Young Writers Society

if it hadn't been for the preface and the announcement that it was about your grandma that you gave at the beginning of the piece i would have been thinking that she was just an ordinary woman at dinner. i like the way that you pieced together the description and also the transitions in time as well as actions. this is a really good piece overall.

I really love this character, and now you need to find a story to put her in. You have many wonderful descriptions, and I'd love to see those dispersed throughout a story so that you could get to know her little-by-little and with some real scenes involved with her. She would be an excellent addition to a great story and it would be great to write since you already have her character planned out and you have written phrases to describe her. Great work! I hope I can see more of her!

*Feel free to PM me, I'm on often

She wasn't quiet, but loud in a sort of helpless, effortless way. - I don’t think ‘helpless’ is the right word here. I understand that you mean she can’t help it, but ‘helpless’ conveys more the idea of vulnerable. Like you knew if you asked her why she was talking so loud, she'd look at you as though you were crazy. She often did that anyway - she'd give some strange comment or unfinished sentence or obnoxious notion and you'd ask why, or how, or what [s]was[/s] her reasoning was and she'd give you this look that not only conveyed she thought you were stupid, but that she hated stupid people who asked stupid questions (love that!) and would very dearly like to wipe you off the bottom of her shoe. And she'd stare and the moment would stretch longer and longer and you'd start to think it was never going to snap - Find an alternative for this ‘snap’, since you have it in the next clause, then she'd snap a correction and it was over. The whole incident was forgotten in the blink of an eye.

She'd continue her anecdote, [s]or[/s] story, or observation with conviction, having reassured herself that she was, in this case, right. She was always right.

Her head swung as she talked, the way puppets do when you twist the back bar. Side to side, switching between people and eye contact so fast that you felt like she was a television screen showing clips of something so quickly edited you were always one step behind, always wondering what you had just seen. - Added in some words to help improve the flow. Her eye contact was staccato. - Liked this description. It hurt to try and look at her the normal way you would look at someone when they were speaking to you.

She crouched in to the table as she spoke, leaning low over the wood like a general discussing tactics, engrossed in everything she said as though it was the funniest or the cleverest thing anyone had heard to date. - ‘To date’ sounds a little too short-term. It sounds like the grandma thinks it the funniest or cleverest thing anyone has ever heard, so maybe you could use a different word to convey the long-term aspect? You could mock her, for her wildness, her eccentricity that was so hilarious because she was so blithely unaware of it (she really did believe that it was the world around her that was outrageous). Yes, you could mock those parts of her, but she was passionate. Crazy maybe, and passionate about the wrong things, but her raucous laughter and burning fury (both of which could be heard within minutes of each other - she swung like a pendulum through a dazzling spectrum of emotions at lightning speed) showed she cared. - Liked the aside, changed comma to a dash. She cared deeply, sincerely about these silly things she talked (maybe ‘spoke’ instead? Probably just personal preference) of, that no one else could understand or relate to. Her passion, her focus, the way she seemed to get lost in the very things she was saying, gave the impression she had once been a glittering, all-singing, all-dancing charmer, whose wildness in her youth had made her enchanting.

Now her intensity had lost its lustre and developed, or deteriorated, with her age. Her audience were now her grandchildren, feigning awed interest in the words of a fool, who had retained her spark but poured it into the most misguided of opinions.

She gestured hurriedly, purposefully as she spoke, illustrating her words invisibly in the air in some language only she herself knew, but in the time that had passed her audience had dispersed, gone to buy a programme of the show, or to find their jackets, or the child that had disappeared into the bathroom ten minutes ago. And she had been left, the only one now hanging on her every word.

I quite liked it. I would like to see this character in a story somewhere. She's completely three-dimensional, and the way you described her was great.

However, you seem to ramle, especially about trivial things. For example, the puppet, you could cut that whole paragraph and it would not damage the story whatsoever. Cut down on the run-on sentences. Also, paranthesis are not usually used in stories so I would find a better way to display that information.

All in all, I thought it ws very good. And I think your a great writer. I would like to see this character pop up in a story somewhere. Keep writing!

Her head swung as she talked.
The way puppets do when you twist the back bar,

The way puppets do when you twist the back bar, side to side, switching between people and eye contact so fast you felt she was a television screen showing clips of something so quickly edited you were always one step behind, always wondering what you had just seen

( she really did believe that is was the world around that was outrageous).

and her audience were now her grandchildren

gone to buy a programme of the show