Young Writers Society

Hi, I know this story already has a lot of reviews but I just had to talk about it since I love scenes like this so much.

I won't mention the spelling or grammatical mistakes since they've already been addressed, but this does seem like the prologue or first chapter of an amazing story.

It seems like Luna is quite young, lives in a world where dragons are generally hated, and loves this little dragon a lot.

I wonder if she presented the egg to her parents thinking she could raise it or they found it when she didn't want them too.

I can already see the cute little dragon the moment you described it's head popping out of the shell.

The ending of the story kind of implied that she had been running away for quite some time. Who was chasing her? And is this just the most recent chase or a long ongoing crusade against her little dragon?

I love how your story sets up these questions and entices the reader to learn more about her and the little dragon she loves so much.

Even though this was a short story it really grabbed my attention and held it well. Good job overall

Hi! This was a nice short story! A very interesting one. I only found two mistakes:

We're her mother's last words

I believe it’s ‘were’ instead of we’re.

as the search party ran last her.
It should be
As the search party ran PAST her.

Hey Horisun!

Hope you're doing well today or tonight, depending on what side of the world you're on. Anyways, I'm here to give you a review on this wonderlandiful story of yours! I like all the description that you've added in here. You describe everything perfectly! And you're spelling is pretty god too. Same with your grammar. Anyways, I have a few things to point out. Let's start.

We're her mother's last words to her before Luna disappeared into the forest with the Dragon egg.

A hour?

Luna sighed in relief as the search party ran last her.

reflecting off crystals, the egg began to rock.

Luna eyes widened as a deep blue head popped out of the shell. It's wide eyes stared into her watering ones.

This was a short but intense short story! I can clearly convey how much she has sacrificed for the love of this dragonlet, even when everything seems to be fine, even though much is left to the imagination.

You could make it longer though. The lack of further details leaves me a bit unsatisfied, because I really wanna know how the dragon egg made her enter in conflict with her family.

For the rest, it was a nice read!

I really liked this story, but I'll jump write into some things that seemed strange to me.

In the beginning of the last paragraph you say...

"She slipped into the cave. It was covered in rainbow crystals. Luna gasped. Carefully setting down the egg. She found some fallen vines and built a nest for the egg."

I think that you made too many short sentances, which kind of seems like it's a list, not a story. I always do this as well though (Sorry!) but it's awkward while reading it. In the second last sentence, you wrote "carefully setting down the egg. She found some fallen vines and built a nest for the egg." I think it would flow better if you wrote something like "Carefully setting down the egg, she found some fallen vines and built it a nest."

Anyways, I really liked how you hinted at her family not wanting her to have the egg, which makes me wonder whether there was some kind of disaster with dragons in the past...

That's all I have to say about it, thanks for the story!

Hi, I'm Lana. You requested a review from me?

I'm gonna start with a quick synopsis to see if I got the details right:
So Luna, who I think is human? I'm not entirely certain? Like she has hair, but...okay so she's human but in some way has a maternal connection to this dragon egg. Only she's not supposed to have it. There's definitely some bad guys who want her to not hatch that egg. She really doesn't have to try that hard to give them the slip though, and she hatches the egg before promptly falling asleep.

With that out of the way, I usually do a line by line style of review, which means I pull out any details that make me pause while I'm reading a piece and then analyze why they made me pause. So... without further ado...

"Luna clutched a midnight blue egg to her chest."
----A little clunky as a description. I’ll have to think on this one. Cause it’s a good set of words, lots of soft sounds, but that makes it calming, which isn’t necessarily what you want in this situation. Also, I’m not sure if color is a big concern at this moment? She’s not looking at it and the color doesn’t tell me much about what the egg is? Texture, might be better here, or weight, or fragility.

"And her dark hair flying in her blue eyes."
----Awkward place for character description.

"Luna stopped and looked up into the night sky, making a silent wish"
----So, narrative question. Why is she stopping? This is a heart-pounding escape. I understand that she’s showing how hopeless the situation is for her by making a wish while also establishing some of the background, but narratively you’re bookending this with reasons why she wouldn’t stop, ya know? It also gives me a lot of questions about the character (WHICH IS FANTASTIC! I love asking questions cause it means your character is different than other characters and details are being established). Is she religious? What/who is she praying to. Is this something she does often when she’s in trouble? Does it work? How hopeless is this situation? I think the best solution to the problem posed by her stopping would be making it part of her character and the world-building.

"She distantly heard the thumping of feet, Luna froze, whether from the cold or the fear, she didn't know."
----Couple of notes here. You’re doing a good job of establishing the chaos and confusion of her situation and the image of distant thumping of feet helps establish this sense of not knowing where to do, because it doesn’t say where the sound is coming from which is terrifying. However, the phrase “She distantly heard,” is kinda awkward sounding. I can’t tell if it’s because the use of “she heard” pulls me out of the immersion, or the adverb “distantly” which grammatically sounds off (it’s not incorrect, it’s just not how sentences are generally phrased, which can make it just that much slower in understanding it and thus again pulls the audience out of the immersion). Also “thumping” as a verb has a soft muted connotation. It’s like bunnies, ya know? It’s not as forceful a verb as I think you want in a tense situation. Lastly, I think she knows which one it is. She’s been running, her body will be warmer. It’s clearly fear. I’m not so much a fan of the “didn’t know which” framing in tense situations cause for me it feels a little cheap and confusing. Is she pausing to analyze the cause of her freezing up? Is the cause of her freezing up more concerning to her than unfreezing herself? Like there are better ways to establish the temperature and her confused mindset. That being said I like the emotions you’re setting up, lots of people forget about emotion and tone, I just think you could evoke them in a stronger way.

