Howdy, Rick!--
Consider the opening paragraph:
"In the golden days of friendship and trust, there existed a deep bond between Sarah and me. Our lives were intertwined in a beautiful symphony of shared experiences, laughter, and unspoken understanding. We were confidantes, supporting each other through life's ups and downs, celebrating achievements and comforting each other in moments of despair. A shared promise to stand by each other's side, come what may, fortified our connection, leading us to believe that nothing could break our unbreakable bond."
I have underlined some diction that "feels" a little repetitive (in a slightly uncomfortable way). I'll let this example serve as an example for the rest of the piece. For example, consider: "sever our unbreakable bond" (and change the first usage of the word "bond" to a different, word, so that we can use the most descriptive and simplest language in the most important sentence in the paragraph).
Last mention -- Paragraph 4: "Our bond seemed unbreakable" <-- Used again. If we are going to say this type of thing over and over, we need a reason, or we need to say it differently, otherwise it comes off a tad funky.
***
"My heart shattered into a thousand fragments." -- Consider spending the most time on sentence construction for these moments. This is a critical and powerful emotion and requires the utmost attention from the author, lest the truth of the experience get washed out in a visual/metaphor that's too simple (cliche`) to truly convey the depths of the emotional reaction to the betrayal.
You go on to describe it in more detail, but my point stands: this is so far the most important part of the piece and it needs to be crisp. "The pain was indescribable—a deep ache that radiated through every fiber of my being." <-- This line without the first line would be better, imho (in my humble opinion), but even this line could be improved.
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"Through the tears and the sleepless nights, I recognized that forgiveness was not a gift I bestowed upon Sarah. It was a process—a journey I needed to embark on for my own healing and growth." <-- Nice
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"Sleepless nights became a routine as I grappled with the weight of the betrayal," -- The beginning of Chapter 3 feels like it's repeating stuff about sleepless nights. I am not sure the reader needs this reminder. If you want to say it, consider saying it in a way that calls back to the fact that you've mentioned it already: (ex.) "my sleepless nights continued".
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One thing that would very much help the pacing of this piece is having a sense of how much time had passed for each chapter. You're taking use through the stages of your grief and renewal (at least at chapter 3 where I am at right now), but I am having a hard time knowing exactly how much time has passed. This is critical information since it allows me to compare what I would expect the timeline of my grief to look like and therefore understand the author's/the persona's grief in a more substantial way.
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Again, be very careful of ideas you're repeating. If we are repeating them, we need to either add new information or we need to repeat for emphasis, which requires a different sentence structure. The start of Chapter 4 feels like it has a lot of ideas that have already been clearly expressed in a very similar manner earlier in the piece.
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"Forgiving Sarah was not about forgetting the past; rather, it was about rewriting the narrative of our friendship." <--- Nice
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"While forgiveness opened the door to healing, it did not necessarily mean restoring the same level of trust or rekindling the friendship with Sarah" <-- Damn right (apologies for the curse) :)
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" I discovered that forgiveness was not just a one-time act, but an ongoing practice that required continuous effort and intention" <-- Nice
***
Okay! Done reading it now!
Overall, I truly love the subject of the piece. It would be astounding to me to hear that this was not a first-hand account from the author, a transcription of an actual experience. Why? Because it carries the cadence and tempo of a thoughtful person's experience. The actual human requirements to undergo massive forgiveness (if this is the first time someone's needed to do so in their life) require cataclysmic change, which likely necessitates cataclysmic suffering as one breaks out of the thought-patterns they had before... and as one wrestles with new ways of thinking, some better than others.
This piece feels like the rough draft of something that could be excellent. As it stands, I'll give it 2/5 stars, but it has the undeniable potential to be a 5/5 piece of writing. All the necessary "pieces" are within the piece (c:), but scattered about and not honed into a single piercing shaft of writing. Please do not let that discourage you! I respect you and your piece and therefore am going to give it my honest, unbridled opinion. I have a strong belief that the best thing one can do in every situation, no matter the consequences, is tell the truth. So do not flinch away, please!!!
Here's some major considerations if you're interested in doing a re-write:
1. The piece is far too long considering the information/emotions it conveys. There's a lot of repeated ideas, phrases, and experiences within the piece that need to be cut down to just the most critical ones. I would imagine that a lean, effective finished piece to be about 1/3 or 1/2 the length of this piece (assuming we are JUST cutting fat and not adding stuff... see #2)
2. Your piece naturally uncovers the cyclical nature of our own self growth. We never simply "learn something" and then immediately "put it into practice". Your piece has a lot of repetition which directly mirrors this cyclical nature of growth. We find an idea, we try it, we learn it, we re-learn it again but differently, we re-learn it again but differently, we finally internalize it. The natural tendency toward repetition in the piece (to my mind) mirrors this, which is why I am feeling so certain that the piece was a first-hand experience (that you're likely doing a great job at conveying... exactly as it happened). But we need to distill it down and write it in such a way that the reader can get a sense of that cyclical repetition without having to read the same thoughts/phases multiple times. A chief goal of a revision would be to consider and implement a strategy to convey this idea of cyclical learning without ever repeating oneself. It is a good challenge that I suspect might pay off greatly as to the efficacy of the piece.
3. This piece is personal, not so much literary. In this way, I appreciate the use of direct, unflowery language and might suggest you lean even harder into that. Keep it simple, short, and without embellishment, since it runs the risk of making something naturally dramatic, now melodramatic. This may not be exceptional feedback, so take this consideration with a grain of salt. The reason I might consider it is that the subject of the piece speaks for itself. You have a lot of beautiful wisdom in the piece that is written in a direct and powerful way. Some of the rest of the piece that surrounds these moments of "pure wisdom" feel like they are in juxtaposition with these pearls of wisdom... and might be detracting from the simple power of your own growth. This idea will also help with the length of the piece, naturally.
4. My favorite parts of the piece are your individual learning. It is clear to me that you (or rather, the author) are a deep-feeling, thoughtful, contemplative person who requires their solitude to process difficult emotions. That very much mirrors my experience. It is also my experience that these moments in my life (as this one the author describes here) are of foundation importance to the life I currently life. And yet... they're just so hard to write, gosh darnit! My belief is that these deeply-learned experiences do not translate easily to writing, due to the differences between (a) what it means to learn something deeply as a human being, and (b) what it means to convey deep learning in writing. It turns out that actually learning something require far more words and thoughts and interactions than conveying that learning requires. I would keep this in mind as you consider a re-write for this piece.
I loved this piece and if you ever re-write it, please send it back to me for an updated review. I hope this review comes off as I intend: to inspire you to level-up this piece and do the subject justice as it is a very difficult piece to get write (pun intended), but deserves the same difficult contemplation that the underlying betrayal/forgiveness received.
Good luck,
--Slight |
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