Thank you! I'll use your advice well. I'll also have my mom look at this when she gets home. She writes.

In writing a novel, even when you're doing it in the first person with the sort of in slang style you have going on, you need to make things readable. (I'm always a fan of doing things in the style of the character. I do that myself.)<br /> <br /> Putting things in ( ) when it's someone's thoughts, is really not the way to go. You can convey disgust in a different way, one that alludes more to the situation and sneers more. Like instead of "(pfft.)", you could do. "I was the survival expert, supposedly. I never wanted that label and I never wanted to do this. Give my side of a story I'd rather forget."<br /> <br /> The other thing is try not to overuse fragments and " " to convey sarcasm as it can interrupt flow of the story. Instead of caps, use italics. Look at the styles you see in well written book and try to copy that. (Or I had a teacher who said fragments should be less than 1/5 of a paragraph.)<br /> <br /> Or to change it up start less sentences with I and more with actions. Like "Heaving a sigh, I looked up at the reporter..."<br /> <br /> Really it's a nice lead in to a story, and the first sentence has that gorgeous simile, very nice use there.<br /> <br /> I know it's a lot of crit, I wouldn't give it anything if I didn't think this had places it could go. And I know from writing my own story that an outside view helps me fix things. Good luck, it sounds interesting.