Young Writers Society

Duskglimmer said that,

Who is Tammy? You mention, Beck and Stacy, but I could find reference for any other girl except for the last line of the prologue. It just seemed a little out of place compared to the good-set ups that you were doing with Elmo and such.

Misty Lynn wrote:Lol, Crys, I almost feel apologetic for sending you all of that...I meant to break it up. Hmm. If I could only learn how to *edit* posts...

I get it now! Lol. I had to go back and reread it. Very good, can't wait to read the rest!

Lol, Crys, I almost feel apologetic for sending you all of that...I meant to break it up. Hmm. If I could only learn how to *edit* posts...

THE COOKIE THING IS IMPORTANT! ...kind of.

thanks for the tips

I half expected Conrad to say, "I hate blondes too..."

Creepy! This is such a sad story, but it's so intriguing, you must post more! Or you can send it to me and we'll talk over MSN. Sorry for lack of critique; it's too early in the morning for me to remember any of the problems I noticed lol.

Might wanna space that out, hon.

Okay, I've critiqued all... *checks* 7 chapters you gave me. But since I don't want to give away any more of the story and I don't want to confuse anyone else, AND I'm lazy and need to get to sleep soon, I'll just post my critiques of the prologue through Chapter 2. Minus spelling errors - you can find those with spellcheck.

Calculus homework, 500 word essay, Psycology terms and Animal Farm, page marked 93.

Beck walked Elmo down her block, arm constantly jarred by the smallish dogs constant jerks. The harsh wind picked up dirt and debris, and blew back Beck's stringy black hair.

Beck couldn't have hoped to understand Stacy...And she had always considered herself an expert on the going-on in Stacy's mind.

They spoke of her once or twice a week,

"That's all right, me neither," the other woman said,

Sure. Calc. Fun, Beck thought,

The sidewalk was slippery with dried rain from the previous night,

"Here," he added, noticing the broken book bag.

An unfeminine derivation of Rebecca, which was so girly it make me puke-ish.

