Young Writers Society

Short Story.

Saint Josephine's School of Acting For Young Women.
Ellie Hart
Sunday, 6th December

“Starlight, Star bright; first star I see tonight… I’ll make a wish, count to ten…” I murmured furiously, squeezing my eyes shut tight in frustration.
“I want to be me, I want to be me, I want to be me for the first time in my life!” I muttered out loud. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, out of their own accord.
“Ellie, get your butt out here! It’s our scene,” Brittany suddenly yelled out in disgust, banging on the door of the dormitory. I nearly fell from the windowsill in shock.
“Just a minute!” I shouted huskily.
Blinking angrily, I took one last look at the eternal darkness outside; slightly frostbitten trees and fields glistening eerily white in the full moon; with just my single star, fluttering carelessly on the spot.
I wished that that was me at that moment. A beautiful, carefree star, shimmering effortlessly; flying over the world...
“Ellie! Hurry up!” Brittany shouted again, destroying what was left of my mystical silence.
I groaned, unlocked the dorm door and barged straight past Brittany without so much as glancing at her.

I step out from the shadows, all of the cameras pointing in my direction.
“Eliza, where are you?” I whisper into thin air.
I pause. “I am terribly afraid, Eliza… Please, do show yourself! I’m scared!”
I begin to sob desperately, and…
“Arghh! Eliza… help me… Eliza!”
Brittany’s arms are around my neck, her face alarmingly close to mine.
“Sweet dreams,” she snarls, and laughs.
“Eliza? Eliza! What – what are you doing? Let go! Let -”
and I collapse dramatically to the ground as she pushes the fake butcher’s knife into my back…
“Brava! Brava!” Director yelled, emerging from the dark.
“Great job, kids,” he says annoyingly, and claps me on the back as I struggle to get up.
“Okay. Rap up, folks. It’s getting late,” he says, and shoos me and Brittany out into the corridor, shutting the hall doors behind him as the set was cleared; quick as that.

Brittany looked towards me and glared, meaningfully, storming off up the corridor towards the West Wing to her dormitory; full of all of her friends. At least somebody would be having fun tonight.
And there I was. Left alone. Again.
They needed me, demanded me, used me and just chucked me out again. I so wished that I could control people, just like that!

Sighing, I headed off to my empty dorm at the East Wing.
It wasn’t usually empty, but Miss Epson had organised a special trip to Disneyland for a week; observing some shows and operas, too, of course. Everybody I knew had gone; everybody apart from the few people I despised.



I had the opportunity to go to, of course, but my Mother refused to pay.
“You still haven’t finished that little Victorian thriller, El. You aren’t leaving that damn school until you produce at least one thing I can be proud of… And I want proof that you’ve done it, too. I want a Goddamn blockbusting DVD!
I know that that probably sounds bad, coming from me. But when you’re older and you’ve achieved your fame, I know you’ll thank me. So, no. You can’t go on any trip at this present moment. I can barely afford it anyway. No is my final answer.”
Mother’s voice rings around my head until I can’t stand it.
I can hear girls in the dorm next to me; laughing and giggling and making me feel the loneliest I have ever ever felt before…
I always used to be terrified of this dark room, even with Silvia and Stacey and Amy with me. But tonight, I just couldn’t care.

I wasn’t usually a crying person. But tonight… I just wept; for everything. For my “friends,” who hadn’t bothered to even find a call-box and ring me in four days; for my brother; who had the right to stay at home and to stay himself, because he was in a wheelchair; and for me, for the girl that I am but never could be. And I don’t know anymore. I’ve spent all of my life pretending; pretending to be happy for my mother, pretending to be a whole different person for my acting.
And now I don’t know who I am anymore. I truly don’t know.

All I want to do is… scream. But not in the form of somebody else.
I want to scream. For once in my life.

Nobody was around to give me a cuddle and to tell me it was okay.
So I did what I did best.
I pretended; I pretended that I was okay, and I fell asleep hopelessly and dreamlessly.

Tuesday, 8th December

“They’ll never see! I’ll never be! I struggle on and on to feed this hunger, burning deep inside of me…” I called, and began to cry, obeying the script.
“Okay, Ellie. And that’s a rap! You may go, love…” Director said. “And you too, Brittany.”
But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop crying. I ran out into the hallway and just wept sorrowfully, leaning against the wall, and the strangest thing happened.
Brittany hovered by me for a few seconds.
And instead of calling Director, like I would have imagined she would do, or just walking away, which would have been pretty bitchy; but something that she would have done anyway...
She pulled me from the wall and made me face her. I must have looked pretty revolting; face all puffy and snot dribbling down my face.
But she didn't seem to care.
She pulled me toward her, and hugged me.
I felt stupid by this point, but I still couldn't help it. I just felt so relieved to have a shoulder to cry on; no matter who's that shoulder belonged too.
"I'm sorry, Ellie. For everything."




