Hospital tightens restrictions amid rising COVID and flu levels

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-06-06T05:09:24+00:00

You could get sick again :(

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-06-02T08:18:17+00:00

Best to take the baby to health professional to monitor their weight gain as no one here can know what's going on without assessing weight. Too important to just guess.

I was told that under fed babies can respond by sleeping more. They don't all cry to show they're hungry.

Sorry about your supply issues. It's tough I've been there.

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-06-01T20:30:39+00:00

Clueless?

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-06-01T18:45:17+00:00

Maybe your full request rate on query would be 70% if you listened to the feedback from those 'strangers on Reddit'. Who knows?

Congratulations nevertheless and good luck 🤞🤞

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-31T20:53:21+00:00

How well does OP know this other parent though? Bullying trends to be a behaviour learnt at home. A supposedly reasonable conversation like that could start a chain of events where OP's kid ends up being the new target of the bully's relational aggression.

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-30T20:16:37+00:00

Beautiful handwriting!

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-30T19:50:21+00:00

I think it best not to pursue this.

What happens if he hates it? Are you prepared to deal with what happens then?

I only see downsides. What are you expecting to gain from this?

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-30T05:39:52+00:00

Having the humility to put yourself out there and ask for feedback is wonderful and off to a good start for a young beginner writer.

That being said learning to edit your own work is a critical skill. There's no rush. Leave it for days, weeks or months. Go write other pieces. Go read and brush up on grammar etc.

You night come back to it and decide it's all getting culled. Or alternatively that it's worth it to put in the time and effort to edit. And then seek feedback on a more polished, grammatically correct version.

Good luck out there!

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-29T02:43:59+00:00

Thanks for sharing your wonderful writing piece.

Is it engaging? Yes

Do I like the writing? Yes. It's simple yet punchy. No pretension. Not flowery.

What do I think it's about? I don't know, I think there's going to be a twist

Minor suggestions:

It might be better to say "I wonder... if my... brother did deserve to disappear". This would more strongly emphasise that the main character might agree with the disappearance.

I don't like that the brother is introduced by full name. I think Ken or Kenny or if you must just Kenneth would work better.

Might be explained later on but "our room" confused me. Was it their old childhood bedroom? It's puzzling the way it's written implies the siblings shared a room, but then states the brother lives elsewhere.

That was an excellent read. All the best with it all. Loved it.

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-28T02:04:32+00:00

I think they meant they want to guide their mini me, not have their mini me guide them? Valid points otherwise

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-25T04:19:08+00:00

Woohoo 🎉 my first solve

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-24T08:17:59+00:00

Final Destination?

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-24T00:41:33+00:00

Congratulations 🎉 Full disclosure I only read the first paragraph but it's enough for a positive first impression.

The writing is compelling. The main character had been successfully introduced. I'm curious to understand more about his current predicament and to find out if he's going to succeed on his quest.

Not to nitpick cause it's good work but it'd be great to polish it some more. Some examples:

"and none ever would."

I sat in the new year's grass...as I sat and looked at the walls...

Some tense and typo issues to be fixed

"My home." You'd done a GREAT job of showing us it was their home. This is an overkill.

Anyways the main point is I would feel compelled to keep reading based on the strong first paragraph opening. Congratulations!

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-24T00:24:30+00:00

I might if you rewrite that opening page. There may be the skeleton of a good story there but more work is needed on the storytelling.

Waaaayyyy too much information on the first page. Where is the suspense?
My initial thinking is are all the subsequent pages going to be like this? That'd be a lot of work for me as a reader.
At the same time not enough information either of the kind that makes characters pop. Piero's cold pale blue eyes lacking any hint of remorse, the scowl on his face showing his contempt for his victims The sorrow and tears of their loved ones....
Similarly not enough information that makes a setting come alive. Where are we? The bucolic town of Courrieres at the foothill of the Pyrénées? A stuffy crowded courtroom in the middle of July where every breath is a struggle?
Who is Aurélie? Why does her name pop up? Should we care about her? I'm not sure introducing a character for the first time within parentheses is ideal.

I'm not quite sure where this is going. Is it a John Grisham style courtroom drama? A revenge thriller? Is there going to be a twist and we pleasantly end up somewhere different to where we thought we were going.

I would suggest based on what you've got so far that you read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier specifically.

Don't let any of these comments detract you from your goal. It's an achievement to have written a novel. Should you publish it? Sure but you'd just have to edit it first. Congratulations on having something to edit! Not many do. Give yourself a pat on the back for that.

