Young Writers Society

Hey there!
I am Incognito and I am going to review your story today. I read the first chapter so don’t worry, I know what is going down.
Also, before we begin, I would recommend you change your font colour. It was very hard for me to read and I believe it took away from your story. I would just keep it black, to help keep the strain from our eyes.
Well, shall we begin?

I will get the grammatical and punctuation errors over first and for most so then I can get really into the reviewing the rest of your story, and other things you may need to work on.

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but I would never end it so long as i had him.

‘I’ should be capitalized.

Since it was three in the afternoon, I knew my dad would be drunk by now.

Okay, first thing I did was simply add a small comma because you need one there. The reason why I crossed out ‘by now’ is because it didn’t quite make sense, and it was not needed. The reason it didn’t make sense was because you are writing this story is past tense. That means it is being told like it already happened and that it is basically the main character retelling the story. ‘By now’ is a term used when writing in present tense because it is relating to at the moment, and right now, which is not in the past.

When I entered my room, I attacked my bed.

You need a comma after ‘room’.

"Why don't you just end it already?" he said.

The use of ‘said’ is becoming redundant. You have to be careful because if you use the same word too often and close together then it seems to become repetitive and doesn’t flow so nicely for the reader. How about, instead of just saying ‘he said’ say something like ‘those harsh words had escaped from his lips, there was no reluctance behind them. They were just cold, emotionless. Hurtful.’ You would be able to get so much emotion into that.

the pain would be less severe.

You are going into the present tense once more. It is a simple mistake. You just have to change the bolded part to: ‘would have been’.

I knew what i was going to do, the question was, when?

You need to capitalize your ‘I’ here. I was also thinking that you could add ‘but’ before ‘the question’ that way it flows a bit better and rolls off the tongue of the reader. It comes more naturally.

In school, I sat in the way back of the class rooms and Rakeal didn't even look at me let alone sit next to me.

This is a bit odd to me. First off, simply take away the ‘way’. We get that impression just from ‘back of the classroom’.

Now here is the tricky part with your whole ‘class rooms’. First off, it should be ‘classrooms’ and secondly I am not sure what you are meaning by that. It seems odd for me because if she was in elementary school then they would have mainly one classroom and assigned seating and you made it seem like she had the choice where to sit. If it was in high school, she would have multiple classes, probably could sit anywhere she really wanted, but how many classes would she really have with Rakeal? Not many if it was a big high school. Now what I think you should do though is probably just eliminate the ‘s’ off of ‘classrooms’ and then mention that it was in first period or second period. Any which class she had with Rakeal if it was in high school which I would reckon she did.

"Hi, my names Haku." he said.

This is a basic dialogue punctuation error. I will count it as a simple mistake for now, but if I see any more of it, I will refresh the rules for you. That period should actually be a comma.

"My names Snow.”

It should be ‘name is’.

"That's a pretty name, I bet it suits you.”

There is a couple of ways to take this. First one is just a straight out pick up line just put wrong. He could be saying that he name is pretty and that she is pretty so the name matches her. If that is so it should actually just be ‘it suits you well’ or something along those lines.

Or it could also mean that he is betting her name will suit her. But her name isn’t one of those names that you want it to suit. You want to be known as cold? You want to be known as icy? I just personally don’t like the line, even though it was light hearted.

"yeah, I guess I do..."

They ‘yeah’ should be capitalized and the ‘I do’ just doesn’t make sense. It should be ‘it does’ because it is referring to her name suiting her.

Haku obviously followed my gaze because his question was agonizing to you.

What? I am so confused at this moment in time. It works until you read that last little bit and I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to go for. I want you to just rephrase it or just fix it up so it does make sense.

I had lost my best friend and and it seemed as though their was nothing I could do to get him back.

Just delete one of the ands.

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Now that we got the technical stuff done, there is a few things I want to talk to you about your story and the plot line I have read so far. I will tell you my opinion on the story so that you can see what I am trying to get at here hopefully and I am sorry if I may offend you in any way, but you have to take the review in context, it is not a stab at you directly.

I don’t like you plot so far. Not at all. It seems riddled with holes and though it has excellent potential, you have to pull it through and make it more believable. There is a few things that you need to fix. Number one, it moves way to fast. I am also referring to the last chapter also. You introduce the two characters, and then finally get the main information done and then, you go into all this angst, all this emotional drama that there seemed to be no reason for and it makes the reader question what the hell just happened? You have to learn to let the matters sink in with the reader, to let the reader get the sense of their normal relationship and to get a sense of how happy things were before you get into all this emotional trap you got yourself caught into.

