I wrote this in Creative Writing about 2 years ago. I might turn it into a novel. Please leave feedback on how you like it!
An eerie smoke hung fresh in the air. The thick clouds of gray dust were just beginning to calm. The fires had now been reduced to embers and the smell of burnt wood, plants and who knows what else, still lingered in the air. Silence was now coming over this once peaceful place; the quiet after the storm. Lillian looked out over the land which once was lush and green, now a burnt charred muddle. A lone tear dripped down her face, clearing a trail through the grime on her cheek. She was stunned, standing there looking with a blank expression on her face, unable to move, to speak, even to think. She was numb. This was not what was supposed to happen. She finally moved; fell to the ground, pressing her face to the warm orange dirt and began to cry louder, her tears falling onto the dirt, mixing with it, and creating thick soupy substance of a bloodlike color. She lay there for a long while, how long she was not sure, for time seems to stand still during calamity. Her mind then awakened and she thought rapidly “Am I the last one? What will I do? Where am I exactly?”she was so confused and disoriented. She thought back to yesterday, before she had left, before the fight she had had with her mother about something so trivial she couldn’t even remember what it was about now. She wished she could take back those fighting words of hatred. “It’s funny how at times like these one becomes a repenting, wishing fool. Not that it matters. Wishing won’t turn back time, no matter how hard I wish.” Her mother had always said she was a dreamer, a wishing girl, out of touch with reality, her mother said a lot of things. Their relationship had taken a turn for the worst after her Father had left them for, what her mother called “a dull, babbling coed”. But now her mother had attempted to be younger and vibrant. Their roles had been reversed, and now Lillian had become the parent to her mother, a role in which she had come to resent. This is why she had run away yesterday, unable to take any more of it. Only to return, the next day, to a nightmarish world she had once called home.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okayy well before I really get into this one I do have to start off by saying that this one currently is a bit of a wall of text here that's a little hard to read. There's enough going on here to work for several scenes too which ends up making this flow even more confusing alongside the wall of text situation. So I think you really need to think twice here a bit about breaking this up into at least around three paragraphs.
Now moving past that issue though, it does seem like you've got yourself a pretty intriguing piece here. There's definitely a lot of emotion involved with our main character here which breathes a lot of life into this piece. You definitely get a sense of some proper raw emotion here which is always a great sign.
I think it definitely does enough here to draw you in as a reader. It does seem like some of these parts need a little more fleshing out to make a bit more sense along with paragraphing, but I think you've got the skeleton of a pretty strong piece in the works here.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hey, this is my first 'critique' so bear with me as i try to not be a complete waste of space.
To be honest i think you should remove the preface, it confused me a little bit as we jumped from first to third person, but that's really a minor issue.
"The fires had now been reduced to embers and the smell of burnt wood, plants and who knows what else, still lingered in the air."
Sorry, i don't know how to do the quote boxes, but i don't think it should be 'and who knows what else' it should probably just be 'and everything else.'
But overall it's pretty well written, not too many errors grammatically or tense-wise either, but i do feel like you have packed way, way, way to much into only a few hundreds words and it feels a bit like the intro to a sci-fi hollywood movie. I think you need to expand upon what you have and add some character traits and ideas, but as you've said, there is a long way to go.
Either way, let us know what the plan will be for the story.
Buddy
Hey there!
I am Incognito and I am going to review your work today!~
First things first though is that you are fairly new here and I don't think you have been introduced to the two for one ratio. For every piece of work you post, you have to review two other peoples stories. That way everyone on this site gets a review.
I also recommend posting in the Welcome Forum, where the greeters will inform you on all the rules.
Now let us begin!
I. Nit-Picking
The reason why I picked this out is partially because it got me confused. There is two ways to take this, either that the gray dust was the smoke from the fires just in different terminology and such or there is actually gray dust in the air that was kicked up.
The first suggestion makes a little more sense than the second, but if it is indeed so, I don't know how smoke could calm. It is a great way to get the readers attention right away but you have to make sure that when writing you make sure everything is clear and the imagery is there. This could also be prevented by using certain punctuation and adding more description.
If it is the second suggestion, you should add more description to it, more detail to the scene, maybe even a brief explanation of why the dirt was kicked up in the air, or make sure the explanation is right there. I briefly read more into the piece and it was just mainly describing the wreckage from a fire and fire would not kick up dust, only cover everything with ashes.
There is a couple things I am going to comment on here. My first part is the redundancy of the word dirt. You have to be careful with how much you use a word and how close you use them together or your writing may seem repetitive to the reader.
Secondly, I don't think you necessarily need the 'her tears falling onto the dirt'. The reason why I say that is because her face is being pressed to the ground. It is quite obvious that her tears would be on the ground. That also gives you a chance to remove the second dirt and reduce your redundancy..
The next part that I am going to comment on is the word 'bloodlike'. It should actually be spelt with a hyphen like this; 'blood-like'. And also, I do not think orange dirt would make a blood like colour when wet. Maybe you should clarify it a different colour to make it actually seem that the ground would turn that way.
