Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm Knight Hardy here on a mission to ensure that all works on YWS has at least two reviews. You will probably never see this but....Imma do this anyway.
First Impression: So....this was an interesting one here. It just wasn't paced very well making it pretty hard to really figure out what's going on and invest yourself into the story itself. I would suggest that you draw this thing out to at least twice or possibly thrice this length to really allow us as the readers to understand what is actually going on here.
Anyway let's get right to it,
“Hello,” Piney paused, “I’m hungry how ‘bout you?” Piney waited for an answer. “You aren’t!” Piney was flabbergasted, “You must be nuts! My stomach is eating itself right now!”
Here...instead of saying that he was flabbergasted it would probably be significantly better to simply describe the shock on Piney's face because that would just convey the hole thing a lot better.
“Piney, Mother Shipton just died!” screamed Tom. Piney quickly looked over to where Mother Shipton had been lying. She then slowly walked over to Mother Shipton’s cold, lifeless body. Piney stared at Mother Shipton’s chest to make sure it was true. When she saw it was true she began to cry, but it was so cold out that her tears froze.
Well that took a dark turn fast. One thing though, your tears are never going to just instantly freeze like that unless the temperature of the surroundings is so low that you yourself should have died by that point.
"Gosh darnit! Them stupid animals!” yelled Uncle Billy. Fortunately, for Uncle Billy Tom Simson grabbed the mule’s rains. While that was going on John Oakhurst slowly moved his hand towards his gun and was ready to use it just in case Uncle Billy panicked.
Okay your character introductions are kind of rushed here. There are just popping like its a game of whack a mole.
“Well uh uh,” Uncle Billy stuttered, “The mules came undone from the tree that they were tied to and I went after them.” He said so sure of himself.
I don't that last phrase is very effective in conveying what you want. It would be better to replace that with a word like "confidently".
“I don’t believe you!” screamed John, “Once a thief, always a thief.” John saw Uncle Billy reaching for his gun, but John already had his gun out. He quickly aimed and shot Uncle Billy right square in the chest. Uncle Billy feel into the beautiful, pure white snowdrift that became stained with the blood of one of the outcasts. “I am sorry Uncle Billy, but you deserved it. You stole our mules and left all of us to die on this godforsaken mountain,” John thought to himself. “Well y’all it looks like our luck is beginning to change,” he said to the group. The snow began to let up so now instead of it being a white out, the snow flakes slowly danced as they feel from the clouds. The Duchess and Piney Woods mounted the mules and John Oakhurst and Tom Simson walked along the sides of the mules. As they slowly descended the Mountain, the snow was getting lighter and lighter.
Okay that is just wayyy to fast there. The pacing just gets thrown right out of the window there and so many things just happen to take place in this one small paragraph. You really need to space those out into separate paragraphs and describe a few things like the emotions of the characters and maybe a little bit more description of this mountain they are on.
“I think you should go anyway. Can’t they see the icicles on your dress?” encouraged Piney. The Duchess and John Oakhurst decided that they would try to go back into town. They explained to the Sheriff about what happened up on top of the mountain. The Sheriff decided that he would let them back into town. He told John Oakhurst that he missed him because there was not any other good poker players.
Okay that's kind of a quick conclusion there. That again just whooshes past the story.
“Duchess, I really missed you,” the Sheriff said while he wrapped his arm around hers while they slowly walked off towards the inn.
And this is actually a really good ending line. It would have been an amazing place to wrap this whole thing up if you had just paced the rest of this story appropriately. Bit of a lost opportunity for a really meaningful ending there.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: So...like I said the pacing kind of ruins something that could actually come off as a pretty sweet little story judging by the plot that I managed to decipher. The language that you use is also pretty good and sometime really beautiful, you just haven't allowed it to shine by rushing this thing along. So keep that in mind.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Points: 253788
Reviews: 4099
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