Curse of a Pirate PART 1

“Hoist the sails!” The Captain cried, spreading his arms wide, “Heave ho!” I clambered up the rigging and set to work, with a chorused yell of, “Aye, aye Cap’n!”
“Put yer backs into it ye landlubbers!”
“Aye,” I muttered under my breath, unfurling the smeared, dirty cream sails. I dropped from the rigging, and the crew assembled around the Captain.
“Alri’ht, me scallywags, I’d like ye all to welcome youn’ Flynn aboard our Furner, savvy?”
“Aye, aye!” The reply came in unison. A boy about my age, with tanned skin and black hair, stepped around the Captain.
“Ahoy there,” He said, a cheeky smile dancing across his lips.
“Ahoy,” Only a few people responded, the rest eyeing him warily. He looked arrogant, a smirk fixed on his face. I snuck along the edges of the group, and stopped when I was next to Grace. She turned to me and smiled. She was 16, a year older than me, but we’d become firm friends, besides, we were the only girls on board. She had long blonde hair she tied in a pony-tail, and hazel eyes. She was the ships cook, and liked by all the crew. She told the most amazing stories, and could dazzle even the stoniest of pirates. I, on the other hand, had short brown hair, and I had blue eyes that seemed to change colour depending on the environment.
“But why is he here?” The whispers spread amongst the small crew like wildfire.
“Now, Flynn ‘ere be on this ship because ‘e ran away from ‘ome, an’ as been lookin’ to sail the seven seas ever since. And that,” The Captain’s voice was as cold as ice, but calm and collected, “Be why ‘e is ‘ere, and ye make no mistakin’ ‘o tha’ fact, savvy?”
The crew nodded solemly. Flynn caught sight of us.
“What be these Wenches aboard our ship?” He asked. The crew fell instantly silent.
“Shiver me timbers,” One member of the crew whispered, as I blushed red with anger.
“How dare ye?” I yelled, storming towards him, “Ye scurvy bilge rat! Ye bilge rat deserves the black spot! Arrr! To see you to Davy Jones’ Locker-!”
“Avast ye! Belay that landlubber talk!” The Captain barked. Grace layed a calming hand on my arm. “Grace be t’ best cook the seven seas has ever seen, and this youn’ lass be one of our best crew members, so ye best be watchin’ what ye say, savvy?” Flynn dropped his head.
“Aye, Cap’n,”
“An’ tha’ be why you an’ Tyde be partners. Tyde, you will show Flynn around t’ ship,”
“Arrr! What!? Avast ye! Blow me down!” I shouted in shock. The crew laughed softly at my outrage.
“I dasn’t mind that at all,” Flynn said wickedly. “Come on me lass,”
I scowled and turned on my heel. I heard Flynn follow me.
“Now get t’ work! We be havin’ a feast t’night!”

This is a great piece! Your dialogue is very smooth and flows well, and it's easy to sense the feeling in the story itself. The only thing that is missing, in my opinion, are a few descriptions, unless you plan on adding those in on later chapters. For example, what kind of ship are you on? What does the captain look like?

Overall, lovely work. Keep going!

Hi there!

I don't know if you did any research before you wrote this short story or if it even was your intent to write a realistic portrayal of how pirate life was like during the late 1600s and early 1700s (the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean, when I'm assuming this is set? Correct me if I'm wrong.) Even if you wanted to write something a little more based in the supernatural and legend as opposed to something dark, gritty and set in realism, we should at least feel like this could happen and the characters and settings aren't stereotypes set out of a cartoon. Have you ever seen the pirates of the Caribbean? Those movies are not historically accurate, but they do provide somewhat of a realistic portrayal of pirate life.

