((Look I could not think of a title. So yeah.Quick write. Because it honestly is)).
“Fran?” Dana asked, wide eyes behind her giant black sunglasses. Dana’s voice was soft and melodious, it was almost as if there was a peace of mind when it came to her. Her girlfriend, Fran, was sitting there, reading some music magazine. Its pages yellowed, and withered. As though time continued and it struggled to keep up with time.
“Yeah?” was the other girl’s answer. Fran put down her magazine onto her lap. She looked over where Dana was.
Dana took a sip of her water, from her old fashioned canteen. She placed it back on the table that she was sitting at.
She placed the canteen onto the table, and then spoke up, “We should actually do something today.”
Fran tilted her head, intrigued. She never did much on weekends, aside from running the gig at the local coffee shop. She would tell people that she was rehearsing all day, but usually that was not the case.
Fran shrugged, ‘What do you want to do, sunshine?”
Dana blushed, and played with a piece of her brown braided hair. She looked at Fran, who had recently dyed her hair a bright cyan. Dana wondered how would she be able to keep her job at the grocery store, but she’s been working there for at least three years. “Well?”
Fran asked, putting the magazine on the couch and going up to Dana. Dana looked up at her with wide doe eyes, and a small smile on her face. Fran grinned, and placed a small kiss onto Dana’s nose. “Now, what do you want to do?”
Fran asked, smirking . Dana blushed, and kept her eyes wide. Fran breathed out, as though it was a small, terse laugh. Dana smiled and then broke the eye contact by looking at the carpeted ground.She then spoke up, “Maybe we can go out for lunch, like old times sake?”
Fran smiled, “Alright sunshine, why didn’t ya say so?”
Dana blushed, and fiddled with her braid again. She then answered, “I don’t know if that was a good idea.”Fran patted Dana on the shoulder then, ‘Hun, you’re all full of good ideas.”
“Mmm, no no not really,” Dana cooed, “Remember last summer.”
“We don’t talk about last summer.”
“My point.”Fran pulled away from Dana and waltzed into her kitchen nearby. She opened her old white refridgerator and grabbed the orange juice. Fran removed the cap and took a swig of the juice.
“That’s disgusting!” Dana commented loudly, and Fran put down the juice and rolled her eyes. She put the orange juice back into the fridge and smiled to herself.
“Hush, this is my apartment, so my rules.”
“Fran. I basically live here also,” Dana yelled back.
“Eh you love me!” exclaimed Fran as she went back into the livingroom. “Questionable.”
Fran shook her head and then went over to Dana and sat down at the other chair next to her. She took the girl’s hand.“Now where shall we go today?”
“Ice cream.” Dana replied, grinning widely.
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137,660 Literary Works • 672,057 Reviews
Hi, J here for a review.
I like this story and where it was headed you had nice characters with interesting backgrounds. This may sound weird but I liked the fact they were gay. You see I have been looking all over for a gay romance story to comfort my best friend and this was just the thing.
I was just the right amount of invested in your characters without being desperate for more information. The plot was good but not overbearing. You had a good setting without having a detail list a mile long. I guess you could shorten that to say this was a well-balanced story.
Good Job and Keep Writing!!
"Her girlfriend, Fran, was sitting there, reading some music magazine. Its pages yellowed, and withered." - It would probably be in your best interest to make this all one sentence
Wow, I had to look it up, by cyan actually sounds like the color that it expresses. I love when words do that! (well, actually the majority of them do.. I'm just such a lover of words and language.)
“I don’t know if that was a good idea.” - you should probably say, 'I didn't know if it was a good idea...'
refridgerator - no d in refrigerator. But there is in Fridge. Confusing, I know..
“Questionable.” - Wait... why did Fran say that. It didn't get communicated to me so well.
“Ice cream.” Dana replied, grinning widely. - This would be a comma for Ice cream, not a period
Okay, so in Reflection: I don't think the Introduction is really the greatest place to start. It's not bad, not at all. But for future referencing, I'd rather see something that didn't start with someone speaking who we don't yet have any idea is speaking. I didn't get any scenery or character yet! Not fair!
