Response to Shelby Rice's "Beyond the Line"

Shelby-

This story was about a man named Isaac, married to a woman named Sophie, who is a soldier in a foreign place.  Eventually, he has to choose to obey an order to bomb a school or receiving a court martial.  He chooses the court martial which means he can go back home to his wife.

I was captured from the first sentence.  I think the scene on the bed was nicely presented.  The reason why it got my attention is because there were so many questions I had from the beginning, where does he have to go?  How long will he be there?  The whole story and its direction was very clear to me the entire time.  I also liked the dialogue you included.  I felt like it was natural and I didn't have a hard time telling the difference between the people.  I also like how you painted images in my head with different words than normal.

I did notice that Sophie seemed very important in the beginning scene and we only have a reference to her two more times in the story.  The scene where Isaac pulls out her picture is nice but it is what I always think of soldiers doing.  I think you could still use that scene but add some tension, but also add more references to her.  I never feel the tension being in war puts on their relationship again like I did in the first scene.  It was clouded by all of the fighting and planning to fight and coordinating.  I actually would have liked the story to be more about his and Sophie's relationship than all of the military scenes.  I think you have a wonderful knowledge of military terms and such but there was never the tension there that I first experienced, again, in the first scene.  One more thing, in the beginning you have a big vocabulary but as the story progresses it disappears.