All Comments on 'I Am Jack's Life Ch. 18'

"Abby would come and go as she pleased, and was coming more than she was going, and was often pleased; if you get my drift."

This sentence should have read: "Abby would come and go as she pleased, and was coming more than she was going." Beautiful, subtle, short, but packed with unspoken romance, and sex.

Your adding the extra words is as good example as any that you overstate the obvious. Which means you think that, either your readers are kind of dumb, or your writing is too vague and obscure for people to get your meaning. So you say the same things over and over, and restate it in different ways. And you often state the obvious. Or you go out of your way to describe some detail that turns out to have no real significance to the story. And it gets tedious, and boring, and on a more subconscious level, insulting. The reader knows when they are being spoon fed. And it is independent of the subject or the age of the reader. Read Dr. Zeus, or Isaac Asimov; no spoon feeding.

You really assassinated your Beth character in this story. She started out intelligent, full of self-awareness and self-respect, who knows she's beautiful and has more options among good men than Miss America. Then you slowly erode all that character, intelligence, strength, until she is reduced to a trailer trash beaten-up fuck toy. Right. Been getting beaten up for two months or more, but none of her best friends know. Been in an abusive relationship for, what, years? They are all so close; no one knows. Right, just keep skimming. So then she gets knocked up, right. Been fucking Godzilla and who knows what other jocks, and she is not on birth control. Right. Smart girl.

Then the asshole Jack throws her out. Cause he couldn't control himself. Cause he has the behavior and maturity of a 14 year old. He's still the awkward clumsy clueless nerd from the beginning of your story, and all the girls would be better off if they had kept him in that nerd zone. He's worthless. Worse, he's annoying. Even his mother doesn't want him around. He's not good enough for any of these women you created. But, hey, you dumbed all your other characters down as the story progressed, so why not have everyone be stupid by the ending. Even Abby. Sad.

Your story is a real pisser. I was hoping to rate it like most of your other readers. Can't do it. Needs LOTS of work. But only in the details (OK, that is a lot of work). What I mean is that its got great bones: plot, characters, setting, theme. Its like a really well constructed house, with a solid frame, wiring, plumbing, site, view, but then someone came along and screwed up the floor plan and decorating. The colors either too garish or too muted, or there is none. The arrangement of the rooms doesn't make sense, and the flow through the house is awkward and inappropriate. The decorating and finish is uncoordinated and sloppily displayed. Its fixable, but it needs fixing. Hope you get some help. Really, keep writing. If you keep at it you will be decent. Great? According to most of the ratings you are already great. What do you think?

the longer it goes, the more it shows you wrote it in only one week.

I wrote the first draft in a week. I spent many many more hours in revisions and edits. While I've missed a few line edits here and there, the content of the story is as polished as I want it.

In the original draft Anna is much less sympathetic, and their break up is much less Jack's fault. In the original draft, Beth is drunk (after a huge fight with Jack) and ends up in an accident, and Jack walks off with Liz from the wreck. I changed these things because it made Jack flawless, and put all the blame for bad things in his life on other people.

Jack is not perfect, I never wanted him to be perfect. He is a flawed human being who makes (several) poor choices in his life.

That's kind of the whole point.

I think it's easy to confuse this story with fantasy fufillment. What guy wouldn't want four hot female friends who all eventually end up in his bed. While that's nice, it's not what this is about.

At any rate, I'm sorry you disliked the ending, but happy you liked the beginning. I think there is no way you can end a story like this that everyone finds satisfactory.

YOU ARE A DICK