2

Beck woke up with a crick in her neck, and rubbed it as she stumbled to the mirror.
Oh, wonderful, she thought. There is a zit on my nose. Gorgeous.
She put on liquid foundation, and powder too. Still, despite the mass of gunk, she didn’t feel any more feminine.
Maybe if I wear that pink skirt…, she thought, thinking of the fact that it was Casual Tuesday at St. Michael’s.
But even to Beck, the idea of borrowing a dead girl’s skirt seemed futile, despite the fact that it was in her closet. And Stacy wouldn’t be needing it. She wouldn’t want her favorite Barbie skirt to go to waste.
Yes. It was settled. Beck pulled the skirt out of her closet, and pulled a white V-neck on. She could at least act like she wasn’t engrossed with her face….and the massive growth on her face.
She shoved her books into her book bag and forgot it at the door. The bus was late and she ran back upstairs for the book bag, then missed the bus.
“Oh, gosh…darn!” Beck exclaimed as the yellow bus zoomed out of view. She stomped her foot on Elmo’s tail, who yelped so ferociously she had to dart away from him and down the sidewalk.
Walking half a mile in high heels. God save us.
Beck hobbled along, slightly wobbly from the weight of her one-shoulder book bag. The sidewalk was slippery with dried rain from the previous night, and Beck had to walk around the icy patches.
She walked past Stacy’s house and around the block. On the street corner, possibly waiting for a bus, was a group of girls, heavily lip-lined, with an arsenal of purses and chanel No. 5.
Lord help us all, Beck though, an edge of sarcasm in her thoughts. But even she wasn’t foolish enough to go up against the preppy blondes. “God knows, you can’t win,” she’d told Stacy earlier that year—though by all means Stacy could be considered a preppy blonde as well.
“But not a real prep. Not an ohmigod-I-broke-a-nail blonde.” Beck had rationalized. And even now, the girls were in a circle, chippering like a bunch of twitty chickens about the loss in their ranks.
“Like, though, Stacy was so pretty, and sweet. Well, I never would have figured it of her, that’s all I’m saying,” Twitty Chicken #1 was saying. Beck rolled her eyes and tried to walk past them, but one stepped in front of her.
“What do you think?” Twitty Chicken #2 asked.
“Me?” Beck asked, trying to step past the girl.
“Yes, you, weren’t you her like, friend? Although I can’t see why, really…”
“Yes. I was. Now, if you don’t mind, I missed my bus, and…”
Another spindly-legged girl in a much-too-short skirt spoke up. “I don’t think she killed herself,” the girl said.
“Oh, please, Rosie,” Twitty Chicken #2 said.
“Well, like, if she didn’t kill herself, what did she do?” Twitty Chicken #1 put in.
Rosie blushed. “I think she was murdered.
That earned a collective gasp from the twittery chickens.
“No, really! Why else would a pretty girl like Stacy just knock herself off? It just doesn’t happen!”
Beck rolled her eyes and took the opportunity to step past Twitty Chicken #2. She hobbled as quickly as she could around the corner.
“Please,” she said aloud, adjusting the strap of her book bag. “What complete and total idiots. I---hate---blondes!” she practically screamed, yanking on the strap.
“Whoa,” said a voice to the left of her. A vaguely attractive boy (at least, he would have earned an ohmigod-what-a-total-hottie from the twitty chickens) stepped off of his porch and onto the sidewalk. “Here,” he added, noticing the broken book bag. With nimble, slightly large, bronzed hands he adjusted it.
“Oh. Thanks. Uh, I was just saying…”
“Something about hating blondes?” the boy offered helpfully.
“Oh, yeah.” Beck laughed and continued to warble along, wishing that she had foregone the skirt and ergo high-heel experience altogether, or at least caught the bus in time.
The boy caught stride with her. Smiling at her wobbly demeanor, he said, “May I?” and took the book bag from her.
“Oh. Thanks.”
That left her to walk in peace. Except that this strange boy was walking next to her, seemingly intent on finding out about every aspect about her life. Or at least her name.
“I’m…well my name is Beck,” she told him. Beck. An unfeminine derivation of Rebecca, which was so girly it make me puke-ish.
“Hi, Beck. I’m, ah, Conrad.”
“Nice to meet you.”
At least he wasn’t your typical Ken, Beck thought. I mean, he had a kind of unique face. Kind of off-centered nose that slanted out at one point and came down to a sort of button, big, hazel eyes, dominant lower lip...He was not completely unattractive, Beck decided. At least he hadn’t grown out his red-brown hair in a complete skater boy cliché.
Well, at least it isn’t blonde, Beck decided. Just as she was coming to the conclusion that she just might possibly like this boy, her heel got caught in the sidewalk crack. Beck gasped, and pulled on the shoe, tugging at it. Conrad noticed he was walking alone and looked back.
“Everything all right back there?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah!” Beck answered, yanking at her foot. “I’m fine!”
She pulled on her foot, and finally it came free—complete with a sensationally unpleasant ripping noise.
Her high heel had been commandeered by the sidewalk. Oh how exceptionally lovely.
Conrad stared at her for a long moment.
“Wow,” he said.
Beck stared at her shoe, then hobbled up to him, limping heavily. “Haha. Uh. Yeah.” She pulled off her shoes, shrugged her shoulders and continued to walk along, inwardly wincing with every step. The sidewalk, she realized, had an exurbanite amount of prickly gravelly things.
“You okay?” Conrad asked, his eyebrows knitted.
“Who, me?” Beck said. “Oh, yeah.” She nodded unconvincingly.
The next three blocks were exceptionally unpleasant, and Beck decided to officially swear off high heels, and put her other pairs in the incinerator as soon as she got home.
At school, Conrad walked Beck to her locker to drop off her books, then Beck ran to her gym locker and put on a pair of white sneakers.
So, so typical, Beck thought while rushing off to her first period class, a study hall.
“Why on earth would anyone schedule a study hall for first period,” Beck vocalized, taking her regular seat in the back. She looked up at the blackboard.
JUNIORS, DON’T FORGET—TEST TODAY IN FRENCH.
Mr. Hamerstein.
“Oh, crap!” Beck exclaimed, rushing out to her locker to get her French book. Who could remember those annoying tests anyway?
She spend nearly the whole of Study Hall poring over her French book and agonizing over the fact that she was going to fail her test. During the last fifteen minutes, the Headmaster entered the classroom. Instantly the regular buzz died down.
The Headmaster was a burly looking figure, with an unkempt goatee and furry bits of hair forming a horseshoe around his balding skull. He tended to wear mismatching tweed suits and always seemed to be fumbling with his glasses, particularly when he was nervous. Pencil-thin, his long, brown jacket and red dress slacks hung loose off of his gaunt figure. Lately his cheeks had hollowed out so that his cheekbones stuck out horribly.
The students were simultaneously afraid of him and amused by him.
“Hello, Junior class,” he said. “I and my secretary have been making rounds.” He looked down at his scuffed black shoes. “We, I fear, are faced with an epidemic.” The man looked up and met their eyes strongly. “We received word that Joanna Tray will no longer be attending school. Because she is dead.”
There were several sharp intakes of breath and one girl immediately burst into tears. The principal moved on as though no one had spoken. “She is dead because she hanged herself last night, around six o’clock. And she is the third one in a month.”
He paused for a moment, allowing this harsh sentiment to sink in.
“The administration would like to make clear that the counselor’s office is located down the hall and to the right from the main office. There are other solutions. Nothing is ever that bad.” He emphasized the words before leaving the room. All in a moment it was abuzz with tremulous words and broken sobs.
Joanna had attended St. Michael’s Academy since second grade. Everyone knew her. She was class president, ASB secretary and, debatably, the most beautiful girl in school, certainly the most popular. She dated jock cornerback Jason Connors, was Captain of both the Cheer Squad and the Softball team, She was beautiful, shapely, and blonde.
Beck shook her head and sat back in her desk, quite suddenly weak. The bell rang but nobody moved. Five minutes past, and Beck stared at her dirty gym sneakers and brushed a dirt clod off one foot with the other foot.
Ten minutes, and the brown haired girl was still hyperventilating and carrying on so badly they had to call an ambulance and give her an oxygen tank.
Fifteen minutes, and the secretary came in and dismissed the class for the rest of the day.

