Young Writers Society

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A lot of description for Donny, and he muses a bit. I'd rather have seen the huge web between the three of them in a less direct way. It was understood, assumed, and I understand that Donny is dwelling on it - but was Donny ever one to dwell so much?

It's your work, but from what you've told me about the characters, the style feels slightly off.

I agree with xanthan gum, there is something a bit off in this chapter. There are some parts I found to be rambling, and others were intriguing. This chapter is mostly Donny's inner thoughts, I feel there needs to be something more.

Why didn’t I move out of Lindon in the first place? I needed to get away from this city where I’d hurt too many people. It’s something I can hardly think about, that year in highschool with John, that summer with John and Michelle and John’s dad’s big, bare house. If you can bruise a soul, then that’s what happened. And now, three and a half years later, I’m afraid it’s started to happen all over again right here, in different circumstances, with different people—but still just the same. After everything I told myself I’d learned painfully, disastrously, how can I have let it begin again?

I did not like this paragraph. Not at all. You introduced John (who?); if he was a character in a previous chapter, he wasn't significant enough to remember. It seems to ramble on. And I can only take so many instances of the narrator asking himself questions.

But to glimpse her reflected in Chris—he was thinner, sharper in definition—well, It made me see her in a new light. Her relation to Chris changed her, it enlarged my sense of her. If I could see her in him, I could also make out, just barely, him in her.

This is brilliant. It really shows a magnificent and intricate thought process. You bring us along for the ride, and assumingly, a transition.

The ending seems rushed, a bit abrupt. It felt like you were trying to make your whole point in that last statement and hurriedly wrote some filler to get there. Plus, I wasn't really wild with the last sentence anyway. It was very frank, a style you haven't been using in past chapters. Perhaps that was your intention?