Young Writers Society

Clo wrote:I know -- truth be told, I'm like the gooshiest Instructor there is. I'm too nice.

I challenge this!

Hey hey,

Welcome to YWS. Before I begin, I think I should say that here we have a policy that for every story or poem you post, you should review two others. It ensures everyone is covered, okay?

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Some people say personal character thoughts need to be italicised to be distinguished from narrative; it's not a rule and some people think otherwise, so long as it's done well. I think we can leave the opening thoughts as they are, just recognise that it might come across better in other ways.

I shift my head over to my clock on my desk. It says that it’s 2:00 in the morning.

Here's an awkward sentence. You can't really shift your head onto a clock, which is, grammatically speaking, what the first sentence there tells us. No, it should read something like:

'I shift my head over. The clock reads: 2:00 AM.'

Or something like that. Clocks can't speak or read actually, so think of another way to get that across.

Another noise blasts its way through my ears. I’m only now aware that there was an original noise in the first place. The original noise is the one that woke me up. This new sound is a noise related to the first one. The original noise was a thud, a collision of two forces in a heavy manner. The second was a cry for help. These noises appeared to be coming from outside my bedroom.

You start out okay and then degenerate into a needlessly repetitive and over-written description of something that is really quite simple. This is the biggest problem with the writing in this piece. It's far too repetitive - something happens, then its thought about and analysed by the character in a really unbelievable, unreadable fashion that distances the reader from the action and the piece. The paragraph above should read something like:

'Another noise blasts its way through my ears. I'm only now aware that there was an original noise in the first place. One that woke me up. This new sound was a cry for help and it came from right outside my window.'

Now, that's just me cutting and reordering the sentences, it doesn't necessarily mean that in itself is okay. I think it all needs to be rewritten. It needs to be more direct, more present, less passive and more active.

Now, that I had been thinking about these two bursts of sounds, I was no longer worried about it being 2:00 in the morning.

Unnecessary. Cut it.

I shifted my blankets to the side as I moved my legs across my bed. I planted them on the floor as I walked over to my window.

You write as though you're painfully aware of what you are doing. Of the fact that you are writing, or as though you are not used to the English language - foreigner's tend not to use contractions and speak like that. You shouldn't write like that though. Certainly, every action doesn't need to be recounted. Why? It's boring and stilted and unnatural.

A simple: 'I got out of bed and looked out the window' - would've sufficed.

Ever since I was little I was always paranoid of some mysterious creepy figure lurking behind my closet or under my bed. I quickly shoved that small little though out of my head as I walked over to the window.

You have a very awkward way of phrasing sentences. And chronologically speaking some sentences are just plain strange. I walked over....but before that I did....' - you should write it as it happens. Above, you need a bit of revision:

'Ever since I was little I've been paranoid of...'

['I was always' is just plain strange]

Through the glass window I saw a human figure lying on the ground. I scanned over him seeing if their was anything wrong

....this is what I mean about your writing being unnatural and strangely phrased. Even here 'human figure' is just such a strange observation for someone to make, even more so for someone who has just woken up. 'their' should be 'there', also.

The first thing that wasn’t right was the fact that he was dressed in rather dark clothing. A pair of dark blue jeans along with some shirt that was a simple black with some logo on it. The second thing that wasn’t right was the fact that it was 2:00 in the morning. If it were to be any time where people were active, then I’d have been concerned for his safety. However, if he was active during a time when most people weren’t active, then he had motives of doing something that he didn’t want others to find out about. The third thing that wasn’t right was the fact his leg was bleeding profoundly. Even beneath the darkness of the night and jeans, I could still the blood oozing out of his body.

This whole thing needs to go. Stop analysing - even if it was a good, clinical, enlightening analysis this wouldn't be okay and its not.

Firstly - there's nothing wrong with jeans and a dark shirt, even at night.
Secondly - we already know the time, don't repeat it.
Thirdly - the most important observation is bogged down in dross. Cut it all away, get to the point. You have to stop being so aware of what your writing, so removed from the story and get within the character, within his mind and his experiences - that's what integrating backstory and action and description is all about; you start okay with his thoughts showing us his disorientation, etc but after that your a thousand miles away from the story.

Get to the point. Why? If you'd just woken up, having heard wierd noises and seen someone on your lawn would all of the text up to this point adequately show how you felt? No. No way.

Dark. Morning. Disorientation. Noise. Getting up, blearily looking out. Man bleeding.

