I just need to write

The computer sat infront of me opened yet again to my email inbox. What to write this time I pondered as I quickly went through all the things I had typed to my boyfriend in all the other emails he would probably never read. Here goes nothing I finally decided and let my fingers fly over the keys typing whatever they had to say. One month twenty one days since I last heard from him, one month twenty one days I spent worried and distraught and knowing me I would spend another one month and twenty one days doing the same thing...waiting. His friends knew nothing, or so they claimed and for awhile i believed them that everything would be okay, that he was probably just introuble with his strict father and at any moment a message would pop up in my inbox with his apology for such a long silence. Through thinking all this I hadn't even focused on the screen and without realizing it I had written another insanely long email pouring my heart and soul out. I was a fool, I know. Who waits around for a boy who lives in another country who hasn't emailed you, messaged you or answered your frantic phone calls for one month and twenty one days, me that's who, stupid hopeful romantic me. I pressed the send button and let my intense feelings be lost in cyberspace then I turned off the light, walked up the stairs and crawled into my bed. Another long night it was going to be, I could tell. My mind was racing my heart was too and I knew in about five and a half minutes the tears would be streaming down my face and I would be trying to muffle my sobs fom reaching my parents in the next room. No one knew, that was my other mistake. No one knew that he hadn't spoken to me in almost two months. Truthfully I didn't want anyone to know but it made it hard to explain why I was acting so down, why I didn't exactly laugh with the same enthusiasm I had always had. One year, six months we had been together and the longer the silence went the more i realized that he was missing out on my life and I was missing out on his. I fell into a fitful sleep and I dreamt of only his face which should have been comforting but as of late they only became nightmares....

Hey, Justbeingme!

Ooh, you've got an excellent frame for a story- an interesting, personal conflict, and characters that I could care about. What's missing? It needs to be fleshed out a little.

Here's why:

As it stands, this piece is very short. Short is okay, right? But then, there's too short- when a story could really be a very long piece, but you've condensed and whittled away at the conflict until it's just one large summary. A very prettily written summary, I might add.

But! Pretty by itself won't win readers. You've got to draw them into the story, as well- with hooks and background information. My personal favorite way of incorporating background information is through anecdotes- you know, little miny stories mixed in with the narration. And absolutely love reading about people- the flawed, human messes that they are.

Here are a few things I'd like to know about in your piece:

- Why is the boyfriend in another country? This could be kind of a cool way to explain her troubles and to introduce the 'strict father'. Just saying he's strict won't convince me- I need to see him in action. Flashback time!

- Are there any up-sides to his being gone? There isn't a lot of...happy in this story. And while you might want to be dragging us into human misery, misery is hard to do well, and usually ends up in navel-gazing. How to fix it? Comic relief- or, if you don't want to go to that extreme- or merely neutral narration will help out. For a line or two, don't angst about the boyfriend. Describe something!

- You don't have to write the whole email, but key parts would be kind of interesting to separate and sprinkle throughout the piece. Right now, this piece is kind of a block. A block can be grand and all, but for a reader, it's a bit intimidating. With lines from the email interspersed, it'l break everything up and make the reader a lot happier.

__

Cool piece, Justbeingme. Feel free to PM me if you've got any questions, or want me to take a look at something else- and welcome to YWS! Hope you enjoy it around here.

I found this quite interesting but perhaps a few flashbacks of the relationship would have helped. It's hard to feel pain for someone else if the reader can't experience that pain so show the reader the love, show the reader the long days of waiting, the anxiety growing, the touch of fear, the touch of betrayal and perhaps even the touch of anger that comes with such a situation.

Late at night (well, actually it's 9:36, but my stepmother was banging pots around way too early this morning...grrr...), the solid block of text is absolute evil. So are the run-ons.

But... what is this?

It's not a story; there's no plot.

Seriously. What it it?