Young Writers Society

Hey wh1plash! I'm gonna jump right into the review, but please feel free to disregard any comments or suggestions I make. With that being said, let's get to the review.

What I liked:

but it turns out these echoes can also do harm not only to the surroundings but to my well being as well.

I like that this thought in the main character's mind puts a limit to their ability. It wouldn't make sense if they could just have the ability with no repercussions, which is all too common in ill-written stories. You did a great job with this throughout the story.

I also really enjoyed the fact that the main character is not able to read Lily's mind. This is a good start to the plot and can be taken in many different directions. It helps give the writer room to keep the story going to answer, why? how? and more about this new character's back story, etc.

On another note...

“Is water even wet?”

Yep that sounds like something kids in school would think. That honestly cracked me up!

My Suggestions:

As I finished presenting, the class went silent. My classmates were silent as I went straight to my seat, confused and somewhat shocked, I saw others with mouths open.

These sentences feel repetitive as you explained an action of the character using "As I" twice, and also "silent" twice in two back to back sentences. I would somehow witch up the wording in these two sentences to feel less repetitive.

The bell rang and I got up. Mr. Morgan called me out and I went to his desk

This doesn't feel like a complete understanding of what is going on. Perhaps: "The bell rang and I got up. Mr. Morgan called out my name before I could reach the door, so I walked over to his desk." Purely my opinion, of course.

Ever since I was a kid I kept hearing noises in my head,

"could" hear voices/noises in my head.

I never thought that they were the inner thoughts or even desires. I really thought that I can be some super hero or something,

"could"

The couple in the corner the girl wearing a pink top and white skirt, hair blonde and chewing gum, she’s cheating with three to five guys while talking to his third boyfriend giving him some hint she wants to make out later on.

This is a run-on sentence. It would help to separate it into different sentences. Sometimes it is easy to keep writing as we are in the process, but it may help to read it over and think about whether or not the sentence should be combined together with so much information. There were a few others but I won't specifically point them out.

Lastly, when you use dialogue, and it changes to a different character, you should put the new dialogue into a separate paragraph. Here's a useful website on using dialogue in stories, and will help explain it in depth so I don't write too much in this review.
https://firstmanuscript.com/format-dialogue/

Overall opinion:

I'm hooked! I'll be keeping my eyes open for the next chapter. I'm eager to find out more about this Lily character and more of the main-characters backstory. You've got a very good story written here thus far. I'm excited to see where you take this!

Keep Writing,

-Katja

Hello! A warm welcome to YWS for you ^^

I'll start off with some grammatical and specific suggestions/comments.

My classmates were silent as I went straight to my seat, confused and somewhat shocked, I saw others with mouths open.

So, the first thing that I noticed when reading the piece was that is was a little difficult to read. There wasn't a very good flow, which may be attributed to some grammatical confusion. In the quote above, specifically, I found it difficult to understand if the "confused and somewhat shocked" was a modifier of the classmates or the narrator. The comma splice left it kind of ambiguous.

What I believe you were going for was to have a period between that phrase and the sentence with the narrator seeing them with their mouths open rather than a comma. This is what's known as a comma splice. Essentially, that is when a comma is placed in between two independent clauses -- or two phrases than are their entirely own sentences -- without the use of a conjunction joining them. This messes up the flow of writing since readers would be expecting more of a pause with a period. So, when you're writing, think about the commas you're placing and if a period would be better suited. Ask yourself, "Can these two phrases stand on their own and still make sense?" If so, use a period.

This was English class, with a theme of : Romance in a poetry.

There are a few instances that I saw where there would be a space between punctuation and the word before it. This should not be the case. Also, this sentence doesn't need a colon. In order to put a colon, the phrase before the colon should be independent, or it should be able to stand on its own. For example, "Get the following things from the grocery store for me: lettuce, cucumber, and tomatoes."

So if you wanted this phrase to use a colon, you could reword it as such: "This was English class with the a unique theme: romance in poetry."

It was kind of cheesy at first but when you kind of put yourself into a poem, the poem becomes you and it’s up to the world to accept or hate you.

Since this is meant to be a story that is written in the first person, past tense, it seems a little odd and out of place to have a sentence that directly references the reader. If this were something consistent throughout the rest of the story and helped to develop the voice of the narrator, it might be able to work, but because it is in one isolated place, it's a little odd. Try to be aware of this.

