Young Writers Society

Okay, I'll tell a bit of myself so you can understand where the opinions of this review come from. I'm a millennial. I live in the PHL. I wrote flash fiction in the past, but now I'm trying to get into essays. I don't read young adult literature from the West anymore, but I am hard into anime culture, comics and modern Philippine adult literature. My main writing influence right now is Lovecraft, because people going crazy suicidal over space horrors is cool and will always be cool. I read this short story thrice already, on top of looking at your profile and the other reviews. I think I'm pretty easy to please with art, so long as it's well-made.

Okay, let's move on now.

I noticed that your English isn't really the most polished. Spelling "breath" when it should have been "breathe," no caps and dash on "african american," wrong spelling of the possessive form of "it" (shoulda been "its" instead of "it's"), tense inconsistency, and others.

I think you should make it a priority to clean up your language, 'cause it can really take the reader out of the immersion. It's like a drawing of a human figure but the arms are drawn too short or something like that. Maybe you can do some studying up on the flaws that I pointed out, or maybe you can get someone else to edit for you. Other people are there for you if it's late night and you too tired to edit it yourself or smth like that. I'm one PM away if you really want me to go in-depth on the grammar details of this one since I'm mostly free on this website.

There was a relatively big jump in time between paragraphs four and five. Maybe you could have put a time indicator, like "one hour later." Or you can put a special sort of divider between the paragraphs.

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Like this.

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Or like that. At least the reader gets informed that there's a skip in time.

The most I could gather about the characters was that our thief robbed in the house she first broke into. I say the robber's a "she" because I've never heard of a guy that wears a tank-top. She found that out because of the photo of the jewelry box she stole. The lady in the picture must be the wolf-lady. Judging by the wolf-lady's reaction in the end, these two people might know each other. Maybe not just robber or robbed, but they may be friends or something.

Two problems in the portrayal of the relationship though. First, it's kind of unclear. The clincher in this story is the revelation of their hidden relationship. But there aren't any hints on what this other relationship would be. Like a keepsake in the photo to hint that they were friends. Or is there even a hidden relationship? Maybe the wolf-lady's just really mad at the robber, that's why she reacted like that in the end. I dunno, that's unclear too. Or maybe I'm just really dumb and imperceptive and this confusion's all my fault. I'm still not clear on that in any case though.

More than that though is the fact that I don't feel for any of these characters. It's okay if it's unclear if I'm really intrigued about these characters. That's gonna make me want to speculate and find out more about them.

The problem is I'm not in love, mad, glad, or sad for the robber or the wolf-lady. I'm not emotionally invested in them. I still want to know what their deal is, but that's just because I want closure so I can get this thing over with and provide a good review, not because I'm rooting for any of these guys.

I think there are some things I haven't mentioned (like how the writing is kind of thin and unthrilling imo), but I think this is enough.

You got a nice idea going on. A little action thriller with a potential hidden backstory is nice on paper. But you got a whole lot of polishing up to do if you want this to be at least above good. I don't think it's gonna be too grueling to get to that point though. You can do it.

I'm just one message away if you got any concerns or if you want some help. I hope this review motivates you to keep on writing. Hope to see you around next time.

-ov

(PS, what's the deal between these two people? I really want to know, you know.)

Hello, I'm Mae, I'm going to play the part of the knowledgeable reviewer, you are going to play the part of the beginning writer. Let's begin, shall we?

Okay, so the first problem I have is your sentence structure. You don't seem to know how to apply word order to keep your readers engaged and to smoothly convey the message of your writing. Most people think that the fluidity of your sentences and the way they sound when read aloud only matters with poetry, but, I'll tell you a little secret. All writing is poetry, the only difference is the level of freedom and the format (I'd say the length but...Well, there are far too many epic poems for that to be a valid point). What you should do to solve this problem is read it aloud, or have someone else read it aloud to you, so you can hear how the words sound that way. This will give you the most accurate representation of how your readers will 'hear' it in their heads.

Now I'm going to tell you what you did right. DO NOT get a big head over this, I don't do it often and if I see you getting overconfident and careless in your future work, I'll stop doing it altogether. Now that that's out of the way, what you did right. Your story is really good, though it ends rather abruptly with no explanation of any kind (I, personally, would write a part-2 to fix that, or just add to this one). Your opening sentence was really good, which I don't see often. It got the readers asking questions from the get-go, particularly, 'What, exactly, is happening' and 'who is speaking and who are they talking to?' (That first one is often a bad thing for a reader to be asking, especially toward to middle or end of a story, but at the beginning it gets more leeway, and you used it in one of the only ways it works).

So that's what you did right, but you really should work on that ending. Your readers should start the story with questions, maybe get more questions as their previous ones are answered, but by the time they read the last sentence, everything should be resolved. No loose threads. No unanswered questions.

Well, that was me playing knowledgeable reviewer, now you play your part and fix up your story. I'll see you next time I come across your work. Bye now.

Hello there.

It's a nice little story.

However, I apologize, for I don't get what is happening. I'm not sure what the last line means. Perhaps the thief and the ghost are known to each other. That is what I seem to derive from this story.

Writing is good. The sentences are easy to understand and convey their meaning clearly. However there are some sentences that I noticed were odd sounding:

The first house I picked to burglaries had to be this one.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’ll leave.” I whispered fear talking for me.