Letters to an angel part 1

The bay is quiet. Streets lamps flickered patches of lights into the deepening darkness. Behind it, the rustling of the leaves brushed off the silence while the pounding waves crashed to the cemented wall that guarded the walkway from the open sea. Under one of the street lamps, before an old pine tree with its grotesque’s branches reaching towards the clouded sky, Fredrick sat down on a wooden bench.

His head rested on its surface looking towards the fleeting clouds that soared slowly over him. He shivered when he felt the gust brushed against his black polo suit, his dark blue trousers and his grey scarf wrapped around his neck.

"She is late", he pondered "She is never late". But then again by the unsetting sun, he was early, he always was. He was never late to either a meeting or to an appointment. Everyday, he would arrive at the spot even an hour before the actual assembly.

Before him, a faint halo glowed at the edge of the horizon, the remnants of the setting sun. Fredrick kept a moment looking towards it as he shivered at the sudden breeze from the sea locking his chest with his arms.

The night begins to haunts him. Cold and dark, it made him recall the time where he got lost at a blizzard, alone and vulnerable around the frozen forest.

"Do you have a good day?" He turned his head to see where the question came from. It was a woman, a young woman who sat beside him with a gentle smile on her face. She wore a light blue denim shirt underneath an oversized black trench coat that almost made her child like in proportion.

"Do you have a good day?" She repeated her question leaning her head forward to look at his scarf covered face. His eyes met hers for a moment before he retreated to look at a flock of birds gathering on the pavement before him. He nodded his head- slowly, that is- as he lowered his face under his scarf.

"That’s good to hear." She answered with a beckoning smile while she placed strands of her hair behind her ear. "Mine was a little awful. I had to look out for a client of mine who needed to attend to some reunion or something. It was his first time you know and he beckoned me not to force him to go there but I had no choice. It was for his good. All the while he endlessly complained and complained and complained. What a woe indeed."

He looked at her briefly pursing his lips to force some kind of smile. He wondered if there was something wrong with the woman that made her brag so long. He wondered if she was just as crazy as the person he had just said. No, she couldn’t be mad. A mad person would not greet him formally with a controlled wave. She did not drool nor babbled under her breathe. She wore clothes that looked formal- a black trench coat coupled with a long blue skirt. Yet, anyone who might have some mental problems could wear the same clothes as she is. She could have suffered from depression or bipolar. Then again, how would he know? He had just met her.

"Sorry," he mumbled unable to catch what she had said.

"Are you going to the ball? From the way you’re wearing, you’re either going to one or to some important meeting?" She leaned her body forward with her chin between her hands taking a glimpse at him.

"A Ball," he whispered edging away a few centimeters to his side to try to get away from her.

"That’s amazing," she exclaimed. "I had always like balls especially the suits and dresses that the people wore. It reminds me a bit of heaven, you know- glamorous and beautiful and all that stuff. Such a fantasy, anyway are you excited about it?"

"Partly," he babbled under his breathe waiting impatiently for his date to arrive. "It is my first time anyway so I am kind of nervous."

"That is much better than I expected then. First time is always a charm you know," she winked at him resting her back to the wooden surface of the bench. She gaze her head up high while breathing in the gentle wind that blew her hair back. She rummaged her pocket to take out a small maroon box. She placed it on the space between them. With a gentle shove from her index finger, she pushed it close to his lap.

"You can have this." She said as she pushed the small box closed to him. Fredrick looked momentarily at the small velvet box then towards the young woman. He opened his mouth to deny such a gift. He had done nothing during their conversation but to listen bluntly at her babble.

"It was a present given to me during my first ball from my date but I don’t usually use it very often. You see I am not yet ready to be in an engagement. I am happy as I am so it would be sweet if you can have this. Make it a present for your date."

"But I do not deserve such a thing." He denied with his hands just above the small velvet box. "You might as well keep it, Miss. Save it when you engage besides I –"

"Please, I do insist you keeping it." She murmured lifting the box from Fredrick towards his lap. "It will be such an honor for you to keep such thing and to give it to your date. It is true that may need it again when I am engaged but for now, it is simply an object waiting for someone to make use of it. It will be a waste for me to keep it and not use it. Don’t you think?"

Fredrick hesitated for a moment to speak. He nodded his head in partial agreement with her but he still felt undeserved of such a gift especially one given from a complete stranger. His eyes moved hastily towards the velvet box and to the young woman who looked at him with her light brown eyes.

He opened his mouth to speak, to argue for her to keep it instead of him, but she lifted her hand towards him to stop him from talking.

"Just open it." She murmured softly. Fredrick hesitated. He reached his hand at the box by his lap curling it around his palm. He held it close for a few moments. He felt the soft leather of the box against his skin. He lifted it, and opened his palm.

His eyes widened when he saw a golden ring inside the box adorned by red silk that surrounded it. It glittered under the illumination from the street lamp. Encrypted on its surface was the word, "engele" written in a Medieval-style font.

Okay, what happened to the speech formatting? There are no speech marks. Why not? I've seen that done a couple of times in memories or suchlike, but usually it's only for a very short period of time and this is all the way through. I don't understand. Is that a technique, or is your computer dying, or did you just forget to add them in? Anyway, I have to say that once I noticed that, I kind of lost track of the prose. Just put them in, and then you can make sure you put the speech tags in properly too, i.e. with a comma inside the speech marks and with no capital letter.