Simplify. Okay? I want you to describe things but I want you to do it in a less obvious way; to demonstrate rather than explain, to make it visceral and real, rather than contrived and plodding. There is no suspense whatsoever. Directly related to the distance I keep mentioning, the passivity. Also, spice up the writing! The tone, the sentence variation, the descriptions. Why can he see the blood at night, through the jeans? [profoundly doesn't work in this context, by the way, and adverbs are icky in general.] Is it gleaming? Is the thief grasping his leg, staining his hands red?

It was easy to tell from the facts I had examined that he was indeed a thief who had slipped and broke his leg.

No, no it isn't. This is you, the author, allowing your knowledge to influence the character. There's just no way you could say that with any conviction, with the story thus far. None of this is being presented well. 'Indeed' implies that he had suspected this fact previously and there's no indication of that in the text.

However, it seemed out that the thief

However, it seemed odd that the thief...

What was he doing attempting to brake in

break

Listen. None of this is realistic or believable in the slightest. Some guy wakes up, discovers a bleeding stranger on his lawn and does what? Stands there for a while examining why the thief chose to break in the wrong way and...what?! !!!!

There are no feelings! There's no sense of character whatsoever. Crisis decisions are prime ways of showing the true nature of a character without telling and there's just no sense of that here. You need to weave back-story into action, okay? This guy has been in some tough situations, he's not panicking, he's confident and not calling the cops. Why? Give us some reasoning. There's just no way he'd be standing there doing nothing, he'd definitely be doing something. Running down the stairs to deal with it, checking the rest of his house for other thieves, calling the cops (or not, because he has contraband?) etc.

The following paragraphs are awful, awful info-dumps. You just vomited out his life story with no thought whatsoever about placement or subtlety; this wasn't an integrated, seamlessly transitioned sequence of events, but a disjointed explanation of poorly phrased sentences, regarding a very cliched story and a character not worthy of being anything other than a cardboard cut out. There's no originality of voice, style or content. Grammatically speaking, you do fairly well - a few basic errors here and there, but its the general manner of storytelling and characterisation that I'm having a problem with it. Let's review the story structure:

What happens:

A former gang member and thief wakes up one night, to find he's been found by his former gang. His wife opened his eyes many years ago and they've been on the run ever since. On this night, the struggle to escape is fought once more.

How You Tell It:

Protagonist wakes up to hear someone crying for help. He gets up to find someone sprawled on his lawn. After examining the situation he decides that the person is a would-be thief and without further thought or investigation decides to go down and talk to said thief. He doesn't call the police or check the rest of his house - no indication of the layout or whether anyone else is in the house, if he's married or not, - and there's no sense whatsoever of surprise or alarm.

He doesn't administer aid or interrogate the man or check on his wife (who for some reason isn't mentioned for the entire story up to this point) but talks to the thief, who lies to him. He doesn't believe the cock and bull story anyway. Meanwhile he is found out by the other thief (who for some reason can't see as well as the protagonist could from that window and can't tell who is who) and together (they're co-operating now, injured thief and protagonist, for some as yet unknown reason) they dupe the other, bring him down and the protagonist kills him in a fit of rage.

A fit of rage from one of the most detached characters I've ever come across. There's no sense that he's been on the run. There's no sense that he's been in danger and needs to be fearful, otherwise seeing a thief on his lawn would've freaked him out (surely the gang would have some sort of distinguishable dress? manner? tattoo?) and sent him packing, but no. There's no sense he has a wife and if he does, why is she not sleeping in his room? Despite that she gets found by the other thief, but is left unharmed?? None of this makes sense. Not only is the writing passive, plodding, basic in description and sentence structure, the actual story itself and sequence of events doesn't make sense. It's as if you only realised the story as you wrote it. It comes across as very haphazard and poorly executed. You need to think this through and rewrite the entire piece. The dialogue too, is horrible.

Look, it's great that you're being creative, that you have stories to tell but you need a lot of help in doing it. Ask yourself, what is it about this story that needs telling? What distinguishes it from all the others being told? What is it about this character that makes him worthy of being read? Why should we care about him or what's happening? This isn't, in my opinion, a good story. You can write and you keep a fairly decent hold on grammar most of the way through, so that's great. You just need to think this through, rewrite with better characterisation and suspense. Don't be discouraged by this review. At your age, I couldn't write for shit, okay? I was absolutely rubbish and I wouldn't have been able to write even this. You get better as you write more, though. Keep practicing, keep trying your hardest. I'm going to recommend you check out the 'Knowledge Base' section of YWS. It contains heaps of articles on how to improve your writing.

Hope this helped,
Cheers