Young Writers Society

The nightmare was simple, but complex in its own way. It started with Chloe standing in a forest. She thought the forest was familiar but she couldn’t exactly place it. Chloe heard dead leaves on the forest floor breaking coming from her left. She tried to peer through the evergreen trees, but it was too dark to see what was hiding in the shadows.
Chloe heard branches breaking behind her and when she whirled around she saw Elena looking up at her with an unusual devilish smile on her face. Then Elena’s body began to contort itself in impossible ways. While her body was being twisted into various shapes, Elena said in a cruel singsong voice, “Why didn’t you save me? You want to know a secret? You’re going to die in more pain than me. You’re going to scream and beg for mercy, but there is no mercy here because you didn’t help me.” Chloe tried to speak, but no sound came out. All she could do was stare at her sister’s body as it became crippled. She watched, silently screaming, until Elena’s neck broke. Elena crumpled to the ground at Chloe’s feet. With tears flowing down her cheeks, Chloe knelt next to her sister’s dead body and attempted to wake Elena by shaking her.
Chloe instantly regretted her decision to try to wake her sister. Elena’s eyes snapped open, her irises a blood red. Elena shoved Chloe over and she fell into a giant gaping hole. As Chloe fell into nothingness, she could hear something’s laughter echoing sinisterly throughout the hole. The closer she got to the bottom, the more pain she felt.
At the very bottom of the hole, there were at five fires arranged in a star shape. In the center of the star was Cynthia. She was holding a sharp knife and muttering a rhyme in a different language, possibly Latin. Chloe could hear Cynthia say, “Tribuo mihi a corpus somes.”Cynthia cut her palm and let the blood flow freely to the ground, not once flinching from the pain. Once Cynthia’s blood stopped flowing evenly, she slowly stopped saying the rhyme and stared up at Chloe, with a cold glint in her eye. She then stuck the knife blade up in the air and said, in the foreign language, “Take is vitualamen. Purgo meus animus per is cruor. Adficio is vita vis quod infuse is per mei.”
Chloe fell, unable to stop herself, and was stabbed in the abdomen with the knife. As Chloe’s life slipped away from her, she witnessed Cynthia become stronger and corporeal. Cynthia looked straight at Chloe and said in a happy voice, “Have fun in Hell.” Chloe woke up in her bed covered in a sheet of cool sweat and her sheets twisted around her legs. She looked at the clock and its glowing read numbers said that it was four in the morning.

This sounds pretty good, so far. Try to go a little more indepth, though. I'd love to feel more of what the character, Chloe, is feeling, thinking, more on her past, more on the anxiety she has that she has to squash down to make herself believe it was just wind moving in the window-that sort of thing. And, also, some general editing is in order. I didn't see any spelling errors, but there were still some grammatical mishaps.

The premise is brief, short, to the point thus far--you have a good bare-bones background right now. I'd love to come back and see this when it's been expanded, beefed up, and given time to mature. The emotion, we need to feel sad for the little girl, and feel somethign to identify with Chloe about, too. You need readers to identify. Again, you have the basis for something good, but to make it its best, you have to beef it up, make the reader sad, maybe cry over the little girl Cynthia drowning. Describe Cynthia a little bit. Tell us, even in just a fw words, what she's like. Tell us her parents' reaction to finding her dead. Then give us something else about Chloe to attach to. Everything in a story like this is caring about the character. Otherwise...they're just somebody somewhere that we don't have much invested in. We won't care what happens to them. And how you change that is by giving them personalities, characteristics, and showing us who they are. Just in a short bit, with a few details, which can be worked right into the same paragraph, it doesn't have to have some strange, extensive exposition. Just a few more details is all.

Thank you so much. I would like to to try to make it a novel. Do you have any tips for that?

Hi 13, okay so first I want to say I really agree with Vox. Beef things up add more detail. I really think this story line seems promising so far; you really could make it into a novel. But you really need to add more details and emotions first. I remember when I first started writing I found it really hard to make things long enough so I stuck to flash fiction at first, but longer pieces can be so much more fulfilling. Besides that I don't have many comments because this is so short.

I think that the prologue could be really cool from the little girl, Cynthia's, perspective. That way instead of you just telling us what happened and the whole story it could be a lot more mysterious. First person is an easy way to get lots of thoughts and feelings in. Maybe it would be cool to do the prologue from the lockets perspective even! That would be really cool. I actually think that any point of view would make it a lot more interesting because third person when the narrator knows everything leaves us with little we don't know eaither.

