On a Starry Night...

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It's kind of short, but I didn't want to add anything in.
In a hot tub on a starry night, six girls sit. The warm water swirls around their bodies as they giggle and laugh about random things and talk for hours about nothing at all. The night is pitch black and chilly. All six are glad the hot tub is heated. One jumps into the pool on a dare, cold water enveloping her as she swims and her friends point, squealing. She winces and giggles at she feels a prickling at the goosebumps forming on her bare skin. She then climbs back into the hot tub, scratching her legs on the stone. She yelps a little, and then settles down. Suddenly, she sees something.
“Look!” she shouts. “It’s a shooting star! Make a wish, guys!” She raises her finger to point at it.
A gorgeous, tan girl says, “That’s a helicopter.”
The girl looks back, disappointed and then says, “Well, I don’t care. Let’s make wishes anyway.”
The girl wishes for something that’s so important to her. I wish, she thinks. I wish everyone in this hot tub tonight has a happy and productive life and that we stay friends forever.
It's two wishes, but the girl doesn’t care.
A girl turns to her and whispers, “What did you wish for?”
She giggles and says, “I can’t tell you! Then it won’t come true!”
The other girl says, “I wished for something sort of serious.”
“Oh,” the first girl says. “Do you want to tell me?”
“Yeah,” the other girl looks at her hands and then speaks. “I wished that my dad would get a job. He’s out of work, and we have no savings. We’re running out of money so quickly. At this rate, we’ll be moving soon.”
The first girl sits there and says gently, “I won’t tell, I promise.”
The other girl nods.
Looking up at the sky, the girl says, God, please make sure that her dad gets a job. She’s one of my best friends, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. Tears fill the girl’s eyes, and she blinks them away. I just, well, just please make her wish come true.
Later on that year, the girl’s dad got a job. Every night, right before she went to bed, the first girl thanked God for everything He had done. She told Him that she was so grateful for granting her friend’s wish. And she fell asleep to happy thoughts.
Last edited by sillyducky on Sun Jul 11, 2010 10:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Writing's a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia E.L. Doctorow
I've always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first is ransom notes Philip Dusenberry
I'm so clever that I don't understand a single word of what I'm saying Oscar Wilde




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Heya ducky :)

You don't have any comments or reviews on this yet, so here I am to give you some. I'm not sure if I've reviewed anything of yours before, but if I haven't, I'll just let you know that I'm going to start off with nit-picks. That's if I can find any, that is. If you have any questions or anything like that once I've finished with my review, just send me a PM and ask.

The warm water swirls around their bodies as they giggle and laugh about random things and talk for hours about nothing at all.

Technically, this doesn't make sense. It's impossible to talk about nothing, otherwise you wouldn't be talking at all. Basically, I think that you should change this to 'nothing important at all', or something like that.

The night is pitch black and chilly. All six are glad the hot tub is heated. One jumps into the pool, cold water enveloping her as she swims and her friends point, squealing. She winces and giggles at the goose bumps forming on her bare skin. She then climbs back into the hot tub, scratching her legs on the stone. Suddenly, she sees something.

This paragraph has a feeling of 'she does that' 'then she does this' then she says that' kind of thing. By this, I mean that I don't really like the flow of this paragraph. It seems rather stiff to me. Maybe you could edit this paragraph up a bit so that it flows in a nicer way. :)

A gorgeous, tanned girl says, “That’s a helicopter.”


The girl wishes for something that’s so important to her. I wish, she thinks. I wish everyone in this hot tub tonight has a happy and productive life and that we stay friends forever.

When a character is thinking, you should italicize their thoughts. If you do that, it will be easier for your readers to understand when a character is thinking. Plus, it simply looks better.

Looking up at the sky, the girl says, God, please make sure that her dad gets a job. She’s one of my best friends, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. Tears fill the girl’s eyes, and she blinks them away. I just, well, just please make her wish come true.

