Young Writers Society

This is a good start, one that defiantly should be expanded in a larger project. Whatever Skit did must have been really terrible. I suggest betraying friendship or love for another if you want to make it a story about jealousy. But you are the writer; therefore, you have the final say over anyone else. Anyways, here are a few things I would change.


She could not bring herself to look at him. Even though he hadn’t meant to do it, he had, and therefore he was responsible for all that might happen.

(Consider rewarding the last part of this, remember to stay away from pronouns as much as you can.)

“I am so sorry, Reign. So very sorry I am.” Skit bowed his head toward the ground. He watched as an autumn leaf, brown with red spots skid across the dirt.

(I think there is a comma after spots. I am not the best with comma's so I might be wrong.)

It lay still for a moment, next to a tree before the wind blew and carried it away. He waited for a very long time for Reign to speak. Why did she have to be so stubborn? Why couldn’t she just understand that he hadn’t meant to do it? He had not meant to do, and even though she said that she understood, he knew that she did not. He knew that inside she would always hate him for this. For his careless mistake.

(Too many pronouns, try adding in their names here and there. Again that is my personal taste so you might think differently.)

Reign turned to look at Skits. He was her friend, and surely, he would not do something like this on purpose. Or would he? Had he done this on purpose? Was he just pretending to be truly sorry, when inside he was aching to jump about merrily? But why would he do something like this consciously? He was a poor dwarf who had spent a large fraction of his life in the dirty caves, scouring for jewels to sell in his little dwarf village. Skits would not be capable, would not have the selfishness to do such a thing as this. “Skits.” She said.

(Try sticking to one perspective, your audience might be confused if you try more than one in a small section of text.)


The writing here is pretty good, so pat yourself on the back. I would love to see more added on to this because it sounds like an intriguing plot. This is a good start so keep going. You are doing a great job at creating tension between the two characters; expand the conflict. Overall good job, I look forward to reading more from you in the future.

I would also like to know what it was that Skits did and how further the internal conflict within Reign would make her move since they're very good friends after all.

Just like what Gryphon said, it's quite confusing on how the POV suddenly changes in the middle of the story. If it hadn't been for the "he" and "she", I would've been very confused on who was talking what. Perhaps you should try on having one paragraph each for their own points of view so that the readers would be able to understand more what it is that the two characters are feeling. Also, it might add up to the tension between these two friends, making it seem like they don't really understand each other because of the differences of their race even though they're friends for a long time.

Good luck on the rest of your story.

I liked the writing on this. I'd love to know just what it was that Skits did, since he really does seem so guilty about it and it was something that would really hurt Reign.

But you really need to fix the formatting on this. As is, there is just a huge chunk of text that is really hard to follow. Instead, you should but an extra "enter" space in between each paragraph and when new dialogue is started.

For example:
--
Ted turned to Kathy. She was sitting in the corner of the room, her arms locked around her knees, and she was rocking back and forth gently. He sat down next to her and tried to touch her shoulder, but she flinched away.

"Kathy," he tried. "It's going to be okay. Really."

She didn't answer at first, just stared ahead and rocked. Then, when he had finally given up on a response, she took a deep breath.

"I'm scared."
--

See how that worked? It is just sooooo much easier to read on a computer screen and actually anywhere in real life.

Also, since you don't capitalize "humans" as a race, "dwarves" should not be capitalized either. I actually have a huge pet peeve about the capitalization of fantasy races, but there's not time for a rant here, so I would just recommend that you leave them uncapitalized.

Anyway, like I said, this was great writing. Your descriptions were awesome and your characters! I was only with them for a few paragraphs and they were great. Excellent work on your part.

The only thing I could really find was the viewpoint switch about midway. You switched from Skits to Reign and then back to Skits. I would recommend that you stay with only one viewpoint character and tell the whole story from their POV, or clearly mark when you change voices. Some sort of divider (* * * centered in the middle is a good one and recognized by most) would be a good idea if you choose to go with two or more viewpoint characters.

One last thing: looking at your info, you have posted one review so far. YWS prefers that you keep your review to posting ratio at 2:1. So skedaddle out there and leave some more reviews before you post anything more.

*thumbs up*

~GryphonFledgling

Please space between paragraphs. Then I will crit.