Young Writers Society

Hi,
This was a nicely written story.I hope you continue it.

Wonderfully carved story, however, with one massive dent to fix. Your writing is straightforward and and "to the point" when the plot calls for it. I was curious about what this story could offer when you began with a phone call conversation between two friends. It sets an ominous and foreboding tone and with the title being "He beats me" we can already suggest what the plot can consist of. Now if the narrator is speaking in a flashback suggesting that she eventually gets away, we don't know. But, as soon as you write the second act were we first meet her boyfriend, we have no choice but to go along with this "novel-like" feel that you've set for us in the beginning. Readers are expecting a fantastic plot that will explain how they got that way, how the family is reacting to this problem and where her friend, who seems as if she is a key player since she's speaking in the first few lines, plays the integral role that may or may not help our narrator. On top of that there is little to help us as readers. We immediately go from introduction to a final conflict? What did it take to get there? We want to know more about their relationship (maybe a deterioration process) and why the narrator wants to stick around. Is the boyfriend brilliant enough that he hides his tactics from friends and family? We need more substance. With that aside, it was a good read and I enjoyed the final conclusion as it reminded me of "The Lovely Bones". Needless to say, spend some more time mapping out a rough direction of where you want your story to go. Then, throw in your characters that will most impact that story and watch them grow...or ruin. Your choice. Good job though, as I'm actually curious as to what else you can do with this story. It has a lot of potential with a future as novel maybe? Keep up the good work!

Alright, I just skimmed this, but parts of it just don't seem realistic to me.

A girl in an abusive relationship doesn't threaten to "tell" on the boy. Its just not realistic. At all. Usually the girl is just in denial about the whole thing.

And the boy just seems to evil. Why would she even love him? its weird.


Hope I helped


EDIT: Oh, and like the other people said, you can't be addicted to weed. I smoke the ganja, as do most of my friends. None of us are addicted. We all quit for like 3 months of the year for school sports. Do a cocaine addiction... Its the most common and easiest to get ahold of, of all the bad drugs. Don't base the entire thing on alcohol either, cause I drink and its not all that bad. Like everyone I know drinks, and it doesn't make you a bad person.

Good evening.

I think Karsten nailed most of the issues with the story itself, so I'm gonna toss out some suggestions I think can help you strengthen the prose in this work as well as future writings.

First off, first person narratives are "voice-driven" narratives therefore the style of writing is essential. The narrator in this story has a voice that's a bit too generic which would be okay if it were just the usual omniscient voice that you see in 3rd person writings like in Neil Gaiman's "Graveyard Book" but when the narrator is an actual character in the story, the reader needs a sense of voice if they are going to sympathize with the character at all.

It's hard for me as a reader to care about the protagonist in this story because I don't know enough about this individual's personality. Put your self in Carissa John's shoes, get inside her head. How does she talk in normal situations? What kind of speech patterns does she use? Does she use any kind of slang when she's talking to her friends? Most people don't talk the way we write in a formal context (I know I sure don't at least).

Another thing that needs work is the dialogue which is closely related to the narration I mentioned in the previous paragraph. For one most of the dialogue is in "talking heads" that's a term which basically means dialogue with no description tag. And the tags we do see with the dialogue are very basic.

-“Let’s go to the park,” he whispered in my ear.

When people are talking to each other they are also doing other things as well. The actions, gestures, body language, facial expressions etc. should be included in the dialogue tags to give us an idea of the character's behavior while he/she is speaking.

Here's an example: She never said anything but I imagined her slapping me in the face and screaming, “The hell’s the matter with you?! Your son’s hurt and you’re sitting here judging him? Get off yer sorry ass and help him!"

Another thing I would suggest as far as dialogue goes, put your description tags before the quotation marks, not after. Putting your tags after the quotes is reminiscent of the old stories and nursery rhymes our parents used to read to us when we were little kids and as such its often looked upon as a telltale sign of an amateur writer among more skilled readers. It's not as important as having descriptive tags, but it would definitely help.

Now I know I said that Karsten had already addressed the story issues that I wanted to mention, but I think a little clarity could help out when you revise. Specifically with the generic drug addicted abusive boyfriend. First of all, if you are going to have him addicted to some type of drug, I'd suggest you pick out something a bit "heavier" than marijuana. I'm not advocating the use of marijuana, but as far as illicit substances go its pretty tame. That as well as the fact that as anyone who has ever used marijuana products will tell you, its not an addictive substance. And the minority of people who do have some sort of disorder linked to it are most likely using it along with more potent drugs like cocaine and heroine.
I would find this story more believable if the boy friend was an alcoholic, addicted to prescription meds or perhaps most likely of all using some sort of steroid or hgh. All of these would strike me as more realistic for a character with such an abusive personality. But I still urge you to consider the cliche of writing about a drug-addict boyfriend.

Sorry for all the verbiage and if it seems like I'm being harsh in anyway. All this I do in hopes that you can better yourself as a writer which I believe is the very purpose of this site.

Good luck,
Black Thought (aka The Bad Narrator)

Hi Forest,

I thought the writing here was clear, but the overall story feels heavy-handed to me. One party is 100% evil, a generic bad guy with drug issues thrown in to make him even worse, the other is 100% good. In addition, I'm a little uncomfortable with the victim-blaming - the message that the protagonist wouldn't have been murdered if she'd said something. Why is it her fault that she got murdered, when her family somehow overlooked signs of abuse (for five months!) and her alleged friend did nothing? Perhaps they should have used their own "three simple words": "he beats her".

You might also want to think about punching up the writing. You tend to use weak verbs like "was" and "were" when you could be using action verbs to make the story more immediate. The description is pretty bland as well.

Hope this helps, Forest.

Cheers,
Karsten