Young Writers Society

Hey FioFaire, it's outvaders here. I'm just passing by to pull you out of the Green Room. The story's pretty short, so why the hell not?

Before anything else though, a belated welcome to YWS. I know you've been registered a while back, but you got no other works, no reviews, no posts, no nothing yet. You're still like, clean and still at the starting point. So yeah, welcome back.

Here are all the complaints I have of this story so far, in no particular order:

-The character whom you constantly call the "servant" acts more of a governess than the servant of a royal family. A servant is more of a person who serves their master through doing errands and carrying out household chores like cooking and cleaning. A governess on the other hand, is hired to teach children in their homes. Looking back to the actions of your "servant" character and the definition of a servant and a governess, I believe it is more appropriate to label that character a "governess" than just a servant.

-...The ellipses... They're just... Too... Many...

No really, I suggest you do away with these ellipses... which is the thing that I just put there. It's alright to use ellipses once in a while, but when they pop up way too often, it just makes the story (and you) look amateur or even illiterate. I suggest using commas more than ellipses; they still convey the same effect. If you can convey the mood perfectly, however, then you don't need ellipses or commas to convey the feelings of your character.

-All punctuation adjacent to quotation marks should be enclosed in them.

“No buts”, the woman retorts.

That is wrong.

“No buts," the woman retorts.

This is right.

You can look this up in the site I'll link here, which is The Punctuation Guide. It's nice, concise, and easy to understand, so this is a good place if you want to brush up on your punctuation: http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/quotation-marks.html

-There is little setting in this story. Sure, it was mentioned that the setting is in a palace and implied in the dialogue that this is a royalty's palace, but there isn't much said about it. Most of the time it just feels as if it's just the characters in a blank, white world. It's a shame, because you could have gotten me more invested in the story had you described the setting more. If you had described the setting more, you could have convinced me to believe that this story is not fiction but a believable reality, in turn making these characters seem more like real people with real problems, in turn making me feel something for these characters.

Anyways, that's the end of the review. I hope I was able to give you at the very least some new knowledge about writing. I might not have liked your first story here, but don't be discouraged. Everyone's gotta start somewhere, and more often than not, their first stories aren't really the best. You've still got a lot of time to get better at writing, so no worries for now. I don't have much left to say, so I'll just end it here. Have a good day.

-outvaders

btw your anime avatar is pretty pretty, I like it

Hey there! MJ here for a quick review.

Basically what you have here is a detailed outline, but not the finer parts of the story. I'll try and give you some suggestions for how to fill in those gaps and make it a little smoother so it could be counted as a rough draft. I'm sorry if that comes across as harsh, but honestly, it needs a lot of work before it could really go anywhere. So here are some of my suggestions on how to reach that point.

The servant seemed to be overly harsh to the princess. She seemed to rebuke her rather angrily, and not with the air you would greet a princess. I take it that the princess' parents would not be pleased to see how curtly the servant treated her, since it is bordering on disrespectful. That was my biggest problem with the piece. The physical punishments aren't quite abusive, and it would be a stretch to say they even border on abusive, but it certainly doesn't seem like the type of treatment a member of the royal family would receive. The lack of action and its shortness also seemed to hint that this wasn't really a finished chapter, so I don't want to rough it up too much before it's finished.

That brings me to another point- the length. Obviously, short stories are meant to be short. But there should still be a clear plot introduced. Right now, we have the bare bones of that- a princess urged to be more lady-like by her caretakers. But you lack the exact details that will help the reader to understand why this is such a struggle, as well as other crucial characters, like the king and queen. So I think it should be longer so that the plot can be more developed and include some subplots, like a king who is fighting a war and keeps the princess inside for her safety.

Overall, I think that you have the rough idea of where you want to go with this story figured out. But you only have a sentence for each major development in this first chapter, and it needs to be lengthened to give the plot the time it needs to finish its work. Don't rush the story- it takes time to set up relationships and betrayals, more time than can be expressed in a few brief sentences. Other than that, you just need more writing and then you'll be set! Good luck

Best wishes,
MJ

For some reason, when I tried spacing it correctly in the draft, it came out a lot differently than it did here. I'll have to get used to spacing it here (I copied and pasted my story from my word program, and manually spaced it here to my liking).