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,

Rachel had never been so embarrassed. Only ten minutes earlier, everyone was dismissed for recess after finishing Art (their current topic was Humor and they were doing caricatures) She felt her own drawing, a caricature of Vladimir Putin was good enough as she left for snack. Her two besties, Sammie and Summer, had stayed behind to do some improvements for their caricature of Donald Trump in class. Normally, they would be inseparable. But they were whispering excitedly which obviously meant that they had some good ideas.

Matt, Rachel’s crush, suddenly stopped outside the door. He asked her if she was OK. She grinned, turning red. She stuttered a soft yes and went to play frisbee after hurrying down the hall. Forgetting about her two bestie’s behaviour, time passed quickly amid happy shouts and screams of the Ultimate Frisbee game, interrupted a few times by Herbert, the world’s most annoying person. Coming back, she noticed something strange.

Okay..this is a fun little start. It dips ever so slightly into the old cliche pool somewhat since we do have the old crush situation going down here, but well it is something I personally do love to read and you've done a decent job of bringing this particular scene to life here with what we've got. The little bit of a twist of sorts towards that last line also helps out in making this a very interesting opening here.

Sammie passed her, giggling madly, and as she caught Summer’s eye Summer hasty made to hide a book, glowing with mirth. She grabbed her bag, and switched to the next class, Arithmetic. Smiling widely, Summer, passed her her book. She snatched it away, Summer turning back quickly. She went along, but suddenly some people stared. She looked at her clothes and bag, making sure hadn’t spilled any paint. She started. Written on her book, in big fat black marker, were the words “I ♡ Matt” written a dozen times. Herbert appeared, laughing. “You!” she half shouted. “No, no, it was the two friends Sammie and Summer. I can’t wait to tell Matt!” She tried to stop him, but that only made her notebook more prominent.

She sighed deeply. Math was a quadruple period, and fortunately, it was so boring everybody didn’t mention Rachel’s not-so-secret secret. Today's unit was Ratios, meaning they had to figure out the equivalent of an average obtuse triangle proportional to the binary fraction of pi cubed. Even Rachel was glad to get out of that horrible lesson. But at lunch, after eating her main diet of homemade tempura and rice, she saw angrily that Herbert was speaking silently into Matt’s ear. Matt went over to Rachel instantly. She tried to run away as she noticed she was turning a deep shade of crimson, but Matt folded her hand into his and squeezed it, looking at her furtively. “Really?” he asked, but Rachel was still frozen with shock, caught unawares of his speed.

Ohh...well the twist turned out to be the old predictable one there....and the pacing also kind of sped up a bit there. I feel like maybe you should have slowed that one down just a touch more, this is a short story so making things a bit faster than they otherwise would be is understandable, but this is a little too fast and considering the detail given to the math lesson to slow that bit down, I think the rest could also do with a bit of the same.

Thankfully, by some miracle, he left for Science as the bell rang, but after school caught up with her again, seeming unrested. “Explain.” he said immediately, grabbing her shoulders. Rachel couldn't move. She was frozen by instinct and her mind was in overload. He pulled her close and glanced away. Now she could see his feelings in his eyes. Realisation dawned over her. It was not shock. It was love. They kissed each other thoughtfully. He slowly drew back, awaiting her reaction. She gave a small smile, both of them blushing, then walked away. They were good friends ever since.

Well that last line is quite something. It was not the ending I was expecting, the rest was well...a bit standard, I have seen similar scenes one too many times now and this one felt a little too fast and the characters were a little too unknown for it to have too much of an impact, but that ending makes this whole thing feel quite a bit different here and a lot more exciting than what I was initially expecting with how things started. Overall, an interesting read I think, but there are a few improvements that need to be made here and there.

Aaaaand that's it for this one.

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

Stay Safe
Harry

Hey there Ferruccio1234567 and a sort of late welcome to YWS. It's just lizzy dropping by real quick, so without a further ado, let the reviewing begin.

I'm going to try to keep this down to about ten minutes because we all have places to be. That and Gravity has already left you a fantastic and really long review covering nearly everything. Let's just jump into this right here.

First Line, First Thought

Rachel had never been so embarrassed.

So it's always good to try and introduce your main characters as soon as possible and in your case you did it in the title which is pretty helpful to a reader. And then you reinforced it with the opening line, which gave me a little more faith in the story. I don't know why but that's just one of those things that I judge on.
The context of the sentence is also interesting to me because there is nothing immediately around it to call out embarrassment until the reader hit the second or third paragraph. Normally I don't like these sort of pre-jumps but the previous bit of the story got wrapped up soon enough for it to not be info-dumpy. If there's one thing you always want to avoid sounding like, it's info dumps.
There is some unnecessary repetition in information with describing the art projects and units. I think you might just want to use caricatures once because it looks almost tacky to use it twice within ten words. Maybe that's just my outlook on style but the repetition is a bit bothersome to me.

Overall Thoughts
I've got five minutes left so this review will be left to the bare bones, overall thoughts on the matter.
Every so often you've got some typos composed of missing periods and commas but that's not too much to fix and doesn't have a giant impact on the reader. I just feel like being sort of nit picky today since most of the stronger points have been taken. The missing commas, are affecting the flow of the entire story a bit so just be a bit more careful of them during your revision process.

