The Past

I couldn't think of a good title yet, and there's more too it, I'll add it lata!
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I sat in the attic of our house. Dust wafted everywhere and burned my lungs and eyes like smoke. I could feel the growing urge of tears pushing through my eyes and everything became misty. Salty drops licked my face.

I was crouching down on the floor to avoid hitting my head on the low slanted ceiling. My eyes rested on the old pictures of me that had sat in frilly pink scrapbooks for at least a good 6 years. The truth hurt. My mind turned back the days and the long moments until I saw myself as a middle school kid. More tears came. Captured in the photo, I was sitting on a bench, my face tough and defiant. Bruises dotted my face and deep scrapes wound like rivers across my dark skin. Before God came to save me, I was in a street gang. It kills me to confess that I was in charge of murder and crime. Reality bit me until more tears squeezed through my shut lids. I was a shame, a disappointment to my family. I bit my lip so hard until I could taste the blood seeping out of its cut.

I was an angry kid. Devils came and stole away chunks of my life until I was left with nothing that was special to me. Fate was against me and I had no one I could trust. Dad was killed in an accident and I lost my best friend when he ran away from home and was found dead. That was what motivated me to do bad deeds; I had to get kill to get the pleasure. I felt I was on the right path and no one could stop me from doing what I felt I had to do. In the midst of all the bottled anger and hatred that I kept inside, I was the one that dirty insults and were aimed at. I was a complete joke at school. It was all life came down too and I wanted to be mean to get back at those that kicked my ass and laughed at it. I felt there was no other way I could prove myself worthy and strong.

One night I didn’t go back home from school. That night was the night that changed my course of fate. I shuffled my sneakers angrily down the street, stomping over the sadness life had cost me. That’s when I met Beast. Beast was the head of a teenage gang and I was immediately accepted into their group, proving to them I was tough. I should have felt horrible about the decision I chose to make but nothing could guilt trip me. Instead, I felt fulfilled. Happiness. Being in a gang was my cover up. A way of hiding what I really felt.

Mom, who was drowned in all her work day in night, pleaded me to stop. But every single time she pleaded, I just shook my head and watched her crumble to the ground crying. I knew I was the one that completed her. She had no one else to love now that her parents died and Dad died. I made me sick to know I had let her down.

Hey, Michelle!

Cool story- definitely very emotional, which is hard to take on, at first. I still have a lot of problems with emotional scenes...-_- It's hard to keep track of both feelings and plot at the same time, right?

Anyway, something you might want to look at ^_^:

OVER-EMOTION:

I sat in the attic of our house. Dust wafted everywhere and burned my lungs and eyes like smoke. I could feel the growing urge of tears pushing through my eyes and everything became misty. Salty drops licked my face.

Your first paragraph doesn't really do it for me- 'do it' in the sense of making me hooked into and interested in the story. Why? Even description is chock-full of emotion, which makes the later scenes seem...not as intense. Also, you don't especially want to begin with something that is intense, for the simple risk that your readers don't really have a feel for your characters and deem them angsty. Not good, right?

Here are a few tips to avoid melodrama:

- Try third person. This is probably both the best advice and the advice most ignored- it's tough to do emotional scenes in first person without going overboard. Why? Your narrator is biased. If a third person narrator is biased, the story is usually pretty bad, in such a way that you can see it, too.

- Try to avoid euphemisms for 'fire'- smoke, burned, licked, etc. It's automatically too much. I don't quite know how to explain this, but perhaps the reason is that these verbs are often found in emo poetry. Emo prose is even more laughable than emo poetry.

- Religious allusions [Devils, etc.] often don't work really well because of the way people are with their faith- they are either really, really into the imagery, or they're not. An in-between person isn't extreme enough to be unique or interesting to the reader. My philosophy with characters is thus: as long as you have the proper motives, your characters can be as crazy and out-there as possible. It's takes some practice to make work, but eventually your characters are more believable. [Read Hail Mary, by Areida, for a good example of this.]

- Back to number one: the more removed you are from the emotion, the more shocking it's going to be. This is more of a personal preference thing for me- I'm a major advocate of show, not tell. It's a lot easier for your reader to grasp emotion if it's put in a way that they can understand (and by this, I mean physical cues).

Juliek lived in the closet of Mrs. Feingold’s dead husband. It was warm, but dusty and full of moths and spiders...

...The spiders never brought kisses and dinner plates. That was the only different thing- Mrs. Feingold brought dinner plates, but she was shifty and nervous and always had red lipstick on her teeth. Her house was dark, with the shutters drawn- she dressed up, made up every day, with barely enough light to guide her brushes.

