Young Writers Society

Waterlilygirl wrote: I feel like critiquing both of your stories, the unrevised and the revised. Sorry if anything is particularly harsh.

I took my last breath, the last gulp of air. I felt free, free underneath the world, under the water. You seem to be repeating things heaps, already. I get what you're trying to do but try not to repeat for effect all the time. Or if you are going to do this, instead of a comma between the two frees, add a semi-colon.I was just floating, looking at my sightings. I was slowly running out of breath,Take away the comma, add a full stop here, capital for bubbles. bubbles slowly danced away from my mouth. I push myself up to the surface of the water. I was just lying there, taking it all in, just letting it sink in.You pretty much just repeated yourself using two different lines. Take away one of them, or change it so it's not repeating. I wiped my face out of my hair. What another wonderful swim, I looked up at the tall bell tower, its one o’clock… I need to hurry and get home.I quickly swam back to the shore. I Foundno capital for found. my bike beside the tall gum tree, and set off toward home. You need to work on the way you emphasize your story, repetition does get quite annoying, but it works sometimes, not all the time. In your case, I would probably try another technique.


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I changed it around:

I took my last breath, the last gulp of air. I felt free, free underneath the world, under the water. Just floating, looking at my surroundings. Slowly, I was running out of air, the bubbles slowly danced away from my mouth. I pushed up towards the surface that was glistening above me. I splashed out of the water, “I’m back in the real world now,” I thought to myself as lots of fresh, cold air fulled up my lungs. Then it hit me, it came over me like a giant wave. Again, repetition. Which sentence would you rather use? "Then it hit me" or "It came over me like a giant wave."

“Oh no, please I can’t be late,” I mumbled to myself.

Frantically, I glanced upwards, towards the tall bell tower. This shone in the sunlight; it was such a beautiful day. Your trail of thought changed here. From the time to how beautiful the day was.

The loud sound of bells went off, and awoke me from my little day dream. This is a really random moment to daydream, and also, you can't really daydream about how beautiful the day is, you can only admire and think about it. Its one O’Clock. I’m safe, this time. Have to hurry home, work starts in an hour. It gets choppy in these last two sentences.

Whilst swimming back towards the shore, my mind screamed at me.
I rememberedYou keep switching between past and present tense words. If you're going to go with present tense, change the 'remembered' to 'remember', or vice versa. that I’m meant to catch up with Georgia in an hour before I go to work. So I started swimming faster, my body floating across the water, gliding.You can't glide and float at the same time. Floating is a non-locomotive word. The action I think you're going for is locomotive, i.e gliding. So put the gliding to where the floating is, and that also shortens the sentence a bit. Every breath was like a new life, every sound is the waves singing to me. Again, if you're going for present tense, change it to 'Every breath IS like a new life'.Now I remember why I love the water so much, it’s just so refreshing. Okay, so there's nothing quite wrong with that sentence, but to me I found it a bit out of the blue. And a bit...strained. 'It's just so refreshing' sounds like some kind of advert for something aquatic. Sorry XD Bahah, that's just me, though. I stood up in the water, which is almost up to my waist; Instead of a semi-colon, add a comma and then put in 'and then', so "which is almost up to my waist, and I...etc.I started walking towards the golden sands. Closer and closer I became from being back on land and out of the water. But then something grabbed hold of my leg, I panicked, my mind was racing. Very little emotion for something I assume you were trying to make exciting. I swung around only to find a piece of seaweed, which had twisted itself around my lower leg. Slowly, I bent over to untangle it from me so I could continue my way back.

My feet slipped out of the water, onto the warm sand.

Okay, wooooh. An overall opinion: I didn't particularly like it. It was a bit amateur for me. If I read this in a book, I would definitely not continue, or advise any one else I know to read it. When you're starting off a chapter, a first chapter especially, you need an exciting opening sentence, that will hook the reader in. Also, you dragged on and on about how awesome the water was, and what it was like to be in the water. Okay, so it's good to give a description, but when you're just starting out a story, the reader doesn't need to know every minute detail about every single thing you can think of. There was such a lack of emotion it made your character seem like some kind of boring robot, and you don't what that. The story doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and the excitement you tried to add into the ending, wasn't very exciting at all. It was created in as little as a sentence, and died by the next. Hmm, I can't really think of anything else. I hope this wasn't too grumpy, I'm not a mean person, I swear Good luck with the rest of your writing.

Ok Thanks, I'll go see what I can do

I took my last breath, the last gulp of air. I felt free, free underneath the world, under the water. I was just floating, looking at my sightings. I was slowly running out of breath, bubbles slowly danced away from my mouth. I push myself up to the surface of the water. I was just lying there, taking it all in, just letting it sink in. I wiped my face of my hair. What another wonderful swim, I looked up at the tall bell tower, its one o’clock… I need to hurry and get home. I quickly swam back to the shore. I Found my bike beside the tall gum tree, and set off toward home.

I Found my bike beside the tall gum tree, and set off toward home.

What another wonderful swim, I looked up at the tall bell tower, its one o’clock…

....

More.

Really the only thing besides pacing, this peice is way to short for consideration of anything other than a sampler.

Give us more of a taste, tell us where this is going by actually going there.

This was a bit of a ... well to use a vulgar term C&$%slap, it diddnt give me anything to really build off of as a reviewer or a reader.

Give us more, thats pretty much the only thing I can say.