Young Writers Society

Hey Jas!

I’m so sorry it took me so long to get to this, and I’m sorry again because this was a beautiful read.

A few nitpicks:

you were there too in jeans and a spiderman t-shirt, fidgety and bored and later, when we played war of the worlds with my barbies and your GI joes, i knew we'd be friends forever.

Because I’m a horrible person and you said to be mean, I take issue with this last statement. So far all the friendship seems to have been very one-sided. It’s the narrator watching the boy, observing the boy, and going from “fidgety and bored” to “friends forever” jars a little. It doesn’t feel real and genuine on both sides. If that’s the effect you were going for, then great. If not, maybe add some interaction between the two, so it feels like the friendship is something between the two of them, and not something the girl is dreaming of in her head.

adam took it worse though and i guess it was expected because adam was always closer to dad and as a twelve year old on the cusp of manhood, adam wasn't ready to lose faith in his father yet. my mom was full of fake smiles that summer and sometimes at night, i could hear her crying through the wall.

This is very stupid, but I hate the word “cusp”. It also feels kinda archaic, like a Victorian story about girls on the cusp of womanhood blooming into flowers or something like that. You can ignore that if you want to, though. Also, I feel like the bolded “and” should be “but”, because then you get a stronger sense of juxtaposition. It’s just a minor point, though, so you can ignore me.

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As I said, this was a beautiful read. I love the structure—each part beginning with “you were” and then the final part beginning with “I” seems to symbolise her maturation, and moving beyond her love for the boy, which seems to have defined her whole life up until his death. It’s like a metamorphosis, moving on and becoming her own person.

However. The lack of capitalisation bugs me, because what’s the point? Every time I see someone do something different with punctuation, I always wonder why. Why change the normal order of things? Just doing it for kicks isn’t enough, because it’s a big change, and if it doesn’t mean something and if it isn’t important, then it’s like introducing an axe-murderer into a novel and not having him kill someone.

Either have normal capitals all the way through, or maybe have them in the last part, to symbolise the maturation of the character. I’d like a name for her, btw. Maybe have her reveal it in said last part? I feel like the last part is the most important, and so it needs a bit more oomph. The capitals, the name reveal, some twist could really make this stand out, and change it from a sweet romance into something deeper and darker.

I hope this was vaguely helpful, and PM or Wall me if you have any questions!

-twit

Hi, Jas dearest! Rach and Ribbit here, as requested.

Neither of us can figure out how to start this review, beyond that little salutation. You asked for harsh, mean, brutal reviews at the top and that isn't necessarily the way we roll. But you did ask, and so we figure we'll do it your way AND our way. In the same review. *dramatic music here*

First, this story's obviously resonating with your readers here. It's a sweet story, a bit tragic, a bit predictable, like a thousand and one chick-flicks to which women and girls clinging to the denial of prince charming and true love flee. Awww, they were best friends! Awww, they fell in love! Aww, he died tragically in a car accident but he loved her more!

In a movie, after the hour and a half of handsome, gorgeous actors making gooey eyes at each other, the audience would be bawling, and it would go down in history as one of one thousand and one good tear-jerking chick flicks.

My chick-flick hating self, combined with your request for a harsh, mean, brutal review, results in the following two-word reaction: "So what?"

You wrote a good little piece, dressed it up in a snazzy little second-person style sans capitalization, and here it is. I can tell you that, structurally, the last snippet where she's in Switzerland seemed extremely drastic to (cynical, chick-flick hating) me, especially considering that there was no lead-up to her being the move-off-to-Switzerland type or of her being in the position to do so, academically or financially. With an addition that high school French courses have a tendency to be pathetic.

And, that this line bugged me,

there is nothing more abnormal in nature than the death of a child and not unexpectedly

because of the clunky way it was written ("there is...") and because the sentiment suddenly when from reporting facts and feelings to musing on the nature of death and parenthood. You could ditch that and just have it as his parents moving south.

And with those two nitpicks tidied up, it'd be an even better good little chick flick dressed up in a snazzy suit of second person sans capitalization.

But... so what?

That's about as much being mean as I can handle, so we are now going to jump to the Rach-and-Ribbit portion of the reviewing program.

For the reasons outline above, the story didn't impress me. The fact that you wrote this so quickly, and that it's so smooth and flowy and by accounts of what it is good, lets me know that this was easy for you. I'm wondering why you're bothering to write things that are easy for you. If you can write good things easily, what would happen if you wrote something that was challenging for you?

The way this is, the potential here is fairly maxed out, but that doesn't mean there isn't somewhere you could take this. Somewhere challenging, for one reason another.

Because no review of mine would be complete without a strange metaphor, I'm going to borrow the one I once told ultraviolet, who like you is capable of writing good stories easily. It was Thanksgiving at the time, and so the metaphor was Thanksgiving-themed:

What I want to see is you stick your hand inside that raw turkey and pull out the story insides. Not dance prettily around with a butter sauce, but reach in--especially if that makes you uncomfortable--and yank and feel the ooze between your writerly fingers.

Because maybe she really does move off to Switzerland. My mean first half of the review said that was too drastic, but what if that's exactly what she does? Because that's the sort of person she is, and she needed to get far, far away. Or because that's the sort of path she'd been set upon. Or because that was the best way to deal with the past. Explore that line of thinking.

Another thing that caught my attention--in the mean part I would have told you to tone it down--was that she describes her life in Switzerland as 'perfect,' which didn't make sense in that context because of how she says something is missing, which would therefore make things not perfect. But it doesn't have to be her definition of perfect. Or maybe it is her definition of perfect--what she always thought of as perfect--but yet something is missing, and she misses him despite himself.

After all, he did go down that bad boy path, and leave her for some other girl, which means he left her before he even died, he was missing before he died.

Those things--what was special about their relationship, their characters--is the "So what." It's what can separate this from the other thousand. If you're willing to get your hands dirty, and try something new, write something that might fail.

This is safe, Jas. This story is what safe looks like. It's a spiffy safe, because you're talented, but you're bursting with potential to do more. What exactly risky is for you, I don't know. I know risky for me was writing something understated, calm, simple, because I always hid in the safety of huge, glamorous, spectacular, shiny things like nifty plot twists. Maybe for you it would be diving into the content of the story.

This one's as good a start as any. It could be that your subconscious is onto something, with her moving off to Switzerland. Or with that word 'perfect.' Or him being gone from her life before he actually dies.

Those things are uncomfortable things. Things that make an audience think uncomfortable things. And to write them means going to uncomfortable places. But the pay off would be worth it.

Now, after this review, I don't want you sitting there at your computer thinking, "Rach says I have to challenge myself. Must challenge myself. Have to write something challenging. Uncomfortable." Asking yourself to do that is like asking yourself to come up with a masterpiece or an idea for a best-selling novel. That's not how it works.

But it's something to keep in mind. And if you catch yourself thinking, "But I couldn't write that.." or "I'm not good enough to..." or being afraid of a line of thinking, follow that and see where it takes you. You have more in you than you know.

I hope this helps you out, Jas, and I look forward to reading your writing in the future, I do. I also hope you'll forgive me for the first part of the review (or maybe the whole review) because that's certainly not how I prefer to review, but you did ask! *hugs*

You know where to find me if you have questions/comments/concerns/need help. I'm always here for ya, and my sig is as true now as it ever ways and always be.

Rach