Stream of consciousness is definitely the way, and it was not at all intended to come off as some type of self insert manic pixie dream girl, and that's why I shouldn't of posted it. The awkwardness was intentional, it's just a lot harder than I expected to write awkward and not entirely creepy, or at least for it to not come off that way.  

It was a hasty decision, but I thank you for being as nice as possible in your critique.

I definitely get what you mean. Everything I write is completely stream-of-consciousness, 5000 words a day, no sleep, which means it took a LONG LONG time for anything I wrote to not be complete trash, and it's still 90% trash until I stare at it for 3 months. 

You gotta let things sit and ask yourself questions about what you've written. And then have other people ask questions about all of the shit that you will--without fail--miss.

And like the other commenter said, yes, please do not let this be a manic pixie dream girl story. We can do better as a race. She would be better with bad breath than she would as the girl with lip rings and no other defining characteristics, if her character does come up again. 

On further reflection I'm still down with the awkwardness of the MC as long as you keep it funny and don't take it too seriously. I don't know what direction you're going in though so it's whatever.

I've never replied/posted to any of these before so I'm not sure if I'm able to touch all the bases you covered but thank you so much for the deconstruction of it. My biggest flaw is misusage of words and I don't know why, it's like randomly I'm thinking of the scene and my brain tells me to use it, and then I die on that hill when it's just an awful word. I do proofread most things I write, and this wasn't an exception, but some things definitely fell through which is my own fault, and thank you for pointing it out, it's a big help. The amount you wrote, probably more than the entire word count of this so I feel extra fucking bad lol. 

Posting this was a fuck up on my end, it was in no condition in terms of engagement/the main plot of the story wasn't even developed or mentioned, definitely gonna need to rewrite the beginning of it in order to draw interest as to what the point of the piece/character's goal is. I definitely meander around in the character's own day instead of startin

**GENERAL IMPRESSION**

So obviously this needs to be heavily edited. Ignoring that for the moment, I'm not sure what the point of this story is. I caught a voice, but what were you trying to say with this story? What did you want people to take from this? How is he a Lost Boy? The black pants and shoes? Was this metaphor going somewhere? Where was it throughout the beginning and middle of the story? 

**HOOK**

Okay lol you're gonna like this. The hook for me was:

> She'd started two weeks ago, and through each vagrant breath...

At this point I was like, "Okay, I gotta see what kind of swamp creature has breath so bad it's described as VAGRANT and what is her superpower?" 

But then it was just a wrong adjective.

And then:

> "You like candy?" coo coo

was just hilariously bad form. It was like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia in text. 

And then the imagery of his breath fogging up the glass so he could spell "I'm sorry" in it actually worked for me and I laughed out loud at 3 AM

**PROSE**

Doing some line-by-line here since the doc is read-only. Next comment will be the actual critique. 

> ...through the myriads of...

Okay so I looked this up and while I highly prefer "myriad" and despise "myriad of", they're apparently both standard English. Multiple "myriads", though, is not. 

> ...any other worthless amenities you'd find...

This phrase seems unnecessary. You've given some examples of the items available on the shelves. Let the list you've already made speak your message for you.

> ...shuddering at the fluorescent lights...

"Shuddering" just doesn't feel like the right verb to me. Maybe "wincing" or "squinting"? When I hear "shuddering" I think of a tactile stimulus, either very good or very bad touch.

> ...as I paddled my way...

Another verb I'm not vibing with. Had to check and make sure we're not in a boat. Also this sentence is a fragment and a long one. 

> ...through each vagrant breath...

"Vagrant" doesn't make sense. It means homeless. Had t

Everything you say here is 100% correct, and just from the conversation between you and the hairdresser I'm fairly confident she would have said yes had you asked her to hang out.

When I first met my wife I had a conversation along those same lines, although I was working in a comic book shop and she wandered in with some friends. I mentioned in passing that the long afternoon shift got me hungry. A few days later she came back with the same friend group and brought me cookies. That was when I knew I had a shot.

Reading this reminded me of a recent interaction I had with a hairdresser.

STORY TIME

Me: Enters the salon in desperate need of a haircut. It's empty, except for the hairdresser, who walks over to the front desk. She's fairly attractive, if you're into goth-lite women, and around my age, probably her late twenties or early thirties.

We have a cordial, if light, interaction, wherein she asks for my name, then says she can "take me" right now (seeing as there are no other customers). Obviously, there's an innuendo here, but this is always how interactions with hairdressers go, so I don't interpret it in that way. I tell her that I'll be a second, as I need to get out of my large winter coat. I hang it on a hook and join her.

Then, the dreaded question comes: "What would you like done today?" For some reason, I never seem to remember what I normally get, like playing a board game once per year and forgetting the rules each time. "Two on the back and sides, and scissors on top," I say.

Firstly, a disclaimer: This is my first critique in a while. As a result of my rust, I may be inarticulate and generally underwhelming in my thoughts and analysis. I apologise for this.

So, I may be entirely misreading your intentions here, and if that's the case, I apologise. But this, for me, was hilarious. It's one of the few pieces on this subreddit to actually make me laugh out loud. In certain parts it felt as though the narrator was being satirised. If it was your general intention to satirise the MC then I think so far you're doing an okay but subpar job. Also, despite my thinking that the MC is a subject of satire, I still did quite like the guy. His awkwardness was rather believable, albeit conveyed in a perhaps somewhat cliched way. But what I found most funny about him, and what led me to believe he was perhaps the subject of satire, was his descriptions and general melodrama. Take the first paragraph, for instance:

>I dragged my shoes across the dull white and blue tile 

Disclaimer: This is my first critique ever (I created this account just so I could join this sub). Also, I'm not a fiction writer; I'm an editor an educational publication, so my insight into craft will be more fragmented, maybe more dry, and generally far inferior to others'. But I'll try to be helpful. I have only a few points, but they may have big ramifications through the whole story.

>If you think the title is bad, wait till you read the story.

Oh come on, don't be so hard on yourself! I enjoyed your story. But let's start with the first line:

>I dragged my shoes across the dull white and blue tile floors...

This might sound like a quibble, but it's very difficult to successfully start a story with the first-person "I." It lacks authority because it is rooted in subjectivity (and thus has an abstract quality), and the interiority tends to have an immediate watering-down effect on the narrative. Exceptions include when such interiority (or ephemerality) are emphatically crafte

Just an opening scene I wrote to try and establish setting, voice, as well as attempt to push to the rising action of this (short) story. 

This is more of a contemporary style story and my main concerns are if it comes off as too boring of an opening, or if the writing is just stale.

Break it apart in any way you desire, whatever you think is bad or good, or somewhere in between. 

But most importantly, what needs work.

[Critique](https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/qtdkft/1110_vampire_story_working_title/hkj5xc4/)

[Story](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kPR6uoiQBsF0OwHjyDrC5F80GcNwiDrIKrqNPBLAgAk/edit?usp=sharing)

If you think the title is bad, wait till you read the story.

[1001] Lost Boy