Bloodlust & Bloodloss

This is a bit of my new book i've been writing. it's being reviewed now. i got to a young writers group. here's a bit of it.

Hunted

There might be a few things you need to know before you step into my life. I am homeless. I hunt vampires. And then I kill them. It’s my night job, so I sleep at day and wait for them to come lurking round corners at night. Just to be on the safe side, if I fall asleep at all, then I’ll just sleep under a street lamp. This is my life. And you’d better be ready to get to grips with it.
I use stakes to kill them. You might want to know how I got the stakes; I simply take them from skips. My life as you might presume, sucks here in London. People are all hysterical with all the happiness around them, the crowded roads and alleyways, but nobody comes near me. I’m a scrub in their minds - a total and utter scrub – and I don’t have the chance to bath like normal citizens. But then again, there are a lot of homeless people here in London - practically everywhere though, international – who go around begging from the rich and famous. The rich and famous give them the dirtiest looks and probably spill it out to all the gossip magazines that a homeless person attacked them, when they were simply asked for spare change. They like the media. Twisting everything that goes on, making the victims of those hurtful phrases feel like a nobody.
I should probably say how I became a homeless freak. It was just an average day with my family going for a family outing. We had family outings a lot. It was just me, my mum, dad and younger sister Daisy.
We had gone for a meal at a really nice restaurant not far from our flat, and we drove down in our nice little car in the evening, as we had got out to make our way to the front door… we were attacked. Not by the average crime committer, but a vampire. There were three vampires actually, who ambushed my mother, father and younger sister. I stared in horror as blood soaked their clothes. I had never believed in the supernatural. But that night changed everything.
They didn’t seem to look at me, not once; they were too busy on my family. At first I thought it was some gang stabbing my family. But they were actually shoving their mouths on my families’ necks.
I was only thirteen. Now I’m sixteen, and my names Mandy. It’s a pretty hard life, staking vampires. They are fast, strong and truly beautiful. It’s hard not to get mesmerised by them, which I did. It wasn’t nice.


There will be mistakes but hope you like it so far. there's a lot of pages so you're getting a sneak peak and i'd like to see your opinions.

Hi iCarly,

Just a quick review today. I enjoyed this - the opening lines are great, the writing is fluent and the homelessness is a new twist on the familiar trope of the vampire slayer. Not quite sure why the narrator goes off on a rant about famous people and the media: if this is relevant to the story, it's not tied back in so that I can understand the link.

The one part that stumbles for me is the murder of the family. This is in itself a cliche, and it's not helped by the fact that it resembles the near-identical scene in Batman Begins in which the young Bruce Wayne watches his family killed during a family outing. I was seeing that scene playing in front of my eyes while I read the story. You can definitely distinguish your murder-of-family scene from all the others, but I think that will require writing out the actual scene instead of just a brief paragraph.

When you summarise, everything sounds the same. You can make Harry Potter sound exactly like the Lord of the Rings and every other Hero's Journey story going. But when you go into the details, you discover what makes Harry Potter new and fresh. I think you need to do that with your murder-of-family scene. Slow it down. Give us a detailed flashback. Show us what's unusual and compelling about this particular scene. I assume the memory is pretty vivid for Mandy, so what was it like? Was it sunny, raining, windy? Was it day or night? How did the vampires ambush them - did they leap down from rooftops, or come out from an alley, or what? What did the vampires look like, sound like, move like? How exactly did the family die? How did Mandy react - what did she think, feel, do? And so on.

At the moment, I'd read on.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Karsten

Ok, thanks. and i wrote that before i saw batman!!!! i didn't even notice. lol. how odd... i'll go into more detail when i get my review back. there'll be some corrections and suggestions on that.