Play around with it! Also, send me a P.M. wihen you get more of this; I'd be interested in reviewing your work again, because this really seems like a good start. Also, if you want any advice on writing check out the community forums; they are great for writing chit chat. I hope I helped.

- Calli

Thanks! I have redone my first two paragraphs , and now it looks so much better.

Hi volleyball! I'm back for another review since you edited. Okay this is so much better than before it isn't even funny. When I first started writing I was horrible at editing; in fact, I still secretly despise it, but you are really good at taking reviews and actually improving! Where I would just keep reviews in mind while I wrote my next chapter. One thing though is that with all this editing this 'paragraph' is getting a bit long; I would split it into two paragraphs. This is a good thing because your story is getting more meat.

Now, you can start to get into the finer workings of your writing, because the big problems have mostly been taken care of. Besides a few grammar mistakes, the biggest problem I noticed was your sentence variety. Some of your sentences are compound or complex sentences, but a lot of them are simple sentences. For example:

The cool air ran shivers down her spine. The window that Chloe was glaring at had suddenly opened and closed with a loud bang. The window closed with so much impact that the glass shattered.

All these sentences are very similar. So, read your paragraph out loud and ask yourself if the sentences are starting to sound slightly monotone. Play around with your grammar make short sentences like 'Chole fumed.' Try to structure the sentences in new ways than before! But make sure that you know if the sentence is complete or not! A lot of sentence structure will just come as you get older (your only 11 right?) and if you write, write, write!

Besides that I just have some nitpicks:

Chloe was sixteen and had just moved into a new house in Long Creek, Oregon. The town was small, yet quaint. She truly hated having to move to another small town- three unknown towns You have said 'town' a lot of times, maybe try to cut it out or use a different word. in one year; it was very frustrating. It didn’t help that each town was older and more boring than the last. As Chloe made her way to the small room that is now called her bedroom, should be a semi-colon like ';'. Also, this would sound a lot smoother and simpler if it was like this 'As Chole made her way to her small, new room;' she slammed her feet on the steps of the stairs just so they would squeak louder. When she walked into her new room, she took a moment to take in the not so spacious roomOkay, as I have highlighted in blue, the last few sentences have said 'room' a lot! Again try to edit a few of those out . It had a wooden floor and two small windows. Chloe glared at the thunderous clouds just outside her window, when something shining on the wood floor caught her eye. As she got closer, Chloe found it was a golden locket in the shape of a heart. On the back it was inscribed, “Cynthia, 1936.” When Chloe opened the locket, a breeze of cold air seemed to rush out of it. The cool air ran shivers down her spine. The window that Chloe was glaring at had suddenly opened and closed with a loud bang. The window closed with so much impact that the glass shattered. Something weird had obviously happened but Chloe’s mind was determined to believe that there was a simple explanation for the cold air and the shattered window, but in the back of her mind she knew that something definitely was off about either her new room or the newly found locket. Chloe quickly made a decision and shoved the locket into her pocket while trying to forget what had just happened. Chloe didn’t even glance at the shards of glass below the window. I don't know why, but I feel like this whole thing isn't dramatized enough; personally, I would be freaked out if this happened to me even if I was trying to forget what happened! Instead, she went down to the kitchen to make dinner. Her mother and father were still in Washington, collecting the rest of their belongings, so it was just her.

I also feel like the ending was cut off at the end, but I know that this isn't a whole chapter. I can't wait to hear more!

If you have any questions P.M. me again like you have been!

Calli

Hey, volleyball!!
Well, I didn't read any of the previous reviews, so, I'm sorry if I say something that was already said before...
I really like where the story is going, but I think you should tell it from Chloe's point of view, so the reader can emphatize with her.
You should focuse more on her feelings, her thoughts, etc. When she finds the locket, for example...

volleyball13 wrote:As Chloe made her way to the small room that is now called her bedroom, she slammed her feet on the steps of the stairs just so they would squeak louder. When she walked into her new room, she took a moment to take in the not so spacious room. It had a wooden floor and two small windows. Chloe glared at the thunderous clouds just outside her window, when something shining on the wood floor caught her eye.

We see a repetition of the terms "room", "small" and "window" here... Give this a second thought, okay?
Like I said, I like where the story is going, and I would love to read more...
Keep writing and feel free to PM me...
Bye