Young Writers Society

Temi. Thank you.

I was grateful for this writing from the moment this line passed through me:

For if the sky could be our sign for danger approaching then it would never be blue. It would never be clear.

This, too, is gorgeous and haunting:

I look around and every girl had already called upon their own silence to inhabit them.

Flawlessly worded. And that ending paragraph is so full of a multitude of feelings. It seems to shift with every sentence, but each moment is as genuine as the next and the one before. These three moments, especially, are very well-written and successful in what they aim to do.

Of course, there are places where the writing might be improved, I think. I'll share them with you and we'll see if we can't polish up the rest of the work to match the radiance of my favorite three parts.

The second paragraph sort of strays from the intensity you set the work up with when it gets to talking in generalizations about the situation. The general "you" get hardened to life, "hundreds" die -- it's a summary of the situation and as a summary it's necessarily distanced from the details. But there are so many accounts of this life, this event, this tragedy, that are distanced from the details. When you can hit the details so finely as you do, why move away from them?

I think the discussion about how can we even consider using our brains for exams when the previous day we mopped up blood? -- I think that is effective in showing the feeling of the sentences that precede it. It's like you're saying the same thing twice: once stating, once showing, and we only really need the showing.

I respect your decision to try to keep the description of gore and violence in a passive voice, so that it is not a sensational moment and doesn't glorify the blood, but presents it. I think, however, that you could use a more active tone or sense to describe the scene more clearly, to the standard that was set when we watched the solid details of girls carrying bags over their heads to block the shade, the desks where they sat to take exams, the sound of the crunching and the concrete thought of a classmate grinding their teeth.

It might help to focus on trying to widen and create the space of the classroom. There's an image of a man at the door, but that just brings the reader's sight to the door. How can we swoop through the room so we get the height of the ceiling, the feeling of being trapped in the room with the bodies of the other girls around us, the wall behind us, the front of the room -- how can you get us to feel like we're present in a place? I think it would help to present that scene.

I hope all these thoughts are helpful to you if you choose to edit and revise this. Even if you don't, thank you for bringing such beautiful moments to life and sharing them with us. You and your writing are important and excellent.

PM me or reply here if you have any questions/comments about my review.
Good luck and keep writing.

Hannah