Hey Carly!
I'll review your story today!
So nice story, I liked it. I'm a vampire freak so yeah, loved it.Actually I loved what the story might be. I feel that you can do a lot more with this piece, and I'm guessing this is just the beginning.
Something I did not like about this was that you tell too much. In writing, is show not tell. Try to make us see what you see, not throw at us everything.
The murder scene, i felts as if its too rushed, way too rushed. Try to improve that , expand it. As Karsten said, it is a bit cliche but you still can make it work. So think of what makes your murder story different, how the MC felt when the vampires killed your family?
And talking about vampires, vampire stories are really common now and are almost cliche in this times so you should also think about how you can make your vampire story original, something that no one has ever heard before. Even when humanity has heard almost everything about vampires lately.
The rich and famous part was good, but it didn't really seem as if it related to the story. Try to make it relate to the MC, how does she react to the rich and famous? How does she feel about them?

Some nitpicks now.

I am homeless. I hunt vampires. And then I kill them

I think I know what you're trying to do here, but really, just make it one sentence and get rid of the periods and capitals.

Just to be on the safe side, if I fall asleep at all, then I’ll just sleep under a street lamp.

This, I think, is hardly understandable. Try rephrasing it.

I use stakes to kill them. You might want to know how I got the stakes; I simply take them from skips.

First of all, I think that the whole "I use steaks to kill them" thingy is a bit too telly, especially at the beginning of a story. Now for the next sentence, I really didn't like how it sounded, it sounded boring and not really useful. For some reason, I think that not many people are interested in knowing where you get the steaks from. Why? Because the important thing about steaks is that you kill vampires with them. This is something you have to watch out for, details that won't help the plot or right development of the story.
Also, I don't get what's the point of talking about this when the rest of the chapter she talks about her life. this part should be with the first paragraph, where you talk about the vampire thing.

My life as you might presume, sucks here in London. People are all hysterical with all the happiness around them, the crowded roads and alleyways, but nobody comes near me. I’m a scrub in their minds - a total and utter scrub – and I don’t have the chance to bath like normal citizens. But then again, there are a lot of homeless people here in London - practically everywhere though, international – who go around begging from the rich and famous. The rich and famous give them the dirtiest looks and probably spill it out to all the gossip magazines that a homeless person attacked them, when they were simply asked for spare change. They like the media. Twisting everything that goes on, making the victims of those hurtful phrases feel like a nobody.

This whole thing, to be honest, is good but it feels flat and not that interesting. I don't get the scene nor the character in here. so as a description of the setting, it doesn't work right. And as a description of the character, it doesn't work right either.
So let's work on it. First, you say they don't come near her, think about: how she feels with that? What she thinks of that? Is she angry? Depressed?Happy?
Now for a setting, try describing London more, you say happiness and stuff, well, try to expand that and make us see London. And the rich and famous part as I said before, has nothing to do with the story but you can make it work if you relate it to your MC.

It was just an average day with my family going for a family outing. We had family outings a lot. It was just me, my mum, dad and younger sister Daisy

Something I noticed in your writing is that you rush too much and leave us hanging. This seems so flat and boring. I mean , is your family, what was so unique about it? What made your family beautiful and perfect to your eyes? How did you feel with them? So as you see, you leave us with a lot of questions in our head.

They didn’t seem to look at me, not once; they were too busy on my family. At first I thought it was some gang stabbing my family. But they were actually shoving their mouths on my families’ necks.

So have you seen Underworld? I'm a huge fan and since we're talking about vampires we should relate this, well...to vampires. Well the principal character, Selene, finds her family dead because of a vampire attack. And what is so unique about it? The way it is shown, the desperation, the sadness, the shock and how the images of her family haunts her. And I know you're probably thinking that is a movie and everything in a movie is portrayed better. But to be honest, you can feels things better if you read them. So if you tell us that she saw the vampires attack her family, well we get the picture but is flat. But if you tell us that she saw them massacre her family, spilling their blood on the street and how she was helpless, desperate looking at how her family was exterminated: now something like that can really make us shiver or cry.

So, I hope I helped and if you need anything else, just PM me and I'll help you.

XOXO
Pudin.