Young Writers Society

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Hey Sunny!

First off, I have to say that I love the title. It reminds me of one of my favorite songs by Dashboard Confessional.

The trees whispered to each other, rocking back and forth in the icy northern wind, the leaves rustling like a thousand butterfly wings.

This is a beautiful opener but it seems too heavy. Maybe try splitting this up into two sentences.

"The trees whispered to each other, rocking back and forth in the icy northern wind. Their leaves rustled like a thousand butterfly wings.

And then she reached the end of the woods.

I don't like this sentence. I know that some people start their sentences with 'And' but it just doesn't seem to work here. I'd suggest connecting it with the sentence that follows.

"When she reached the end of the woods, she could see the ocean rolling and pitching fitfully."

Their hair was lank and loose, no matter the color. The one nearest to her, a woman with waist length dirty blond hair, smiled eerily at her, showing her pointed teeth.

First sentence: I don't think you need "no matter the color" It messes up the flow of things and it's not really important.

Second second: Hmm? I don't think 'eerily' is the right word. I can't think of any other word now but eerily doesn't fit.

“Anna,” she said in greeting, in her raspy, toneless voice. “How good to see you again.”

"Anna," she said, her voice raspy, toneless, "how good to see you again."

It throbbed inside her, leaking from her in her tears that spilled over her muddy hands, that hit the earth and disappeared.

"It throbbed inside of her. It poisoned her tears as they doused her muddy hands. Then, they hit the earth and disappeared."

She felt as if she were the one with an open wound, blood spurting out of her. It was murderer’s pain. Even as she sobbed into the ground, she fought for justification. She’d been ordered to. She’d had to. But she didn’t have to; she had chosen this. There was no vindication. She was guilty.
And she longed for punishment.

1. "It was murderer's pain." You don't really need that sentence.

2. "Even as she sobbed, she fought for justification. She had been ordered to kill them. And because it was an order, she had to obey. A part of her wanted to believe she did the right thing. Simon would respect her for her actions. Actions. They were things you chose to do. She had chosen to kill those creatures, mercilessly. There was no vindication. She was guilty. And she longed for a punishment."

Okay, that's my rendition of that paragraph there.

There came a time when Anna, curled into a ball, trying to keep the broken, guilt-ridden pieces of herself together in one smoldering pile, found that she had no more tears left to shed. That the pain inside her was still raw and aching, but it was bearable. That her thoughts were clear and very much there. That her body moved and operated at just one thought from her brain. That she would follow no more orders that were not her own.

I like this!

Okay, verdict. I really did like this but the beginning started off a little slow. To fix this, you could consider condensing some of your sentences. There are a lot of long ones and if you had a variety of them, everything flow better.

Your descriptions and word choice are lovely. But I am curious as to why you waited to introduce the name of the MC till the middle. Also, I think you need to make the vampires' anger more apparent when she tells them that she has to get rid of them.

All in all, I like how you described the vampires and this is a good story, it really doesn't need a lot of work but just work on your sentence structures and the other points I pointed out, and you should be fine.

I hope of was of some help and keep writing,

~Angel

*gold star*

Hello Sunny. Sorry it took me as long as it did to get to this review…my days have been rather hectic lately and my nights (when I review) have been dedicated to just catching up with sleep. But I had the day off, so here I am to review your vamp story. *loves vampires*

Nitpicks

The trees whispered to each other, rocking back and forth in the icy northern wind, the leaves rustling like a thousand butterfly wings.

Okay, so I feel it’s almost always necessary to touch on the opening line of a story…especially in short stories. The opening line sets the stage for the rest of the story and adds the tone of the story as well, at least in most cases. But another thing to remember is that the opening line is meant to Hook, Grab, and Pull (Yes, I totally have that mantra posted on my bedroom wall.) the reader in.

With your particular opening line, I would perhaps break this up into two sentences like this: “The trees whispered to each other. Rocking back and forth in the icy northern wind, the leaves rustled like a thousand butterfly wings.” This helps in bringing a sharp, short opening sentence to the…opening.

