Young Writers Society

Hey CoffeeCat,

Shady here with a review for you! As you requested help on punctuation as well as whether this is interesting enough to continue, that is where I will attempt to focus my review, but I'll also point out anything else I notice

and what came after it was either resurrecting hope or doom in descending slow motion.

This is really good. I like your description here. I feel like it is an extremely accurate portrait of what life after high school is like.

~

Okay, as far as punctuation goes, you had several sentences that were very long. I could quote a few of them for you, but I'm guessing if you skim through your piece you can find them easily enough yourself. I didn't pull them out specifically because I didn't know exactly how to suggest how to improve them. Usually when people ask for punctuation help it's because they're putting periods on the wrong side of their quotation marks or have run-on sentences galore.

So your writing is significantly more refined than I expected when I saw you asking for punctuation help. It was a pleasant surprise, but I'm afraid of leading you astray, so I won't offer suggestions on how to punctuate better. However, the longer your sentences are, the harder your reader has to work to be able to read them. I think in those super long sentences you have, it would benefit your work to use more periods and semi-colons to break it up and slow it down a bit, to give your readers a bit of a break.

As far as interest goes, I think you've got a promising piece here. You've got an enjoyable narrative tone and right now you're offering a perspective on a necessary evil that we've all had to endure (or are currently enduring/going to endure, depending on ages of your readers here) so it's nice to step back and view it how you portray it.

One caution is if you keep it on this overhead view of things, so to speak. While this piece was enjoyable, and, because it was so withdrawn, easy to relate to -- I fear that later chapters might feel a bit dry if you continue to focus on experiences that every has in life, such as high school. Make sure you're owning it and telling your story in the process, not just giving generalities about your experience.

I do think you have an interesting concept, though. And you definitely have an interesting writing style! I would encourage you to keep writing this, if it holds your interest and you continue wanting to write your autobiography.

Keep writing!

~Shady