kizzykat's profile

This was a pleasant read. The only real problem I noticed with the verb tenses was at the beginning - 'my mother was in a horrible carriage accident' should have been 'my mother had been'. You could also do with being a little more specific in 'I had run away' which gives no indication of how long the narrator has been gone from home. 'I had run away after the funeral' might be better and explain why she's so upset. You could also do with making it clearer earlier on that the narrator is a gi...

I didn't really feel any tension in this and I think it was because Alex and Diana are rather faceless and so the reader cannot readily identify with them. For example, at the beginning it isn't clear until Alex speaks that Diana is probably a child. We don't know how old they are or very much about them. It might help to give some identifying characteristics eg Diana pulling at her pigtails, Alex having scabbed knees or something to make them real. The ending is also unsatisfactory for a sho...

I was a little puzzled by this as I couldn't pinpoint the setting. Is it a squat, a mental institution or somewhere surreal? Or is that the point, that it's imaginary and the potential suicide is hallucinating? For some reason the 'I' strikes me as female, perhaps it's the mention of the old lady. She seems resigned to death, perhaps the result of depression, or drug-induced apathy. I think the final line is a little trite and could do with a second line to give it more weight. Perhaps a ment...

I think you rather wasted the first three paragraphs (almost half the story) by not making it clear that this was set in the future. I spent a lot of effort trying to place this into a recognisable context. The first two sentences make it sound like suburbian monotony. I thought the fumes came from the bus. Then you mentioned the fire. I presume the fumes come from the fire, but you didn't make that connection and I think you need to for readers who have no experience of forest fires. At leas...

The style isn't boring, but it is a little vague. For example, in the opening sentence, you've found yourself "at crossroads over and over but still pushing forward". But forward to what? What were the dilemmas that caused you to hesitate in your journey through life? What were you pushing towards? You obviously know what you are talking about, but the reader doesn't. I think you need to give a few more facts in order to give a framework to help with the interpretation of your view of the wor...