… curves of the hills, till she could no longer distinguish …

This is an error that many people make on accident. “Till” is a word that means about the same thing as to cultivate or to plow. What you should use is the full word “until.”

…and that even seemed quieter than before.

If I were you, I would swap “even” and “seemed” so it says ‘seemed even’.

her eyes peeled and her eyes pricked

Okay, ‘eyes’ is way too repetitive here. Or did you mean for the second ‘eyes’ to be ‘ears’ because I know I’ve done that myself a couple of times before. If that’s not what you meant, then just say “her eyes peeled and pricked”

It was murderer’s pain.

I would probably add and “a” in there after “was.”

She spread her arms wide, taking [s]in[/s] one last deep breath, before throwing herself off the edge.

By getting rid of “in” the sentence becomes shorter, and shorter generally means it will have more impact. Better yet, if you want, you could try and find a way to break this into two sentences.

Description

The full moon hung in the middle of the black void of the sky, outshining by far any of the stars. Moonlight crept around the canopy and a few bars of silvery light hit the forest floor. She stepped around them, ducking into deeper shadows, finding that half-way place in her mind where she was neither awake nor asleep. She flitted, skillfully and somewhat dreamily, around tree trunks and over mossy logs.

Even in its good years, the abbey had been nothing but gloomy and formidable. Now it was derelict. The little cluster of stone buildings were abandoned and slumped, with a few walls that looked as if they had been eaten by some giant. The cemetery jutted out from the side, a rickety fence enclosing the tombstones that have been worn down by wind and time to shapeless stones.

All of this has such wonderful description. The word choice and imagery is beautiful. Actually, there were lots of examples of wonderful description like this, but I didn’t want to post all of them. These two paragraphs were probably my favorites.

Anna

Generally, you don’t see much character development in a short story. But you can obviously see that because of her actions, Anna reacts and development occurs, which is great. You did a wonderful job with this.

Actually, this whole story was really wonderful and it definitely deserves a gold star. Good luck in the contest, Sunny. PM me if you have any questions.

~lilymoore

Hey there.

Overall impressions:

The writing itself is rather nice. You have some skill when it comes to writing descriptions. It was one of the reasons why I kept reading this, it made me feel that I was actually there (at points, I wished I had your description skills). However, for a piece that's well written, I found it strangely dull and uninteresting.

I think the reason for this lies in how you've explored the core ideas in the piece. To me, a lot of emphasis was placed on the descriptions instead of developing the core ideas further. This is problematic because there is very little that the reader can get out of this piece. Though your descriptions are nice, they do little to add more meat to your story.

The first questions that really came into my mind was "What purpose? Why was she determined to kill the vampires?" I don't really get/feel why she did what she did she did. Because her master told her to? To earn his respect? What? Why would she want to do that? I think more of the piece should be focused on developing this relationship between the master and Anna. I just don't really feel that purpose/drive in her.

Then I read further on and I notice that the piece seems to suggest the idea that the main character might be doing this for redemption. But what is she trying to redeem herself from? Why would she want to redeem herself?

This is also the reason why I found the ending to be weak. Well not only that, but you haven't exactly explored further as to why she is tormented.

Ultimately, I realized that this piece wasn't as strong as it could have been because it doesn't capture the deeper reasons as to why vampires are feared in society. Take this with a grain of salt if you want, but my Media Studies teacher once told us that vampires are scary because they have the ability to cross between contrasting ideas and/or themes (such as life/death, man/beast etc). Because of this, we as humans will become quite confused and hence our fear of the unknown. And from what I've gathered, it seems your narrator really despise having this sort of ability...but why? Does it go against her own morals/ideals? What is it?

I also disagree with the reviewer above that said that your main character is developed. To me, she has the right ingredients for development, but she isn't interesting/well rounded yet due to the lack of development of these ideas.

