A good point, but I wouldn't let this bother you. The fact that it does makes me wonder if you're not afraid what was said is true (aside from the personal attacks). I can assure you it's not true. There are a variety of reasons why people resort to personal attacks, one of which is feeling like they've been attacked. If your review is less than glowing, some people take it personally and respond in kind. Those people will never be published writers, because they have no interest in learning ...

Some points: _A girl that was merely in early 20s_ It's your story, you're narrating it. How old is she exactly? Watch your tenses--fall, roam, seem, lighten--they have to agree with the tenses of the sentence as a whole. _“Is anything wrong?” said the brown haired man._ He asked, not said. Unless asking a question, the quote should end with a comma before a sentence tag like "started Tiffany." You have some images here, but strung together like they are and so brief, I don't know what your s...

Interesting format, pithy commentary and very sound mechanically. I enjoyed it. While on the verge of melodrama, it never went over the edge. This post had it's profound moments, particularly when cast in simple language. The following line is an example of your best. _The hardest part about living after the war was not coping with the abundance of life, but rather the absence of death._ One note:_I just wanted to know what I had been doing what he ‘passed on’._ I'm guessing that second what ...

An interesting historical post. It's not every day that the Russo-Japanese conflict gets novel attention, which bodes well for your likelihood of publication. Is Ishikawa and Silkworm historical fact? I know Beria is, as are the rumors you mention about him. Assuming this is a fictional encounter, you've captured the essence of the fear and mood of communism during Stalin's reign. You set up tension by foreshadowing a desire to see a sister despite orders to the contrary, and the post promise...

Good imagery, but layered on so thick that it borders on soap opera-melodramatics. You have themes that are repeated--ideas emerging from fog to become reality, and the scenes those ideas will become--that could be pared down. Pick one imaginative description for each and stick with it, mentioning it once. Break the sentences up with periods. I had this problem and still fight it--run-on sentences full of commas and fragments of thought. It seems this was written less to communicate an idea t...

Good word use, I especially liked the descriptions of joints like whetstones and gravel. The language borders on too florid, but not quite over the top. Some of the more flowery lines impede the flow of the post and I found myself going back to reread them. Its a good scene, well scripted and the dialogue is believable, though it is out of context. The post begins with a war weary, tired and defeated column, with no explanation as to why. My largest problem came with the abrupt ending. After ...

A good start with an interesting premise and well-developed character/setting. I'd like to see more of the oddball types that I imagine inhabit this town in my homestate. Yes, I wanted to read on, until the chase scene. Everything flowed nicely until the chase scene, which really interrupted the flow of the piece. Don't get so bogged down in creating a situation with the sedan and a truck, just have him block both lanes on that side of the highway. The sexual tension caught me by surprise, an...

You've put more thought into this than most people put into a blog or a diary entry. However because you are talking about yourself to yourself (which is what a diary is) the imagery, mood and tone which probably seem powerful to you are lost on the reader. I was excited when you gave me a warning about an episode, thinking it was going to put me right inside your mad mindset. It did not. I'll let others nitpick the grammatical issues such as commas that break up sentences, run-on sentences o...

This is both better and worse than the draft I read originally. It might be hard, but it's important for the reader to be able to focus on what your point is--what is your point exactly? The opening with the episode works very well, and I see you've made paragraphs out of another sentence with a different effect which worked great in that context. I see style developing slowly but surely here, and begin to see your "writers voice" forming. The last sentence is a great line and sign of self aw...

I know this is a short story, and without knowing what you have planned for Dale, I say this still moved too fast. We don't get much of a physical picture of Dale or his environment before the switch, for starters. I don't picture him as muscle-bound as a pro wrestler, so when he is transported into this man's body he'd be keen to try some things out--crushing beer cans or something that would add even more depth to his personality. For him to arrive in the body and instantly be confronted by...