Young Writers Society

Hello hello! Here to bring this out of the green room for you! I picked it out because you classified it as romantic and I love me some romance, so lets get to it!

I love the simplicity of this and that you tried to capture one specific, yet profound moment. One of the best parts of any love story is when person A realizes they love person B. I thought your overall style of prose was lovely and your way with words was lovely. It was very poetic and it flowed really nice. For it being such a short moment in time, you did a really, really nice job making it a moment worth remembering and bringing out the little details of the moment. Without that, the story would be very blase.

My biggest qualm with this piece is that I want a little bit more. While I do really like the simplicity and the capturing of this one small, significant moment, I feel like I'm missing part of the story. The fact that you chose to start with a ... and a lowercase word makes me feel like the story is unfinished and we didn't get to see the first part of it. Now, I appreciate a good flash fiction piece and I don't think you need to add a ton of length. You've already shown that that you can do a lot with a little (which is awesome because not everyone has that skill!) I really want to know where we are and what's going on. I feel like those two little details added to the beginning (you could probably do it in one paragraph) would make the story feel more complete.

My other little qualm was the dialogue (is it even dialogue?) in the middle. I'm talking about the "But you love her/But I love her" Are those thoughts or dialogue. If it's dialogue I would do full quotation marks (" ") and I would also be curious to know who is saying these lines. I think if they're thoughts, you could make it more apparent it's thoughts by putting it in italics.

Overall, the story works for me and I think it's a beautiful portrayal of a moment. Let me know if you ever write a novel because I'll be all over that. And let me know if you have any questions or if there's something you'd like feedback about that I didn't mention!

Hello there!

What you have here is not exactly a short story, but more of a sketch of a scene that could belong in a short story. Because of this, the intentionality behind the sketch is unclear. What do you hope to achieve with this? What is the impact of this on yourself and also your readership? There is nothing wrong with posting little vignettes on YWS, but as you have posted this as a short story, I will review it as such. And it is not quite a short story.

In order to make something a short story, you need some sort of characterization, plot development, some sort of action as well. As it stands, your protagonist and his love interest are actually quite flat characters. They are stagnant and unchanging in their love for each other. Also, what are the grounds for this love? I think there are many questions that you need to answer, as the author, in order for this to be more than a quick glimpse into a scene of your protagonist's life.

Personally, I struggle with the cliched woman-overpowering-the-man situation. It's actually quite dehumanizing. While I understand that it may lead to some beautiful imagery and descriptive text, it does not yield much respect for either character. Once again, I am urging you to expand this short scene into something more.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Best,
Lav

Hi, not a critique, just wanted to say I really enjoyed the elegant prose here. A nice fragment of love and life. Thank you for sharing.

I love this too much. I just can't bring myself to review it. I have so many feels right now but I feel so warm and fuzzy. Amazing. Just amazing. Good job