z

Young Writers Society



the begining

by oliviadonohoe


Rain pierced my face. Pain raced through my body for every step I took. My heart is pounding like a rock- n- roll drum beat. I couldn’t see for miles, but I keep running. Lighting painted the night sky. I made a dead stop thinking I might just die. I look around, there was nothing in site. I rested my tender body against a generous tree. From all that running, I could barely breathe.


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Sun Jun 24, 2012 6:46 pm
Rosendorn wrote a review...



Allo.

I'll assume this is the introductory paragraph of your story. For future reference, try to post about 1,500 words of your story at once, so reviewers have enough content to give an in-depth critique.

That being said, a few things I noticed:

The first one was your use of "pierced". To me, this indicated that the rain was actually piercing her skin as it went, which would indicate either the supernatural or very weak skin. It would also mean she'd be rendered blind in a very short while, because of how thin eyelids were. Considering you didn't mention any blood from this piercing rain or that her skin was particularly resilient, I'm going to assume this is normal rain.

I'm going on so long about that single word because it gives a misleading impression as the very first impression in the story. First impressions are absolutely critical in writing, as that's what editors read. If you can't grab readers instantly, you'll be hard pressed to grab them at all.

You don't help your cause with the number of mistakes after that misleading word. Some highlights:

Pain raced through my body for every step I took.


While not grammatically incorrect, this sentence reads oddly. I don't really get any physical sensation from this line, even though I know you mean that every step the narrator takes brings her pain, and each step seems to bring her more. The most common way to show this is "with every step I took". Not "for."

My heart is pounding like a rock- n- roll drum beat. I couldn’t see for miles, but I keep running.


You change tenses here, with "is" and "keep". Everything else is in past tense, and you should keep it that way. Correct use is "was" and "kept."

Also, no need for hyphens in "rock and roll". But a note for the future: no need to put spaces after a hyphen.

I look around, there was nothing in site.


Another tense switch. Correct is "looked".

Onto the actual impressions of the piece.

I found this choppy and bland. There's no reason to care for the character, and when you attempt to add in some emotion ("tender body" and "generous tree") it comes across as purple prose, which is usually to be avoided unless you make a very strong style out of it that readers can tolerate.

Give us more of her emotions, a reason to care that she's injured. Sentence-long flashbacks of what just happened, so we know there's a conflict at stake. Something to keep our interest.

Right now, the story reads as "okay. She's in pain. Why should we care about this person we don't know?"

I'd suggest reading this article on beginnings and use the tips to polish this up. And please watch your tenses/word use.

Hope this helps, and happy editing.

~Rosey




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Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:24 pm
yubbies21 says...



"I couldn’t see for miles, but I keep running."

????? Shouldn't it be something like I couldn't see the road right in front of me, but I kept running. Something like that. Because it's okay to not be able to see for miles when you are running, all you need is a couple meters in front of you at least. Just thought I'd add that...





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