Overall though, I think this is a solid piece. But if you want this to be a good piece of writing, then I think you would need to reconsider the structure of the piece (less focus on descriptions, more on the hardcore ideas and themes established in the piece).

I hope this review has helped somewhat. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss this further.

Good luck.

Andy.

I really like it,it's awsome. How the story was neatly developed, and the events are nicely describes. I would heve liked to know a little more about Anna's appearance. Yhen there's the title, it's awesome too. The story itself is very compelling I really liked it.
Question, is this all? I think it is, because she throws herself off the edge. And it doesn't suck, ok?. It's really good

Pain. That was it. It throbbed inside her, leaking from her in her tears that spilled over her muddy hands, that hit the earth and disappeared. It clawed up her throat, scrabbling to make her bleed as much as possible. She felt as if she were the one with an open wound, blood spurting out of her. It was murderer’s pain. Even as she sobbed into the ground, she fought for justification. She’d been ordered to. She’d had to. But she didn’t have to; she had chosen this. There was no vindication. She was guilty

I really liked this. I liked how you described her tormented feelings and how she feels about her decisins about the decision she has made in the past.

so I really liked it.

Keep writing
pudin.juni

pudin.junidf wrote:.
Question, is this all? I think it is, because she throws herself off the edge. And it doesn't suck, ok?. It's really good.

Aw, thanks!

Um, that's all for this short story. It isn't really part of my novel, just a . . . I dunno, something I wrote about one of the characters.

[spoiler]It isn't really the end. Because Anna is a vampire, she can't kill herself by normal means. Throwing herself off the cliff was her first attempt at suicide, but it doesn't work. She tries various other means, but it only injures her severely, to the point where she can't move.[/spoiler]

Thanks again, pudin.juni!

~Sunny

Now that the Contest has ended I'm going through all the entries and giving them a review.

The trees whispered to each other, rocking back and forth in the icy northern wind, the leaves rustling like a thousand butterfly wings. With the murmuring of the forest and the distant rumbling of waves breaking on the rocky shore, the night echoed a kind of din, white noise that buzzed in her ears.

Really good description.

The full moon hung in the middle of the black void of the sky, outshining by far any of the stars.

This goes without saying, you need to choose what you describe carefully.

she saw distant trees twisting upward as if they were alive.

trees are alive.



“Yes,” she whispered, and put a white hand with long, tapered fingers down to her side, where she stroked the foot-long,

gently curved knife in its sheath.

A vampire with a nife unique

“Simon did this,” hissed the female. She was no longer smiling. In fact, her white eyes flashed dangerously. Quietly, Anna put a hand inside the pouch containing the cold salt. Salt to burn, she intoned, iron to bleed away. Salt to burn, iron to bleed, salt to burn, iron to bleed . . .

Very good, and interesting

It came back then, the determination, the purpose, the movement. But most of all, the thoughtlessness. Anna welcomed it gladly. As if in a daze, she killed them all. It was simply, easy, quick; and once they were dead, she didn’t have to look at them anymore. Most of them rotted on the ground as soon as she impaled them.

First off you didn't describe the battle. Second the very idea that that one vampire took out several others by herself as you say easily and quickly is a bit of a stretch.

She gazed down at her feet, where in the pool of liquid she saw a face looking back at her. It was pale, smooth, and pointed, the features harsh and severe. Black hair that was tied back, a red mouth and sharp white teeth, and dark, endless eyes that seemed hollow. A senseless, uncaring, cruel expression. It didn’t care.
And she was looking at herself

.

Describing you character by way of reflection, bad idea. Although I'll give you points for it being a pool of blood.

Overall I think this was good, you seem to choose the wrong things to describe. You lovingly describe her surrondings but you skip over the battle seen. Which like I said is a bit of a stretch for one vampire to take out many. Second put a little more about Simon. I relize this is just a small portion of a bigger thing, but he was mentioned to often to be so vague. So anyway this was really good. Once I'm finished all these reviews I will post the winners.