Young Writers Society

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

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

Anyway let's get right to it,

"P-p-please don't hurt me. I don't know what I did." I stutter backing up into a corner. I've always been good at knowing what do do but this time... I don't. I guess no one would, if you were being cornered by a big dude with red hot eyes and this syrupy stuff coming from his mouth with freakishly sharp teeth. "What do you expect sweetie? You smell so nice. It's gonna hurt. It hurts for most people." He whispered. The fact that it hurts freaks me out more than the fact that I'm gonna die. "What did I do?" I squeaked. I've never felt fear this bad in my whole life, even at school when I was being beaten up by the bullies. "Did you hear what I just said?!?!" He bellowed his eyes flaming at me. dragging me out of my thoughts. I glanced up at him. He was looking really pissed off. "N-n-no sorry. What did you say?" I whispered about to curl up into a ball to protect myself. But before I had the chance. The red eyed angry guy Stamped my leg. I let out a blood curdling scream...

Ooooh...looks like we have a bit of horror based start to this one here...and its a properly chilling one too that we've got here which definitely makes for a very attention grabby start to a story...and that cliffhanger towards the end does a very good job of making you want to read on more and find out what happens to the poor girl there.

There's a really nice sense of dread going on throughout this piece here and you can really feel the tension and fear slowly rising out from the initial confusion that this person has here...there's a very chilling sense of calm in the protagonist as well with them slowly getting a little frustrated and the we've got a bit of a climax when the anger levels and fear levels reach a bit of a maximum.

Overall, you really paint a powerful picture here and I like its not just straight up horror, but we have a rather mysterious and creepy figure doing all the horrifying things which elevates things to another level. Overall this all comes together to make a properly terrifying start here that's pretty well done.

Aaaaand that's it for this one.

As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.

Stay Safe
Harry

Hello.

I'm going to go mostly sentence-by-sentence here, and point out what needs to be improved in every sentence I quote. Since your goal is to publish this eventually, I figure being this thorough will help in both the short and long term. This idea has promise to it, but the execution needs some work.

1 P-p- please don't hurt me. I don't know what 2 i did 3 ." I stutter 4 backing up into a corner.

1- You need to start dialogue with a quotation mark. Easy to miss when copying, but proofread before posting to make sure everything copied right.

2- You have an uncapitalized "I" here, which has to be capitalized.

3- That period at the end should be a comma; this article explains why, and some details about dialogue punctuation.

4- There is a comma missing here, after “stutter”.

I've always been good at knowing what to do but this time... 1 i don't... I guess 2 know one would if you were being cornered by a 3 big dude with red hot eyes with this syrupy stuff coming from his mouth, with freakishly sharp looking teeth 4

1- Uncapitalized I again.

2- "No" is the correct version. "Know" is for what a character has in their heads ("I knew this pieces of information" or "Knowing him")

3- A few things about this sentence.

"Dude" sounds very slangy, even for a first person story. It stands out even farther in the horror-like setting you'd used previously. Then there is "red hot" when describing eyes; it brings to mind glowing coal, which doesn't translate to eyes that well. Moving on, the way you describe the "syrupy stuff" makes me think he has a whole mouthful of it, and it's dripping down his chin. Finally "freakishly sharp looking teeth" doesn't exactly create that solid an image. That create more an image of... all teeth being sharp, yet all teeth only being blunt because you say "looking", which indicates uncertainty.

This whole mass of description is given to us very quickly, no commas (and a repetitive "with", which kills flow) and no time to actually register what image is being presented to us. One thing about trying to create a scary mood is, you have to slow it down. Slowing it down means only putting one or two ideas per sentence. Shinda gave you this advice in his previous review, and I agree with it.

See, slowing down a work and actually giving each piece of description room to breathe and gives readers a chance to sink into the situation. There is a fine line to walk between "too slow" (boring) and "too fast" (information flies over our heads), but, right now, you are moving just a bit too fast. Check out this article on pacing and pay special attention to the slow segments. You want to build tension here at what's going to happen, how he's cornering her, how he looks, her fear in the moment. Not rush through to the gory bits. Often, the tension and anticipation is what's really scary.