Pretty creepy. Very intense. I liked it.

First, I noticed a few places where a semicolon would work a lot better than comma.

i.e.

Of course Beck took in Elmo, she wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The prologue is very vague and disconnected, and in a way rather hard to follow. There seems to be a mixture of thoughts running around with no noticeable continuity or flow between them , which often makes narrative difficult to follow (might explain some confusion noted earlier on). However, at the same time, it was sort of effective - it made me interested. So you should probably keep it as it is.

Other issues:

Hyphen Abuse: At some points you seem to hyphenated two words that don't need it. Example: "She and Stacyh ad shared everything from milk cartons in kindergarten to first bra-shopping experineces to crushes and boyfriends." I think it works fine as "to first bra shopping experiences." Actually, though, it would be better as "to first underwear shopping experiences."

Paragraphing: I guess you might like the short lines split from each other, but in reality this formatting is frankly pretty annoying. I'd rather have clustered paragraphs, it looks better and reads better. If you're going for effect again, I'd suggest not to overdo it. You definitely need a lot more detail anyway in your first chapter, cos it's pretty sparse at the moment. Basically it needs "filling".

Spelling and Grammar: Yeh, you probably know this, but there's a lot of mistakes. I know you rushed it, but sort it!

Pointless Detail

“Couldn’ hold off, huh hon?” Beck’s mother said, spatulaing the cookies onto the countertop.

“Hmm mm, mom,” Beck replied with vigor as she enveloped the cookie in her mouth and grabbing another.

“That’s all right, me neither,” the other woman said, grabbing a cookie and dipping it in Beck’s milk. “And how’s the mutt?”

“Elmo is fine. I took him on a walk.”

“Hmm.”

Beck finished her cookie. “Well, homework calls.”

Lots of spelling/gramatical errors, but these can be fixed. I'd suggest perhaps adding a little more description as well as a bit more background info so as not to confuse the reader. I'll go through all of these in more detail, but can't tonight 'cause I have to go to bed now..

~KayJuran~

As many have already said, there were tons of grammatical errors, if you proof read your work it will be more easy for the reader to grasp and understand whats going on, i had to keep re-reaing some parts.

The story is really good. I think you should try and use better vocabulary, and experiment with words. Some of the vocab you're using in the story seems a bit to simple for the plot. But you are using some really effective words though just use it more often.

No she wouldn’t, Beck contradicted herself bitterly. But she sure had no problem killing herself.

Read it and proofread it, please. There are tons of spelling and grammatical errors. Since I've read some of your other work, I won't go on and on about the grammatical errors, but you should keep it in mind and correct it, if only for our sanity.

I thought the prologue was very catchy. It was written in a quick, quirky way that reminded me more than once of "The Twilight Show." With that said, I think this might be a really cool episode of that show. The first couple of paragraphs are great. But then it gets a little harder to believe. For example, you just skipped over the family's reactions of her death as if it was nothing consequential. But it was. This is making me wonder whether it would be better if you describe it in the first chapter as Beck and just cut straight to the chase from the prologue to the first chapter. Something a little like, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy if that makes any sense.

The first chapter seems like too much dialogue and not enough supporting detail. I'm not asking you to go on this long tangent about Beck's hair, mind you, but I would like more of her thoughts on the suicide and her reactions. Right now, it's pretty sparse on that, or when it is mentioned, it's almost in a morbidly humorous way, which is cutting the creepiness away from the story. If that's what you want to do, then fine, but if it is, I'm going to have to do a completely different critique on making comedy. And comedy is by far the hardest genre to write for...

And something else that bugged me about the story... this line:

Beck was only halfway through her homework. Who even knew what a quadratic formula was? She scrunched her forehead and her hair fell into her face. Annoyed, she grabbed a hair-tie from her nightstand and pulled it back.

I thought you meant 'Marc Antony'...as in Cleopatra's lover, but we won't go there.

Ah, Misty, I shall critique when you get on MSN, since I owe you. Big time.

