Eli Miles was a ten year boy who had everything. The cute adorable innocent child look. The perfect blue eyes, and hair as dark as night. The perfect family to those who seen. He got toys and books and clothes when ever he wanted. Or so it seemed. No one knew what happened behind closed doors. No one knew that all that was act in public. A ten year old who was so good at acting and lying that he started to believe it himself. He was a boy who was neglected and abused. Maybe not physically, but mentally. A boy who had to fend for himself in his own home, to cook his own meals most days and nights. A boy who was desperate.
It was like any other day, the Miles family were at the park for appearances since they couldn't be seen alone with out the boy unless it was 'date night'. They weren't ready to have a child. They had wanted to give him up for adoption but their parents wouldn't let them. They said you got into this mess now you can raise it. Oh, they would raise it, just not like they thought they would.
The elder Miles' were sitting on the blanket they had packed talking to each other not paying attention to anything else. Though they would throw glances at the playground just so it would seem they were checking on the boy. One thing they didn't like was for Eli to have friends. Friends meant comparing families. Comparing families would show something was different and that would raise questions for other parents.
Eli sat on the swings. He watched the other kids run around yelling and laughing. It looked abnormal to him. He didn't understand. He didn't like his family and they didn't like him. He knew that or he thinks he does. Sometimes fake and real blends together he doesn't know what to make of it. He sighs and gets off the swings to walk back to his parents when he feels hands on him. He turned but didn't know who it was and he started to feel scared. He tried to get away but the man quickly shushed him and pulled him behind a big Oak tree.
"Listen here son. There has been complaints about your family. And they aren't to good. I'm with social services. See look, I even get a cool looking badge." The man said and showed to Eli. Eli didn't know if he should believe him. He was a good liar himself. Why shouldn't someone else be able to lie as well as him.
"Why should I believe you?" He asked the man.
"That's a good question." The man said as he nodded. "I'm Cole Romero. I'm here with a couple of cops to take your parents in for questioning and more than likely book them for the night. You'll get to leave your family and you'll be put into foster care until you are adopted. I know you still don't trust me but your parents have had many complaints on them and we can finally do something about it. Watch." Cole said as he pointed to where the older Miles' were.
Eli watched two men in cop uniforms walk over to his parents and put them into handcuffs while reading them their rights. As this happened everyone watched the perfect couple get put into a cruiser. All very curious about what was going on. Looking around for the sweet little boy that the couple had with them but quickly went back to what they were doing.
Eli turned back to Cole and nodded.
"You give me a better home and I'll trust you." Eli said as he looked him in the eyes. Blue eyes meeting Cole's brown ones. Cole nodded.
"You got it buddy." He said as he stood and walked with Eli to his car. Promising in his mind he would find the perfect home for him.
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125,009 Literary Works • 672,837 Reviews
Howdy, Byrd~
Happy Review Day!
So, what I liked about this was that you have a good handle on knowing what you want from your story; you've pretty much decided who your characters are and what they want/what they'll be doing to get what they want. This is a good thing! What's not so great, on the other hand, is rushing through the plot so fast that your characters don't get the chance to develop properly. At the moment, they're very two-dimensional; we know the basics about Eli, but it's basically through narrations, and a lot of info-dump. We don't get to see inside his mind, or what kind of child he was (aside from the 'abuse' you've mentioned). I'd advise you to take things a little slower and incorporate some sensory description in the mix, as well as easing us into the setting instead of listing the events as they happen. Make things interesting; 'show' more and 'tell' less.
Besides this, you've also managed to confuse your reader because you take things so fast. First, you start the piece off by telling us how wonderfully well-off Eli was, only to say that it was a façade and give a couple of points to support this. It really managed to throw me off, the way you explained this, and I didn't have as much sympathy for Eli's situation as I should have had. There are a lot of holes in the narration as well, and I'll just tick off the thoughts that occurred to me as I read through the piece:
1] Why does Eli's family put up a false front? What kind of 'front', exactly, is it? I understand that you mention that they didn't want a child, but I don't fully understand their reasoning for keeping him. Why didn't they give him up for adoption? You've mentioned something along the lines of dealing with the 'mess' and 'keeping it', but if Eli's parents were really the hard-hearted monsters you've portrayed them to be, I doubt they'd have had any scruples in 'getting rid of him'.