Thank you for reading my story, and feel free to critisise
I wrote this because I always used to be jelous of famous people and... I wanted to feel a little better So I thought I'd write about these people at bad times in there lives...
to cheer me up
(But I guess it needs to have a happy ending, soooo... )
xxx

Hey!

A few things:

Blinking angrily, I took one last look at the eternal darkness outside; slightly frostbitten trees and fields glistening eerily white in the full moon; with just my single star, fluttering carelessly on the spot.

~ Love this.

Brittany’s name was perfectly suited to her.

~ "Brittany's name suited her perfectly."

“Eliza, where are you?” I whisper into thin air.
I pause. “I am terribly afraid, Eliza… Please, do show yourself! I’m scared!”
I begin to sob desperately, and…
“Arghh! Eliza… help me… Eliza!”
Brittany’s arms are around my neck, her face alarmingly close to mine.
“Sweet dreams,” she snarls, and laughs.

~I was going to say that I didn't really understand this, but then I realized it was just them acting, and I understood it. However, you might want to begin by saying something about the fact that they're on a stage (I know you didn't want to do that) but otherwise it just kind of comes off as sounded convoluted and confusing.

Brittany looked towards me and glared, meaningfully, storming off up the corridor towards the West Wing to her full dormitory.

~"Brittany looked glared meaningfully at me, then stormed off up the corridor towards the West Wing to her dormitory." --I didn't know what "full" meant, so I took it out. If it has some meaning, by all means use it but maybe clarify a bit.

Everybody I knew had gone; everybody apart from the few people I despised.

~ I think this should be: "Everybody I knew THOUGHT I had gone"?

There is not much to review here. It's a well written story, but it wraps up pretty quickly and isn't very complicated. I haven't read any of your other works, but I think you should definitely try writing some longer pieces (not novels, just longer short stories) to stretch your talent. You're good with words, but a story like this one doesn't really showcase any kind of talent with storymaking, you know what I mean?
Anyway, good job! & Keep writing.

Drawers

Loving the acting school and the emotion flowling throught it you've got hate and anger and sadness and then a bit of joy all mixed up perfectly and it shows good writting skills. but i'm not really getting it's a diary so just out the dates and scrap the diary idea. unless you are going to change it too a diary but other wise i think it's really good keep it upp.

Wow emma i never knew you were good at writing. this is brilliant, im not even kidding this is excellent! well done. are you going to carry on, i'd really like to read more! xxxxxxxx (:
p.s could you review my story, its feeling lonely lol

Hey Ems, here again. Hope I can be of some help again.

Saint Josephine's School of Acting For Young Women.
Ellie's Diary!
Sunday. 6th December.

I have a problem here with the format you used in here. Sure when somebody writes a diary, for instance me, I won't bother to have a proper format and all, even though ideally I should. But whatever it is, when you're presenting a story based on the diary format, you need to take this in mind-format should be perfect. So here, you don't need to have a full-stop after every information you give to us. Neither there should be an exclamatory sign after Diary. Also, the Sunday would have a comma after it, not a full-stop.

As for the start, it was good, I really liked how she was practicing her dialog or whatever it was. I really liked it. Just a little more description of the dormitory itself. I liked the bit where you have the moment where she describes the outside world from her window and how she longs to remain in peace-that was brilliantly crafted, I liked it. But more than that is the need of bit of how the dormitory looked. It might not seem very important to the story's plot but if you see, it's quite important since the condition of her room is going to tell a lot about how the place is-whether rich people come, or the middle class. Small things like these would help shape up your story, so just work on that. My second opinion would be of the scene where she comes to the stage in the story for the first time. Sure, there wasn't an audience gathered to see them perform but I think there are always some other technicians or crew members who are around to see how the thing is going and some of them are in the seats for the guests. So don't forget that, and not much but little would be required on your part to show us or give us the feel of the theater. After all the whole school is about dramatics and if you forget that element, it won't be too great.

Grammar. I felt there was a lot wrong with your grammar this time. You had many weird sentences in and out there, so just try reading everything aloud and you would be able to find your mistakes. Also, if you want me to go in for a line-by-line review, just PM me and I'll be here. Do let me know. It might be vague of me just telling there were some mistakes, so if you need help, just tell me. And don't hesitate. Now onto the story. Overall, I felt it was nice, good by the way, but t was just the story I felt was good. Not the main writing thing. I have read the last work of yours and I am sure that you can pull out much more than this. In the beginning, I loved it, but then as it dragged on(like last time), it lost its spice. I might not be able to tell you what I exactly feel, but I'll try. Emotions. That was lacking. At two three points you had great emotions, I could feel her, but then later they just seemed to be some words, totally ineffective on me. Just keep in mind that your readers are not going to have dreams on how the MC feels, you have to make them feel that. Maybe some more flashbacks could have worked. But the sweetest thing, which also came as a surprise, was Brittany hugging her. That was indeed sweet, but at the same time, unexpected. But it was the main thing, so that can't be changed. Other than that, I'd like to say that you can have more of flashbacks about the boyfriend Brits stole from Ellie. Just that and this story would look more realistic.

