Nathan Bransford - The Forums

SOrry guys--I've sent it out to be published (hopefully), so I had to remove it from here. Thanks for the feedback and help, I'll be sure to comment more on other posts and post more of my own stuff here in the near future!

Poor Jerry. He really got the bad end of the stick, didn't he? I mean, try to help a multiple personality out and that's the thanks you get? :)

Wow. I like the voice. Totally gives me that detached nonchalant feeling associated with a sociopath.

You show how much power and voice can be created with simple sentences:
"I always liked that." "I smiled and squeezed the trigger." "She fell limp."

You creeped me out. In a good way.

lmitchell wrote:Poor Jerry. He really got the bad end of the stick, didn't he? I mean, try to help a multiple personality out and that's the thanks you get? :)

Wow. I like the voice. Totally gives me that detached nonchalant feeling associated with a sociopath.

You show how much power and voice can be created with simple sentences:
"I always liked that." "I smiled and squeezed the trigger." "She fell limp."

You creeped me out. In a good way.

Thanks--this is encouraging!

A nice piece. Needs a little editing, but nicely done. I'm not going to edit here, but comment.

In your second paragraph, I my mind wants to substitute "streamlined," regardless of what my eyes say. In the next sentence, you could set the frame of mind of the narrator a little earlier by using the more poetic/archaic form "O! How I've watched her..." Indeed, given the acceleration of tempo that you use in the next few words, it might be a better fit. See what you think.

In the third paragraph you've got "Jerry would say to me," but just a little further "...he went on..." Try to make them match. I like the "would," and would (!) probably use "...he would continue..."

Next paragraph: "I didn't believe him--but I waved..." Again we've got some disagreement. I'd recommend dropping the 'but' and either leaving it with no connector or using 'so' for a connector.

"I knew a place, but Jerry objected." This doesn't seem to jive with what (little) we know of Jerry. What about something like "I knew a place, but Jerry didn't want to go there."? Jerry comes off as a little snide, a little too sure of himself. I didn't think he'd just object, I thought he'd find himself way too cool to go to a place like that.

Nevertheless, a neat piece. Hope you can take away something valuable from the above.

~Serzen

Thanks Serzen!

Already applied the changes. I'll update the original post with the edits.

Very demented. I love it! It is amazing how you seemed to create an entire story in such a short piece of work.

Wow. Loved it. Couldn't have predicted the end, and that's a good thing considering it's flash fiction.