Also, another thing to keep in mind is that typically, things don't need to be repeated. In the third paragraph, I like how the narrator "predicts" what the teacher wants to talk to him about and then his reaction. It gives him voice and character, but later on things don't need to continue to be repeated between narration and dialogue. It's redundant and repetitive. This is just generally helpful advice, since if an event just happens, the characters do not need to rehash that event that just occurred.

I can hear his thoughts. “Odd one. Yet creative.” I can hear them.

Once again, this is repetitive to say he can hear the teacher's thoughts twice. I'd just recommend to cut them out. Also, as we find out in a bit that the narrator can actually hear the thoughts, this part was a little ambiguous. Since we had no indication of anything not realistic yet, I had assumed it as a sarcastic "I can totally hear his thoughts now..." rather than literal. It caught me off guard.

The couple in the corner the girl wearing a pink top and white skirt, hair blonde and chewing gum, she’s cheating with three to five guys while talking to his third boyfriend giving him some hint she wants to make out later on.

Occasionally, there are really confusing sentences that I can get the general idea of, but they're a little bit overladen with irrelevant details and are confusing in structure. Try to read your writing out loud so that you can hear if something doesn't sound natural, which means it doesn't flow well. This sentence is also a comma splice, as mentioned before, so be aware of that.

Here's a possible suggestion: "There was a couple in the corner. The blonde haired girl smacking her gum was cheating on him with three to five guys. The guy was her third boyfriend and, even still, she was giving him hints she wanted to make out later on."

I never really knew Lily was popular with the boys. Her fashion sense was a ruin.

Once again, a period was missing, so I went ahead and added it (shown in bold). However, I found this detail a little bit odd because if this guy can read minds and just happens to hear people's thoughts, how had he never heard any thoughts like this before? Especially if it's more than one boy. This just struck me as odd, since the piece gives a rather conflicting image of Lily.

“Psst. Psst.” I turned back and saw her, her eyes were in mysterious dark black and deeper than the ocean, her silky hair with red and black color, it wasn’t maroon it wasn’t red nor black alone, you can see the redness when it hits the lights.

Be very careful about run-on sentences. This is very similar to comma splices, except they're typically a lot longer. This sentence is rather confusing since it's also contradictory, and when I first read it, I had no idea who the "her" the narrator was referring to. This might be considered "the pronoun" game, which is difficult to execute because I just thought the narrator was describing Lily again and didn't quite understand it was someone else who had appeared. So, my recommendation is to try to condense sentences to make the points and important details stand out to the reader so it's very clear.

I can’t read her mind.

Final thing, be careful about tense changes. Occasionally, the piece would slip in and out of past tense, so try to comb through it and catching anything that is accidentally present. That's something you should worry about more in editing and proof-reading after the writing.

Final kind of technical thing -- when you're formatting dialogue, every time there is a new speaker, the dialogue should start its own paragraph. So it would look as follows:

"Hello, Fred. How are you?" Jorge asked.

"I'm great," Fred said. "How about yourself?"

That was very simplified, but it illustrates the point I'm trying to make.

So, conceptually, I like the idea behind your story. I think you've got a strong set up and you've given the reader some inkling of an idea of what the conflict and further plot could be. It's certainly revolving around this girl. As well, I think the main character has a strong voice that shines through the narration and that makes it much more interesting to read. So I applaud you on that.

However, the final thing I'd like to mention is especially in regards to building the world and the powers of this character. You might have heard this advice in many different forms and in a lot of different ways but it is so, so important. It typically helps to show instead of tell. Sometimes telling is necessary and unavoidable, but it is often more powerful to illustrate the ideas and concepts instead of simply talking about it.

For instance, the paragraph that says "I've had these powers since I was a kid" is a lot of telling, but it would be so much more effective to simply show the powers, like is done later on in the paragraph, demonstrating the thoughts he can hear from people. Instead of telling about what he discovered, show it. Show how it works.

This ended up being a little more lengthy than I thought, but I see a lot of potential and this and I just wanted to give the advice that really helped me when I was developing my style. You have a great start, a good idea, and lots of improvement ahead of you. Don't be discouraged and if you want any more explanation/help, feel free to contact me. My inbox is always open! ^^

Best of luck~

Wolfe