Please have a look at Moving (a collection of 1 long and 2 short linked pieces)

Ewan - to be honest I found the stories confusing. I get the Richard Cory/David Watts thing (I'm old enough) but the sex of the writer of the main story seems to change from time to time - or maybe I just got the wrong end of the stick. As a story it does kind of work but I just don't care enough about the characters. It needs some real characterisation so that these people come alive and aren't just the recipients of a series of events. Sorry, that's all a bit harsh but I think this is what you want.

A few thoughts Ewan: 1. Is there enough plot to fill the story? As far as I can tell from reading the three pieces, there isn't a lot of action in the present in these three pieces. There's not necessarily anything wrong with this, but based on what I can surmise of the back story, it does mean that you never actually get to see the characters ding the most exciting or interesting bits of the plot. I'd suggest mapping out the story on a bit of paper, however you might find that useful to do, then finding the bits of it where they exciting or interesting bits are, then structuring your work around them. At the moment it all looks backward, and because of the structure, none of the narrative is actually 'at' the most important points of the plot. 2. Are three parts better than one? I'd suggest that this should be one story, based on what I said above. Restructuring the plot will allow all of the characters to interact during the exciting bits, which will bring the story to life. 3. Voice Of the three pieces, Richard has the most interesting voice, and his language shows more of his character than the other two. 4. First person First person narratives are very attractive, but can lead to some difficulties. One is that they can allow for some very distant and indistinct writing, because somehow your writing sense gets lulled by the hypnotic tones of this voice that you've created, meaning that you end up with writing which goes 'then this happened, then I went here, then I went there. I think concrete detail is a way round this. In David's story this is especially a problem. He tells us a variety of things, none of which have any detail beyond the way that he says them. He tells us about the comprehensive school. I'd rather that we were shown the comprehensive school, leading me onto - 5 Third person For an experiment, I suggest that you rewrite David's story in the third person. Be rigorous, and treat every statement that is in the first person version as something that needs evidence to back it up. In this exercise, it isn't good enough to tell, you have to solve the problem of showing. 6 Why doesn't it work? It doesn't work, I think, because you've hamstrung yourself in the way that you've chosen to try to tel the story, choosing modes that mean that you can never actually put the reader at the centre of the plot. If it is supposed to create a mystery, it doesn't because all it does is make the reader a very distant spectatr of events that the characters themselves already seem bored with or resigned to. 7. Speech I think a lot of David's story could be told through speech. I'm a big fan of speech in stories. It makes the world of that story come alive, because without direct speech it's silent. Hope these help. Cheers, Mark

I didn't have any problem with the sex of the main story writer, but I agree with Mark that it's very unfocused. I don't really see the point of having three separate pieces - if you go with one, you can then bring out your character's differences by the way they relate to each other. I agree with the others that the characters do not really come alive except, occasionally, for David. It's a worthwhile idea, though - triangles are always good emotional hunting grounds. I just feel that you maybe need to spend a little more time getting to know who your characters are rather than what they symbolise. Looking forward to seeing a revised version.