Hello,
I am brand new to writing.com and appreciate you putting your work out for review. I have never reviewed another person's work on this particular site so I will be short and as concise as possible. Additionally, this seems like it would be a romance or relationship piece. I am not very studied in this genre so there is a chance that I totally miss the boat here. I appreciate your patience :)
1. His reply was typical; “You’re letting your technical and marketing enthusiasm run away with you again, Julia. We have to be fiscally responsible.”
- the You're may be trying to be a your. It isn't "you are" in this case is it? <--grammar hound, sorry :/
2. His typical reply would be easier to read if the dialogue was on its own line. As an example I have broken it up here:
-Now she was putting behind her the arguments and the pain of the breakup of her business and her marriage. The fracture had been reached after a long crescendo of complaints and counter-complaints.
“You penny pinching bean counter,” she had yelled at her then husband.
His reply was typical; “You’re letting your technical and marketing enthusiasm run away with you again, Julia. We have to be fiscally responsible.”
“Fiscally responsible my butt” she had yelled in reply. “If we don’t expand and introduce new products, we’ll have no money to be responsible with!”
“No, Julia, I control the purse strings, and what I say goes.”
3. Your dialogue is pretty fluid. It is easier to read than most. Can you notice in the above exchange the little markers you use to identify the speakers? "...bean counter," she had yelled at her then husband... your use of yelling (she had yelled, she yelled) could be shown instead of stated. I don't know how exactly, that would be up to you to maintain pace, flow, and flavor, but you could show the yelling instead of saying it. That is an old and tired recommendation but when I write it is one of the most common things I do that could be instantly improved with something like, "...bean counter!" Her voice cracked with the force of her reply. <--maybe showing the effect on her volume, her vocal cords, her mouth--spit is useful in uncontrolled responses--or something like that? :)
4. This is a solid paragraph that ends suddenly: Accusations. Challenges. Lawyers. Negotiations. Compromises. All of these eventually led to Julia selling out her share of the business to Mark at a healthy profit. And that, of course, destroyed their marriage in another welter of accusations and general nastiness. “Whew,” thought Julia when it was all over, “how on earth did I let myself get into that in the first place? Now is the time to re-invent Julia Temple.”
-That sort of self awareness could come after a realization of some sort couldn't it? I liked how she listed the negatives that led her to making the ultimate decision to leave and start over. The realization itself, however, seems sudden. Could she have an introspective thought or idea that ultimately leads her to decide that it's "time," today, to re-invent Julia Temple?
I will leave my critique at this point. I hope I was helpful and not discouraging or negative. I love feedback, even if I never use it, as it lets me see what readers are seeing, and sometimes it's totally different than what I was trying to communicate.
Have fun and thanks for trusting me with a review.
-Tank
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