"Luna didn't know how long she ran."
----I’m sorry. I’m probably gonna nitpick here. It’s kinda an overused/rushed sounding line. It doesn’t help get across her emotions. What was it like running that long? Did she loose trach because she was focusing on running so hard, or because she was afraid the whole time, or because she has a selective memory? It takes the audience out of the time and space too, which means that you’re breaking the immersion. As an audience member I don’t necessarily want every detail, but I like a good idea of how close the chase is, how confusing the terrain is, and/or how her emotions are shifting. Cause suddenly we’re at a dead end and I don’t know how dangerous the situation is.

"Rays of sunlight reached through the vines"
----So it has been hours.

"reflecting off crystals, the egg began to rock."
----Awkward phrasing. Also…Is this immediate? Like, as soon as the egg hits sunlight it begins to move? Or is it like…wait a bit, maybe it’ll work? I know you have that slowly then faster bit, but the way it’s phrased here sounds very immediate.

"Luna eyes widened as a deep blue head popped out of the shell. It's wide eyes stared into her watering ones"
----nitpick, but her eyes widen and it has wide eyes. I don’t particularly like this reveal either. Like this is a huge moment for the egg to hatch, and it happens for the audience in a few seconds. There’s no tension to it, ya know? We know it’s a dragon, we know it’ll hatch, and we don’t have to wait to see those cute little baby eyes. I don’t have a perfect one solution fix for this. Maybe some fear at the start about whether or not it’ll hatch or some motivation to hatching it or a longer description of its hatching? Idk. But I know that it doesn’t hit me as hard as I know it should. And the rest isn’t helping really. Like it’s kinda a letdown. They just conveniently fall asleep. There’s no real conflict in the story, ya know? Like there’s bad guys, but they’re never close enough and we don’t know what a dragon means in this world and specifically for the main character. And there’s a convenient hatching spot that she wanders into. I think expanding is your biggest hurdle here. Just adding more tension, making it more emotionally driven, letting it be more immersive. That’ll really make this piece stronger.

That being said, I really like that it’s not a battle or a confrontational situation cause I like that it's an escape. I could use a little more tension as to whether or not she will escape, but I like the quietness that the piece has. I don’t know much about Luna, but for the most part that’s okay, it makes me wonder if she's in her right mind or if she's justified in hatching this thing which is cool. You have a pretty good sense of the beats you want to hit and the emotions you want to create, which is fantastic. I thought it was pretty well written, there were a few moments where I was like “hmmmm…” but for the most part you picked good verbs and your sentence structure wasn’t bad.

Biggest Complaint: EXPAND EXPAND EXPAND!

The missing apostrophe in the title was fairly intriguing - I was thinking perhaps this was a poem about how multiple dragons came together and formed one tear - I found though instead it is about one single dragon. And I actually think the tear is from Luna, who I think is a human?

This short story made me remember a wonderful piece of prose called, "Eragon" by Christopher Paolini.

Dragons in themselves are quite intriguing, if anything I would love some more vivid descriptions of the baby dragon getting out of the egg. I'll also say there wasn't much plot that I could see, or at least not a lot of conflict. Just the miracle of life *cough cough* Dragon Life that is.

Your environment descriptions were very well done, the vines, the nest, the sun - you set up a nice scene. Would love for a bit more about the Dragons though, and the relation of the dragon mum to this Luna character.

That's all.

Don't fear the poem, don't fear the poet!

metrophobia

Hey, Horison! I like the story! It was touching how she wanted to protect the egg, something beautiful and natural, and yet so dangerous. I like the way she found the cave too. There are some issues I have with the story though. Some are just minor, and some are, I think, more important. I'll start with the important stuff and if I have time, I'll just add the small stuff.

1. Length and detail: In some ways, I feel like the description tells more of the story than the short story itself. I think it was missing some important details. I do like the way you slipped her mother's quote in, but if you're going to do this, I think you need to add more information. The only reason I know she was talking about the egg is because I read the description. One can only do so much guessing. I also think it could be longer, though a lot more descriptive content would have to be added in order to make it work.

2. Holes: Some things are confusing, like who is following her. You never really say, but the dead end moment made it seem like she was running from someone. I feel like the identity of the person should come up. Maybe they could pass by the cave before the egg hatches and she could hold her breath and then let out a sigh of relief when they go back the way they came. Another thing that is missing is how long she's been running for. Since she's running, it seems like she just barely left her house and maybe her parents are chasing after her, but if that was the case, we would have two problems. One is that you say that Luna sleeps for the first time since she ran away. If she just left and we've been following her journey practically this whole time, it's kind of obvious that she hasn't slept yet. The other problem, if it was her parents chasing her, is that we would hear some dialogue. Her parents would call out, which I actually think would be a good idea if you wanted to add some detail about the reason she ran. Otherwise, how long has she been running? And who would still be chasing her?

3. "When she found a dead end" is a sentence fragment, and not a complete sentence. You might want to fix that. Sorry for the nitpick.

That's it. If I somehow missed the point of your story or misinterpreted some information, I think that only stands to prove that there is indeed not enough. Great job though. This is really well-written I was entranced most of the time. I didn't want it to end!
...I'm also curious how the title fits in. She sheds a tear on the dragon, but the dragon doesn't. Unless your making a statement that the tear now belongs to the dragon, you might want to reconsider the title on grounds of accuracy.