Deleted

Hi there!

Hey, this was something different!

The moment I scrolled over this, my eyes practically crossed. Break up the blocks! They scare readers off!

This was brilliantly written, in a different style, and the entire philosophical conundrum was very well expressed. However, you really frightened me with the length, the weight, and the lack of any action. Only the most dedicated of readers with philosophical ideas would happily read through this. Beware of the bulk! The descriptions were beautiful, but also robbed the story of flow.

I got really tired of it in the middle and was tempted to skim the rest, but stuck it out and it was quite good and very interesting!

Keep writing!
barefoot

It's brilliant. Your descriptions are really interesting, and your writing style vaguely reminiscent of of American modernist style. I found it quite difficult to read however, but that this is mainly to do with your paragraphing. You could also perhaps watch the way your sentences run into each other.

Although I get that it's a stylistic thing, sentences such as your opening one could definitely be punctuated more.

Well, Stigma already said the problem with this: it's too blocky.
Try seperating it into smaller paragraphs, ten lines is usually a good amount for a paragraph.

Anyway, I think this is good. I like your descriptions. They are detailed and give you a good starting point to imagine the characters in your head.

I don't have much more to say. So, the paragraphs need to be altered... but thats it really.

Well done, good luck!

Sorry for not being detailed, but Stigma pointed out most things.

Keep writing!
-Clarity.

This is very nicely written! The only problem I have with it is that it's a bit wall-of-texty. I would separate them into smaller paragraphs myself, maybe like:

"He told her that he did not know what to do. That he knew if he was the salesman of it and forced it upon her that was awful and wrong. But he was trying to understand—they’d prayed on it and talked it through from every different angle. Lane said how sorry she knew he was, and that if he was wrong in believing they’d truly decided together when they decided to make the appointment she should please tell him, because he thought he knew how she must have felt as it got closer and closer and how she must be so scared, but that what he couldn’t tell was if it was more than that. He was totally still except for moving his mouth, it felt like. She did not reply. That if they needed to pray on it more and talk it through, then he was here, he was ready, he said. The appointment could get moved back; if she just said the word they could call and push it back to take more time to be sure in the decision.

It was still so early in it—they both knew that, he said. This was true, that he felt this way, and yet he also knew he was also trying to say things that would get her to open up and say enough back that he could see her and read her heart and know what to say to get her to go through with it. He knew this without admitting to himself that this was what he wanted, for it would make him a hypocrite and liar. He knew, in some locked-up little part of him, why it was that he’d gone to no one to open up and seek their life counsel, not Pastor Steve or the prayer partners at campus ministries, not his UPS friends or the spiritual counselling available through his parents’ old church. But he did not know why Sheri herself had not gone to Pastor Steve—he could not read her heart.

She was blank and hidden. He so fervently wished it never happened. He felt like he knew now why it was a true sin and not just a leftover rule from past society. He felt like he had been brought low by it and humbled and now did believe that the rules were there for a reason. That the rules were concerned with him personally, as an individual. He promised God he had learned his lesson. But what if that, too, was a hollow promise, from a hypocrite who repented only after, who promised submission but really only wanted a reprieve? He might not even know his own heart or be able to read and know himself. He kept thinking also of 1 Timothy and the hypocrite therein who disputeth over words. He felt a terrible inner resistance but could not feel what it was that it resisted. This was the truth.

All the different angles and ways they had come at the decision together did not ever include it—the word—for had he once said it, avowed that he did love her, loved Sheri Fisher, then it all would have been transformed. It would not be a different stance or angle, but a difference in the very thing they were praying and deciding on together. Sometimes they had prayed together over the phone, in a kind of half code in case anybody accidentally picked up the extension. She continued to sit as if thinking, in the pose of thinking, like that one statue. They were right up next to each other on the table. He was looking over past her at the tree in the water. But he could not say he did: it was not true."

...etc etc. That's just my opinion though. If you feel like it's better the way it is, by all means, leave it as it is.

In conclusion, you have a lot of talent, and I encourage you to continue writing! =)