I am bothered by how inactive the story is. They stay in the same room the whole time. They don't go out to actually do their activity. Can I say I'm quite a little mightily disappointed about that? Also, I never got to know what happened "Last Summer," and considering this isn't a novel, I feel gypped. Give them things to do, or at least memories to discuss about. I don't usually see anybody during my day, but it's still way more riveting than what just happened here. You provoked at a Backstory these two girls had, So let us Have it I do beseech ye!!
Hi Jellyrose!
This is really cute. What I really like, a theme which is only just breaking into modern genres, is that the sexuality of the characters is very casual. It's not there to make a statement or promote diversity, it feels like there are simply two characters who happen to both be female.
It plays out a bit like a storyboard, most of it is centred around the characters reactions to each other. It says a lot about their relationship, which is great, but I'd also like to see a glimpse of what they are like independently, like what kind of habits they have or how they interact with the space. The sentence structure is quite monotonous, but I think that's probably because of the back-and-forth nature of their conversation. If you broke it up a bit, add a little description or introspection here or there, that'll probably iron itself out.
This seems like a fantastic start to a longer story. You've instantly made the characters likeable in their interactions with each other, and it would be really interesting to see where there lives go from here and what kind of conflicts could be introduced.
Hi and a belated welcome to YWS! Knight Ink of the After Watch here for a hopefully quick review! I'm not reading the reviews below so I hope you don't mind if I repeat something.
The story was--really fast-moving!
But I liked it anyway; Dana and Fran are a nice couple. I also think the characters were developed well. I had no trouble distinguishing who was who and that's a great accomplishment for such a short piece!
But if this piece is a self-contained story, I'm a little disappointed. I see some threads for some possible "plots" and then they disappear at the end. For example,
I'm a little concerned for Dana here. Will she lose her job?
I'm curious. What is it about?
So if this story is really a quick one, I'm hoping somehow these threads can be tied up nicely at the end. Never mind what I said if the story is part of a longer one, but that's what I just wanted to say as a reader.
Well, that's all I've got to say. Feel free to use my suggestions or not, and message me if you want to discuss!
Wow, this was quick.
Fran and Dana were really cute together. I like the contrast in their personalities, how Fran is the kind of person to dye her hair blue while Dana blushes when her girlfriend calls her "sunshine" and kisses her on the nose. You also left us off with a bit of a mystery, thanks to this bit.
I don't know if you're planning to do anything with this small piece of writing, if it's part of a longer story you're planning or if it was just for practice, but if you did decide to write more, this would hopefully be addressed at some point.
Taken as a piece of practice, here are my general thoughts.
Strengths. Definitely characterization. As I said, Fran and Dana are distinct characters who are easy to tell apart, and you did a good job showing their interactions with each other even though this is a really, really short piece. Your dialogue is natural, the kind of things real people who are in a comfortable relationship would say to each other. I particularly thought so in this case.
You didn't use much description, but I at least had a sense of where the characters were and what they looked like - it didn't feel like they were floating around in nothingness.
Weaknesses. Dialogue tags. For one thing, you do a lot of "she cooed," "she exclaimed," and so on. "Said" can get repetitive if you use it for every single line of dialogue, but for the most part it's invisible; readers pass right over it. Using too many replacements - like "cooed" - trips up the story, because readers start noticing the tags too much. Also, I'm going to drop this here for you for formatting purposes.
You could stand to develop your description further - you've got an all right start, but you might want to consider playing with description to give readers a more vivid picture. Finally, the writing itself sometimes got a little confusing, like here.
Fran works at a coffee shop - or at least plays gigs there, I think? - so is it Dana who works at the grocery store? But she's not the one with blue hair, so I don't understand why she thinks she'd be fired after three years there. Unless it IS Fran who works at the grocery store. I'm really not sure. Have readers look this over and ask them if there's anything confusing about the story. Then ask them what might have made things clearer to them.