I'll give you a proper review when you put the correct speech formatting in, I think. It's almost impossible for me to read it without coming back to that point, because I keep losing track of what's writing and what's dialogue. It just looks like you're constantly switching from first person to third person and back again.

So consider this a crit ticket for when you sort that out. In the immortal words of the Terminator, I'll be back.

EDIT: Think maybe this does come off as a bit harsh when I read it back. I'm sorry. I'm a bit tired, and also irritated with my computer, which is liable to delete this review at any moment, the way it's been going on. I do promise you a more tactful and hopefully longer critique if you fix the speech formatting, though.

Tad harsh for a first post.

As I see it there was thought put into the personal aspect of this and it is very, very well done, the awkwardness of one and the overwhelming vitality of the other a sharp contrast in characters that made for a very interesting read.

However, I must pay due to the initial concern.

I cant tell personal thoughts from speech and dialogue from simple thoughts, this almost made me abandon the read.

However your storytelling, though in need of a slight tune up, was enough to keep me going.

You should work on wording, alot of the phrases seemed a bit shakey, like you diddnt exactly know how to put something, or how the characters themselves would word it.

I'd work on that.

Anyways, I enjoyed it, take into account what I said and the suggestions of the Author above me and I'm sure your unique storytelling will become even more of a must read.

Please let me know if you have any new works or something you'd like me to go over, I would be more than happy to oblige.

Exe's and Oh's, Eraqio.

This was beautiful fox, how you put her feelings and his feelings, the confusion and I also thought it was interesting the first paragraph. The description you made about hte place and time was very good.
But as the rest had said, it confused me, I couldn't tell what was dialogue and what were his thoughts.

I would made a review but I'm quite..."rushing" so, sorry for such a small post.

Pudin

I cried with the amount of hard work and detail you put into it. I don't know if you edited it or not but I didn't notice the missing things at all.

I have nothing bad to say about this. You had amazing amounts of detail. I believed what the characters were saying, and the plot was good.

Thanks for putting them in! Ah, so it was just your computer. I guess I was harsh then, so I apologise again. I would do nitpicks, but going through this story I'm just finding the same mistakes over and over again, so I'll just delve into my main crit.

First, speech. Example.

"She is late", he pondered "She is never late".

Okay, there are quite a few problems with the speech formatting here. I've been typing out the rules all morning, so if it's allowed, I think I'll just recommend this site: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/quotation.htm. I haven't used it myself, but as I can't find the one I usually use, this will do. It seems to have the basic formatting rules on it, so have a look at it and maybe even have a look for a guide around YWS. I'll sort this dialogue here out for you, though.

"She is late," he pondered. "She is never late."

It's not the only one by a long shot, so go through using that link I gave you and hopefully you'll spot the mistakes.

Next. Typos. There are an awful lot of typos in here, and a few odd mistakes like tense switching and dodgy flow. The way to catch all of these is to read the piece aloud. If you do this, you won't be able to skip over the typos, so you'll be able to spot them and therefore edit them. Equally, tense switching will seem odd to you and you'll notice things much more easily than you do reading silently. It's the best way to check your work, reading aloud. I'd say go with your instincts, and if something sounds wrong when you read it, it probably is.

Dialogue. The dialogue is pretty choppy here. Is your character foreign, or are you? I was thrown by the "Do you have a nice day?". There's an apparent lack of commas in the dialogue too, which makes reading it particularly hard. Again, read this aloud! You'll pause for breath naturally, and that's where you should put the commas. I'll give you an example to help you out.

"It was a present given to me during my first ball from my date but I don’t usually use it very often. You see I am not yet ready to be in an engagement. I am happy as I am so it would be sweet if you can have this. Make it a present for your date."

That's what you wrote, and this is how I would correct it with the necessary punctuation.

"It was a present given to me during my first ball from my date, but I don't usually use it very often. You see, I am not yet ready to be in an engagement. I am happy as I am, so it would be sweet if you can have this. Make it a present for your date.

Now, I go through it and think about how it sounds, because parts of that read oddly to me. One reason for that is the lack of contractions - you don't say "I'm" and "you're" enough. So I correct that.

It was a present from my date, given to me during my first ball. I don't use it very often. You see, I'm not ready to be in an engagement. I'm happy as I am, so I think it would be sweet if you could have this. Make it a present for your date.

If even after all that it sounds odd, which I think this does, you need to change the dialogue by cutting and cropping. Even if you're setting the piece in medieval times, you need to know that people didn't talk in formal, letter-writing English. Dialogue from other eras is hard, and it's easy to lapse into formality, but anyone who's giving away an engagement ring to a complete stranger is not going to be overly concerned with their manners. Dialogue must ring true with the character as well as with the era.

On plot and characters, I have little to say, because I quite liked both. I just think you need to go back and try to make your writing do them justice, so that we really see the quirkiness and kindness of this woman. At the end of the day, all your characters and your plot rely on your writing being up to bringing them to life. Grammar and punctuation are important, because it's not just about being right or wrong, but helping your story. Which is what I've tried to do, so here's hoping that little speech went well.