If she's saying this, shouldn't they be in quotation marks/speech marks? :wink:


Overall

To be honest, I don't have all that much to say about this. The main reason for this was because, to begin with, it was rather short. I also can't say all that much about this because not much happened and there wasn't really any conflict. Mind you, you could argue that the conflict was the fact that one of the girls father had lost his job. The other reason I can't necessarily say an awful lot about this is the fact that we don't really know much about the characters. Although this stuff is true, I rather liked this. :) As a whole, it was a short and sweet piece, in my opinion. Even though not much happened, I liked the idea of the story. It was simple, but it made a very nice read. There were some places that could be improved, but there some nice bits in it too. When it comes to your grammar, it was very good! In fact, I don't think that I found any grammatical errors. The same goes for your spelling. As far as I'm aware, there weren't any spelling mistakes in this. That is definitely a good thing!

My main critique is that this kind of feels a bit rushed. Even though not much happens in this story, you could still make it longer. I especially felt as though this was a bit rushed at the end when you started describing the one girls father getting a job e.t.c. Part of the reason this felt a bit rushed was because of some of your descriptions. To me, it seemed as though you were telling and not showing a lot of the time. For example, you were telling us that the girl who jumped into the pool was cold but you weren't really showing us. Instead of simply saying; the girl was cold, tell us about how she was rubbing her arms in the pool. Or tell us how, as she breathed out, a light mist came out of her mouth. Do you understand what I mean? The reason that showing is important when writing some creative writing is because it simply makes the writing more interesting. Anyone can say that someone was cold or that someone was happy, but it takes more skill to show this without literally saying it. Another reason that showing is a lot better than telling is because it keeps your readers reading your story. If they are reading boring, plain descriptions, then they're hardly going to want to keep on reading. are they? If you make your descriptions so that they are showing, your readers will not get bored as easily. Plus, it helps with the flow and the pace of the story.

I haven't really got much else to say about this. I feel useless... :lol: All that you need to do now is to take into consideration what I've suggested and maybe edit this up a bit. If you do that, I really think that this could be a very nice piece of writing.

Keep writing,

xoxo Rhian
I didn't know what to put here so I put this.




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thanks for the review skins! I would have made this more of a conflict, or longer or something, but this is a true story, its something that really happened to me, and one of my most cherished memories, so I didn't want to ruin it. I guess I was a little too careful, but I didn't want to add anything that didn't really happen.
Anyway, thanks for the review! It helped a lot! Thanks for taking the time to write all of that, I'll take that into consideration next time I'm writing. I think that's the longest review I've ever gotten!
Writing's a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia E.L. Doctorow
I've always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first is ransom notes Philip Dusenberry
I'm so clever that I don't understand a single word of what I'm saying Oscar Wilde




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Hello there sillyducky

In a hot tub on a starry night, six girls sit. The warm water swirls around their bodies as they giggle and laugh about random things and talk for hours about nothing at all. The night is pitch black and chilly. All six are glad the hot tub is heated. One jumps into the pool, cold water enveloping her as she swims and her friends point, squealing. She winces and giggles at the goose bumps forming on her bare skin. She then climbs back into the hot tub, scratching her legs on the stone. Suddenly, she sees something.

I felt that there was not much narrating in this paragraph. You like went from one point to another without elaborating much on one idea to properly paint that picture in my head.
As I read on though, I thought that this was a sweet short story.
I think skins has touched on a lot of issues so there is really nothing to comment on .
Keep writing




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SILLY! :) I thought i'd stalk all your work. Naaah only joking...or am i? Hahahaha Anyhoo..

I really like this piece, i thought it was sweet. But i sort of (just a little bit) got sick of reading, 'that girl' or 'the first girl'. It didn't get that annoying. Have you ever thought about naming them? Or maybe even getting into their physical appeareance abit more?
Also, what was the point of 'that girl' jumping into the pool? Was it a dare? Or did she just want to cool down? Maybe add something that explains this a bit more.

Looking up at the sky, the girl says, God, please make sure that her dad gets a job. She’s one of my best friends, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. Tears fill the girl’s eyes, and she blinks them away.


^^ I really like that part! :) Very touching, and you can tell the the girl cares about her friend!


I didn't really see that many mistakes. I liked it! It was a good description about friends. It made me laugh when i read the part about the helicopter. Very cool.
Great work, Silly! :)

Born
xx
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Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
— Quentin Crisp