Blackout - Comments

  • This was quite different from things I normally read. I found it a little weird, not because there's anything wrong with it or it reads awkwardly, just that I sometimes experience that faintness, especially after showers when it's just too hot and it feels like I'm not getting enough oxygen. I've never blacked out from it (that's my sister's specialty), but it is something I can relate to. I find it weird because I never thought I'd find it described in a story though so that makes this stand out to me, and I really liked the line about her paling face before it happened. That was a nice detail.

    I found myself mentally inserting commas here and there.

    Like in this sentence: She looks to her sister who nods, backing up her mother’s words face full of concern.

    I was thinking a comma where I bolded it would make the sentence read better. A lot of them right now don't have those pauses between separate thoughts and it makes the whole thing read frantic. I think by adding commas in places they should be, it would slow it down a bit and that would go better with the story itself. While her mother and sister are panicking, she's quite calm about the whole thing and is trying to assure them she's fine. She's being casual and it would reflect that very well I think.

    “Oh, so that’s why I’m on the floor.” She says quickly with a smile on her face.

    It shouldn't be a full stop (period) after floor, but a comma instead since you have the dialogue tag she says after it. It would be: “Oh, so that’s why I’m on the floor,she says quickly with a smile on her face. Comma, lowercase S. I would also suggest spacing this line from the paragraph. It's typically normal to give dialogue its own line, but it would also separate the two paragraphs and be a transition between them.

    She can’t say she feels fully fine without being a lair…

    Small spelling error where it should be liar and not lair.

    It had a different kind of feel to it, not just in the plot, but in the way you wrote it. Not having any dialogue from her mother and sister, just explaining it in narration, was something really interesting and also a cool technique. I liked how calm she remained through it all while her mother and sister were trying to rush her to the hospital. Sometimes, you faint and that's it so I liked that she had that mentality of, "I'll be fine. I don't need immediate emergency medical attention." Overall, it was an intriguing one-shot and I really did like the plot.
    June 16th, 2013 at 09:48am