The crisp autumn wind blew through her soft red curls, making them stick to her face where tears once travelled. She had finally stopped crying, but not on her own accord, there were just no tears left. She hung her head low, not really sure what to do with herself, not sure where to place her hands and never feeling comfortable. Her black dress danced with the wind, moving to the sound of whistling and soft murmurs. She finally looked up. Her face was scarred with sorrow; her once beautiful features were now torn from bitter emotion. She let out a heartfelt cry, shouting into the wind. She didn’t want him to go, she never wanted to have to say goodbye to him, to look into his eyes as he said he might not be returning. She remembered this moment; it played in her head continuously, she was unable to stop it. She grasped her head and dropped to her knees. She was tormented by the emptiness she felt. Why did he have to go?
Chapter One
The duvet swallowed all hope of trying to get out of bed. It created a soft barrier between the harsh world and bliss. Its’ warm cosiness drove away any thought of actually leaving to try and get on with life. David wrapped his large arm around Karen, he loved watching her slowly wake up, watching her green eyes sparkle in the light of the newly risen sun. Her thick eyelashes batting against her soft rosy cheeks, her pink mouth turning into a smooth smile as she realises she’s in his arms.
“Good morning sunshine” David playfully smiled at her, brushing off her silky red hair from her face. She tiredly grunted to show recognition of his greeting. Karen slowly raised her arms to stretch; then looked over at the clock. She moved in closer to him, feeling his warm breath against her forehead.
“Morning” she managed to force out during a yawn. Her teeth glistened as she grinned, like precious pearls discovered by deep sea divers. David continued to hold her, he was reluctant to let go, wanting this moment to last for forever and a day. He rested his head against hers, smothering his face in her hair, slowly inhaling her sweet scent. He loved her smell, it reminded him of the day they met, the warm spring breeze, the field of poppies, her youthful smile, she hadn’t changed one bit. He gently kissed the top of her head as she clutched onto his grey t-shirt. David sighed.
He stretched his legs out, making Karen release her grip, and stood up and got out of bed. He looked back at Karen, he seemed distressed, he just stared into her eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of emotion in them, he could have been standing there for seconds or days, he lost complete track of time. Karen held her hand out for him to hold it, but he refused with a slight turn of his head. Karen knew automatically something was up; he would never turn her down; so she crawled across the mattress and leaned towards him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, worry was hanging in her voice, she tried to look into his eyes, but he turned away. David picked up his trousers and slipped them on slowly, his head still low and his eyes never meeting hers. As he finally did up his trousers, he looked her straight in the face, and hesitated.
“Karen, I’m, I’m sorry. There’s something I’ve got to do.” Without waiting for a response he walked out the door, but guilt slowly built up on him. Why was he doing this to himself, and why was he doing this to his love of his life. He wasn’t sure, be he was sure about one thing; he was going to make his father proud.
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression: Okayy...so this was a pretty exciting chapter right here. I think you've managed to do a pretty good job for the most part with this particular opening. Its certainly exciting enough to get the reader's attention here and make us want to read on and find out more.
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okayy...that's quite the statement there to start things off here. Definitely a neat sort of introduction almost here considering that this does appear to come before the first chapter and this isn't an author's note.
Hmm, this is a cute little moment to start with. This first chapter is starting on a rather lazy note here and I think its a fun way to get things up and running. Not the most attention grabbing but then the ones that start the slowest usually end up having the craziest of endings, so that certainly makes me want to read on here.
Hmm, well this is getting a little more intriguing here as we go on. The first bit was relatively slow and while this continues that trend there's just a slight sense of finality in that one that you don't quite see in the previous part and now there's a bit of a tension in the air which is awesome to see creep up in a first chapter.
Okayy...some interesting things going on down there towards the end. It seems that this one is about to embark on some sort of dangerous quest of some sort possibly one he doesn't expect to return, well, this is certainly a great place to end a first chapter on.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall, I think this is off to a good start here with this first chapter. You've managed to do a pretty decent job with what you've got going here and I think this is certainly good enough to get people wanting to read more here.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hello HolyCheesecake!
I guess you could say that it read exactly as one might expect a romance novel to be read.
Should be 'of' not 'on'.Welcome to YWS! So here's how this is going to go down. I'm gonna give you my impressions and do a little crititquing, sound alright? Of course it does!
First, when you post something, it's best to give it a title, and if you're not sure if you want to keep the title just say [Working Title] right next to it. That way people can kind of get a feel for your work and it catches their eye making them want to read it. Untitled just sounds so blah. Thankfully, I saw past the Untitled title and decided to read this! And I wasn't disappointed!
To begin: I want to point out the positives. You used a lot of pretty imagery and painted the picture very well with your words. It read nicely and was almost quaint in a way.
One problem however is that it can come off as kind of cheesy or cliche, and those are things that you need to try to avoid so when you are going to say something about the MC's (main character) hair or skin or lips, etc, you need to give it a little pizzaz. Something to make it stand out amidst all the other descriptions going on. In fact, you might even want to tone down some of the heavier adjectives and adverbs, just so the reader doesn't become too entranced and distracted by the descriptions that they get lost in the story.
There was a few issues with grammar. Your verb tenses switched a few times, and you just need to be careful with that. I found a few errors spelling-wise. Here they are:
Should be 'Its' the apostrophe at the end isn't necessary. Coziness is spelled with a 'z'. I know, weird right?
When you do dialogue, the needs to be a comma separating the spoken words from the speaker and the description. Like so:
On a positive note, you are using quotation marks correctly, which is wonderful!
Another thing I would like to point out as a useful accessory to writing are hyphens. They work wonders for separating bits of description from the rest of a sentence, making it flow better in the long run. I'll show you an example of a place you could use some hyphens.
Neat huh?
I also noticed that you tended to like using run-onish sentences. Being a user of run-ons myself, I wasn't too displeased, but in general it's best to leave run-ons in verbal communication rather than in writing. Otherwise you just succeed in making the reader confused and tired of reading the. My advice is just to go back in and break them up into smaller chunks. They will probably work better that way too. It's okay to have short declarative sentences. You don't have to be longwinded to prove you can write.
That all said, I would like to congratulate you on having posted your first piece on YWS. I know it's a milestone in any writer's career to put their work out there for others--like me--to read and review. And if you feel like my review of your work was too in depth or even unnecessary, please feel free to PM me with any questions, or even hop on over to my Portfolio and give reviewing a shot. It's pretty fun! And I promise not to get upset if you judge my work unworthy.
Happy Writing!
Bailey