Young Writers Society

hello there,

I'm going on this crusade to review an item from the portfolio's of each of my followers and you're next on the list.

so for this story. I think you did a pretty good job of capturing the male voice in this piece. writing from the point of view of the opposite sex can often be tricky for writers but I think you do it well. my only suggestion in that regard would be to make the descriptions a bit more concrete. males tend to describe things based on how they look, physically. where as female narrators tend to lean towards the abstract or how something makes them feel. this isn't always the case, but when a voice deviates from this trend it's usually done intentionally for the purposes of characterization.

also, work on the conflict. there needs to be more standing between the narrator and Madalyn than simply her friends make fun of him. if you're going for the star-crossed lovers approach I suggest you figure out a way to make so that his most loveable characteristic is also the thing that keeps them apart. remember the key to tragedy is giving the hero a fatal flaw which also happens to be his most endearing trait.

that's all I've got for now. good job and keep writing.

Hey Renee,

Hope you're enjoying your time here. I'm Puck.Nice to meet you.
Okay, Now onto the story.
The obvious problem here is the use of apostrophes. You have fixed the whole story into seperate paragraphs, so it looks nice now but the apostrophe can really turn off a reader. I advise you to learn using it. Also, capitalize the "i"'s
Story wise, it's really good, considering your young age. I found the story lucid and clear and that helps your plot to progress. I would've wanted to know a bit more explicitely how Madeline's friends come between Jay and her. Without knowing what led to such pain makes it a bit fragmented.
Also,

BOOM! She explodes, already passing the 5 meter mark after a couple of seconds. Her eyes cloud up even more, and i know what shes thinking about

Hello! Welcome to YWS! I hope you're liking it here.
I'm guineapiggirl and I'm going to give you a little review of this piece here
My initial impressions on looking at it and reading the first few sentences are the lack of paragraphs and apostrophes.
These are two things that just really jumped out at me as soon as I looked at it and it made it quite distracting to read the story.
I'm pretty sure you know about paragraphs. YWS can go funny on the formatting and stuff when you paste it in. I tend to find choosing the 'paste as plain text' rather than the 'paste' option helps with the display.
Anyway, this piece could do with being broken up into a few paragraphs.
The other thing is the apostrophes. You don't have a single one in the whole piece.
I've just copied the first few sentences and put the apostrophes in where they should be:
"As I watch her, I start to wonder what's going on in her head. She looks like she's deep in thought. Her teammates look like they are deep in thought, too. But they don't look as serious as her. There's serious game going on in her head."
OK? THe apostrophe's something I'm really passionate about, and I always get a bit pedantic when I see it being misused/not used. Here's a link to a site that explains where you should put apostrophes: http://www.apostrophe.org.uk/page2.html
Please have a little look at that. You've got great grammar in everything else but, like many people, the apostrophe's your exception. One other thing is that quite a few times you forgot to capitalise I.
Other than that, good on the grammar front.
I quite liked this little story. Are you going to expand it and write a bigger story of it, or is it just this little thing? You've got your characters with an unusual problem in romance fiction which is that, although they both like each other, her friends don't like him. I'd like to know what's going to happen.
My favourite bit is the descriptions you have of her. You really get across how much he likes her. I like this bit:

"Madalynn. I love her. I love her name. I love everything about her. Her determination. Her will. Everything. "

I think you get the point across really well. I'd like you to expand it to have a bit more about her. A little more character development and description in this piece would be good.
It would be interesting if you uploaded Madalynn's point of view.
If you do, you can message me for a review
OK, hope I've helped. Welcome to YWS. Nice interesting piece, good writing style.
Keep up the good work!

Hey, EatSleepRead, welcome the YWS! I hope you're settling in well.

Now, I might come across as a bit harsh in this review, but I really do just want to help you. I'm not saying that this story doesn't have potential, but at the moment there are some pretty big issues that are stopping this piece flourish and I need to point them out. So, here goes:

1)Spelling. This is trivial and banal, but it's so, so important for good writing. This piece is littered with mistakes and typos, and it got to the point where I just couldn't focus on the actual narrative because I was too busy noticing all the spelling mistakes. If you just remember to use a spell-checker, this whole problem will go away. It's as simple as that.

2) Punctuation. Your main problem, so I have seen, is with apostrophes. You need to remember that "can't", "wasn't", "it's" (for 'it is') and numerous other words feature them, otherwise the writing looks unprofessional and doesn't read well. Again, a spell-checker would help with this, and I recommend that you find the rules of apostrophes and where to use them elsewhere on the Internet. It's vital you learn them - you can't just rely on your computer to pick out your mistakes.

3)Sentence structure. This problem has a bit more depth, but you only ever seem to use short, clipped sentences which quickly grow repetitive and detract from the interest of the story. It pays to use slightly mote lengthy sentences, and never underestimate the way that you can use connectives - even simple ones like 'but', 'yet' and 'and - to tie separate phrases together. Use of more complex sentence structure would do wonders for the sophistication of your writing, but I do advise that you focus on punctuation and spelling for now. Let's not run before you walk.

Keep writing! Hope I helped!

~Dark

I forgot to add this, but please review! I need some feedback becuz im only 12 and theres so much to learn...
I have this story in Madalynn's POV too, so if u want me to put that up as well, just holler
Also, keep in mind that this is my first story and im a newbie at this whole YWS thingy. Just thought u should know.
-Renee