4- You're missing a period at the end of that sentence.

1"What do you expect sweetie? 2 You smell so nice. Its gonna hurt... It 3 hursts for every one 4 ." He 5 whispered.

1- A new person speaking should have their dialogue on a new paragraph. Look in a published book to see how dialogue is broken out, then copy that.

2- The fact he was attracted to her smell made me chuckle a bit; it's so close to Twilight that fans and haters alike will compare your work to that consciously and subconsciously, if you're going to use such a well-known point from the books.

3- "Hursts" should be "hurts." Try running your work through spell-check before posting it, to cut down on the really obvious errors you might miss proofreading. Or simply reread the work after letting it sit for awhile, so you're not reading what you think is there (you'll reread works from short term memory if you don't let them sit).

4- See my previous note about dialogue punctuation. That should be a comma and a lowercase "h" in "he."

5- "Whispered" is past tense, while the rest of this piece has been in present tense. The only time you can switch between tenses in a work is when you change scenes, or there is a flashback within a scene. Since neither happens in that dialogue tag, you either change the previous two sentences to be past tense, or you change all past-tense verbs to present.

The fact that 1 its going to hurt 2 freaks me out more that the fact 3 that 4 hes got red eyes. 5

1- You had referred to this thing as "he" before. Stay consistent with your pronouns. Unless you are referring to what he is going to do, in which case, that should be "it's" for "it is".

2- Back to present tense with "freaks".

3- This "that" just kills flow in the sentence. It feels too formal, when your narrator is speaking very informally and it is first person narration. Stay consistent with how she speaks.

4- That should be "he's" to denote it's "he is".

5- This sentence as a whole is rather weird reading. I want to know why that freaks her out more than his red eyes. I want to get into her head a bit. Thanks to the rushed previous section, I'm not really feeling the character right now. I have no idea why they think the way they do. If this is the beginning of a story, not feeling the character this far into the story isn't good. If this is an excerpt from the middle of the story, then you should use this period of high stress to have us learn more about the character. Either way, adding in introspection helps us understand her.

Start explaining why the MC feels this way. It's rather important when writing in first person, because first person is completely inside the character's head. There is no space to zoom out and get an overall look on the situation. Readers also get to expect a certain amount of introspection from the character, which will be said in their own unique voice.

This sentence is one that needs introspection, because not all of your audience would understand why. I'd be much more worried about something supernatural taking an interest in me than I would be about getting hurt.

Even if you don't want all of your audience to understand, it helps your readers get immersed in your writing if you actually let us into how your MC thinks. It's all about how much information you give, so we can become your narrator and live the story through her experiences.

1"What did 2 i do 3 ?!?" I 4 squeeked.

1- New paragraph for new person speaking.

2- Uncapitalized I.

3- Only one piece of punctuation, please. It's more professional to only have one. Your dialogue and tags should indicate the strength of voice being used; you shouldn't have to rely on a punctuation trick.

4- "Squeaked" (A instead of a second E). And, back to past tense.

1 I've never felt fear this bad in my whole life... at school 2 i was bullied... 3 i 4 didnt even feel fear then. 5

1- Back to present tense with "I have".

2 & 3- Uncapitalized I.

4- "Didn't" (missing apostrophe)

5- This sentence, again, needs introspection. Has she realized that that wasn't fear, or was the bullying more emotional/mental and not really something you'd get scared from?

1 | 2 "ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME 3 !!!!!!" 4 He 5 bellowed at me, pulling me out of my thoughts.

1- New paragraph for a new person speaking

2- All-caps to show shouting are really amateur. Use regular typing and have italics denote emphasis, instead. Also, remember what I said about how the dialogue and tags should indicate how something is said? Same applies here. Let one or two words in italics plus the tag of "he bellowed" do the talking, not all-caps.

3- Only one piece of punctuation for the same reason as above.

4- Lowercase H for proper dialogue punctuation.

5- Back to past tense with "bellowed".

He was looking quite a bit pissed off.

And what does that look like? There are a large variety of variations on this look, and unless you give us some sort of clue how he in particular looks pissed off, readers will continue to draw a blank because of the variety of options, and lack of information about this particular character. Even if you've introduced him before, it's nice to get some idea of how he'll put on this particular expression.