The ending is also really bumpy to me like how did they go from fighting to kissing in like three seconds? And also why the thing about being friends? Maybe it's my twisted view of romance and the real world but none of this seems too 'realistic' or the proper order of how these things should be happening. I'm also confused on how quickly the pace changed, you went from a very slow jog to a race car in the daytona 500. This whole thing sort of confuses me and I think I'm just going to leave now and wait for it to be explained to me.

Anyways, Happy Review Day.
Good day and good luck to you.
Lizzy
The Queen of the Book Clubs

Hey Ferruccio! Gravity here to give you a review!

Okay, so I'm going to start off by saying you have a really good bare bones structure of a short story, but it's very rough around the edges and underdeveloped.

So the first thing I would like to mention is your overall tone. It's very choppy and goes into details too much in certain places and not enough in others. Just to give you a general idea, I'm going to rewrite your first paragraph and explain why I've made the re-writes.

Rachel had never been so embarrassed. Only ten minutes earlier, everyone was dismissed for recess after finishing Art (their current topic was Humor and they were doing caricatures) She felt her own drawing, a caricature of Vladimir Putin was good enough as she left for snack. Her two besties, Sammie and Summer, had stayed behind to do some improvements for their caricature of Donald Trump in class. Normally, they would be inseparable. But they were whispering excitedly which obviously meant that they had some good ideas.

My version:
Rachel had never been so embarrassed. Only ten minutes earlier, all of the other students had finished filing out of the classroom for recess after finishing art. Currently, the art students were working on humor and the class period had been focused on caricatures. Proud of her own drawing, Rachel left the room for a snack, leaving behind her two best friends, Sammie and Summer. The two girls had decided to do some improvements on their own drawings, but were giggling and whispering excitedly. Normally the girls were inseparable, but it seemed as if the two friends had come up with some rather interesting ideas. That, or they were up to something.

Okay, so I felt your opening was really good and immediately grabbed my interest, which is why I included it. There were some things I did not include that I felt needed to be there, such as details about the main characters. What do they look like, how old are they, what grade are they in? It sounds like they're in primary/elementary school because you mentioned recess, but obviously not if Rachel is getting kissed by Matt. I didn't include Putin and Trump because there was no reason to. Normally when people reference famous events or political figures in a story, it's because those figures or events some how build on the plot or symbolize something going on in the story. The rest of what I changed was simply to make the flow smoother. The end of the paragraph I changed because you said "But they were whispering excitedly which obviously meant they had some good ideas." The first thing I didn't like about this sentence was you beginning it with the word "But". That's never a good thing to do, not when you can use words like "However" or even just remove the first word completely. Secondly, what bothered me was your use of the word obviously. The fact that they were whispering and giggling does not obviously point to them having good ideas, they could be laughing at their drawing or at the drawings around them, or at something that happened earlier in the day, or (which I suspect is what you were getting at) about the prank they would go on to play on Rachel. Which brings me to why I added the last sentence. I thought it would add some foreshadowing and make the reader more interested in what is going on.

Okay, so yeah, that was really long and drawn out. Now that you understand what a better flow looks like, I'm just going to briefly talk about some other things you can fix that I saw throughout the piece.

You mention Matt is Rachel's crush. You do this thing where you show us but don't tell us what's going on. Why does Rachel like him? What moments have they shared together or what traits does Matt have that makes Rachel like him? What does a crush feel like? Instead of telling us Rachel likes him, show us. You do the same thing again when you mention Herbert, the world's most annoying person. Why is he so annoying? What has he done in the past to make him seem irritating?

Also, you used the term "bestie" a few times now. I would eliminate that and just use "friends" or "best friends".

In the next paragraph, I like what's going on because it puts me on the edge of suspense, I wanted to find out what happened next. But then you use words like "she" and "her" so often I can't tell what's going on. Obviously you shouldn't use character names all the time, but try specifying who is doing what action a bit more. And the dialogue at the end of that paragraph needs some help:

Herbert appeared laughing. “You!” she half shouted. “No, no, it was the two friends Sammie and Summer. I can’t wait to tell Matt!” She tried to stop him, but that only made her notebook more prominent.

Dialogue should be separated into their own paragraphs based on who is speaking, unless you have separated it by action. So the dialogue should look like this:

Herbert appeared laughing. "You!" she half shouted.

"No, no, it was the two best friends. I can't wait to tell him!" Herbert said gleefully. She tried to stop him, but that only made her notebook more visible.

So the second to last period, you do the too much info thing. We don't need to know that Rachel is learning about ratios in math, nor do we need to know what a ratio is. Also, what Matt does next doesn't make sense. Why would he just hold her hand without warning, say "really?" and then just walk away. This doesn't make sense because in the next paragraph he says "explain" while he grabs her shoulders, and that makes him sound like he's angry.

Then the end just made me mad. "They were good friends ever since." Okay. No. Now you have me invested in this couple. I love Rachel and Matt now, they can't simply be friends. They have to date or maybe you could mention at the end that she's getting ready to go on a date with him or something of the like. I LOVE RACHEL AND MATT TOGETHER, YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!!! Also, what happens to Sammie and Summer? Do they remain friends with Rachel or does Rachel eventually forgive them? What about Hubert? Isn't he put out that he tried to embarrass Rachel by telling Matt but he ended up liking her anyway?

So yeah, I like your characters and I like your story, (I also really like your beginning), I just think you need some help with flow, taking out nonessential details, dialogue, and plot/character development.

Anyway, keep writing! Sorry if my review was a bit harsh, that was not the intention

XOXO,
Gravity