Untitled for school magazine

I wrote a few short stories(had to be dramatic), and I’m thinking about publishing them in the school magazine. Please help, me decide which one to post and give me title suggestions:

Please write:

Review: ...

I Vote For: ...

Title Suggestion: ...

Here goes:

1) It stretched its hand out,
touched my face
it was cold
Shivers ran down my back,
It had come to get my Gran years ago,
And now it wanted to take me.
I struggled.
I tried to fight myself out of its cool clutches.
Its fingers felt thin, bony even.
It closed its arms around me.
A bony skull pressed a kiss on my lips
And Then,
Nothing
The struggle had stopped.
All that remained was my lifeless body.
I watched from far, far away.
Peace finally.

------

2) I sat at the kitchen table.
All that I needed was laid out before me.
I reached out with my hand
To touch the cold metal
I slid my finger along its sharp edge.
It easily cut my skin.
A thin strand of blood ran down my finger.
I didn’t notice the pain.
I was preparing myself for worse.
I clutched the wooden handle tightly.
The metal was surprisingly cold when it touched my wrist, I shivered for a second
Then I remembered what I was looking forward to
Peace.
With one impulse I sliced my wrist open.
Nothing happened.
I didn’t feel it.
One more swift cut. It was deep.
Now blood came out.
Lots.
I stared at my blood as if it were something new.
I sat still.
Waiting.
Then Finally.
Peace

-------

3) It was night.
I was standing at the top of a New Yorker building.
I watched everything around me.
The lights of Times Square,
Yellow cabs rushing around,
Central Park,
Broadway.
I used to love the flair of NY.
I loved the air,
The lights,
The people,
Even the subway,
But tonight the lights seemed oddly cold.
Not inviting.
The lights of a giant MC Donald sign felt disturbingly unnecessary
The roof I was standing on was dark.
Fate had brought me here,
Except, I didn’t believe in fate.
I crouched down,
stood at the very edge of the building.
I stood there for a moment,
Then,
I jumped.
A few meters I just fell,
Then,
I spread my wings,
And flew off.
Into the unfamiliar thick darkness,
That lay beyond NY-City.

----

PS: Don’t take any of this too literal^^

Thanks allot for helping me.

Well none of these really feel like short stories to me. They all seem to be poems...

well that helped... How do you move a story from one genre to the next?

I think a moderator has to do that, I'm not sure.

Hey Arya!

Review: Well, these are all about rather deep and controversial topics. Death, wrist cutting, suicide. It seems like you are going for a more unstructured format rather than a structured one, but I can't tell for sure. If you are going for structured, there are some punctuation errors that need cleaning up. But if you're going for unstructured, you need to make your punctuation more consistent. I know it sounds odd that unstructured poems must be consistent, but they do. Otherwise it disrupts the flow of the poem and distracts the reader from the story.
On the positive side, I really liked the imagery that you used, especially for poem 1. I could picture Death floating over to the narrator and slowly sucking the life out of him/her. Well done!

I Vote For: Poem 1 because it had the best imagery.

Title Suggestion: Final Kiss

If you want any help with making your poem more structured, please let me know. Unless, of course, you want to keep it free form. In fact, I almost like it better free form, but I would still tweak a few things here and there. I don't think I can be of much help when it comes to tweaking it, but you should definitely ask around, especially the instructors.
-Winter

Ok. My turn for a review! To start off the reason it seems like a poem is the layout. It is hard to tell what it is really, poem, story, description, prologue? It could be anything and I think that is not always bad. The author always has a certain vision in their mind and when trying to get that across to a reader, I know I always forget to make sure it's clear.

1) I thought this was good. It gave me a very clear Harry Potter and the 'kiss of death' impression. Whether that is what you were going for or not. I would suggest less I's

I struggled.

I tried to fight myself out of its cool clutches.

You could instead have like:

I struggled, (Comma instead of full stop)

Trying to fight myself out of it's cool clutches. (Different beginning)


I know I'm normally all for short sentences but they sometimes need to be balanced. Plus

fight myself

what does that really mean? A one person boxing match wouldn't go down to well.


2) I don't have any complaints about two. I really liked it, however can I just say school magazine? You really think this will go down well when your teacher discovers your true writing potential, teamed with self harm. I am not joking though I did really enjoy reading it, the perfect amount of description, with action. Look at the layout as it is a little irregular. Sometimes you have more than one sentence on a line and others you need to at least put a comma on. You need to use comma, semi-colon, dash, dot dot dot (I've forgotten the real name of it) just use different punctuation and end every line with some sort of punctuation.


3) Ok for once you're actually using too many commas and not enough full stops. Also I wouldn't use NY, everyone knows what you mean but you sound more like a writer when you say New York, especially on the last line, it ruins it slightly to have NY city. I would suggest to make it seem more like time is passing. Like the city is moving while she's standing still. 'Cars blur down the motor way. Lights flash, on and off, by the road.' OK poor examples but you know what I mean, instead of telling us show us that the city is alive. I do really like it actually. The more I analyse the more I like it.


My preference would be two, as it is, but if you add more description three could be amazing. Hope I'm in time, otherwise there are a lot of things to enter it into.

*Moved to Other Poetry*

1) It stretched its hand out,
touched my face
it was cold
Shivers ran down my back,
It had come to get my Gran years ago,
And now it wanted to take me.
I struggled.
I tried to fight myself out of its cool clutches.
Its fingers felt thin, bony even.
It closed its arms around me.
A bony skull pressed a kiss on my lips
And Then,
Nothing
The struggle had stopped.
All that remained was my lifeless body.
I watched from far, far away.
Peace finally.

Ok, this one is the one to go with. The other ones will get you an appointment with the guidance counciler. umm I am not sure about the title, how about " The Last Embrace"? I don't know, but good luck anyway.

Thanks guys. You really helped me. I showed it to a teacher (the first 2) and I am still waiting for his response if its OK for school magazine... Could you keep giving me tips please? Thanks.

My teacher isn't giving the poems back! I am so mad right now. I hope he actually looked at them... Really isn't that his job? I submitted the first two poems and I really made them look so pretty. I was so proud of them, and now the holls have almost started, and I haven't heard ANYTHING.
My fav. teacher is leaving the school. She used to be my Italian teacher. OMG Ill miss her. .
AND Michael Jackson died. What kinda day is this?