For starters, women were not allowed aboard pirate ships, as they were believed to bring bad luck and curse the ship. There were women pirates, but they had to disguise themselves as men, and if they were caught, they would either be killed or marooned. It would be hard enough for one woman to disguise and poise herself as a man, but two, on a single ship? That's only happened once in history. See Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

The way you have the characters talk bothers me for several reasons. First of all, it's not accurate; in reality, they just spoke normally, with maybe a little bit of variation. Secondly, the way you craft the dialogue is so overblown and magnified that it makes it hard to understand what is actually being said and it makes the story very hard to follow (I had to read it through several times to understand fully what was going on).

When you take that all way, this is bland as a beginning. You haven't given your main character any characteristics to make her stand out as an individual, as of now, she's just a voice to move the story along. I guess you could say there is more to come in this story, but as a writer, you have to make your beginning strong to make your reader want to continue, and as of now, there is really no reason too.

When you revise this, try to flesh out some detail. Who is your main character? Why did she decide to become a pirate? What was her life at home like? Did she know who Grace was before or meet her aboard the ship? What are some of the other pirates like? Where in the ocean are they? What does everything look and sound and feel like? Answering these questions will help us get a better sense of the characters.

I also suggest that you try to do some research -- read books, watch documentaries, look up information online, go to the library, etc. Get a sense of what pirate life was life. A lot of the culture you see in movies like Peter Pan and Treasure Island is inaccurate. Because of the title, I'm assuming that you're going to incorporate the supernatural a little bit later, and that's fine. But pirates were individuals just like us, not cartoonish stereotypes, and they deserve to be presented as such.

But I've babbled on for too long. I hope this review doesn't sound harsh; this has potential, but you just have to mine it a little bit more, clean it up, and flesh it out. If you have any questions, I know quite a bit about pirates, so feel free to give me a shout if you have any questions. Good luck with your revisions!

~ Elinor

Thanks! It was more of a fictional story, and as you said, I'm adding more of the descriptions and characters in later.
I added in all this talk because I had designed it for my younger sister, as a laugh.

Hi!

So, with the dialogue, I feel as though they're over exaggerated which made them rather difficult to read. I know you're trying to set the scene and everything, but really, the dialogue was rather hard to read with all the strange words and stuff. I briefly skimmed Elinor Brynn's review and it looks like she knows more about the setting that you're going for, so I won't go one about that, not to mention that I have no idea what so ever what pirates did.

The story you've written seemed to have lots of dialogue, but I'd like to see what's happening around them. You mentioned unfurling the smeared, dirty cream sails. But what about the rest? What about the ship? What does it look like? Is it old? What's the weather like? Dialogue is a good way to get across information and move the plot on. But setting the scene a bit is good too. After all, a story can't just be all dialogues right? So, what I'm saying is, I'd like to see the dialogue even out a bit.

A thing that I thought looked a bit strange. In the paragraph where the main character was describing Grace and all that, she described it as how we would've described it today, or in other words, normal language, not pirate language. But later on when she interacted with Flynn, she went on with all these strange pirate talk. I would have thought that your thoughts and your speech would be synchronised in language, not different. Like the main character's is. So, either keep the pirate talk throughout the whole story, including the part where the character is describing things and stuff. Or, make the main character talk normal, or if not normal, at least not as exaggerated as she's talking now. As mentioned before, I did skim through Elinor Brynn's review and I saw that she said pirates don't actually talk that way at all, so, I would take her advice and change the pirate talk. But, this is your story, so you don't have to follow my advice.

I guess that was the main stand out bit: the difference in language between the main character's thoughts and speech. The story was really good though, it was interesting and you didn't spend ages describing the setting or if anything spent a bit too little time describing the setting. A bit more setting would be good and by a bit, I mean glimpses of the setting, like you've done here:

unfurling the smeared, dirty cream sails

Overall, well done, the story was interesting and it kept my interest.

Yeah, like I said before, it was something I did for my little sister (who is 6) so the dialouge was just a laugh, and I wanted the dialoge in "pirate" language, and the description/non-dialoge in proper English, and if I am going to carry it on, I would of described the crew and the ship then.

Oh, and I had planned on adding a glossary type thing, explaining all the words.