What If?

Heyo, my new wonderful buddy. Ariel the Mentor is here to review, like promised!

I'ma go ahead and quote the poem, then bold in my comments.

Walk What if I were to walk out the door right now?

Would you stop me?

What if I told you how I really felt about you?

Would you care? I think it would be better if you replaced this sentence with "What would you say?"

What if I took a razor to my skin because of you? Like StoryWeaver13 said, this is rather common, and I believe that if you wanted to include suicidal mentions in this, then maybe go for something less heard of? (Just don't give anyone any new ideas..)

Would you feel bad? To me, this seems like a redundant question. I mean, of course he would care, who wouldn't? No one wants to be the reason of suicide or suicidal attempts.

What if I screamed at the top of my lungs?

Would you tell me to be quiet? A better substitute for the entire sentence: Would you listen?

What if I died tonight?

Would you cry? Maybe try: Would you mourn?

What if I said I loved you?

Would you say it back?

Would you mean it?

Do I mean it? I really liked this ending sentence, just italicize the I.

Hi Mercy,
So first of the bat, you have a piece which has potential, while it's not magnificent there is something to work with. So I will do my best to help you work with it.

Like the last two reviews, it is repetitive, while I don't mind repetition it can get a bit to much if that is all the poem is.
So focus on certain aspects of this poem and emphasis them and go more in depths, this will add to the story and people will connect with it more.

Also, you don't talk a lot about the why. Why are you feeling this way? What made you feel this way? Why are you leaving? Etc.
again it's about going more in depth with the story you are creating.
Work on it and I'm sure you will have a good piece.
Keep writing and enjoy YWS!
Nargles xxxx

Hi Mercy!

Overall, I agree with StoryWeaver about this being repetitive. A lot of questions in a poem is not usually a good thing. One or two can work if they are responded to in the piece, but too many are boring. A lot of questions here are also cliched-cutting, "what if I died", etc.

I'm also confused about the relationship here. The first line about walking out the door implies that they are already in a relationship. In contrast "What if I told you how I really felt about you?" implies a more distant unrequited love. If you're going to rewrite this, I would focus on one of those scenarios.

I'd also suggest playing out one of these scenarios. For example, you could show her leaving and then the guy either running to stop her or waving bye and going back to playing video games or whatever.

If you want, you could go more in depth with this but you could also just leave it and move on to something else. Whatever you do, keep writing! Oh, and welcome to YWS!

Hey! Well, due to the length of this, I'll just analyze it line-by-line, and then give you more general impressions at the end.


Walk if I were to walk out the door right now? < I'm assuming the first word was supposed to be "what," so just make sure to tweak that.

Would you stop me?

What if I told you how I really felt about you?

Would you care? < The rhythm of this doesn't quite work; it's almost too abrupt.

What if I said I took a razor to my skin because of you? < Try to avoid using this lovely and convenient cliche; it appears far too frequently and it's lost its sense of meaning. It makes your piece seem equally tired and overdone.

Would you feel bad?

What if I screamed at the top of my lungs?

Would you tell me to be quiet?

What if I died tonight?

Would you cry?

What if I said I loved you?

Would you say it back?

Would you mean it?

Do I mean it? < I like this for a last line. There's something very poignant about it that I like.


Okay, so in general, I think this is just too repetitive of itself. The problem with putting a poem into a format like this is that the reader gets lazy and starts skimming through the parts that repeat every line - it's the way our minds work, so while we tend to think of this repetition as an impacting statement, it in fact has the opposite affect by making our minds kind of digress and skim through. My advice would to find a different way of going about this stylistically. It will also give you a better chance of adding an increased depth to what you're trying to say.

I hope this helps, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Keep writing, and best wishes. xxx