Just a sample

This is just the first paragraph and a half of a short story I'm writing. I have written about two pages (not edited though ), but i want to know if I should continue because I do have other ideas that need attending to.


Faith Heaven knew she had an odd name. She also knew that she, of all people, deserved one. Having been placed in a wicker basket at birth, with just a note, and unceremoniously sent down a river—Faith would have been more appropriately named Moses—to be discovered by a bony young woman with copies of the bible in every room of her Alabama home and her older, just-as-sane brother.

Evie and Jonathan Palmer lived in a small cottage, that was really more of mix between a shed and a trailer, in the middle of hot and sticky Nowhere, Oklahoma, as they advertised it.

This is for that contest...thing, isn't it? Where they give you the first sentence? If so, let us know. At first I thought you stole this from someone.

Honestly? The first paragraph was all right - you did have to tie in that sentence (right?) The second was too much telling.

But you won't get any critiques this way. It's too little! We can point out grammar/spelling, but not content. We can't rant about your characters, or how cliched it is - all the things we love to do. Post a big section (usually around 1,000 words is good,) and you will actually get real reviews.

And PM me when you do!

~JFW1415

The only advice I can give? Work on it. It's much too little to even try and critique. So work on it. Often. A lot. As much as you can. Once you work on it, post it and let me know!

Sorry, I didn't want to post too much, 1) because I haven't edited. I personally hate when people put up pre spell-checked work. 2) I only wanted to know if I should continue, I was just giving the idea because I have limited writing time and I know if I stop now, I may not go back.

And, no, it isnt for a contest. Where did you see that first line? I'm almost positive I came up with that. Maybe I'm giong crazy and saw it somewhere, I don't know.

And, I don't think I'll continue with this, I actually may go back to it, but I rarely do. I forget about things.

Well, thanks anyway! I wil try to put up an actual story soon. I get nervous and self-conscious and I obsessively check for comments, I think I'll build up to actually posting.

Turns out I was wrong. The sentence was 'Sometimes the name they give you is all wrong.' It was from http://www.thefirstline.com/index.htm. *Shrug* Sorry, the sentence just sounded a bit familiar.

Also, while we won't critique something where every other word is wrong, it is okay to post stories that aren't perfect yet. Maybe we'll catch something you didn't, and then you can edit all at once, instead of a hundred times.

Also, we can't really tell you what we think of the idea. We don't know the plot yet! ;P

Try to get that first story up soon. It can be scary, but it helps a LOT, and we don't bite. (Well, most of us... )

PM me when you get something up, okay?

~JFW1415

I will try, but besides getting up the courage (which isn't such a big feat, i have done it before), I do not have a lot of time and my computer likes to stop working a lot. On top of that, strep has been going around my school and I had the luck to get it during my busiest week ever (4 softball games, soccer game, soccer practice, school, GEPA prep, church retreat, softball coaching, girl scouts and some concert at my mom's work) I'm up for a fun week.

Sorry, I don't mean to rant about myself like nobody else has any problems, but I just wanted to type all of that, just to see what it looked like, pretty scary, huh?

While I realize you said you didn't want to post too much, you can't expect people to comment when they weren't given much of anything. We don't have an inkling on who this MC is, except that she thinks about her name quite a bit. Setting? Plot? Development? These are all important things, that are what is usually commented upon, and we have none of that.

If I absolutely had to say something about this, I would say it's a - sorry to be so harsh - weak beginning. I felt there was nothing unique about it, or particularly eye-catching. I felt what we have of sentences run too long.

Needs work. I can't say whether or not it's worth continuing, because we were given too little.