I heard the scream before I saw the blood. “What happened?” I asked. She didn’t answer so I glanced around the room. That’s when I saw the blood, my blood. The blood covering my feet was speckled with glass. The sticky mess I felt running down my face is what made me scream though.
I guess I went into shock because the trip to the hospital went by in a haze. My dad came in and swept me up out of the glass and put me in the car. In the waiting room at the hospital I sat in my mom’s lap clutching my doll. Mom couldn’t stop sobbing. She was still crying when the nurses brought me in back. After putting me in a hospital gown, the doctors pulled out the bits of glass still lodged in my foot and cheek.
The doctor came in with a shot to numb the area. Then they held me still and stitched the wounds. I screamed until I passed out. When it was over they discharged me and we headed back to my aunt’s. My mom told me that the mirror had fallen down and shattered, cutting me. The next few weeks were tough. I couldn’t go swimming and I had to be careful when I ate so as not to bust my stitches. That night left some very painful scars both, physically and emotionally, that I’ll never forget.
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139,276 Literary Works • 672,524 Reviews
Thanks everyone for your advice. I am currently revising the story and will repost when finished. i think that my personal involvement in the events of the story clouded my description and your suggestions were very helpful in showing where i needed to improve .
thanks
Greetings earthstar98! Holographic Ladybug here for a review!
Overall, it was good, but could use some more. But don't worry, no matter what the piece of writing, nothing is perfect and can always be improved. 
This review will be very short and I don't really have much to say other than a few bits that you could maybe do to improve your story, so I'll jump right into it.
I feel like you could use more description in your story. You see how short your story is? I have no problem with really short short stories, but I feel that I could be better with description, thus making it longer. Try this: where is the blood? Could you describe how it is splattered across the floor? The shards of mirror, could your character see their started reflection in them? What did the doctors look like? Also, try being creative in describing the setting and characters' reactions. This will make your story longer, but it will also make it better. Description is a big part of writing and adds a serious boost to it.
Another thing that can make this better is slowing down a bit. I'm not saying that this feels rushed, but maybe just kindof fast. Be in the moment and make the reader feel like they're there in the story. Start right where the mirror feel onto your MC and describe how they feel. What parts of their body sting? Then, have your character's parents reactions in there. What are they sayig and what are they doing? Do kind of the same things when hey're putting your character into the car and driving to the hospital. You don't need to describe exactly what happens moment by moment in the car. What does the waiting room in the hospital look like? Feel free to describe the surroundings and some of the other patients. What appears to be wrong with them?
Make sure that we're in the moment during this. Emotion, description of your setting, dialogue, backstory, and thought can really add to that. Take what I have exampled above and apply that to the rest of your story. Again, we as readers want to feel like we're actually there.
Also, I'm not really feeling what was so tough about the next few weeks. We don't really have a good enough relationship with your character to know why not being able to go swimming is such a bad thing for them. What I have mentioned above could really help with this. At the same time, we need to know what made it tough because swimming doesn't really seem like a big deal from my perspective. What else was hard or changed your characer's life? What about their family?
So those are my friendly suggestions to you for this text.
Never stop writing!
~Holographic Ladybug
'Ello, it's Cello!
I'm not sure if there's any truth behind this but this story was very interesting. It's a great plot for a short story but the writing could be improved.
Let's start with this-
You say 'she' but never specify who 'she' is. It's a bit distracting to the readers. I was sitting there, waiting to see who the girl or woman was when I should have be focusing on the blood and injuries. With all honesty, mentioning the lack of answer is completely unnecessary. 'What happened?' I asked. As my eyes gaze around the room, I spotted the blood.' Little things like that can completely change the mood of a story.
You use the word blood in both of the first sentences here. It's okay to repeat words for emphasis, but you already put emphasis on 'my blood' in the first sentence so you have to give the emphasizing a break. Changing 'The blood' in the second sentence to 'It' would help the flow of the story quite a bit.
Another thing here- The part talking about 'the sticky mess' is great. It has quite a bit of description but it blocks out the reader. To make a story great, you need the reader to relate. Yes, the sticky blood was scary, but what does that fear physically do the the speaker. Did their stomach flip? Did their spine tingle? Add in a sensation that readers can feel and relate to.
There seems to be a bit of time traveling here. You start talking about how the mom was crying, then you skip the speakers time with the doctors and place the speaker once again with the mom. ("She was still crying when the nurses brought me in back") After doing this, you then go into detail about what happened with the doctors and nurses. Your sense of time and actions if perfectly fine except for the one line that talks about the mom crying after the doctors visit. This is an easy fix, either putting it somewhere else in the story or removing it all together would work but in the end it's totally your call.
I spoke too soon- more time travel! You mention the removal of the glass then rewind to talk about the preparation before the glass removal. Doing this time switching thing in the manner you've chosen to do it makes it hard for readers to follow the story comfortably. Put the actions in order of how they happened.
This is less of a proper edit and more of a suggestion but-
Try to tie these sentences together. 'As not to bust my stitches. With time I healed, but that night left some very painful scars...' Bring the recovery and connect it to the final result of this accident. It makes the story feel more complete.
Keep up the good work!
-ChocolateCello
Actually, the doctors would have removed the glass before numbing or stitching the areas, to prevent contamination of the wound, so earth's timeline is in perfect order. (There really isn't any time confusion with the first bit, either -- "When the nurses brought me into the back from the waiting room, my mother was still crying. The nurses put me in a hospital gown.")
Hello, earthstar! I'm here to give you a review on this short story of yours~
With these two lines, I find myself asking "but how tough were they?" You give the reader an idea of what the character goes through with the second line, but the first line—that the weeks were vaguely "tough"—gives us little to go off of. Maybe include a different scene of the main character eating at dinner and having to be reminded to be gentle with themself, or of their friends going swimming and them having to stay home, to show the reader how it affected the character.I'd like to start with a mention that this might have been a much more effective short story if we got some of the background of the characters, action and setting in the story. As it is, we don't really get a chance to relate to the main character or their experience.
This can be done as easily as starting the story a few minutes earlier, perhaps with what the main character was doing when the mirror fell. You don't have to reveal that it was the mirror at first, but you can start with them doing something mundane like chopping vegetables (in front of a mirror...maybe I need to rethink my suggestions, haha) or combing their hair. Give us some initial interaction between your main character and their surroundings—what's their relationship with their mother like? Is their mother overprotective? Does she try to shield them when the mirror falls, or does she not notice?
Your description is a little bland, and it could use some work, I think. What's the room like that the main character is in? What room of the house are they in?
How do they interact with the other characters? What's the hospital like? What are the nurses like? What is the doctor like? You skim over these things that have amazing potential to be expanded upon; you can relate your character's experience of going into the hospital and getting stitches while giving us some emotional impact regarding how they treat and are treated by other people.
On another note, what were the emotional scars the character has? What caused them? Was the character doing something they shouldn't have been, and that's why the mirror fell? Did they learn some sort of lesson from this experience that you want to relate to the audience?
This isn't a bad short story, especially for your first one ever! It left me with a lot of questions, though, and it left me wanting so much more out of this experience. If you ever edit and expand this story, I would love to read it again to see how it improves.
Keep writing!