Again, I don't understand fully why Eli's parents need to play at happy families, so maybe you could shed some light on this.
2] What had the Mileses done that was serious enough to result in arrest? You talk about mistreatment in the very beginning of the piece and coin it as mental aka psychological mistreatment. But in what way? Being left alone at home, fending for himself? I fail to understand a great deal of what is going on, so some questions--
A) how long has Eli been 'neglected' and why is action being taken against it now, all of a sudden?
B) what kind of neglect was it? Was it just the lack of family time or was it open hatred? Are we talking about overwork and exploitation? Who reported Eli's parents and how did they know of Eli's mistreatment?
C) Would the social services really create such a big scene--at a park? I don't live in America and am not completely familiar with how action takes place, but this scene you've sketched out here is a tad ... unrealistic. It also felt very flat, as if the other characters were puppets merely succumbing to the author's whim.
You really need to establish background and flesh your characters out before proceeding with this. Build up this world, question interests and answer questions. This is realistic fiction and so it ought to echo 'realistic' as well.
Grammar-wise, I do have some critiques. First is that I spotted a comma splice in your writing, which is basically when two separate sentences are merged using a comma. This article might prove useful to you.
You also shifted tenses in the piece, from past to present; I'm pretty sure if you read through this once, you'll be able to identify the tense-shifts and smooth them out.
Dialogue-wise, the period in dialogue ought to be replaced with a comma when employing a dialogue tag (this includes words like 'said', 'shouted', 'exclaimed', etc.). Take a looksee at this link explaining dialogue punctuation.
I do hope you didn't find this review too harsh; as always, there will be potential! Work on this story-line some more, pay attention to stylistic detail, and take the execution a little slower--I'm sure you'll do great!
As always, keep writing! Keep it up!
Hope this helped. PM me if you have any questions~
Cheers.
~Pomp c:
Hi.
A nice advise and a good story you had written. I like it.
On with the review.
I'll tell you almost everything that seemed to be weird. First, the morale of this story. It was pretty harsh. So harsh, actually. I know what you had trying to write but it didn't make any sense at the ending/closure. You made like the poor kid hated his parents. It was pretty harsh. You know what I mean, right? I just hate children that hate their mother. But, in a way it was good because you were trying to make something different, right? Good job but please think in a logical way.
Next, the errors. If I missed something, forgive me because I lacked time to identify them.
You should put colon(:) instead of the dot(.) because you were describing the child look. Got it?
Next, all of these were the same errors.
You know your mistakes, right? Please correct them.
Next, I'm sorry for quoting a whole paragraph.
You mixed past tense with present right here. And again find and correct them.
Next,
There was a little hole in this sentence and it was making the sentence look weird and confusing. I suggested "A boy who had to fend for himself in his own home, cooking his own meals mostly everyday."
I was so sorry if I made a mistake or hurt your feeling but think about it. The story have a great chance to become a greater story. Don't be confuse, I like your story.
I truly hope this helped.
This is really good, in my opinion. I would love to hear any advice you have to offer
Hey there, Sammy here. This story, I got to say, is pretty impressive and you just started, like today! Which reminds me, Welcome (yes, I know, capitalization grammar, but for this, it doesn't matter) to Young Writers' Society!
I'm pretty new too, but the people here are great and fun to interact with. Anyway, the story is great with a good message standing out, but there is some things I want to say to help you improve.
In the sentence "Looking around for the sweet little boy that the couple had with them, but quickly went back to what they were doing." doesn't really make sense. Maybe you were trying to say "They started looking around for the sweet little boy that the couple had with them, but quickly went back to what they were doing."
Another sentence that didn't make sense was "The perfect family to those who seen." I don't really know how to arrange this sentence better, but I just wanted to tell you that.
There are other sentences that don't really make sense, that seem to be part of a previous sentence that got cut off. That's the only main problem I see in this writing so other than that, it's a great piece and I hope you continue writing better and better each time.