----1923----
There once was a man named Thomas. He always dreamed of being an artist. He wanted all of the nicest paints and canvases. The issue was, Thomas was very poor. Work in the 1920's was a bit hard to find, even for a kind, honest, hardworking man like Thomas. All Thomas wanted was to inspire people with his art.
Thomas would take any job he could to raise money, but he wanted a job that he could express himself through. He found a great job opening and immediately rushed in. It was a job making benches for local parks and private customers. He figured he could manipulate the metal and wood or carve the wood to make the benches artistic. He had a lot of background working as a carpenter before he got let go, and ended up getting the job.
Thomas was so happy to have a job and he worked his hardest every day to show his boss his gratitude. He always made sturdy benches with beautiful wood and metal designs. He worked and worked on a pretty small salary.
It took Thomas a long time to save up for all of the supplies that he wanted, but he didn't mind. After about a year and a half, he was only one paycheck away from his goal. He had almost every dollar he needed. He went home from work the night before he gets paid, and rejoiced. He made himself a nice dinner and treated himself to a drink. Thomas was really excited, and decides to go to bed a bit early. His golden retriever get settled into his bed next to him, and they slept.
That night, Thomas had a heart attack and he never woke up. He would never get what he wanted. He would never be able to paint for people; he would never be able to inspire people.
----modern day----
There once was a girl named Bella. She was only 16, but she loved to draw. Nobody knew how good she was because she was really shy. The only person that had ever seen her drawings was her mom, who paid no attention to her and couldn't care less. Bella didn't have a lot of confidence because of her mother, and kept to herself.
Bella was walking through the park, but she was growing tired. She had been walking for hours. She was looking for the perfect picture to draw, but nothing was catching her eye. She gave up and sat down looking at her blank sheet and perfectly sharp pencil. She sighed, about to give up, and lifted her head. In front of her, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Bella started drawing as fast as she could and drew each detail to a tee. She drew until the sun went down and then she ran home.
Bella showed her mother, but didn't expect any good feedback. Surprisingly, her mom was proud and told her that she should take the drawing to school and try and enter it into an art show. Bella was happy that her mom liked the drawing and agreed to take it to school.
She carefully put it into her book bag in the morning and stopped in the art room before school started. The teacher agreed with Bella's mom and told Bella that he would enter it into the next art show. Bella was very grateful that he was willing to do the work for her. She was excited to see other people enjoying her art.
What Bella didn't know was just how much people would like it. She ended up winning the first place prize for her drawing. The art teacher put it in more art shows and each time, she ended up first. A magazine did an interview with her. It wasn't long before every person in America knew her name. Bella was famous. She was invited to 10 TV shows a week. She was appreciative that people liked her drawing and that they had made her famous. Her life was changed with this one picture.
The drawing she did sitting on the man's last bench.
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125,014 Literary Works • 672,845 Reviews
"He went home from work the night before he gets paid, and rejoiced. He made himself a nice dinner and treated himself to a drink. Thomas was really excited, and decides to go to bed a bit early. His golden retriever get settled into his bed next to him, and they slept"
In this section there are two examples if a change in tense. The parts where you say "he gets paid" and "Thomas was really excited, and decides"
The words got, had, was, decided, ran, and ate are all in the past tense and let the reader know what you are talking about happened in the past.
The words get, have, am, decides, run, and eat are all present tense words and should not appear with past tense words unless it is in dialogue.
Your story is written in past tense so none of the words should be in present tense. A revised verision of that chunk of the story would look like this.
"He went home from work the night before he got paid, and rejoiced. He made himself a nice dinner and treated himself to a drink. Thomas was really excited, and decided to go to bed a bit early. His golden retriever got settled into his bed next to him, and they slept"
Other than those spots this work doesn't have any more errors with the tense.
Hope I was helpful!
This is an awesome story! I wasn't expecting it to have a happy ending so I am really glad that it did. One thing you could fix is the tense of the story, make sure if you start in past tense you end in past tense.
I am not sure if you meant to do this but the story kind of sounds like a fairytale. Not sure if this is a bad thing in your opinion but I thought I would just let you know anyway.
Overall the story is really good and satisfying.
Thank you. Could you tell me where the tense changes? I know I struggle with this but it would be great if you could point out where. Thank you so much for the review.
"He worked and worked on a pretty small salary."
I would love it if you could reword this. I feel like the word 'pretty' in here just sounds a little too casual compared to the sentences around it.