Okay, I wrote a really long, detailed critique for this and then accidentally deleted it.
But thankfully, I remembered most of the points I made, so wrote as many as I remembered here!
Okay, this was pretty good. Chilling, but good. There were a few things I noticed though...

The hanging had a bad effect on him

It was hard to walk by Stacy’s door on the way home, where they had drunk hot cocoa and shared secrets.

No she wouldn’t, Beck contradicted herself bitterly. But she sure had no problem killing herself.

there was a tray of sugar cookies on the edgy steel stove. Beck smiled, picked up the spatula and pulled off ac ookie. She poured a glass of milk and bit into the sweet cookie.

spatulaing the cookies onto the countertop.

as she enveloped the cookie in her mouth

It was realy hard to understand , your style was good but you mixed errelavent stuff like the formulas with horrer scenes. Make it simpler and use more dialog, cs the best bit about this story was the dialog .

it would be helpfull if you went to my ULTAMATE RANDOMNESS CONTEST in the contest forum, its fun and could win you a 100 points

LOL---there are fifteen more pages and I'd be happy to post them. I just didn't want to put too much up the first time. Thanks so much for the crit. FOR THE RECORD:::

I wrote the prologue in Anatomy and Physiology. I was very bored. So that whole but was just me trying to amuse myself, and then I decided to go further with Beck.
you're right. HEVC--you're right, about the cookie thing. But it has been a month. A friend of mine tried to commit suicide and I was devastated for about three weeks and then I started to get over it, despite natural worries. Of course, he lived. Crayon--I sympathize with you. That sucks out loud. Concertchick16-thanks for the read and the tips. I'll definitelly elaborate more about the bf thing. fishr-thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Cagulila and Dusky--glad I was about to creep you out. If anyone who read has something for me to crit, I'd be more than happy.

~Misty Lynn

Who's Jonny Jay? The beginning was a little confusing, love the "Hang me Barbie" box idea.
Beck seems more angry than sad. Like she resents that Stacy "hanged" herself.In what conditon did they find Stacy? more detail on the way she was when they found her, and how her boyfreind acted would be good
Other than that, i love it! hurry and finish it.

Wow that was um chilling, although it may have something to do with the fact that a 12 year old girl i know through friends was found hanging in her backyard not very long again, she was only twelve, stupid bloody text bullies.

Well... Since I went to bed early and accidentally left myself logged on, I see everyone pointed out all the typos I was about to mention. And yes, Dusky asked, but who is Tammy?

My only other question is did Stacy kill herself or did the dad? I read it twice and couldn't figure it out. Heh, but the end was mysterious and a little creepy. I wonder what the man in the black jumper suit is doing? My first thought it was either a bugler or... Stacy's dad returned and we're about to see a re-actment of King's Pet Cemetery. After all. it only stated in the story the dad left the house with a single suitcase. Sure, it may be for sale, but is that going to stop him from seeing his daughter again?

Eh, I'm probably seeing way too much in this, lol. Anyway, besides the typos, it was very well written. The prologue was the best because it really caught my attention. Good work. I enjoyed myself and hope to find out more about the man in the jump suit.

i have just a few complaints (all spelling errors aside):

1.

She had lost her best friend, next-door-neighbor and study-buddy in one clean sweet. Ut was hard to walk by Stacy’s door on the way home, where they had drunk hot cocoa and shared secrets. Beck knew that there was a pair of her jeans in Stacy’s closet, the ones she’d loaned Stac for her date with Andy.

“Couldn’ hold off, huh hon?” Beck’s mother said, spatulaing the cookies onto the countertop.

“Hmm mm, mom,” Beck replied with vigor as she enveloped the cookie in her mouth and grabbing another.

“That’s all right, me neither,” the other woman said, grabbing a cookie and dipping it in Beck’s milk. “And how’s the mutt?”

“Elmo is fine. I took him on a walk.”

“Hmm.”

Beck finished her cookie. “Well, homework calls.”

“Have fun hon.”

5:45

6:00

6:15

in one clean sweet.

First couple paragraphs - Awesome. I love the descriptions and the analogy of the barbie in her "Hang Me Barbie" box. It really caught me.

The rest of it... it's getting creepy on me... I'm guessing you're going the route that says that Stacy didn't really kill herself?

You've got some typos. Just things like:

Misty Lynn wrote:Sure enough, there was a tray of sugar cookies on the edgy steel stove. Beck smiled, picked up the spatula and pulled off ac ookie. She poured a glass of milk and bit into the sweet cookie. Her mom walked in a moment later.

Oooo...creepy.... More?

typos - Psycology should be Psychology

Ut was hard to walk by Stacy’s door on the way home, where they had drunk hot cocoa and shared secrets. It not Ut.

I love the second paragraph of the prologue.

CL