Hi,

I came across your item, liked what I read and would like to share my thoughts about it.


Plot: Maggie is a coffee shop barista fancying her daily customer, Gabriel. However, she doesn't dare admit it to him, yet tries to flirt anyway. Her coworker, Jenny, is more and more annoyed by the crampy fiasco playing out in front of her perpetually and gives Maggie a piece of her mind. When Maggie finally acts, Gabriel stops appearing... leaving Maggie unknowing what's going on. When Gabriel re-appears, they're finally honest with each other.


Style/Voice: present; 3rd Person, Maggie's Point of View


Setting: Behind the counter of a coffee shop.


Characters:

Maggie is hopelessly in love with Gabriel, yet she seems to favor letting it eat her up secretly instead of acting on it. She seems to sense that such a nice, proper man would never want anything more from her than the dark, liquid gold, and settles with it. Five minutes a day is better than nothing at all. Her insecurity and doubts concerning her self worth are evident in each movement and each stuttered word.

Her coworker's urging her to finally do something is a threat to her little everyday romantic fantasy. And ironically, she's truly passionate and animated when trying to shut her up when she actually should be that woman towards Gabriel. When she finally takes her heart-y step forward and this obviously scares away Gabriel, she's devastated and pissed at herself that she listened to her coworker at all, her self-fulling prophecy having fulfilled at her act of daring.

When Gabriel finally returns, she knows that she finally has to woman up and speak to him like an adult if she wants to keep a chance that things normalize. She realizes that speaking up and being dissed might hurt now, but that it might hurt worse and more lasting if she didn't try at all.


Gabriel's the slightly flirty everyday customer who lights up Maggie's day. He has good manners, acknowledging the "servant" behind the counter at all and exchanging pleasantries, even getting off the phone to do so, which is not common in this day and age. For him, that daily exchange seems to be a little highlight in a busy day he doesn't want to miss.

His reaction to Maggie's "secret message" throws a curveball at him, though. When he finally returns to confront her, he's an insecure and scared teenager rather that the confident adult he was before. Yet, he has the balls to bite the bullet... and isn't shot!


Jenny is a direct, straight-in-the-face woman. She freely speaks her mind and can't understand why two people can be so immature as to act out in front of her like Maggie and Gabriel do. She has a quite matching opinion towards men, whom she considers to be insensitive and blind morons considering love and its initiation. It shows that Maggie means something to her as a friend, too, since otherwise she surely wouldn't prod her like she does, being annoyed or not.



Grammar: Beware! Below I've pointed out, corrected things and made suggestions based on how I would've put things. However, I'm ESL, so you might not agree with everything.

Okay, some tips:

1. Put more space between paragraphs. It makes reading more convenient for the reader, since they might not be jumping between lines and get confused over it. Also,
2. Separate dialogue and narrative. More convenient as well.
3. Stay in tense, meaning not starting off in one tense and then suddenly switching it.
4. Don't forget apostrophes when they're due: should've, doesn't, didn't, et cetera.
5. Punctuation! Periods at the end of sentences, be sparse with ellipses (...).
6. Don't write too many words in capitals. In the "writing language" that's reserved for yelling. (Yes, I'm being serious.) To emphasize something someone says, rather use italics ({ i } { /i }), or bolds ({ b } { /b }), putting the writing in between, and sparing all the spaces.

"It's 10:45A.M. or P.M. (?), Jenny," Maggie says (see 3.)

Everyday at the same time... Written out in two words, when counting days is meant, but together when it's incorporated in a rehearsal, like Maggie's above-mentioned everyday romantic fantasy.

Noone ever said she was... No one... Same as with "every day".


Okay, that looks like much, but is fixed in a minute.

Yes, I know from browsing your port that you're rather a poet than a narrator, and that mirrors in your narrative. And, yes, you may say that I should shut up since I did much I'm "complaining" about here in the story of mine you reviewed. But: that story was one of the first I ever wrote and one in my second language as well, so I was quickly "cured" of all those little things by native speakers / writers... and am just passing that on now, I guess. Oh, and I'm a terrible nitpicker as well.



Personal Opinion: This was overall a cute little story, and also a generic one, meaning that this happens to countless others over the globe every day. Even I have had my moment of that kind as a student, with a barista at the Uni Cafe next to my institute, who was really cute. I never dared to act, since I was still traumatized from what happened a few years earlier in 10th grade when I gathered my balls to approach the boy of my dreams... and he told me he had a girlfriend.

Maggie and Gabriel beating around the bush came across of both charming and annoying. Looks like as an - perceived }- adult I have switched from being a Maggie to being a Jenny.

The lesson is evident, too: Don't be such a stupid wimp, and talk to those you fancy, since all of a sudden they might be gone and you devastated and pissed at yourself for dumping the chance when you had it. Another generic, since that is not only true in the love arena but in life's arena in general.


Don't forget that I'm just someone voicing her opinion. You know best what's best for your story.





My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .