Young Writers Society

It wasn’t that long ago when I moved to Maine with my father. Back at my old home in New York, my mom had gotten a promotion to her already high-paying position at her company job. This may sound like a good thing, but as it turned out the new position required many more hours and responsibilities from her; she’d come home exhausted after a long day of work and be called in an hour later for a meeting.

I can remember one Wednesday in particular when I came home from school and saw a note on the kitchen table on which she had scrawled out ’Sorry honey, got called into work again. I won’t be back ’till late. Love, Mom’. I fixed myself a bowl of Cocoa Puffs for dinner and sat in front of the T.V waiting for her to come home. I would’ve normally just gone to bed, but that day at school I was crowned Spelling Bee champion and I wanted to surprise her with the good news. I mean sure, I won it every year, but just because my victories were consecutive it didn’t make winning the new title any less sweet.

Just the thought of seeing the glowing look on her face kept me awake past 3 a.m., but it was a school night, and halfway through Jimmy Kimmel I just wasn’t able to keep my eyes open any longer. I jolted awake three hours later to the monotonous beeping noise of my alarm, and my arm flew out instinctively to hit the snooze. I had completely forgotten that I had passed out on the couch, and instead of hitting my clock, my hand knocked over a tall glass of fizz-less Mountain Dew that toppled over and splashed onto our virtually stainless white rug. I had to skip breakfast that morning in order to squint through my blurry, sleep-deprived vision to focus on cleaning the pale green mess. Needless to say, I was out cold through the first two classes of the day, and dealt with a head-splitting migraine until I passed out the instant I got home.

The Cocoa Puff Routine, as I liked to call it, continued for the next few weeks, and eventually mom stopped leaving me messages to explain she had to work. I learned how to make homemade soup and scrambled eggs, because even though I imagined I would never tire of them, a week of solid Cocoa Puffs just didn’t cut it anymore. I even began to wash my own dishes, because to put it frankly, the mess that had begun to pile up since mom’s promotion was really starting to gross me out.

After the third week of being more or less self-dependant, mom announced to me after she got back form work one evening that I was moving in with my father. She explained how she just wasn’t able to be a mother to me anymore, and that I needed someone to take care of me. This took me completely by surprise, and I argued that I was doing just fine here by myself. I told her how I even taught myself to cook and clean while she was away, but she decisively shook her head back and forth, and refusing to even listen.

“You could live better than this. You’re going to your father’s because he can take care of you and I can’t!”

I got so frustrated with her that I just started crying and yelling; two things I never did. It was like she thought I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself! She was treating me like I was a kid. I‘d been fine for a whole month, and now she suddenly decides I‘m not good enough. I get good grades, clean my room, and do my chores, and she’s kicking me out of the house!

I ran off into my room because I just couldn’t stand arguing my point in what I already knew was a losing battle. Hours later, I passed out on a tear-stained pillow, my head nearly bursting with all this insanity.

The next day at school was totally miserable. Mom had left me scrambled eggs on the stove for breakfast, but I knew she only made them because of last night’s fight so I left them untouched, and spitefully grabbed the box of Cocoa Puffs.

I wasn’t planning on telling them yet, but I ended up spilling the bad news to my friends at lunch when they sensed something was wrong. I mumbled the events of last night to them while I repeatedly stabbed my chicken patty. Their reactions were as shocked as mine had been, but they didn’t say much besides,

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,”

“Don’t worry,”

And, “That sucks!”

I couldn’t really blame them, because those were the thoughts I kept playing inside my own head. I figured Mom would just talk to her boss about her hours, or maybe hire a babysitter, however embarrassing that would be.

The truth of it was that I just wouldn‘t accept it. A terrible feeling of uncertainty gnawed at my insides, and I knew that however impossible it might seem, things in my life were going to start changing really fast.




~

Hey! =]

My first impression upon reading this was just how rushed it seemed - it felt like you were trying to run through this character's life so that we could get into some dialogue after the back-story. But it didn't come naturally, eg: seeing as she could no longer seem to raise me."

That needs a least a few paragraphs explaining. Coupled with the next remark about how she only knew her father threw letters, we're talking a massive impact on how this girl has been brought up. This feeling carries on for the next few paragraphs, and is even more disproportionate when we consider the amount of time in comparison spent on travelling, and then such a brief greeting with a man this girl has never met before.

I'd recommend spending some time getting into how these events have shaped her character. It would be a good way to introduce her, in my opinion. It would make the final part where she cries so much more significant - the first chapter is always a great place to introduce to the reader who this character is.

Hope that helped.
-Mark

okay like Blink said it feels rushed and doesn't really flow well. I would really like to say I got something from the character,but I didn't I mean you implied she was sad, overwhelmed which is normal in a situation like hers, but it didn't say anything about her.

Hello, wariofart here to review. I'm not expert, so I'll just be playing this by ear. Hope it helps.

Description: First, the descriptions. They were fine, but seemed lacking. There was no emotional punch to it, you were just saying "Oh, his house had wood in it and lots of windows." Dive deeper into what that means for your Elyse. What does she think about it? She lived in New York for most of her life, right? So she would have had a pretty tiny apartment, even with her Mom's high salary. Think about what having a house with a bunch of windows and wood furniture means to your character. Also, think about why you're telling the readers about it. For me, it doesn't shed a lot of light on the father.

Dialogue:The dialogue was great in this piece. Characters seemed lifelike, and even with the amount you had, I didn't get bored. However, there is one blaring problem that almost destroys this whole piece.

seeing as I had never met the man before, and as far as I knew, he and my mother were still on good terms, even though they were divorced.

What?! That just seems totally, totally, impossible. How could Elyse go through her whole life without ever seeing her father? Doesn't she at least remember seeing him when she was younger? And even if the Mom was busy with her job, this girl must have seen her Dad at least once. Maybe her Mom had a week long conference and had to leave Elyse with her father since she'd be gone. I'm sorry for going on this rant, but it just seems impossible to me. Especially since you say there are on good terms. Why would the Mom never let a man, who she supposedly still tolerates, never allow him to see his own daughter? I'm friends with a few people with divorced parents, and they see them fairly regularly. One of my best friends, in fact, has parents that hate each other, but she still sees the Dad at least once a month. (On a side note, isn't it sad that it always seems to be the Dad who is left without the kids?)
So if you want readers to believe in this story, these characters, you'll have to either change it, or come up with a pretty grand excuse. I'll leave you to decide which.

Characters: The characters, like the dialogue, were believable. I liked how they all had there little flaws, that really fleshes them out. However, and this is the same problem with the dialogue, Elyse has never met her Dad? I feel like this scene would be plausible if Elyse had seen her Dad at least a few times before. Otherwise, the whole dynamic of the scene would probably have to change.

Overall: Even with my rant about her Dad, I still really liked this piece. The characters seemed lifelike, and were very interesting. To improve, just think about how realistic the whole backstory is, like others have said. Spend some more time with it, maybe devote a whole chapter to explaining what it was like to grow up with her Mom. Then, when she is forced to live with her Dad, the readers can really appreciate how traumatic this really would be. Hope this helps, and as always, Keep Writing.

Hi, BlackSheep! Sorry, I know it took me a little while to get to this review, I can be a little slow to get these done.

Well, the story does seem pretty interesting so far, though I’ve really got no guesses on what’s going to happen.
I think by far the best-written part is the feeling of conflict that the MC has with her (?) mother—it’s really very honest and believable, and I can feel the character’s anger and disappointment that her mother won’t be there for her, as well as her frustration when the mother tries to push her over on her dad. I also like how easily it’s symbolized by things like how the main character expresses disgust at the mess left behind when her mother isn’t there to clean, and how she eventually refuses to eat her food.


I also like that the conflict was set up in such a way that you could easily sympathize with both characters and both sides of the argument. I can definitely feel the main character’s need to be independent and to have her independence recognized, her sense of pride, and her loyalty to and her love of the place where she is. At the same time, I could really easily see her mom’s point that the MC really needs to go and live with someone who actually can and will take care of her, someone that she can really rely on. I suppose on an emotional level, I really identify with the MC’s side of the argument, while on an intellectual level I can identify with the mother. This is great, because it keeps both sides of the conflict from getting demonized by the reader—the mother isn’t cast as a villain, but the MC isn’t an idiot, either.

There are also a lot of great scenes that show the love between the main character and her mother, though, and I especially like the scene in the second paragraph where she falls asleep waiting for her. It was really sweet and sympathetic, and that made me feel real pity for her—especially later on in the scene where she panics and knocks over the Mountain Dew and has to clean it up, poor girl. Scenes like that are really great for establishing her character as someone I, as the reader, can feel real pain for.

The main problem I have here, though, is that, like Blink said, this seems pretty massively rushed. I can’t get close to any of the characters or get to into the story, because it feels like great opportunities for the growth and development of the characters are just flying right past me with nothing but a cursory mention.

The main reason for that feeling of rushed-ness, I think, is the fact that this chapter has an awful lot of telling rather than showing. There are some great little showing moments, where the character’s feelings are implied rather than outright stated, and I like those best—for example, the scenes about the MC’s mom’s cooking vs. the main character making herself cereal, showing that the main character wants to preserve her independence even if it’s not as good for her.

But other times, I feel like the MC was just summarizing for us what her experience had been with her mom’s busy schedule, especially around the beginning. This scene, where the MC has to face what almost amounts to abandonment by her mother for such a long time, could be particularly emotionally evocative and give the reader a reason to feel sympathy for the main character, but it feels more like the narrator’s experience is just being summarized for us.

I think the narrator just becomes self-dependant a little bit too fast—if more time was spent on these individual days (showing, perhaps, her initial struggles with having to do unfamiliar things, her loneliness, her feelings of disappointment when her mother doesn’t show up again and again) then I think I could feel more attached to her character and connect to the story a little more. In a sense, I’d feel more like the character was someone real and believable, rather than just that I was being told a story.

Otherwise, though, I think there’s a lot of exciting potential in this opening chapter, and I’ll be glad to read the next one, if you’d like me to! ^_^ I hope my review was helpful.

Hey Black! Sorry it took me two days to get to you. My computer and laptop both had crashed down at the same time. But here I am.

Just the thought of seeing the glowing look on her face kept me awake past 3 a.m., but it was a school night and I just wasn’t able to keep my eyes from drooping closed.

Till now, you were totally not doing any kind of describing and most of the thing was kinda Tell, not 'Show'. so I think this could have been the right place to get on with some of it. You could have elaborated and explained the drowsiness which took hold of her. Just be more specific.

I jolted awake three hours later to the monotonous beeping noise of my alarm, and my arm flew out instinctively to hit the snooze.

I just wanted to point out that this was the very part from where my interest began to shoot up, and before this seemed monotonous just liked the beeping noise of the alarm. LOL.

Okay, to start off with, I have already read many stories where the parents get a divorce and the child is forced to live with another parent(mostly father) with whom they don't share such a good bonding. But the main twist to this is that why she is leaving to live with her father. Her mom's work. Now, I exactly don't have any idea what would happen next. Is she going to meet out-pf-some-fairytale-beautiful boy and have a vampire boyfriend? LOL. Well, that is to see in the next chapter where I would be able to get in more touch with the main idea.

Now coming onto the main thing: writing. Let me be very honest on this. I know you have a good talent for writing and it did show at some places, but at others it read like something even a class one child can write. From the beginning, where it ought to have grasped my interest, it failed to. You were just simply narrating things when you should have been starting on with some scene instead(not necessary). But if you are interested in starting off with a scene then here's a quick advice: you can start on from where she comes to her dad's place. It can be a cliche idea, though.

The descriptions?To be very frank, even though you were telling us more than showing, but still there was a lot of scope of describing the emotions, the things around her, the scene, etc. To start off with, you could have told us a bit more about the pride she felt when she was crowned Spelling Bee. There could have been more things.As there wasn't much of showing, there were also not much of dialog. So, I don't have much to comment on that.

My main critique would be that I believe that the place from where you started this was the most wrong thing. You could have really started off with somewhere more of a thing to be called a beginning, which could hold the attention for long. But, don't worry, I did like how the things started progressing further.As Zan said, I also loved where she slept waiting for her mother. That was adorable.My other issue is her age. Guessing from that she was crowned Spelling Bee and how she loved Cocoa Puffs, and all, I assume that she is still small and has not yet reached her teens, but there is no solid proof of that. I hope you do all the things and then present us with a whole new chapter.

On the whole, I would suggest revising this up, and also to concentrate more on this, and taking time for writing down the chapters. There were many mistakes, but I didn't go in for a line-by-line review, but if you want one, I can definitely do that.

Bye,
Shubhi

Back at my old home in New York, my mom had gotten a promotion to her already high-paying position at the company job.

sat in front of the T.V

Spell out television.

Just the thought of seeing the glowing look on her face kept me awake past 3 a.m.,

Change that to, "until three in the morning . . ."

tall glass of fizz-less Mountain Dew

The general term for so without fizz is flat. Just say, "tall glass of flat Mountain Dew"

and dealt with a head-splitting migraine until I passed out the instant I got home.

Get rid of the word head.

she got back form work one evening

How do you get back form something? I think you mean from.

Overall: Ok, right now, I must say it's kind of boring. There's little description and nothing to really drag me into the story. Try describing their house, maybe add in bits why her parents are divorced, or just add something liven it up because it's just darn monotonous. Your grammar was fine with only a couple mistakes. What I do to help me with description is to try to form a picture in your head how you want it to go and then try your best to translate what you see into words, then go over it and fix any grammar mistakes or remove things that aren't important.

Hey BlackSheep!
I just came to look at your profile, and I saw that you have written this novel!
I thought since you had donated so much time to my novel, it was only fair I did the same for yours
And I am very impressed!
In fact, im loving it so far!
So, comments will be in bold

It wasn’t that long ago when I moved to Maine with my father.Id consider rephrasing this, it just doesnt sit right... maybe 'I moved to Maine with my father not tha long ago' Back at my old home in New York, my mom had gotten a promotion to her already high-paying position at her company job. This may sound like a good thing, but as it turned out the new position required many more hours and responsibilities from her; she’d come home exhausted after a long day of work and be called in an hour later for a meeting.

I can remember one Wednesday in particular when I came home from school and saw a note on the kitchen table on which she had scrawled out ’Sorry honey, got called into work again. I won’t be back ’till late. Love, Mom’. I fixed myself a bowl of Cocoa Puffs for dinner and sat in front of the T.V waiting for her to come home. I would’ve normally just gone to bed, but that day at school I was crowned Spelling Bee champion and I wanted to surprise her with the good news.I mean sSure, I won it every year, but just because my victories were consecutive it didn’t make winning the new title any less sweet. i love that last line!

Just the thought of seeing the glowing look on her face kept me awake past 3 a.m., but it was a school night, and halfway through Jimmy Kimmel, I just wasn’t able to keep my eyes open any longer. I jolted awake three hours later to the monotonous beeping noise of my alarm, and my arm flew out instinctively to hit the snooze. I had completely forgotten that I had passed out on the couch, and instead of hitting my clock, my hand knocked over a tall glass of fizz-less Mountain Dew that toppled over and splashed onto our virtually stainless white rug. I had to skip breakfast that morning in order to squint through my blurry, sleep-deprived vision to focus on cleaning the pale green mess. Needless to say, I was out cold through the first two classes of the day, and dealt with a head-splitting migraine until I passed out the instant I got home.

The Cocoa Puff Routine, as I liked to call it, continued for the next few weeks, and eventually mom stopped leaving me messages to explain she had to work. I learned how to make homemade soup and scrambled eggs, because even though I imagined I would never tire of them, a week of solid Cocoa Puffs just didn’t cut it anymore. I even began to wash my own dishes, because to put it frankly, the mess that had begun to pile up since mom’s promotion was really starting to gross me out. a amazing, informative, funny paragraph!

After the third week of being more or less self-dependant, mom announced to me after she got back form work one evening that I was moving in with my father. She explained how she just wasn’t able to be a mother to me anymore, and that I needed someone to take care of me. This took me completely by surprise, and I argued that I was doing just fine here alone dont need to say alone aswell as by myself by myself. I told her how I even taught myself to cook and clean while she was away, but she decisively shook her head back and forthand-refuseding to even listen.

“You could live better than this. You’re going to your father’s because he can take care of you and I can’t!”

I got so frustrated with her that I just started crying and yelling; two things I never did. It was like she thought I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself! She was treating me like I was a kid. I‘d been fine for a whole month, and now she suddenly decides I‘m not good enough. I get good grades, clean my room, and do my chores, and she’s kicking me out of the house!

I ran off into my room because I just couldn’t stand arguing my point in what I already knew was a loosing oops small typo! battle. Hours later, I passed out on a tear-stained pillow, my head nearly bursting with all this insanity.

The next day at school was totally miserable. Mom had left me scrambled eggs on the stove for breakfast, but I knew she only made them because of last night’s fight so I left them untouched, and spitefully grabbed the box of Cocoa Puffs.

I wasn’t planning on telling them yet, but I ended up spilling the bad news to my friends at lunch when they sensed something was wrong. I mumbled the events of last night to them while I repeatedly stabbed my chicken patty. Their reactions were as shocked as mine had been, but they didn’t say much besides,

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,”

“Don’t worry,”

And, “That sucks!”

I couldn’t really blame them, because those were the thoughts I kept playing inside my own head. I figured she say mom hear instead, so the reader knows exactly who you're talking about would just talk to her boss about her hours, or maybe hire a babysitter, however embarrassing that would be.

The truth of it was that I just wouldn‘t accept it. A terrible feeling of uncertainty gnawed at my insides, and I knew that however impossible it might seem, things in my life were going to start changing really fast.

WOWOWOWW!
This is amazing, and really gripping!
Hardly any typo's, and any suggestions of mine are just because the sentence didnt sit right
BUT WOW.
Cant wait til the next chapter!
-Ava

THAT WAS AMAZING....Seriously can't think of what to say am still trying to understand how i managed to read it all since i'm so amazed XD hehehe you did goood and I am most definitely going to read more once i'm able to. As of now I believe it's time I went to bed, get some much 2 days of solid sleep I won't ever get, and Read and review once again^^ Good job..Good luck and Happy Writing
Soulkana<3

I loved the story I was really interested in how you described the mnt. dew falling on the floor. That was genius pure genius. I think that it would have been better written if I felt more concerned about the character. I don't even know her name (I'm assuming it's a her). I think that the fight with the mom would have been better if you described it like I, as the reader, was there. It seemed as if it was a new and hardly interesting friend of mine was telling me there life story in one breath as soon as I said "Good morning." What I would do to make it better and to make me want to know more about this character and her relationship with her friends and family I would write it how you did but instead of telling me what happened, show me more. I was thinking, and you can burn this idea if you want, and this entire review for that matter, but you could possibly write it like "Dear so-and-so, today blah blah blah......" then take me and the rest of your readers through the events. You could possibly write most of the first chapter like this then SHOW the fight and SHOW the friends reactions and her bitterness as she stomps out of the house with her coco puffs. That's it. I'm not a Grammar Nazi so your safe there. Keep writing though! I really did love it.
~Berlynn Rae