Together

Hey Michelle,

I read most the 2nd chapter. It was a whole lot of emails lol. I like the concept of a love story through email. It's interesting and unique. My only thing is I noticed a couple times you would go back to present time after an email without much spacing. I thought that if you have more emails than thought, you might want to italicize the thoughts.
It's amazing how people can get so obsessed with one another...perhaps even obsessed with the emailing and texting.

As far as error, you might want to check back for word tenses. Like at one point, you say know instead of knew when she was talking about when she told her guy about wanting ot have sex with Mike. And in the 1st line you say send instead of sent.

-Aliah
Her Demise

Mishelle,

I read the first chapter.
Is it an American thing to say "I use to do this" instead of "I used to do this"? I've seen it a few times before and criticised it, but your writing is generally so clean that I am starting to doubt that it is considered wrong on the other side of the Atlantic.

I love the theme to this story. Love and the way it is told through e-mails and letters.
I did struggle to see who's head I was in half of the time. I think you need to make it clearer who is writing what. I take it the into and most of the early stuff was from the woman, and the 1st e-mail was from the bloke. There's then a couple of small lines that are probably the woman before she writes a return e-mail. Who moved away, or was it both?

You doubled up on one word in "I still have have issues this very day."

And substituted "on" for "of" in "...and while I was on the verge on marriage..."

Like this a lot.
Best wishes
Warrick

I like the concept behind this story, how love can become an obsession, especially if it's something two people are reaching for but can't make it happen.

Your long pitch does tell me about the obsession one of the characters feels and that others find the relationship wrong, but not why or who this character is.

As I read, I found that I'm interested in the idea of it - why would two people, related through marriage, risk their families to begin a relationship? What drives them to that and how does it develop? I feel that there is an issue with the delivery at the moment, but that's just my opinion and I'd recommend getting feedback from others and joining a crit group on the forum to get constructive comments.

The method of talking to the other person, addressing him, gives this the feel of a confessional letter or diary.

There is a feeling in the second email, which spends time going over the past, that it's a method to provide information rather than a likely email - why does she need to tell him they started hanging out years ago, stand and talk for hours, moved to Maine and went on like normal, shared coffee? He was there for all those events and knows they happened. I think this email is supposed to be her confessing her feelings for him so I'd expect it to say things like - 'When you moved to Maine, I knew I'd miss you but I thought we'd all be fine. Then when we moved to Maine and we slipped into the routines, like coffee on Saturday, I tried to act like it meant nothing, but it did. I tried to hide it, but I was so glad to see you, kept thinking about you and wishing we were together. You made my life better.' This email is quite long, perhaps the pace could be picked up if there was a series of shorter emails, dropping bits of info, like 'do you remember when...' and perhaps he could address her in the opening email as I was almost at the end of chapter one before I found out the MC is called Katherine. As I said before, just my take on it.

There are some technical issues, things like use instead of used, were as a contraction instead of we're, lack of spacing after punctuation and lower case at the beginning of new sentences. In the second paragraph you use a mixture of numbers and words in describing 6 months.

I like the idea of this story, it has the ability to explore some strong and potentially devastating emotions, I just feel it needs some work, but then that's why many of us are here.