1 "N-N-no sorry... what did you say?" I 2 whispered 2 | 3 curling up into a ball.

1- New paragraph for new person speaking.

2- Comma after "whispered".

3- So, she's on the ground. I thought he had been standing over her and she'd been pressed against a wall. It would be nice to get some setting for the work, so the characters aren't talking to a void.

The setting could've been used to get some atmosphere to the work, and isn't limited to huge chunks of description. Part of the reason this scene isn't scary is it's happening in a void; we don't know the time of day, the way he's standing, the way she is standing, if he's handling her at all... anything.

If this isn't the beginning of your story, then I'd expect to have known some of that. But, the scene has no movement to it. Did she start off in a corner, and one of the reasons she's so scared is she's completely trapped? How about him moving? What makes him so menacing, and why should we be scared? All of this could be shown within this small segment. If it's the beginning of the story, then some lighting would be nice.

That was it....

That was what? You have only mentioned an "it" once previously, and that would reference to a bite. This "it" has no antecedent, nothing to ground it as a solid object in our minds. All attempt at suspense falls flat on how vague this sentence is. I can't say anything else because this line comes so far out of nowhere I don't know why it's even in the narration.

Overall:

This needs work.

Step one would be to copy this into Word or OpenOffice (its free equivalent) and hitting "check spelling and grammar". While this button won't catch all errors you shall ever make, it will catch a lot of the more obvious ones (And, if you turn autocorrect on, will not even show a lot of them as you type).

The second step would be to format this properly. Look into other published books and see how the dialogue is formatted there. Copy that. The story will be much easier to read. This includes not relying on tricks like multiple pieces of punctuation and caps to get emphasis across.

Third step: slow down. A lot. Break up ideas into their own sentences, and give each little piece of description enough that we get a solid image in our minds. An often-cited example is asking somebody their favourite colour then drawing something in that colour. If they say "red", for example, they could have meant dark/blood red, while you thought pinky red. Unless you give specifics, the images you try to create will fail. Don't worry about being too slow. Worry about actually giving us a picture we can be afraid of.

And these specifics don't have to be big, either. A sentence here, one or two words there, and you have something readers can grasp.

Step four would be showing some movement and emotion in here. You tell us a lot, about how she's scared, he's ticked off... no real showing. No physical symptoms of fear, no description of his face to tell us how he carries emotions. You can also use description to add emotion in the scene, which would help flesh this out a lot.

Also, how are they moving? You can tell most of what you need about a character thanks to their body language. Around 70% of communication is nonverbal, and putting the smallest mentions of how characters are moving can bring them to life.

Step five. Add some description in here. Regardless of where this is in the story, you actually have a really long span of time shown in this snippet. By giving us some of her setting, you can create an actual mood. Goes hand in hand with the above step.

And finally, step six. Add in some introspection and thoughts from the character. Right now, things are just happening to her and she isn't reacting. Or thinking. Or acting. Or doing much of anything past telling the audience how she feels. There is no showing, there is nothing to tell us how the rest of her body feels. You're writing in first person, which means the reader is the character.

In order for the reader to properly be the character, readers need to know what's coming in through all five senses. Not necessarily at once, but by the end of this snippet I should be able to guess at least sights, sounds and feeling (touch). Since he seems rather otherworldly, it'd be nice to have some smells in there as well (his breath), maybe a bad taste in her mouth.

Or, if none of that exists because of sheer terror, please mention that she can't feel a thing. That would provide the information we need in order to understand what she's feeling from all her senses. (Maybe adding in how being numb makes her fear worse, if that applies.)

As with every other early draft, this has promise. But this is a very early draft. Proofreading and proper formatting will get you well on your way to improvement. Everything else I pointed out you comes with rewrites. Often, lots of rewrites. But by posting for reviews, you learn what you need to focus on improving faster. And you have a decent idea for a scene here, with lots of potential for emotion and really getting a grasp on the character. Start working that in and you'll be miles ahead.

Hope this helps. Drop me a line if you have any questions, and happy editing.

~Rosey