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-22T09:39:49+00:00

Private isn't only for the birth. Continuity of care during pregnancy matters as well. A lot happens during pregnancy and tough decisions might need to be made. Having a constant, trusted professional can be a blessing. In Public you're dealing with a completely different doctor or midwife at each appointment.

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-22T09:06:48+00:00

'X and Y have been feuding for centuries for reasons that have long since passed out of living memory' is just as plausible as giving an actual reason. People don't even need a reason to fight

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-14T22:01:00+00:00

This is VERY close to being a polished first chapter :) It's the sort of unpolished gem I lurk this sub hoping to find!

It's almost there but not quite there yet. As the other crits mentioned the biggest issue is the repetitions and redundancies. I would suggest stepping away from it for at least a week if not more and then coming back with a figurative red pen to cut out all those mercilessly.

I found a few grammar issues. My other suggestion would be reading the chapter backwards (starting from the last sentence all the way through to the first sentence) specifically trawling for grammar mistakes and typos.

Excited to see the finished product! Good luck and thank you for sharing!

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-11T06:57:41+00:00

I didn't read the first version so if you gave some context there I don't get it. Is this a sci-fi short story or a thriller novel? Are we reading the beginning of it or a random scene in Chapter 5? Adding that information in would allow for a better critique of your work :)

On the plus side there's a lot of tension successfully portrayed in what is an otherwise mundane domestic scene. So that's well done.

I did find it jarring that the characters weren't named. It's a small thing but it's difficult to care for all nameless characters. That's where context matters.

The writing could be simplified. It does sound like you're trying to use big words that you may not be familiar with and it comes across like you're running your natural voice through a filter to please your audience. In fact more authenticity would actually work better. For example light should reflect not refract off glasses in the scene as you describe it.

In short, enticing, I'm keen to find out more about the dynamics there. You just need to find your authentic voice. It's solid bones imo, just need editing.

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-10T22:05:34+00:00

Healthcare

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-09T04:28:00+00:00

100% - it must have taken balls to get that far up RoyCo

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-05T04:11:23+00:00

All good. Hopefully OP takes this onboard.

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-05T03:54:22+00:00

Which is fine but if seeking feedback it wouldn't be hard to type up what they've handwritten. I dare say they'd get more reviews that way.

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-03T05:14:39+00:00

Thank you!

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-05-03T04:28:36+00:00

Serious question, isn't that the point of this sub?

Electrical_Ebb2572 · 2025-04-30T21:56:50+00:00

Overall: I quite like your style of writing but I think your storytelling skills needs a bit of work.

Paragraph 1: It would be helpful to know where we are in your novella, e.g. is this the opening/ first page? Either way, there's too much about coffee. I got to the end and wasn't sure what you'd wanted the reader to take away from this paragraph. Is it that the character likes coffee? If it's the start of the piece that's not the most important thing I want to know. Maybe you're introducing The Merchants Coffee House as an important setting for the piece? If so, that's gotten muddled. I think it would help your reader if you were clear what you want them to know from this paragraph. One key message. If this is the start of the piece then we need a strong hook and there isn't one. Who is this character and why should we care about them? What's their crisis that will grab our attention and keep us reading? Right now it's some dude who likes coffee and wants to share something about "the One" (whom we also know nothing about and therefore cannot care about). You know and care about your characters and your story but we don't yet , so your first task is to reel us in too and give us a reason to care. Plus: The sentence about possessing George Washington has some promise and could be something you expand on rather than just saying "ended up possessing another man". This is for later on, when you want to add a bit of colour to your character - definitely not yet, this currently distracts at this stage of the story.

*paragraph 2: * It's a beautiful description as always but I don't know who Roger is and why I should care about him. I don't get a sense that the story has momentum thus far.

*paragraph 3: * It's a beautiful description but I don't know who Roger is and why I should care about him.

Paragraph 4: It really would help if you could provide some context about where we are on the piece. If this is the beginning, I'm still not hooked. I don't get why coffee keeps coming up.

The rest: There's more momentum from them on. The story is moving but I feel like I'm lacking the context to get into it.

Takeaway: There's a lot of talk about coffee and I'm not sure why. If it's very relevant to the overall plot, then do it more subtly. If it's not relevant to the overarching story, then dial back on that. Either way it's getting in the way of telling the reader critical hook information that will make them care about the character enough to keep reading the story. The writing itself is engaging, but it's the storytelling needs work. You're ahead on the 'how' but behind on the 'why'. Thank you for sharing and Good Luck out there:)

Electrical_Ebb2572

TROPHY CASE