N.B. This is an idea for a scene in a story I'm writing. It's still in the roughest of the rough drafts, but I thought I would submit it anyway.
The snow lay over the graveyard like a linen blanket. Soft flakes drifted down from the grey clouds. She stood over the grave, the fresh earth not yet interred with snow. Her gloves hands delicately traced the outline of his name on the marble tombstone, a slab of bright white light in the sea of weathered and cracked monuments. Her knees buckled from under her, and she fell to the ground, her knees breaking the thin layer of frost that was beginning to form. She gently scooped up a handful of the dark brown dirt, and held it in her palm. The rising wind picked it up and carried the dirt into the sky, the small flecks of darkness rapidly disappearing from sight. Her raven black hair was caught on the breeze as well, whipping across her face. She blinked, surprised to find tears streaming down her face.
She didn't cry. She never cried. She quickly mastered her emotions, letting her gaze turn back to stone, though there was nobody there to see her. She rose to her feet, brushing down her jeans. She turned and walked away, a white ghost amid the rows of silent, buried corpses. At the wrought iron gates that marked the entrance to the cemetery, she turned back for the first time. The marble easily drew her eye, it almost seemed to radiate light. She smiled slightly, and sighed.
'Goodbye.'
Then she turned around and walked out of the cemetery. She did not look back again.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,807 Reviews
Hello and welcome to YWS! We ask that people try to critique two pieces of someone else's work before submitting their own. If you have any questions, you might want to read the rules or check out one of the guides. Now on to the critique!
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This is a solid start. It might even be able to stand on its own, if you really wanted to. The only thing of concern was a brief change in tone, from knowing only what an observer knows and knowing what the character knows:
It's the mastering of emotions; even though it's explained that her gaze turns to stone, how is an observer really supposed to know that that shows her mastering her emotions? Besides, the phrase itself seems a lofty cliche that doesn't mean much by itself.
The other thing is that we don't see much in the way of emotions until the very end. This could be alright, I suppose, but it's definitely something to consider whether or not you intended it to turn out this way. Her smile, sigh, and saying "goodbye" tell more about the girl than telling how she stood up, for example.
Personally, I think you could leave it like this, really. I don't know if the story really has that much left to tell.
Happy writing!
Hello, and welcome to YWS!!! Um... the idea is to leave two reviews before you leave your first piece, but it's fine, just make sure you leave reviews later.
Wow, your description was really good! I have one bone to pick:
[quote]She didn't cry. She never cried. She quickly mastered her emotions, letting her gaze turn back to stone, though there was nobody there to see her. She rose to her feet, brushing down her jeans. She turned and walked away, a white ghost amid the rows of silent, buried corpses. [quote]
She, she, she, she. You varied a lot in the rest of the passage, but here, every sentence begins with the same word. You might want to change it, rephrase it, whatever.
Other than that, lovely job!
Amazing! Great description with it. I could picture everything with ease. For your first work, it was awesome! Way, WAY better than most of my work!
Great Job!
This was really good. It was sad. It was also short, but you gave enough information to give us an idea about the girl's personality and suffering. I thought this was really good. Keep up the good work.
Wow. Great story for your first time! My first one wasn't half as good.
Wow. It's too short to give a good critique but overall your writing style and detail were quite good. Good job.
YAY! First post! Haha, so basically all I can say is wow.
I really liked that! Sometimes there were little things, like commas missing, but they're very easy to fix.
Here are some things that I would change, but this is just me, and you shouldn't take all of my advice if you don't want to