See how this is very subtle? It's obvious Mr. Feingold has died, but yet...why does Mrs. Feingold keep his clothing, and work herself into a fervor dressing up every day, even though she lives as a recluse? People who are grieving do crazy things, just like your character is wont to do. This is a lot more shocking than if I came out and said, "Mrs. Feingold was very sad. She liked to cry a lot because she missed her husband."

I'm actually saying the same thing, but with pictures instead of words. See what I mean? It's quite hard to explain...

Why the ramble? You've got a great set-up for a story here- a ghost, who's looking over her choices in life and regrets them. It's got the potential to be a truly hard-hitting story, and I think it needs to be. it's just that cool. ^_~

Anyway, feel free to PM me if you've got any questions or have posted the next bit. I'd be happy to read!

I enjoyed this story, but I have to agree with what Sam said, it was very emotional, but some parts didn't really connect with me. To make your story more involved with the reader, you should bring us into the memories instead of just telling about them. Like when you are talking about him joining the gang, you could put in the diolouge between the gang leader and him, describe what his mothers face looked like when she found out about what had been doing, put in a letter from the principle about his bad behaivior, just something to make it more real.

Hmmm.. Sam pointed out the problems with your storyline as far as I can tell, but there are also some other problems tht have to do do with spelling, grammar and the more technical side of things

Also kind of an abrubt ending.......... I found the order of events to be somewhat confusing. You also have kind of a problem with the tenses. (i.e. "I sit in the attick" and "it kills me....") hmmm... order and other things could definitely be revised. This whole thing could use a good editing session as well......


Other than that, I think Sam pretty much got it all.

I liked the general idea, but I think this needs some work.

I sat in the attic of our house. Dust wafted everywhere and burned my lungs and eyes like smoke. I could feel the growing urge of tears pushing through my eyes and everything became misty. Salty drops licked my face.

Great description here! I loved it.

I was crouching down on the floor to avoid hitting my head on the low slanted ceiling. My eyes rested on the old pictures of me that had sat in frilly pink scrapbooks for at least a good 6 years. The truth hurt. My mind turned back the days and the long moments until I saw myself as a middle school kid. More tears came. Captured in the photo, I was sitting on a bench, my face tough and defiant. Bruises dotted my face and deep scrapes wound like rivers across my dark skin. Before God came to save me, I was in a street gang. It kills me to confess that I was in charge of murder and crime. Reality bit me until more tears squeezed through my shut lids. I was a shame, a disappointment to my family. I bit my lip so hard until I could taste the blood seeping out of its cut.

Where did the bruises come from? God isn't mentioned anywhere else, perphaps try weaving in a more spiritual side of the story.

I was an angry kid. Devils came and stole away chunks of my life until I was left with nothing that was special to me. Fate was against me and I had no one I could trust. Dad was killed in an accident and I lost my best friend when he ran away from home and was found dead. That was what motivated me to do bad deeds; I had to get kill to get the pleasure. I felt I was on the right path and no one could stop me from doing what I felt I had to do. In the midst of all the bottled anger and hatred that I kept inside, I was the one that dirty insults and were aimed at. I was a complete joke at school. It was all life came down too and I wanted to be mean to get back at those that kicked my ass and laughed at it. I felt there was no other way I could prove myself worthy and strong.

This is an info-dump. Try re-writing it, or perphaps put it in a flashback.

One night I didn’t go back home from school. That night was the night that changed my course of fate. I shuffled my sneakers angrily down the street, stomping over the sadness life had cost me. That’s when I met Beast. Beast was the head of a teenage gang and I was immediately accepted into their group, proving to them I was tough. I should have felt horrible about the decision I chose to make but nothing could guilt trip me. Instead, I felt fulfilled. Happiness. Being in a gang was my cover up. A way of hiding what I really felt.

Again, an info-dump. Break it up a bit, or write it differently.

Mom, who was drowned in all her work day in night, pleaded me to stop. But every single time she pleaded, I just shook my head and watched her crumble to the ground crying. I knew I was the one that completed her. She had no one else to love now that her parents died and Dad died. I made me sick to know I had let her down.

Nice. I liked this part. The story is good, but perphaps you should extend it. Right now it's just a person sitting in an attic explaining their life to us. Give us some more detail about the person, thier friends and family. Put in some flashbacks and dialouge.

I hope to see a re-written version of this, I bet it would be really good if you worked on it a bit.