For thoughts, you should actually have them in italics, and I would suggest you don't put them in full quotations because it makes it seem like actual dialogue. I would suggest using the apostrophe thingies to hug your words in italics or none at all. It makes it more neat.
The next thing is that there should be a space after the thought and the 'she'. The 'she' should also be capitalized, because it is the start of a new sentence.
I know it makes sense this way, but if you look at it again, you don't actually need the second 'had'. It actually makes more sense slightly.
This I am not sure if it is actually dialogue or thoughts. That is why you need to clarify with italics and the apostrophe thingies.
I actually bolded a comma in that sentence. That is because you should change it to a period and have the 'her mother said a lot of things' into a sentence on its own. That way it is more dramatic and makes more sense, the sentence not seeming to drag on and on.
First, 'father' should not be capitalized and secondly there should be another comma after 'called'. Another preference of mine is that you shouldn't have quotations hugging the 'dull, babbling coed' and use my favourite apostrophe thingies. xD
The word 'now' throws me off because actually if it was actually 'now' then the fire and the wreckage would have been when her mom had attempted to be younger. You could easily enough get rid of that word or change it to something that suits your fancy. Also, I thought this part would sound better if you just eliminated the 'to her mother' part because actually it is not needed, it is obvious that it is to her mother.
Your tenses are slightly off here. It should be 'that was'.
II. Grammar and Punctuation
You have a good sense of grammar and punctuation, it was actually excellent. I don't think I picked up on any actual grammatical errors. Just a thing to recommend is to read over your work slowly a couple times. All the simple mistakes I picked up could have been easily found and corrected with an extra read through. Good job here.
III. Character Development
It seems your character Lillian is quite melancholy. At this point in time, that is the only thing I can tell about her actual personality.
You have to make sure that your character is displayed. This is not very per-say important for a preface, but this is information you will need to know anyways. You have to give your character characteristics that set her apart from everyone else, and more human like and easier for the readers to connect to. And that can easily be accomplished by simply adding more dialogue, thoughts, and describing her actions. Every little thing a person does in real life usually gives away their actual personality.
For example; 'The man looked down on me arrogantly, his golden hair framing his face like a halo. He reached out swiftly, revealing the his mahogany velvet sleeve from under is cloak and grabbed the wine glass, as if mockingly.'
From that you can get a feeling that this man thinks higher of himself then the others around him and that he is richer because he is wearing velvet and grabbing a glass of wine. The describing of his golden hair comparing to a halo can makes it seem more angelic, which contrasts with his brutal personality, making it obvious that his appearance is part of the reason why he thinks so highly of himself. It is all about impressions.
Now another part is to describe what the characters look like and appear. I have no idea what Lillian looks like. You also have to be careful to describe them without info dumping which is definitely not wanted. Take the time to integrate the appearance with the actual actions that the character is doing. Like in your piece it said that she fell to her knees, how about add her black or brown hair falling nimbly around her. I have no idea what your character looks like, and that is why it is up to you.
If you look at my example from the first part also, you can get a picture of a blonde man who wears a cloack and velvet. If I continued, you would gather more and more details and peice them together like a puzzle.
IV. Writing Format
Now with your story, you have no particular format for your actual writing, which means that there is no particular paragraphs. I don't necessarily know how to break your story to pieces, but this is how I would have broken it up.
Paragraphs are the basics for writing, they are topic breakers.
Then I also suggest you fixing up your format for thoughts because it is so easy to mix them up for dialogue.
V. Overall
This is a very intriguing piece for sure. It is a good length for a preface. The only thing I suggest it that you have a lot of explaining which is not a good thing to do to draw the readers in. Your writing is certainly beautiful.
You describing the setting brilliantly, something that I notice a lot of writers tend not to do. All you have to do is pick up on the actual character descriptions also.
Keep up the good work, and I would love to read more of your writing.
~Incognito
I like the promise of this. Obviously the immediate question is "What happened?!" which is, in my opinion, a GREAT way to start off a piece of work, especially since you have a nice balance of doing it dramatically without being overdramatic. Your descriptions are rich enough to paint a very clear picture of a very desolate and destroyed landscape, and I liked how you described Lillian's grief and breakdown. You were rich enough in your details but didn't go overboard with them.
The format threw me off a little when reading, but I can see where you would put line breaks or start new paragraphs, and I'm also sure you know how to do that so I won't bore you with technical things!
I think the only thing that stood out to me in a slightly negative way was how you tell us that Lillian doesn't remember why she and her mother argued as Lillian is crying, and yet the piece ends with an explanation of what caused Lillian to run away. If you take out either the reveal of the fight or Lillian not knowing why they fought (maybe replacing it with "not knowing why it should matter" or something like that?) I think that should all be cleared up.
Good luck if you continue with this! I'm hooked and I hope to see more if you should be so kind :D