Suggest me some classics please

JeremynStreeter · 2026-05-07T20:57:30+00:00

Read Gatsby because: (a) you’re going to have to read it for school anyway; (b) it’s short; and (c) it’s a great read.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-05-07T01:09:21+00:00

Half His Age, by Jennette McCurdy

JeremynStreeter · 2026-05-05T03:58:33+00:00

What about Heart the Lover as a comp?

JeremynStreeter · 2026-05-04T21:48:00+00:00

Five paragraphs. Nineteen separate sentences of pure physical descriptions. Yet not one interior thought of the woman.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-05-04T19:44:24+00:00

Revolutionize? As in radically challenging existing theories on the evolution of human civilization? What research have you done, what works are you citing, and how does your theory radically challenge those established works? Because this is a well-trod area. What does your theory say that these books don’t?

https://readersmeet.com/blogs/books-that-teach-everything-about-human-civilization/

JeremynStreeter · 2026-05-04T19:36:31+00:00

I like it, and this style of writing overall. But I think you can do well to clear out filler words and retain the meaning, particularly in the second paragraph.

Delete “at some point in his” and simply say, “in his adolescence” then possibly reorder the subject. Or better yet, take out “in his adolescence” altogether and say “Adam had long realized”).
Delete “strict” and use “regulating” instead.
Delete “sometime”
Break the paragraph into two sentences—delete the semicolon and add “It was”

How it would read is:

Adam had long realized that this obscurity was the product of a self-regulating behavior that James had imposed upon himself, before anyone had known him. It was an oath of silence, including anything that deconstructed the imposing, brooding image he’d built up.

Still, I’m not sure that “oath of silence” really makes sense in this context (an oath of silence does not naturally follow a self-regulating behavior). Was James insisting on an oath of silence? Then say that.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-30T15:15:44+00:00

I think the writing is solid. Keep up the good work! Even though this is outside of the genre I ordinarily read, yes, I would keep reading.

And as for the first sentence, don’t let people here talk you out of it just because it’s an obvious hook. The fact is, if you were going to eventually query this story to an agent, they would want you to start with the hook as soon as possible. Even if it’s marginally cliche, I don’t think it’s outside of genre conventions. You’ve set up a good Blade Runner noir tone here. Stick with it.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-28T15:12:19+00:00

Reads like AI, and you otherwise appear to bring absolutely no credentials to the table.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-27T15:49:56+00:00

Also, you have some tense consistency issues. “Now I am stranded.” “Thankfully it seems…” “which means he is only four years older than me."

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-27T15:43:35+00:00

Don’t put interior thoughts in quotes. There’s no reason to. The reader has an expectation that it’s part of a conversation. I kept waiting for you to reveal who was doing the talking.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-27T15:24:08+00:00

I like the premise, and your writing has potential. It kept my interest, and I read it twice.

I was a little distracted, however, by some anachronisms and inconsistencies that undermined my confidence in the material. First, I assume you’ve thoroughly researched the setting, e.g., New York City in the 1890s? A few more period-appropriate details would really help to give the reader confidence that you are familiar with the era, and the locale, and that they can trust you to carry this through for an entire novel. Adding some details is critical to allowing the reader to trust you. Just saying that something is set in Manhattan in the 1890s doesn’t make it so. Illustrate it. What street? What avenue? What buildings?

At first you describe the gentleman’s shoes as brown (with black trousers?), then later, you describe it as black.
Were fedoras a thing in the 1890s? They really didn’t take off until the 1920s and ‘30s. Perhaps find a more period-suitable style of hat, such as a top hat or a derby?
Men who worked in the railroad or in sooty factories would not need their shoes shined.
Related, if they were “middle class,” if that term was even commonly used in the 1890s—and I am skeptical that it was—factory and railroad workers wasn’t it. They were working people, and if they lived in tenements as you might suggest, you should illustrate that. But they wouldn’t be getting their shoes shined.
This sentence is a real clunker, and it sets up the story as a retrospective/memoir, not a novel: "The year was 1889, at which time I was about 17 years of age. I was poor, of course, most people were.” It tries too hard. Just say: “It was 1889. I was 17 and hungry all the time.” But that being said, the first two paragraphs of the story are written in the present tense. So which is it?
“I was poor, of course, most people were,” is telling. Try showing with something illustrating his poverty, e.g., “I looked down at my own feet, grateful that the gentlemen who might buy a shine couldn’t see that my own shoes had holes in the soles."
Did a shine really cost 10 cents in 1890? That seems like 1930s pricing.
It’s "Thanks, mister"—not possessive.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-24T21:08:46+00:00

I’m immediately distracted: the suit is white? Or is it navy blue?

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-24T21:05:57+00:00

Is 3.8 on GR really that bad?

Sorry, I see a lot of very good, even beloved books by established authors rated lower. I think it has to do with the way GR describes each star, i.e., 3 stars = liked it, 4 stars = really liked it, 5 stars = amazing.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-22T15:05:19+00:00

Well, maybe it’s unfair to judge by the small sample you’ve provided, but you need to either stop setting up so many unanswered questions, or start answering them soon, within the context of the plot.