The USP of this story was that it was situated or set up in a drama school. Quite honestly, I love the idea and there was lot you could have played on with this topic in your hand, but just you didn't. I was not exactly there. When I am reading something, I should be able to picture myself there, but sadly it didn't happen for me. Other than that I felt the character of Brittany quite underestimated. Even though we don't have many characters here, Brittany is the one next important to MC, and she was not well-defined to us. I had a major problem following up their age. Brits was that snobby, rich girl but what else drew these guys to her? Another thing would be that the relationship between the MC and Brits should have been another highlight and well-defined. You should have taken more time to bring us to the relation they both shared, which I am sure was a bitter one. That's important to do-just share the relationship they had. Any fights they had? I know this was supposed to be a short story, but without these dimensions unexplored, this can't be complete. You need to do justice to it. As for the title-why this? It didn't suit to the story. Please explain to me if I couldn't understand it. It might be me. Did you mean emotional fools? Anyways, there were some loopholes in the story. I felt the time when she felt so sad as to yell and cry, the part was rushing. I felt everything was slower in comparison to this-no emotions.

Sorry if I were harsh.

The main problems I encountered in your writing:
-lack of descriptions: Your MC sees lot more around them-tell us that.
-lack of emotions: I need to feel them
-small grammatical errors-yeah!
-Rushed ends-They just seem to be not of my taste.

But your good points:
-good message
-epic opening and ending line
-nice imagery, but needs more work.

Bye,
Shubhi

Hey, Em!

I'm sorry this has taken me ages to get to... I've been so busy lately. I can't apologise enough. Anyway, I'm here now, so that's better than nothing, I guess. If you have any questions or anything after this review, just let me know. I'll be happy to clear any confusion for you.

As a whole, I liked this. I think that you potentially have a great idea here, Em. I also noticed that you had some flashes of wonderful imagery too, so if you can expand on them even more, they will get even better. Another thing I liked about this was the overall message of it. It was good because even though you kind of explained the message of the piece at the end, I didn't need to read that to understand the point you were trying to get across in this. Does that make sense? I hope it does. Basically, a thumbs up for the message of this story. Now, onto critiques!

I have to agree with Shubhi on what she said about the imagery. Like I've already mentioned, there were flashes of good imagery throughout this, so you're halfway there. What I'd like to see you doing now is going into more detail with them. Like Shubhi said, what does the dorm look like exactly? You don't have to tell us about every single speck of dust or anything, but make sure that us readers can see the dorm in our heads. Make sure that you set the scene for, well, every scene. With imagery, you can create the right atmosphere and that is very important. In my mind, it is anyway. You're half way there already. All that you need to do now is expand on them.

It's a little annoying because all of the things I've noticed have already been mentioned by previous reviewers. I don't want to repeat everything all over again, but I don't want to cut this review short either... Hmmm... I think what I'll do is repeat the one thing I think you mostly need to work on.

Basically, I'm not loving the pace of this right now. I agree that the ending seems a little sudden and rushed. I may be a bit biased because I prefer novels to short stories, but I think that you should make this longer. Maybe? I don't write short stories unless I have to really, but when I do, they're often long short stories. Unless they are long, I'm not comfortable with them because I worry that I haven't given as much as I could, if you get what I mean. I get paranoid unless I express every emotion, set every scene, create every character e.t.c. to a good standard.

Don't worry about writing something that's a little long because you need to make sure you give as much as you can. At the same time though, don't just make something long to make it long. Some short stories work better with a thousand words, and some work better with six thousand. As for this story, I think that extending it could make it even better. In the end, it's up to you because it is your writing, but I would suggest that you at least consider extending parts of this, especially the ending. It's a little blunt and sudden at the moment, to me.

Sorry I haven't been an awful amount of help... Keep writing,

xoxo Skins

Hello!
I thought this was an awesome story!! There are a few nitpicks that I would love to point out, but I really do think this deserves around first place for the contest!!

Brittany’s name suited her perfectly. The spoilt little rich girl, the one that always has something to cry about.
But also; the one

I found that you spelled spoiled wrong, but that doesn't really change anything, except that it kept bugging me.
And also the "But also;" I don't really know why you put ; there. You could put a comma instead.


GREAT JOB AND KEEP WRITING!!!



~Kat