I know this needs work, but I feel like I need some feedback on this before I carry on.
Might be hard to follow since it's so short, but the idea is that the story is narrated by two different characters whose storys overlap.
Apologies for any silly mistakes, i'm having one of those days when I just can't spot them.
feedback please? ^^
Liliana- chapter 1
It doesn’t matter how hard I think or how deep down I search, for some reason there’s something missing inside me and I can’t figure out what it is. It makes me feel selfish and pathetic, knowing that there’s nothing majorly wrong with my life yet I insist on maintaining a constant, vicious cycle of silenced feelings and negligent complaints rattling round my tired head, trying desperately to understand where this seeping feeling of emptiness is coming from. Why can’t I just be happy?
Sometimes I feel like telling people to step into my size 5 shoes for just a moment and see how hard my life is, how stressful my life is. But then I had a thought. Staring critically at myself in the mirror, watching the tears gradually glaze over my fiery chestnut eyes before dramatically spilling over and tumbling down my cheek, it suddenly occurred to me that surely out of all the people in this world I couldn’t possibly be the only one to feel this way. I find it rather funny that such a simple realisation momentarily restored a little motivation to my body, and for all of about 3 seconds the emptiness faded.
All I know is I’m extremely thankful for my best friend, Tyler, because without him I generally have no idea what I would do. I don’t know anyone else who would come round at half 11 at night just to give me a hug, let me win every time we play on the Xbox, make dinner when i can't be bothered too, sit and watch crappy mtv programmes for hours on end with me and best of all finish the last 4 pages of my paper for me an hour before the final deadline, bless him. In fact, laid here on my gorgeous memory-foam mattress at 4.57 pm on a dreary Wednesday afternoon I have the urge to go for a walk down on the pier, so I pick up the phone, scroll through the ‘recent calls’ menu and dial his number.
Tyler-chapter 2
“yep, I’ll see you in 10.. mhmmm, love you too”.
Great. He flew down the stairs, shoved on a tatty pair of trainers, flung his adidas over his shoulder, briskly made his way out the front door and swiftly shut the door behind him. How many times was he going to have to do this? I mean, he knew girls were emotional and hormonal and all that jazz, but this was beginning to take the piss now. It’s a 25 minute uphill walk to his girlfriend’s house, and he’s already walked there and back 7 times in the last 3 days. On the upside, it was good exercise.
He arrived at Elle’s to find her squirreled in the corner of her sofa surrounded by a plethora of tissues and her baby blue blanket draped over her, the picture of her and Bella in her right hand. Maybe it was just him, but he didn’t see why she was so upset over her dog dying. I mean, of course he felt bad about it, but she was old anyway and it was inevitable that the poor thing would die soon. Nevertheless, for the 8th time this week he clambered onto the sofa and gave her the most heartfelt cuddle he could manage, which in all fairness was pretty poor. Once again this was going to be a very long evening.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,004 Literary Works • 672,792 Reviews
I think you've done quite well on this, and I really enjoyed reading it. After giving many reviews, it seems to me that the hardest problem writers have on YWS is balencing charecter development with description. you do this quite well, like in the instance when you mentioned her size five shoes, or the memory foam bed, while still deeply developing your charecters in very little text. The balence is impressive, but even the best of us can still improve. You lean a little farther on the charecter development side, which means you need a little more description. Not a lot mind you, but some.
in any case, I did like your two charecters, because as whiney as Liliana comes across, she does have the redeeming quality of being thankful for the help her friend gives her and realizing, even for just a moment, that other people suffer too. Tyler on the other hand, gave me quite a scare at first, because the way Liliana describes him you would think he was a saint. Fortunately you didn't make the begginer's mistake of creating a perfect charecter with no flaws. He shows frustration and resentment, and although he acts like the perfect boyfriend he thinks like any other flawed human.
One thing that did confuse me, was whether Liliana and Tyler are dating. You introduce her, say that Tyler does a lot of stuff for her, and then mention that Tyler has a girlfriend who he does a lot of stuff for. Until it occured to me that he was at some girl's house named "Elle", I was convinced they were dating. Be a little more clear about this.
As for typos, the only one I saw was that "realization" was spelled with an "S" and not a "Z". Besides that you seem to be good.
Keep writing!
Your friend,
---Psudiname
Hello
I'm going to nitpick about grammar and spelling, if you don't mind, then comment on everything else after.
