Young Writers Society

Hiya!

Okkkayy...so. This is a very, emotion filled story, no? I believe so, and I am guessing that you really wanted to portray some emotion through the story, and bring forth the feelings one might go through in such a situation.

If that is at least semi-true then I must tell you, it needs to be longer. I understand wanting to get the whole story in, and not adding too many details but honestly, this needs more details to bring forth what you were trying to portray otherwise it can be misunderstood and confusing especially the plot of the story. The ending should definitively have had more details, the reader needs to know the ease she started to feel the understanding she grasped.

So I love how you started with a sudden situation with the car crashing an all, but I again felt that details were being slipped away from the readers grasp...how did the car crash?Why did the car crash? Leaving those a mystery in a short story leaves out some important opportunities to seep emotion and connection for the reader.

I also thought that the way that her mother told her was a bit...shallow. I know that her mother must have felt horrible, but the way her mother was saying it was as if it didn't really matter, like she was separated from the whole situation. And I found it strange that it needed to be brought up again at all, it was explained in the first paragraph that the girls boy-friend and friend had died.

Another thing...and this one is just an opinion although I am sure some might agree with me, I do have a problem with caps. I tend to capitalize the first letter of words that do not need to be capitalized, and that is why I can tell you that I do not think that boy-friend is suppose to be capitalized. But I understand that mistake, and am honestly just informing you. The thing that I wanted to really share with you though is the all the way capitalizing every word in a sentence in order to emphasize someone screaming or shouting. I honestly do not think that it is needed, a simple exclamation mark or three exclamation marks will do.

I just think it would be cool to revise it in those areas, adding more details as much as possible

Keep at it

Hello there.

I can see that you're trying to deliver a message about drunk driving and how it affects people. That's nice and all, but there's one major problem with this story: it doesn't have any impact. If you want to make a truly heart-wrenching story with an effective message you need more than a tragic incident. You need to make your readers care about your characters and what happens to them. Allow me to explain.

This character, Ally. We're introduced to her in the immediate aftermath of the incident. We don't know anything about her other than the fact that she's been involved in a car crash and her best friends are dead. Sad situation? Yes. Doesn't mean it's effective, though. Why? Because I don't particularly care about Ally, her friends, or any of the other characters. Now that may sound heartless, but from the perspective of a person reading a fictional work I live for empathetic and compelling characters, and that usually involves getting to know them over a period of time. Getting to know their pasts, personalities, hopes and dreams. The key here is to make your characters seem like real people. Right now Ally is a flat character, so I don't see a traumatized girl. I see another story that tries to show the consequences of drunk driving yet ends up missing the mark.

So, how can you make Ally a more rounded, sympathetic character? Well, I'd first suggest showing more emotions than despair over the events. After all, real people can have more than one emotion at a time. We can safely assume that Ally was drunk at the time of the crash. She may be disoriented at that time and not grasp the tragedy of the situation at first (though the readers probably will, leading to this lovely thing called dramatic irony).

I also noticed that Ally has something of an emotion switch. One moment she's in despair, the next confused, angry a moment later, etc. I think you would do this story a lot of good if you showed the transition from one emotion to the next. Explore why and how her emotional shifts occur. Really get into Ally's head. Show her thought processes and how she makes conclusions about things. Since you're writing in first person this is a very easy thing to accomplish.

Another big thing that's preventing your story from having impact is the fact that you tell us about Ally's emotions instead of showing them. This particularly hurts when you deliver the "drunk driving is dangerous" message at the end. Ally tells us that she went through therapy which changed how she felt about drunk driving, but the fact that we never get to see how Ally arrived at that conclusion reduces the impact of the message. We also need to be shown why this conclusion is important to Ally. No, the "what if" questions aren't going to be enough. Telling us about her conclusions after the therapy sessions and her following character development isn't going to be enough. We need to be shown these changes.

All right, enough with that. Time to talk about the technical aspects. The part that needs the most work is the dialogue. Ignoring the fact that it doesn't sound realistic the formatting is incorrect. When a new character starts to speak a new paragraph is made. Also, when a quotation is neither a question or exclamation you place a comma before the dialogue tag, not a period. Like this.

“I want to go(,)” I said.

Hey there!
First of all, I think the topic of this is a bit played. That being said, I did like where you went with this. In the line ' My boyfriend. Dead. Friend. Friend. Dana!" I think you should have put a question mark after the second friend, as though you couldn't quite remember. Error wise:
*can't
*"she asks, obviously a little uncomfortable. "
*recognize
*"....and I don’t even know who the hell' Was this meant to be cut off? if so, I'd put " who the hell-"
*realized
*still closed. 'That's why I open my eyes" without the period
*"...goodbye to them, even if it's for the last time."
*"....be soothed, so I pushed her away."
*"...but a demand."
*" Why did they have to die while I lived?"
*still
*"... fourth session,"
*"...time over due. I have more friends now then ever. I've stopped pushing people away......"
Overall, I did like it.
~Epic