Red and White - Comments

I adore the banner photo. There's a great contrast between the white and red - it reminds me of Painting the roses red♫♪ and matches nicely with the summary. There are grammatical errors, and improvements that can be made to sentence structure; also a few incorrect word usages, but nothing a quick edit can't fix! There's a wonderful selection of editors in the forums (:


You have a great vocabulary range that's inspiring me to go buy a thesaurus. The wording choices you make help this to flow rather nicely, but to me it seems like narration to open a television series or a play. I like that this isn't set present-day, because there aren't too many stories I've come across that are set in previous generations. I do hope you;ll be writing more because this makes a fantastic prologue to the story of Maude. These few paragraphs make me want to know more about her childhood, about her marriage, and about what happens to her after she's committed two murders. Especially lovely is the final sentence. Well done, Lockhart

I rather enjoyed this story. It was short and to the point which caught my interest. I like how you managed to hit the important aspect of her childhood, getting help for her anger management, before moving on to the actual story with her marriage and cheating husband. I completely agree with Michael Westen on how it feels like a bit of an origin story for Maude. It would be really interesting to see her character progress after the murder of her husband.

There are a few simple mistakes that can be fixed with a quick read through but there is nothing that ruins the flow or the feel of the story.

Overall a great story.

First of all having read the summary I'd like to point out that there is a bit of a grammar issue. Murder should be murdered, after police you need a comma. Other than that the summary is quite enticing. I literally am expecting her to have killed him, but that's just my theory.

Now on to the actual content...

I found it quite fast paced. Overall it just feels like a long summary of the character, like an origin story for Maude. It was interesting and I almost wish you would continue with her character.

I did spot another small mistake. You wrote that "Tom had portrayed her once again." Portrayed should be betrayed.

You did good here.

I'm here as the judge for this contest. I gotta say that I really liked this story. I loved how you portrayed Maude and described her past. It would be easy for many people to relate to her. At first, you're happy for Maude. She's having an happy life with her lover and she has a great job. Though, as the stories goes by, you wished Maude wouldn't have laughed the rumours off. It's sad to see how naive she was...yet so in love with Thomas. You could even get mad at her for forgiving Thomas for what happened at Tom's office...yet you can understand why she would. Love. I really appreciated the end of the story, even though killing the secretary and Tom wasn't the best option. It just shows how angry and sad she was. And the last sentence of this story, just wow! Overall, this was a great piece. I didn't see any major grammar or spelling errors. Good job!