Young Writers Society

You really set us into the scene of gambling very fast and very well!

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Hi! Manilla here for my second review day review. Let's get the nitpicky things out of the way, shall we?

You have some of short, choppy sentences that can be combined to make longer, more flow-y ones. Example!

To test my luck, I went to the slot machines. The handle bounced up then down. The smile on my face grew wider. Hours passed.

New: "To test my luck, I went to the slot machines, whose handles bounced up and down. The smile on my face grew wider as the hours flew by."

This will make your writing seem more professional, but I understand because these things take time! Keep writing and you'll improve. (Radrook covered a lot of my points.)

You also lack a lot of descriptors/adjectives that could add more "pizzazz" to describe what's going on. In the first few paragraphs or so, you have a sufficient amount of satisfactory adjectives. In the middle, it's all about playing the card games itself. Do you think adding in tidbits of the "real world" around the narrator could benefit the plot?

That's all from me!
-Manilla out

(Feel free to disregard any comment you deem unhelpful or rude. That was not my intention.)

Hey ChristianKeener,

Shady here with a review for you! I see you're new to the site, so a great big welcome to you! If you need any help finding your way around YWS, don't hesitate to send me a message. I'd love to help any way that I can

On to the review. Everyone here has their own unique review style -- mine is typically to go through line by line and mention things as I notice it, then give a general overview of my reaction to the piece at the end. So bear with me if it seems overly critical, I don't mean to offend -- I just point out anything I think could be improved, because we are all learning here and all have room to grow in our craft. Jumping right in...

Three thousand dollars, a pack of tobacco, and two working hands; It’s poker night, baby.

This could just be a typo, but I'm pointing it out just in case it wasn't -- after a semi-colon the word should not be capitalized.

Using an old whisky flask, I spit out the juices as I make my way to the local casino.

So this is your story, so it's 100% your decision, but in my experience people who chew tobacco rarely use re-usable things like flasks to spit tobacco juice into. My dad and brother typically use empty disposable water bottles to spit into if they're out and about. Cleaning that up would not be a pleasant job, so I'm not sure how realistic spitting into a flask would be, unless that's just a quirk of your character that'll come out later.

My grizzled beard shone with freshly drunken beer.

Hm, drunken is what you become when you consume too much beer. Freshly drunk beer might be more appropriate?

~

Okay! Overall I thought this was an interesting piece! You have a lovely description of spending a night in the casino. I like how you kept the focus on the chips, and how he progressively lost them through the night then ended up in his car empty-handed. I half-expected him to hit it large in this piece, so it's kind of refreshing that it came out more like how it would be likely to happen in reality. Well done~

I think you could easily expand this piece into something a bit longer. Right now it's quite short for either a chapter or a short story. You could give a bit more description of who the man is, what he looks like, and why he's at the casino in the first place.

You could even add in bits about him interacting with other gamblers, or the call girls, or the clerks running the gambling. Show the different card games, the roulette wheels, slot machines, all of it. Give us some description.

And while you're at it, don't just stop with the visual description. Tell us how it made him feel. Was he getting butterflies from excitement or nervousness? Was he wallowing in self-pity from some sort of something that is the reason he's at the casino in the first place? How do the lights and noises and bustling of people affect him? Does he ignore them? Does it make him agitated? Is it invigorating?

I think you could really bring some depth to this piece if you slowed it down a bit and took time to develop your character further -- slow down the pacing a bit more, drag it out, show us hoping to strike it big -- only to have to later slink back to his car empty-handed.

Overall, I thought this was good, though! Definitely not a bad first piece! I hope to see more of your writing around here!

Keep writing!

~Shady