Okay, so, I'll start with the thing that jumped out at me the most. You use an abundance of adjectives and very colorful verbs, which isn't a good thing. Here's a bell curve for reference. Ignore the numbers, and just think of the ideal amount of adjectives is X, and anything too above or too below it is bad. Just think about it: a plethora of tissues? Watching the tears gradually glaze over my fiery chesnut eyes before dramatically spilling over and tumbling down my cheek? Gorgeous memory foam mattress? Remember that it has to flow and sound good, because that is ultimately the most important thing, but the number of adjectives is not directly proportional to the quality of the piece. If anything, it's inversely proportional.
Sorry, I'm rather math-minded. Moving on.
Another thing to mention is that the girl, with the help of the purple-prose style adjectives and such, seems like a huge drama queen. Do you know anyone who actually thinks like this? It might make sense to you, but this is basically one long monologue for the readers. The character is telling us a story, and nobody really wants to read a story with a whiny narrator who can't keep her feet on the ground at all. It makes the reader question her reliability, which is never something we should have to worry about.
For the record, I've never met anyone who gets that dramatic, even when she's been broken up with while on her period.
You state in the title of the first chapter that her name is Liliana. Then you mention some Elle girl. Make sure you stay consistant.
The girl says that Tyler is her "best friend," then Tyler says that the girl is his "girlfriend." Once again, make sure you stay consistant, because when she says he's her best friend, that's what I expect. Although I'm aware that you should be best friends with your significant other, when you explicitly say he's her best friend, that's all I expect.
There was one sentence in particular I didn't like in Tyler's chapter:
1.) You switch POVs. Not like, "Oh, now this is Tyler's POV," but "Oh, I just switched from first person to third person, then back to first person, then back to third person." If you're going to do the whole book switching between the girl and Tyler, then either make it all in third person, or give the girl and the boy totally different voices (which you've taken a good whack at already) and make it all in first person.
2.) Girls always being emotional and hormonal is so cliche'd that I don't even want to talk about it. If he was a smart boy, he would know by now what girls in general, especially his girl, are actually like.
3.) "and all that jazz" can be cute when it's in dialogue, but since this technically in the third person during this chapter, you can't let the narrator say that.
4.) Throughout this entire piece so far, actually, you change tenses, so watch that. There's a difference between "I ran," "I'm running," and "I'm going to run."
In my opinion, the chapters are WAY too short.
Just for future reference, don't allow your tiredness or whatever it is to keep you from proofreading. Reading your work out loud just once will help you catch silly mistakes that other people sometimes feel annoyed to have to point out. Once those are out of the way, the reviewers here can help with the real meat and potatoes of the story, rather than aesthetic errors.
I really think the plot seems quite interesting, though. The quixotic (vocab word!) and overly romantic young female thinking she's in love, and the down-to-Earth male who wishes he had someone to talk to about real things, not dreams. Or something like that. It'll be a cool read.
That is all. Feel free to PM me with any comments, questions, or complaints.
Good job getting both perspectives down! I found this quite impressive.
Not sure where you would take this story but it has potential.
One little thing about the dog dying, the way you wrote it did not make sense from her point of view. Would she not realize that the empty feeling was coming from the loss of a dear friend (the dog) ? It was only at the end of Tyler's part that a dog is even mentioned, try saying something about him sooner if you can do so without messing up the plot.
One other thing. You might consider putting both parts in the same tense. Putting her part in first person and his in third person is a bit odd. Just a thought...
Keep writing,
~FW~
Hi! I'm Teardrop.
So, mistakes are highlighted in red, and my comments are in bold.
Okay, so first of all I think this lacks emotion/depth. Step into the characters shoes, and describe everything when it's the right time. Since you're writing in third person, ( Well when it's from Tyler's POV at least ) you can see everything, which means that you should be able to describe everything. The setting, the characters feelings, and all their senses as well! As for the other girl, don't be afraid to emphesize her emotions and be sure to always provide good details!
I noticed that when you have dialogue, that you need some work. First of all, the punctuation goes within the quotes. You should check out this article, if you'd like topic44898.html
Also, be sure to read over your work before you post! Be sure that capatilization, spelling, punctuation, are all good! Also, be careful not to bunch everything all together into giant paragraphs. When this happens, it makes it difficult for the reader to keep focusing when they read. Try and be sure that you seperate the paragraphs when nessesary.
Overall, I think this has potential and I enjoyed reading! Keep writing!!
Feel free to drop me a message with any questions or comments!
~Teardrop