Young Writers Society

Everybody knows you can't outrun your own shadow, but I had no choice. I had to get away from the terrible darkness which clung to me. I ran until my lungs burned, but it still held on. I knew it would never let go. All I could do was run.

Is this for a contest or something?

Okay, so I feel kinda stupid for critiquing a fifty word story, but for some reason I feel compelled to. This is nice, haunting, but nice. But the opening line, it's too... generalizing. Start something with "everyone knows" when in fact everyone in the world probably does not know, then I'm going to feel lied to. Especially if it's something I don't know. And it's not really much of a hook, anyway.

If it were me, I'd change it to "You can't outrun your shadow - everyone knows that - but I had no choice." It shows you a fact, and a hooking one, before saying it's obvious. Of course, this just reflects my style. Keep it how it is, if you want, but it's like using a line like "For as long as I can remember," or "I'd never imagined when I'd walked into the -insert place here- that..." Of course, these aren't necessarily bad in and of themselves, but a lot of people get tired of them, and it makes them think that if the beginning's cliche, the part that's supposed to be the best and most looked at, then what must the rest be like?

(And yes, by now I do feel like an idiot for writing over twice the size of the work in critiquing the first line.)

Anyway, for something so short, this holds a lot of emotion. It shows defeat and fear and desperation. So, I kinda love it.

loveness, ultraviolet <3

@ultraviolet you shouldn't feel silly for writing a critique longer than the original piece, there's an art to writing succinctly, which is why writing picture books for children is so difficult, using minimal words with a limited vocabulary, but still writing an interesting story to captivate a young audience.

Anyway, on to my critique:
Everybody knows you can't outrun you're own shadow, but I had no choice.

I agree with @Ultiraviolet that this needs working on. Firstly, it's
"your", not "you're". Secondly, you've written a sweeping generalisation at the beginning. I'm not sure that everybody does know that you can outrun your own shadow. I'd omit the first two words and remove the 'but', so the sentence is: "You can't outrun your own shadow. I had no choice."

"I had to get away from the terrible darkness which clung to me. I ran until my lungs burned, but it still held on."

The sentence is a bit childlike, e.g. "the cat sat on the mat... I had to do that". I'd rearrange it, something like "The terrible darkness which clung to me was inescapable, but I had to run, run until my lungs burned, but still it held on."

"I knew it would never let go. All I could do was run."

The end doesn't really say much, and like Ultraviolet says I'm not sure if this is a competition to write a synopsis for an existing story, but the end doesn't really want me to read the actual story. Saying "I knew" puts me off a little, I (and most readers) don't like when the character knows more than the reader (unless they just think they do, creating dramatic irony), so instead I would be more succinct e.g. "Never letting go, all I could do was run."

Not sure if that fits in with the fifty word thing, I wasn't counting, but I think you show more than say, so maybe swapping some of the sentences around a bit would be more effective.

Hope this helps!
~ Emma

I wouldn't so much as call this a story as I would call this a poem, a very good poem at that. I think what solidified the poem aspect of it was the last line, the All I could do was run. Write more please!

Heya
This is great, not only because its 'short and sweet' but it leaves so much for the imagination, and even though you can think about what may happen after or what happened to make you need to run, you're not in the dark about the emotion.

Seriously, I love it!

MissMadHatter

ps. our names are alike

MissMadHatter, at first glance I thought you were critiquing your own piece! xD
Anyway, TheMadHatter, I really like this little piece here! It reminds me of those little written bits of mine that will stay in the darkness for as long as they do not have a piece for me to fit them in. Anyway, I enjoyed reading it!

Wow. It seems everyone has pretty much beat the crap out of this. I feel obligated to apologize for such reviews, because I found this quite nice. It was quick and simple, but painted nice general picture. My only critique is "your" not "you're", and you should use more adjectives to paint a discriptive picture in the reader's mind. I wrote something similar, only with fifty-five words, for an english assignment last month. I have it posted on YWS even . It's called The Last Rose In fall.

Good job!
I enjoyed reading

xoxo,
Kiicoh.

Hey there. This story is nice. It caught me with its 'darkness' xD. However, the shortness is flawed too. As a story, I see no plot. I didn't get what was the point of this piece. It's more like an essay 'cause nothing happened. Hmm...yah, I think, it would be better if this is considered an essay rather than a story.

Anyway, I agree with what the others said. The piece was able to create images inside the readers' mind even though it is short and that there weren't much descriptive words. I applaud you for that.

This was short and sweet =D

Everybody knows you can't outrun your own shadow, but I had no choice. I had to get away from the terrible darkness which clung to me. I ran until my lungs burned, but it (instead of "it", you might find it better to replace it with "the darkness", so that the "it" in your next sentence is not referring back to a noun that had been stated two sentences ago, and had already been used as the antecedent once before.)still held on. I knew it would never let go. All I could do was run.

Using more descriptive words is also a bonus in short stories/paragraphs/poems as well. Using different and more colorful vocabulary would most definitely liven up what you've already got here. BUT, that all depends on your writing style. Sometimes, less is more.

-Mazey

I always wanted to critique this fifty word story...I don' know why but I'm going to anyway.
Firstly, I like the first sentence. It introduces a problem and captures some interest and question which is a good thing.
Makes me wonder what's his character running from but you're not going to waste words telling us that, we'll just have to use our imagination. Also, I have no idea what 'see that shadow' is that you're inspired by. Is it a song? Another poem of some sort or is this a contest entree? I don't know... Anyway, I thought the third sentence was bit of a waste. It just continued to state what the other sentence before it actually already mentioned. I wouldn't waste words like that and actually put something else there that could make it feel more problematic or such.

As far as your ending goes, I kind of dislike it. It just keep going, running and running but there is no solution, no final ending and it makes me feel like this is incomplete. I don't know, that's just my thoughts. Anyway, as far a fifty word story goes, I did enjoy this. It's nice...

-Pink

Even for such a short piece, it is pretty interesting, and poetic, at that. However, with it's shortness comes problems. I am not even slightly engrossed in this story, because I know it is short, and to be honest, you never really make the effort to truly engross me.

This might not make complete sense but, it seems like you took a long time to write a short story. Not that the concept of running from shadows can take long to come up with, but I get the feeling you sort of struggled to make this into just 50 words, now to me, that seems like wasted effort, when the story is so short. Spend your time detailing it and really fleshing it out, instead of trying so hard to make it short. Unless this is for a contest or something similar, in which case you did fairly well for using only 50 words.

Dear all, just wanted to clear up some confusion. This was a task we had to do in my writing club. We were given a list of 6 word 'stories' ( one of which was 'see that shadow? (It's not yours)') and had to write a 50 word story inspired by one of them. I would have added more description and detail,and changed some of the dodgy wording, but I couldn't due to the limited word count. I've changed the 'you're' to 'your'. That was just a typo. There's not really much point changing anything else now anyhow, as I have already handed it in.
Thanks for all the reviews,
Hatter

Also, surely it's obvious that you can't outrun your own shadow? Your shadow is always attatched to you, so it is blatently impossible to outrun it.

Sorry that sounded really rude when I read over it. I get a bit feisty when typing :/