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I wonder if it is time to change the name!!
I've got a thread there, but I've not been around for a while, lots of personal stuff. And that happens to us all.

totally in agreement with you and K. I'm saying the occurrences out loud to myself and deciding from that which needs to happen. Thanks for all your input. x

That that is, is. That that is not, is not. That that is not, is not that that is. That that is, is not that that is not.

I love your explanations NJ but I never actually understand what you are trying to tell me I'm not academic enough, I'm so sorry

yes, my feeling too. In particular would contracted to say, he'd or she'd looks and sounds better to me. So in a sentence: 'She had always thought she would feel differently. But she did not.' it just feels so much more likely to say 'She'd always thought she'd feel differently. But she didn't.'  Especially with a teen audience.

New question.
Contractions: yes to dialogue, but in narrative? Accepting that this is a close third, tightly in the POV head, with little or no authorial comment.
My agent is anti, I am dithering.

I'm still quietly working on the rewrites of Breathing *sigh*. Got some active comments back from Angela (my agent) so I am incorporating them and itching to get back to book 2. In other news I had some very dodgy blood results back, and am concentrating my energies on losing weight, getting my liver back into some kind of non-fatty order and tidying up my life. We are decorating the front living room, and so I am painting a large display unit cream, from its now redundant mahogany.
I've not had the right mindset for reviewing. I open stuff and can't find anything positive to say, so I shut it again.

Looks like you are living in a different universe with a time lapse...

I do sympathise, and I know exactly how you feel. Every time I think my stuff is ok, and coming along, I read something so much better that I can't imagine ever creating anything that good. But really, they probably went through just the same angsting with their first drafts, and it's only after a lot of work, reviewing the plot arc, deleting half of it, rewriting, putting it away, pulling it out again and trying again, that their work got to the high level of professionalism that makes me weep.
I do find that critiquing other people's work is very useful for making me think about what works and what doesn't so I can use that in my own portfolio. I try to give a reason for the things that I comment on, rather than just saying delete, or changing the wording, as that teaches me to be positive in my criticism, and also to think carefully about why I want to change something. So I would say leap into critiquing others if you don't have sufficient confidence to put your own work up, and make sure each comment you can justify. You'll learn loads that way.

You can't. You will have to start again, marking them as a book and then adding in the chapters. I too discovered this the hard way when I arrived. Waste of points but better now than later and it makes it much easier as you go along.

Huge fun K. Not the book I am writing, of course, but my stuff is more about what is under the surface, I think.
Thanks for the review btw, always helpful. Asking this question has also made me realise that making it all more obviously alien isn't working for me.

ok. my thoughts on your thoughts.
1. I don't think it trivialises the Skills. It is just dawning on Izzy that the things she, as a child, took for granted aren't as simple as she used to think.  'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.' It is time for her to put away her childish things.
2. Realisations are often about what is not. The rest of the narrative is about what is. This is about the comparison.
3. It might appear to be easy, but this is EARLY in the progress. She's soon going to find out that living in this society is not easy at all.