I feel like there isn't much showing going on, just a lot of telling and you start a lot of sentences with character names and his/her/she/he. I don't think this short did much for me, I feel like your words could have been more descriptive and I think you could put in better vocabulary. I don't think the break between Thomas and Bella was great. The Thomas part ended abruptly and left me sort of confused. I understood what happened but I felt like something was missing. I didn't get any emotional build up. I know how hard it is to write shorts and this is a good one, but I think you can improve this one and maybe write more that are even better.
I hope my review helped you,
Alice ♥
Hey there, and welcome to YWS! *throws confetti* Hopefully you'll learn to love this place, and decide to stick around for a while. I've been here 7 years now, so I'm practically a pensioner, which gives me the advantage of knowing a lot about the site. Any questions you have about it here, please don't hesitate to shoot them in my direction
Anywho, onto the review!
Awwww, I really love this concept. I didn't expect the story to go in the direction it did, and for surprising me in that way, I massively applaud you. The idea as a whole is such a clever one, and it's certainly a heartwarming story. Other than a few tense slip ups here and there (during Thomas's last paragraph), the technical side of your writing was pretty neat and tidy. I'm quite fond of your title too as it encapsulates what happens here, and draws my attention, but is also nice and subtle. In terms of context and originality, this is a super impressive piece of writing. I take my hat off to you.
As for improvements, throughout this, you did have a tendency to tell instead of show (a phrase I'm sure you've heard before). As I was reading this, it felt like there was a constant pattern of Thomas did this, Bella did that, which can get a little boring. In a third-person story with no dialogue, managing to show instead of tell can be tricky, so I can't at all blame you for wrestling with it. In order to remove this telling feeling, you could consider adding in some dialogue to give us readers information, but it's perfectly doable without that. I do quite like that this has no dialogue too, to be honest. Sometimes it can be difficult when something is telling, and not just progressing the story. Let me find an example of telling...
Don't just tell us that Bella was happy, show that to us! Instead of saying Bella was happy that her mom liked the drawing... you could describe to us her reaction. For example, this could be replaced with something like, Bella's eyes lit up as a grin burst onto her face, and she agreed to take it to school. Do you see how that just sounds a lot more colourful than simply stating that Bella was happy? I fear I'm explaining this badly, so here's a link to a super useful article:
Show and Tell
Secondly, I think this could be slowed down as a whole. You've got such a lovely idea here, and I would really love to see more detail, particularly towards the end where Bella becomes famous. She becomes famous within a single paragraph, I mean, that's pretty quick! There is a slight feeling of disconnect from your characters at the moment, and I think a lot of that does have to do with your fast-paced narrative, which doesn't leave heaps of room for character development. The development with Thomas was pretty good, so kudos to that, as we saw him struggle with work alongside his desire to save money and create art. Bella's conflict with her mother is an interesting point, but other than that, we don't really know much about her. Therefore, this conflict with her mother is something we're not awfully bothered about, and we don't really connect to her. Spend more time showing (not telling!) her to us, and allow us to form a bond.
I guess what I'm basically suggesting here is that you consider elongating this story, and really going into detail with it. Now obviously, this is your story, so I'm not going to tell you how to write it. If you want to keep it super short and sweet, then go for it! I just think you need a bit more character development and plot development, and the easiest way to do that is to go into more detail and sloe things down, resulting in a longer piece overall. If you do want to keep this as short as it is though, I would recommend trying to develop some things as much as you possibly can within this word count you've got already!
Anywho, that's all I have for you today. Please do take every suggestion I've made with a pinch of salt because, of course, writing is entirely subjective. I sometimes worry I can come across as a bit harsh in my reviews too, so please know that I enjoyed this overall, and that I am totally in love with the context of it. I just think it's a little rough around the edges, and could become something even more wonderful if you were to tweak a few details.
Be sure to let me know if you've got any questions about YWS, and once again, welcome!
Keep writing,
xoxo Skins
Thank you so much! This means so much to me!
Oh , gosh, okay, I admit I cried!
This is really beautiful. This is heart warnming and I know there are many people whi think they die and leave nithing after themseoves but in the end many other survive thanks to what they had done during their life. His dream to draw had been taken by her and she had done everything he could do thanks to his last work. This is really beautiful example of what one ismple thing can do and that we never know what action of yours will change someone''s life. Now I will tell you abiut one or two complains of mine.
'Work for a black man in the 1920's was a bit hard to find, even for a kind, honest and handworking man like Thomas' it needs to be, I think.
'was to inspire people with his art'
You had forgotten one word there.
The job can not be hiring him. He can be hired for the job. So you need to change this even if I am not sure how.
Overall, great job.
I think I may have fixed the problems. Thanks again!
Welcome.