In your first chapter, I recommend you get that time in, maybe moving into a couple flashbacks of when they were children and were happy, maybe a couple moments when she was crying and he promised that he would never leave her side. Give the reader a feeling of their relationship before you break it and make it interesting. You just made it seem so quick, so disorganized, so flat.

Then you need to give a better reason for him to be angry. I know that line would hurt, and it would be understandable for him to be like, what the hell was that for, but not enough just to make him be like; okay, its over just because you said one thing, and our perfect friendship just can’t handle it anymore. It is not enough. Maybe she had been going into depression, maybe she did something to him that she did not even see that it was chewing him up inside. Give them a real reason to fight. They sounded like they were the best of friends, and when you really have friendship like that, it wouldn’t break over such trivial things. He wouldn’t leave her and say good-bye for little to no reason. The only way that I think you can return the plot to this story is to make him leave because he is scared of hurting her for some odd reason. Something to that affect. I am not a fan of these emotional cesspool stories, but that is one thing you need. There has to be a better reason for their friendship to end.

And then you made her cry and it seems so stupid how quickly you made it happen. I know it would hurt if you lost a friend, I know you would cry and I even know the feeling of losing a friend, but the reason for him leaving is just so stupid that I would be more angry than anything else.

You make her emotional, and that is alright, and yet it is not fun to read. It is not fun to enjoy. You make it seem like her life is over, that there was no sense in the world. That she had no hope. And it makes it impossible for someone like me to read through. I connect very easily with stories that I read, and I feel empathy for characters, and yet I don’t feel empathy for her. I don’t feel upset. I can’t connect with her at all. You are pushing her into a dark hole that she can’t escape from, and that is pushing your story into a hole that it can’t escape from. And that hole is making your story just another story of teenage angst.

Emotional pieces are good, though you have to learn not to dwell on matters and make it too overbearing for the readers or else they won’t enjoy it like happened in my case. It is tricky, but you have to balance it out, maybe using descriptions of the settings or actions. You need to make the emotion be told in other ways then being blatantly told to the reader by the main character. Make the character give the reader hope in some ways. And learn to give the reader a break.

Then you tend to do this:

I knew what i was going to do, the question was, when?

You make it seem that character knows what she is going to do to get Rakeal back, you make it seem like the story has some kind of plot thrust and not some woe-my-life-is-just-not-worth-it-anymore story. But you don’t tell the reader what the main character is going to do, and then later on, it becomes apparent that there wasn’t actually going to be something the main character was going to do. You need to give the reader hope as I said before. Give the reader something to stand for, and not just keep crashing it down. In the latter of the story you give evidence that she is trying to make him see her, but still you don’t tell us what she is going to do and at the end when we are thinking that something has to be done, you make it apparent that there was nothing actually going to happen and she had no plan and it is once more in the woe-be-me-my-life-is-worthless stage.

And then I want to talk to you about the characterization itself. It sounds like you have these awesome characters to contend with, though you make it seem that they are not so awesome. That they become flat and not believable. Here is an example that I really didn’t like what your Snow character turned into:

He betrayed me! When we were in seventh grade together he told me that he would never leave me, that he would always be here with me, and he lied.

It was a promise he made in the seventh grade. You really think that would last, that they would be friends forever, happy-go-lucky. You have to give your characters some common sense, and not so pigheaded that they get upset so easily. You have to make them able to see the other point of view at some points. And this part makes your character Snow seem like a brat to me, and I don’t think she is that. I believe she is a lost individual. She has no mother, her father is drunk and I bet she has been beaten plenty of times before, well enough to make her not even want to go through the front door, and she needs somebody with her. Anyone can see that, especially someone like Rakeal, or what impression I got from him. He wouldn’t have left her, he wouldn’t have left a person in need. They are not children, they are not six, fights over just one thing said would never cause a fight like this.

Overall

For me, the only thing you need to do is think things through very well. Make sure everything makes sense and things like that would actually happen, that it is logic and in common sense, not just some random excuse for plot. Your story is like a diamond in the rough. I am sure that if you shined it and polished it, it would be brilliant for sure. It would be an excellent read. Your writing is excellent, you get emotion out there which some people struggle to do. You just have to make it easier for people to read. You are a brilliant writer, you just have to get away from all this angst and sorrow. Give a bit of time of happiness, give a chance for the reader to actually like your characters and not think ill of them. I believe your story could be excellent.

My best regards,
~Incognito