With Revisions: The Deal Will Live

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

First Impression: Hmm....well this was quite a mysterious little story, we don't realize our character here is some sort of ghost or spirit till the very end, and it really does build up a decent amount of tension there towards, although towards the middle, that little memory may have made things a touch dicey on that account.

Anyway let's get right to it,

I don't know how long it took me to figure out what happened to me. Even now it seems a bit like a jigsaw puzzle with a whole bunch of missing pieces.

When I first heard my name and saw my face on the news, I knew something was wrong. I sat there in awestruck horror.

They were showing pictures of about fifteen people and one of the pictures was of me. It showed my face at my sixteenth birthday -and god- I looked so happy.

I was practically glowing that day... My cheeks had hurt at the end of the day from all the laughing, smiling and happy talking.

That day was when I had met my first true love. He is my older brother's best friend, and had been for quite a while, but I naturally steered clear of anything that had to do with my brother. I had been refilling my punch glass when my eyes had fallen upon his glorious figure. Ah- that was a good day. We just clicked, we related to each other so closely.

When I saw myself on the TV, I was informed that I was a victim of a massive shooting.

I was lying there on the ground, alongside some other people and my true love, Jake, was lying there with blood running down his shoulder and he was holding my head and bawling. His face was dirty and the whole scene was depressing. Some other people were kneeling by someone not even doing anything. They were just in complete shock.

That is when I realized it.

I was dead.

Hello Uni, Wolf here for a review.

So, this is a really nice start, but I don't feel like this is a complete story, but instead more of a skeleton of one that need to be nurtured and added muscle and fat to make it whole. So I get on quite a few people about showing not telling, and this is something that needs to be done here as well.

This lacks a fair bit of details and with those /relevant/ details, this story can be something wonderful. For example, we're not even told what this guy's look like. We're not told why she liked him, and just because of his looks isn't enough to call him 'her true love'. What are his quirks? What's his personality like? Why would he bother going out with her brother's best friend? Details!

Another thing that could use some buffing up, is the memory. You kind of tell about how happy her sixteenth birthday party is, but we're never told, again, why. What did she do there? Were all her friends there? Did they crash someone's house? What made it so spectacular?

Finally, I'm confused on the timing. So how long after she met Jake did this mass shooting take place? Who did it? How could she not know she's dead? That last question makes me super confused. How long did she know this guy that she met to make him care about her so much? Was it a week? A day? A year? How long, I need details!!

This is quite an interesting topic though, and I know you can build so much off of this. You've got a good start and great potential! Happy Review Day and Keep Writing,
~Wolfare

Juxtaposition seems to be the key theme to this story, something that you've might have have picked up on but haven't really built upon. You took the time to set up an environment of contrasting moods, one lively and cheerful, one shocking and melancholic. But while you were not reluctant to describe the party in detail and all the feelings associated with it, you held back upon the post-shooting scene. And I felt that that detracted from the story at whole. Especially considering the whole "life and death" form of irony that seems to have been going on by having the shooting take place on a birthday.

You don't necessarily have to go into the gory details, but you can at least try to be more descriptive like you were in the first part, rather than just say "It was sad. People cried".

Ey up, Uniuqe.

I feel like what you here right now is an idea, and it's one that could be pretty interesting but there's a lot more that you can do here.

One of the exciting and fun things when you've got a twist like this -- where the narrator doesn't realise something so big has happened -- is to build up the tension, to give us some more details so that when our character realises she's dead it's a surprise and we're just as shocked as she is!

Right now, it's pretty easy to tell right off the bat what's going to happen, but there are things that you can do to delay the reveal and lead us up to the story more. Here are some questions you might like to think about, and maybe use to expand this piece.

How long has she been wondering what's happening? It sounds like she's watching TV at home, not at school at the time of the schooting. How does that happen? Does her spirit think it's been a normal school day and sit down ready to kick back with the goggle box?

What makes her think something is wrong? Is it an unsettling feeling inside of her? Is it to do with her memories of the day? Is it the way that people around her, family and friends perhaps, are behaving out of character?

Does the realisation that she's dead come quickly? Or does it build up slowly like a pot of water boiling on the hob? Is she in denial? Would they really show an image of her dead and bloody body on television?

You don't have to answer all of these, but they're things that you can think about when trying to think about what's driving the characters and the story at hand.

Cheers,

Tinny

*Blushes* Mistake in the title* "The Dead Will Live"....