A story

this is just the beginning of chapter 1 of one of my stories. It is not the whole chapter i repeat, not the whole chapter. just the beginning part. please review!

Chapter 1
The unrelenting rain pounded my skin but I hardly felt it anymore. I wasn’t sure if my fingers were still alive. The wind gusted through me, taking with it my determination, wearing me down like waves on a rock. I couldn’t see where I was going through the swirling columns of rain combined with my hair, which whipped my face in strands. I couldn’t tell whether it was tears or drops of rain that were clinging to my eyelashes and my cheeks stung every time a raindrop landed. My breath was shallow and shaky as I watched each gasping exhale go in a puff of ice-like vapor, afraid the next one would be my last.
I don’t know when or where I collapsed onto my knees. I was desperate, there was no where left to run to. I couldn’t go back to where I had come, I had nowhere to go. My breathing became slower with each gust of wind.
Death would have been so welcome.
I took another shaky breath. No, I told myself, Don’t go yet, you need to live.
I didn’t know why I needed to live, it was probably just because I was so used to living that I didn’t want to let go. I thought about it a while, struggling to remember my life without this kind of pain. It seemed so far away, so dreamlike…
I wanted it back.
As I struggled to drag in another mangled breath, I noticed that as I breathed I didn’t feel it anymore. I wasn’t sure if I really was breathing. My mouth felt strangely metallic and my vision was beginning to fail me. No! No, not… now…
The only thing I could really feel was the headache that consumed reason along with thought.
Behind my eyes, someone flushed the toilet. At least, I think they did because my vision spiraled inward and then blacked out. I was conscious for a few more minutes, but all I remember thinking is, hurry up.
* * *


i know it needs some work so don't bite my head off please thanx so much for looking.

Ooh! Very nice!
It works very well as a prologue/1st chapter. I like the descriptions and emotion. One fault I noticed was that you use incredibly long sentences. One or two here and there is fine, but you use them almost entirely and that makes it almost as choppy as if they were super-short sentences. I think it comes from trying to cram too much information into too few sentences. A lot of the time, what you have in one sentence could be spaced out into a whole paragraph! Not really, but you get the point, right?

The following version of your story has had its spacing fixed, see how the paragraphs are spaced out all purty-like? ...That's a thing you should do whenever posting anything to YWS.

Italic means I've made a change.
Bold means there's a comment for that sentence below the quoted text.
[s]Strikethrough[/s] means that I suggest that word/section be deleted (and if it's in bold then there's a reason stated below the quote)

The unrelenting rain pounded my skin, but I hardly felt it anymore. I wasn’t sure if my fingers were still alive. The wind gusted through me, taking with it my determination, wearing me down like waves on a rock. I couldn’t see where I was going through the swirling columns of rain combined with my hair, which whipped my face in strands. I couldn’t tell whether it was tears or drops of rain that were clinging to my eyelashes and my cheeks stung every time a raindrop landed. My breath was shallow and shaky as I watched each gasping exhale go in a puff of ice-like vapor, afraid the next one would be my last.

I don’t know when or where I collapsed onto my knees. I was desperate and there was nowhere left to run [s]to[/s]. I couldn’t go back to where I had come, I had nowhere to go. My breathing became slower with each gust of wind.

Death would have been so welcome.

I took another shaky breath. No, I told myself, Don’t go yet, you need to live.
I didn’t know why I needed to live, it was probably just because I was so used to living that I didn’t want to let go. I thought about it a while, struggling to remember my life without this kind of pain. It seemed so far away, so dreamlike…

I wanted it back.

As I struggled to drag in another mangled breath, I noticed that as I breathed I didn’t feel it anymore. I wasn’t sure if I really was breathing. My mouth felt strangely metallic and my vision was beginning to fail me. No! No, not… now…

The only thing I could really feel was the headache that consumed reason along with thought.

Behind my eyes, someone flushed the toilet. At least, I think they did because my vision spiraled inward and then blacked out. I was conscious for a few more minutes, but all I remember thinking is, hurry up.

1. I couldn’t see where I was going through the swirling columns of rain combined with my hair, which whipped my face in strands.
This is one of those mega-sentences I mentioned! I'm not quite sure how you can fix it... Maybe have a sentence about the wind and mention in the end of it that there was hair too, then in another sentence go into the hair?

2. I couldn’t tell whether it was tears or drops of rain that were clinging to my eyelashes and my cheeks stung every time a raindrop landed.
Try something like this: "I couldn’t tell whether it was tears or drops of rain that were clinging to my eyelashes, or that stung my cheeks with every landing."

3. to
Oh yes... this was just about ending a sentence in a preposition; the classic grammatical no-no.

Very nice overall! It was short, and I suggest you enter more at a time (not too much, obviously, but a bit more) just so that there's more to critique --but that's just my opinion.

I want to read more of this! It has a very promising beginning.

Please PM me if you have questions!!

~Azila

P.S. I LOVE your avatar

Azila is write. The sentences are a bit too long at some places. I strongly believe in praising all good piece of writing. It really helps the writer. It sure helps me . Of course critisizing is important as well.

YOur writing is very captivating. I know this is only PART of the chapter, but it would really have helped me, if I knew why she was there in the rain, why she was feeling this way. This is really just a thought. Maybe you Deliberately left out that part. You might explain later on in the chapter. I completely understand that and it's makes sense. But the whole while I was reading, I thought I would find out what really was going on.

The description is awesome and you've really created an amazing mood for your piece that really fits with what you've written. Can't wait to read more of this.

Keep writing and posting. ANd like Azila said, it WOULD help if you spaced you writing into neat smaller paragraphs and also if you post more at a time.

Is the title of your Story..A story? I don't think so. Try and think of one. A story without a title is like, is like ..... well I can't really think of something...but my point is Titles are very important.



All the best.

Oh my goodness i just noticed i wrote "Azila is write" I'm so sorry I meant to write "Azila is right" ....can you believe me!! Of all places, YWS site. I am not a good speller but NOT THAT BAD..

well excuse me.

HEY!
First of all I loved it. You had good description which painted a picture.
Second I found a few run on sentences which can be easily fixed.
Third I can't wait to read the rest so please continue writing!