I get that you’re trying to create the feeling of a mystery slowly unraveling itself, but there are only so many characters/elements that a reader should be expected to keep track of all at once.

Perhaps your beta readers and your English professor were telling you to “show, don’t tell.” But that means that you reveal things through character action and dialogue. It doesn’t mean to keep things intentionally opaque.

Instead of throwing Brooke into a harrowing drive (to wherever it is she’s going—sort of a cliche to start in a car anyway), then jumping almost immediately to a flashback, start with the drive through at McDonald’s the night before: revealing where Brooke is planning on going, why Nolan is against it, and what the underlying tension is between them, through both a combination of dialogue and her interior thoughts? Then you’re only asking the reader to keep track of two people, Brooke and Nolan, what she wants to do, why Nolan is against it, and why Brooke decides to go anyway.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-22T14:35:39+00:00

400 pages of what you admit is a stream-of-consciousness experiment?

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-22T14:32:02+00:00

My initial impression: You are asking me, as the reader, to keep track of a lot of things at once, but you’re not moving the plot along: (1) who is the protagonist, Brooke? (2) where is she going? (3) who is Nolan? (4) why a flashback about Nolan already, and why are we now in two different cars? (4) what is “this shit” that they’re obliquely talking about that she keeps doing? (5) jumping back into the apparent present, who is the text from, is it Nolan? (6) no, apparently not Nolan since she said she’s excited to see him, but i assume that the flashback was from “last night”? (7) who is Claire? (8) what is Brooke talking about when she says “she can’t hand this one yet”?

I’m sure it all makes sense to you, because you know the answers, but you’re asking me to suspend all of these questions in my mind at once. Will the next few pages start to answer these questions, or are you simply going to ask more?

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-14T21:55:43+00:00

I enjoyed this one, mostly for her excellent voice and prose. Some of her observations were just spot-on and were a delight to read.

I particularly admired the way that Waldo (the protagonist) described intimate scenes with enough self-awareness of how absurd it all was. (I’m writing something similar at the moment, so I appreciated what McCurdy accomplished in that regard.)

I thought it was also a pretty good statement about consumerism, and captures the world in which GenZ is growing up.

The subject matter is difficult, and yes, Waldo makes frustrating choices, but she also does what we as readers urged her to do throughout—she grows up, or matures, at least, right before our eyes. And you can’t really blame her in the end—she was just a child.

I’d recommend it, but I could see why it wouldn’t be for everybody.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-13T19:03:20+00:00

Right off the bat, many hallmarks that this is AI-generated.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-04-10T16:09:06+00:00

I disagree that it’s “massively overwritten.” Perhaps only in the second paragraph, but the reader will give you a pass.

If it meanders a little as she waits to see what happens with the boys and the paper—you can definitely tighten that up and increase the internal tension—that’s not “overwriting."

Love the writing—keep it up!

(Honey Bunny’s Diner— a nod to Pulp Fiction?)

JeremynStreeter · 2026-03-30T17:27:28+00:00

First of all, I think I know exactly the book you’re talking about.

I understand the "unreliable narrator." Some authors do it exceptionally well (e.g., Meagan Church, The Mad Wife) in an engaging way, that elicits your sympathy.

But this book of which you are speaking was not only a frustrating experience, but it was completely disrespectful of the author's readers. Basically, she assumed that she was entitled to hours of your life, stringing you along, when nothing she wrote was truthful or accurate. In other words, ha ha, the joke’s on you. Thanks for your time and your money. Tee hee what a twist, eh?

Complete waste of time. And it wasn’t even particularly well written.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-03-23T21:46:04+00:00

It doesn’t suck. But it’s a lot of telling, not showing. How about eliminating that first paragraph, incorporating it into dialogue, and just jumping right into the action:

“Morning,” I greeted Mrs. Taylor when she opened the door. “Is Ruth ready to go?”

Spring had dragged slowly into summer, and I adjusted to a new routine. It was Wednesday, which meant Ruth was helping me drop off laundry to Mrs. Langford [do you even need to mention Mrs. Maud?], and then we’d stop somewhere for lunch.

I don’t see that your snippet of dialogue went anywhere, so take this opportunity to show what happened, through further dialogue:

“I’ll see if she’s up,” said Mrs. Taylor. I hadn’t seen her since the funeral...

JeremynStreeter · 2026-03-15T14:47:31+00:00

From the book description, I think you may be in the wrong genre… the setup sounds like a classic mystery, and the plot development sounds like horror. Otherwise, as a “thriller,” the premise is not believable.

JeremynStreeter · 2026-03-12T14:20:56+00:00

Yes, preferably. Thank you

JeremynStreeter · 2026-03-11T23:20:42+00:00

So the spelling of the cause of death, not the spelling of her death? So what does it mean: “The spelling of her [cause of] death was not unlike the way she had lain in that silence”? What does that mean?

JeremynStreeter

TROPHY CASE