The love story that remains unnamed

Dear LadyShadows,

I would like to say that this was not an ordinary piece of writing because you expressed all your sad emotions in it as you previously mentioned above. When writing to convey what's in your
heart, or what you feel, it's not always necessary for other people to decide the way you should write or how you can improve your style of writing. The most important thing is that you should prioritize Your opinions and ideas first. Also, when writing, nothing is more important than using accurate words to express what is in your heart, which you did very well. Compared to other critical reviews, I am here to motivate you to do what you feel is right as there's no age to stop learning. I would like to encourage you to write when you're sad and analyse the piece of writing after that to learn more about yourself. To me, this was a rather great work & I feel extremely grateful to you for having written such a heart touching piece of writing. Sincerely, I learnt various things from this. Thank you for taking the time to read my review.

Thanks and love, Sejal

Hey there LadyShadows,
Myjaspercat here to leave you a review

Line-by-Line/Nit-Picks

Once upon a time there was a beautiful young lady. She was lonely,[remove the comma] but it suddenly changed when she was given lovely blood-red roses. Why blood red? Why couldn't you just say red? Is there a significance to the fact that the roses are blood red? She received these in a mansion filled with people[comma] who lived there [comma] ~~and~~ none she knew. Wrapped around the bare stems was a note. It said: 'knock on the door you see in the fifth hall. Knock thrice, and I will come.' I would make the writing of the note italicized to distinguish the difference. The girl was curious, so she ventured up the stairs. The fifth pair of stairs finally came,[remove comma] The wording of this is a little odd. I don't particularly like it. If I were you, I would just say "the fifth floor" or something along those lines. and she was greeted by many doors, but then she saw one [all] alone at the end of the hall.

"It's alone, like me,' she said to herself, ~~and thought that it had to be it~~. Timid, the girl crept close to the door and knocked. One. Two. Three.

The door suddenly opened and a young man emerged ~~forth~~. He had flowing white hair that reached his hips; it was a beautiful mess of waves and curls. He had winter blue eyes and a large toothy grin that gave her great joy. It was truly love at first sight. The description of your male character is a little cliché. Just watch out for that.

"Hello," she said, ~~and~~ slowly ~~smiled~~[smiling] . The man lifted a stove pipe hat ~~off his head~~ in greeting and invited her in. I'm pretty sure everyone knows were hats are in relation to the body. ~~There,~~ The room was filled with candlelight and the warm scent of vanilla. He silently Switch the first two words in this sentence around. picked up a bottle of strawberry wine and filled an empty glass. She took it, and together they drank and talked. I know this may seem a little too nit-picky but since the girl takes the drink, I would make it clear that he hands the drink or offers it to her. The rose inside her heart slowly bloomed.

That summer, [remove comma] the man and lady happily married, but quickly Winter came, [change comma to a semi-colon] a time of death and sorrow...Remove the ellipsis and I'm also almost positive that winter doesn't need be capitalized.

* * *

In the dead of Winter ~~came~~ another man [came] to town. This man was filled with want, greed,[remove comma] and desire. The young lady was beautiful and full of love,[remove comma] and ~~that~~ [this] man wanted it to himself. As the days and nights arrived, [remove comma] the man grew jealous. One night, he took her against her will and carried her far away from her love. That's too many "her(s)" for one sentence. ~~When her love awoke, he found her missing~~. Well no duh. That ~~very~~ day he looked for her. Time came and went, but he could not find her. He grew insane, [remove comma] and the townsfolk decided to lock him away. This slightly reminds me of Beauty and the Beast. Be careful so you're ideas don't sound ripped off, you want to write something that's original not already used and worn out.

The girl tired to find her way out,[remove comma] but to no prevail. Out from where?She grew bitter and wistful. She was married to a man she didn't love. Wait what? When did she marry this man?

One day, [remove comma] she received a letter. Her eyes filled with tears as she discovered her love had died. This seems a little contradictory. If the man could never find her, then how would the person who sent her the letter even know to send the letter there. If they knew where she was, wouldn't they just rescue her and reunite the girl with her husband? Her heart filled with agony and her world filled with darkness. Like a rose, she bloomed, but the bloom did [not] ~~never~~ last. In time, like the rose, she withered away...Remove ellipsis. Unless there's a continuation, the stories done. Ended. No-more. There's no need for the ellipsis. Also, that's too many "her(s)" in general and that's just the last half of the story.

Overall
If I'm going to be both blunt and honest. I did not like this piece. I found it to be very cliché and rather boring to read. That said, I do think that with a quite a bit of work, you can actually turn this piece into something special. Let's look at a few main points:

1.) Show don't Tell

Continuing with the most basic of advice, the one piece that everyone hears when they start writing, and even professional authors struggle with. This is the benchmark piece of writing advice that, if followed, will improve your writing tenfold. But what exactly does it mean?

