Now this I like. It’s so well written that an editor would not need to do much work on it. Kudos, Charles! As to the distinction between a story teller and an editor, well, I don’t want to distract from the comments on your post itself, so I’ve open a thread on the forum to [...]

Here are more examples of typos in the story (corrections/explantions in brackets): After Uncle Paul’s raucous laughter and Uju’s white dress coming brown at the hem from all that dancing. After Toju’s dark suit with its gold buttons and the blaze of orange and green wedding colours. The bright lights dimmed, and then snuffed out [...]

Charles, I hope you’re not feeling discouraged by my comments - that’s not my intention at all. In fact, I think it’s great that you want to improve on the quality of your writing. I certainly agree with you that getting input from an editor would be a great idea. Good luck, and please, please [...]

The story is straightforward and simple - a story of a girl that gets pregnant. Personally, I prefer my stories to have more themes and conflict, but simple stories are not such a bad thing if the story is told in a creative and expressive way. But in telling this story, you use far too [...]

Who or what is Mr. Rushlow? That’s what I want to know.

Your writing style is very… singular. You use expressions very creatively; sometimes, this works well for me, as in this part:

So while Peter grew around glitter and learned to have something you didn’t necessarily have to , Toju grew up around rust where nothing got broken for fear of having to replace it.

and this:

[...]

Charles,

I’m afraid to say that the story STILL NEEDS WORK as far as tense confusion goes. I really think you should take the time to privately go through your story thoroughly and ensure that you are consistent with tenses.

Charles, There is a very high degree of tense confusion in this story. It is so high I have no idea whether you are telling the story in the present or past tense. For the avoidance of doubt, this is what I mean - if the story is in the present tense, the corrections should [...]

I like the whimsical theme of the story - in fact, I wish you had continued with it. It sounds like a great opening for a much longer story - maybe something chronicling the adventures of the books, or the relationships between them.

I think that the delivery was a bit haphazard. You were introducing many things at once in a piecemeal way; the school field, Reincarnation, Agnes, the dog, etc., and you weren’t trying to connect them so that the story felt cohesive. But the story was very amusing, especially the perception about how school fields appear [...]

Great post, OALOT. Another suggestion is to combine your lifestyle with your exercise. For example, I ride to work on my bike almost every morning, so I don’t have to worry about setting aside a separate chunk of time to exercise. Even if you aren’t a cyclist, you can choose to walk to work/school for [...]

I tried to get the story, but there were too many ‘jumps’ in the narrative that broke up the flow for me. From the shooting, to when Lade found out about Remi and Shola, to Tarkwa Bay, to the beginning… and in such a short space of time, too!

In addition to tense confusion and the opening paragraph removing the suspense, I’ll also add that I didn’t like the excessive use of commas here (sorry o, Xikay). For example, you had this:

It happened on a fateful Monday morning, Ibrahim was going to his place of work as usual, he was a rich trader, usually [...]

Edydeyemi, this was very well written - very few typos, etc. I’ll admit that when I read overly romantic sections of books, my eyes tend to go into fast-forward mode, because I’m more interested in the conflict and drama in stories. Maybe I might have slowed down if I had got to know more about [...]