent about it?

Is there anything I can improve? Spelling errors? A lack of description maybe?

[Hayden]

I actually don't have the patience to read all of that; I only got about half-way. I did, however, enjoy this part:

Mia Allen rolled over and lazily tried to bat away the annoying jester. She heard herself mumble "Er, shaddup, it's sust Jaturday."

Of course she knew that this was inaccurate, it was in fact fust Jriday...

 

[mark-2007]

I haven't read it fully, but so that I could remember better, I thought I'd post some typos I found.

 

a black bag that had vomitied

 

 

Years of monotomy had made Mia

 

 

same desk as many other failiures

 

And a fair amount of your dialogue attribution is done wrongly, I think.

 

 

"Oh no!" She wailed

There's no need for the 'S' to be capitalised after the exclamation mark.

 

 

"Only those too young or too stupid to know any better." Mia chimed in,

I reckon that should be a comma, rather than a full stop.

[Typhus]

No point anymore.

Edited March 20, 2009 by Typhus

[Typhus]

No point anymore.

Edited March 20, 2009 by Typhus

[Typhus]

No point anymore.

Edited March 20, 2009 by Typhus

[Typhus]

No point anymore.

Edited March 20, 2009 by Typhus

[Eminence]

Just start with a few main things I noticed:

 

 

She rubbed her eyes and blinked hard at the ceiling, letting out a resigned sigh. She had better get out the door and give that smug idiot his daily pound of flesh.

She slid off the bed and had to avoid stepping on the lithe black and white cat that was dashing between her feet.

 

Watch the repetitive sentence structures - 'she, she, she' - as well as the fact that they're all short and fast paced, giving this segment very little flow.

 

Regarding punctuation at the end of dialogue - you're correct with it now pretty much all the time, but there's a couple instances where a comma should be used instead of a full-stop. When any form of attribution follows, there must be a comma. For example:

 

 

"I care about my exployees." He lied.

 

This should read as:

 

 

"I care about my exployees," he lied.

 

Of course, you can use a full-stop if it's description afterwards, not attribution. For example:

 

 

"I care about my exployees." He was lying.

 

A subtle difference, but it makes something incorrect correct - or vice versa. So just watch out for that general rule; there's a couple more examples where a comma should be used, but I won't point out the same thing more than once.

 

 

And for a brief, horrible moment. Before the artery clogging food came to fill their mouths. Neither father nor daughter could think of a single thing to say to one another.

 

I think all of this should've been structured as one sentence - the split between the middle fragment really stops the flow. Aside from that, though, this was actually a great line to read - one of my favourites of the piece so far.

 

 

Her mind was shrieking at her to whip out her mobile phone and phone the police.

 

Here I would've just shaken things up a touch and used a different word so that 'phone' wasn't repeated twice in such rapid succession - call, ring, take your pick.

 

 

"but I know what's got your goat, you're annoyed that I broke in."

 

I like the goat phrase, reminds me of McMurphy in One Flew Over the nice personoo's Nest... although that's the only place I've really heard it, might be more common than I know!

 

 

Mia felt her face scrunch up in a little ball, what was this is?

 

Slight error here with the 'what was this is' - there's numerous possibilities for the phrase so that'd be up to you to figure out.

 

-

 

Now, overall, I'm really enjoying this so far. The line about being not as much of a deafeatist as Mia was a nice touch - I really think it's started extremely effectively, establishing the nihilistic tone of the piece and her character - there seems to be a bit of pathetic fallacy about the piece, too. Just the structure; the constant negativity really brings it to life in a very genuine, grittily realistic way. Excellent atmosphere thus far, and the flashback chapter was also a nice touch.

 

I must apologise that it's taken so long for me to start reading, but I'll be looking forward to future installments, and I hope you can take something positive from my belated response.

[Canofceleri]

Your formatting is atrocious, dude. I tried, I really did try to read this. From the little I read it didn't seem bad at all... but goddamn, the formatting really killed it for me. You must give some line breaks in place of your non-existent indentions. Please.