Young Writers Society

I faded in and out of consciousness. With each stride Ash gave, a wave of blinding pain washed over me, and I shuddered through it. Ash’s shirt was soaked with blood, and his grim expression never left his face.

“Can’t…we stop?” I murmur, somewhat breathlessly.

Ash took a big leap over something big on the ground. I gritted my teeth as that tortuous pain came again.

“We can’t, Selina,” was all he said.

My name sounded strange coming from his mouth. He never spoke to me with my first name. Only my middle.

He wasn’t just tired, I realized as I glanced at his tensed mouth, drawn eyebrows, and hardened eyes. Ash was angry.

When we finally, finally arrived back at home, I was placed in a bed almost immediately, Ash got his mother and she removed the bullets and wrapped bandages around my torso.

Lucky, she was saying. I was lucky.

Then she led Ash out of the room, and I was left to sleep peacefully.

When I woke again, it was to the sound of arguing.

“She almost got us both killed!” I recognized Ash’s voice.

“My Ash, it was her first mission. I have no doubt she will improve.” his mother reassured him.

“And how many of us will die before then?!”

“Watch your mouth.” Shadow snapped.

I practically heard the tension from just outside my door. I heard Ash stomp away. Guilt sprung. Ash and Shadow’s relationship was already complicated. Adding an escape from death today didn’t help that.

When was I going to finally not be the reason for everything that goes wrong?

Hey there @thequeerwriter!! First off, a warm welcome to YWS ^^ I hope you're finding your way around the site well. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me ^^

Regarding this scene: I'll give some general thoughts on this and pose some questions! But first, a note: If you're wanting some specific writing critique/advice, I do recommend posting this in the Publishing Center as a literary work! Our site is unique in that our writing culture is actually a reviewing culture, where we give feedback to other writers/poets in order to earn "points" to post more works ourselves.

Onto the flashback!

Okay, so is this the flashback? It might be that I don't have context to what was outside of the flashback, but the beginning of this doesn't really read as a flashback. However, it reads pretty fine!

I'll pose some questions for ya:

-Where in the story does this take place? (if it's early in the story, flashbacks are a bit trope-y, but if it's in the middle of the story it could work to provide important plot points)

-What does this flashback serve in the bigger picture? (if it doesn't really serve anything besides being a flashback for the sake of a flashback, then it's better served elsewhere. On the flipside, if it is pretty clearly a plot device, it would be better served with nuance)

-What's the context before and after this flashback?

I will say that all of these questions will be better answered if you post the full story as literary works in the Publishing Center. You will most definitely get better and more in depth advice there. Nonetheless, I do hope this helped ^^

Hi @thequeerwriter! Hope you're enjoying the site so far and it's great to see you posting already.

I'd like to echo what Omni's said about posting through the publishing centre as you'll definitely get more feedback that way (please do shout if you need help working out how to do this and one of us will be more than happy to walk you through it).

In terms of the flashback, it's hard to comment on it as is without knowing its context in the story and where it fits in. Sometimes flashbacks can feel a little jarring if they aren't set up properly in the text prior to them, so that's something to watch out for.

Also think about whether we need the full flashback. Sometimes we feel like we should give the reader all the background when actually a couple of sentences alluding to the past are more subtle, and can work better in the story. I'm not saying that's the case here (again, can't comment without the full context) but it might be something to consider when you're writing

In general though, the writing quality and pacing are good so if that's your query, then I think you've done a good job so far!

If you do post this to the site through the publishing centre, please feel free to tag me and I'll review it in full (just pop me a message on my wall, or DM me). Hope this has helped!

Icy