Showing versus Telling has always seemed to me to be a matter of how you establish information. At it's basest level, you've shown information if the reader is able to interpret it themselves, but you've told information if you've established that information yourself by addressing the reader or through exposition.

Now, telling has it's place; the rule would be better titled "When to Show, When to Tell" since both are valid forms of information establishment and, as I'm about to argue, it's impossible to not tell at all.

But why is showing better than telling? Basically, it's more engaging. If the reader is coming to conclusions on their own, they are more involved with the text, which means they'll be more immersed. Telling, conversely, has about the same level of engagement that a history or science textbook might, and is half as interesting.

Telling is unavoidable, which means you shouldn't beat yourself up too much over it, It also means it's quite tricky to decide when you're telling too much, which is why so many authors have a problem with it. If everything is telling, it becomes less a matter of identify the telling and changing it to showing, and instead grows into figuring out where in the telling you could be showing more strongly.

There are some things you'll want to tell. Maybe it's a passage of time you want to skip over, or an unimportant detail that would only kill the pacing of your story if you included it. In these moments, it's perfectly fine to go into telling.Telling is okay, if you know why you're using it.

So, on a scene level, you need to decide what you're going to show as a scene and what you can just skip over, with exposition or not. This is where you have to have skill--you need to decide what you want to accomplish in a scene, and what you can accomplish in a scene, and what you can cram in there to keep the story moving, develop character, and keep the reader hooked all at the same time.

On a sentence-by-sentence level, you should probably be aiming for showing any time you can. One helpful tip is to look for the word "was" if you're writing in past tense, or "is" if you're writing in present tense.

With your piece, it was pretty much all telling which really made me not enjoy the piece as much as I wanted too.

2.) Commas

I'm going to use my own examples for this one:

, - This is a comma. It has several uses.

The simplest use is in lists. When you are listing a number of objects in a sentence you will want to separate them by commas. For example:

Bob bought a cat dog fish and rat.

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But if we add commas...

Bob bought a cat, dog, fish, and rat.

You don't have to use a comma before the last object on the list, unless not doing so will lead to ambiguity. For example:

Bob bought a cat, dog, fish and rat

Is acceptable, but:

Bob said hello to the girls, Sarah and Jane.

It is unclear from this list whether or not Sarah and Jane are the girls Bob is saying hello to, or if Sarah and Jane are two separate entities from the girls we mentioned. On the other hand, writing like this:

Bob said hello to the girls, Sarah, and Jane.

The only interpretation is that Sarah and Jane are separate from the girls.

The more common use of a comma in prose is to separate clauses, whether they be independent, dependent, conjunctions, what have you. For example:

Having finished his purchase, Bob brought the cat home.

In this instance, "having finished his purchase" is a dependent clause because it does not make sense on its own, but is only understandable when connected to the independent clause that is "Bob brought the cat home" (note the use of subject and predicate). By using a comma to connect these two, you now have a sentence that makes sense and is more sophisticated than "Bob finished his purchase. He brought the cat home."

Sometimes you will want to join a conjunction with a comma. Generally speaking, you should use a comma when both conjoined clauses are independent, such as:

Bob bought the cat, and then he brought it home.

.
However, if one of the sentences conjoined is dependent, you may omit the comma.

Bob bought the cat and brought it home.

A parenthetical comma is one that is used to connect a parenthetical information--information that is not necessary to the understanding of the full sentence. For example:

Bob bought a cat, that son-of-a-bitch!

In this example you do not need "that son-of-a-bitch" to understand the main clause, so you separate it with a parenthetical comma. Another example:

Bob, having bought a cat, drove home.

The main clause in this example is "Bob drove home" but the parenthetical phrase "having bought a cat" is not necessary to understand that clause and so is inserted parenthetically, with a comma both before the clause and after to completely separate it.

A comma splice is an incorrect way of using a comma in that you connect two complete clauses when you should have used a period/full stop. For example:

Bob bought the cat, he drove it home.

Without a conjunction to connect the two clauses, they are independent of each other and this reads incorrectly. Either fix comma splices by inserting a full stop, or a conjunction, like so:

Bob bought the cat. He drove it home.
Bob bought the cat, and he drove it home.

Comma splices may be used stylistically, such as in short sentences that have similar meaning, but use this sparingly and not as an excuse to let comma splices into your work. A passable example might include:

Bob's eagerness to buy a cat was legendary, his forethought unheard of.

Since these two clauses are expressing a similar idea (that, while Bob is known for wanting a cat, no one thinks he put much thought into it) it is stylistically acceptable that they be spliced together.

^^Basically, you had a lot of commas that were unneeded. I hope all this information helps.

Final thoughts
So that's all I got for now, I hope I helped a little bit without sounding too cruel. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. Good luck and continue writing.

Young Writers Society

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