A soft touch on a tree's rough bark, and a few light footsteps, and a young girl was in front of a eight-feet tall gate made of pure metal. The woman watched in fascination as the thick fog blocked her sight from the rest of the tombstones. She walked to a tombstone and set the cherry blossoms down. The whole place smelled heavily of dirt and rotting flesh. The setting was not a good one, but it was enough to give the young girl a good memory of her boyfriend.
The young girl was 15, with lightly tanned skin, that looked pore-less. Short, Shoulder-length black hair with a blond highlight sat on the girl's head, slightly greasy from days without washing it. She was small for her age, being the only girl in the family that was neglected the most. With 7 other older sisters and 2 older brothers, she was a last priority. The name of Miyuki Young. She looked down at her boyfriend's tombstone, reading the letters carved in the light gray stone.
RIP William Salain, In loving memory of a great boy, who's life ended to soon. 1991 - 2010.
Miyuki closed her eyes, holding her jacket close. Tracing her hand on the smooth, cold surface of the stone. 'William.'
She thought, the smell of the rotting flesh got stronger, making Miyuki stand up on the smooth soil. The cemetery looked so better now, since she though of her lost love.
The fog was still surrounding the grounds, but it seemed to lighten up. The skies as black as coal, threatening to rain at any moment. The soil was soft beneath her feet. A small hut, with peeling gray paint, was visible through the thick fog. That's where the grave keeper lived. Miyuki looked back at the stones set in the ground, many saying different names.
Amy Lopez, Christian Moratini, Edward A. Sera, and Jacob Irma were the first names she say, engraved forever into stone to show loved ones that they were gone.
Forever.
Miyuki took one last look at her boyfriend's grave, earning a new found courage to move on. Miyuki knew that William was gone, and that she was going to try to move on. She would move slowly though, remembering that this was what William wanted for her. She could move back to Japan with her parents, and get a nice job. She could go to school again, to study Folklore. This would be her perfect life.
One Day, she might be able to love someone again as much as she loved William.
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Canary word: Present
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Alright, despite many spelling and grammar errors (and a few phrases that just plain didn’t make sense) you managed a good story. It’s not too clichéd, but you went so far off the beaten track it almost isn’t Romantic anymore (you posted this in Romantic Novels, but I’m not sure if this is a first chapter or whatever). I have a few places where you should fix, and then you’re all set!
The first ‘and’ needs to be removed, or it sounds as though you were naming a list of objects. When naming a list like that, you only need an and on the last object.
Since a ‘soft touch, a few light footsteps and young girl’ don’t sound like much of a collection, I think you meant it to be a sequence of events. For this to be, though, you should think it out a bit more to make sense.
Also, this is your first sentence of the first paragraph, so you need to make it ‘pulling’ and interesting to grab your readers. The rest of the story needs to be interesting enough to keep them here.
When you mention your MC, you vary between ‘young girl’ and ‘woman’. Choose one and stick with it, or, if that gets redundant, give her name early on and use it.
If I ever bold a phrase or word, it means that you use it redundantly and need to change it.
‘A eight-feet tall gate’ should be ‘an eight-foot gate’. Don’t ask why, English is just like that.
‘Pure metal’ sounds weird, since any gate made would have to be made from a pure metal (unless it was alloyed, but we won’t go into those details). Also, since you were mentioning ‘pure’ you may as well tell us what kind of metal it is. Maybe pure brass, or iron, or silver; your choice.
‘Walked’ is okay, but it’s rather boring. Try to come up with a different word.
If I underline a phrase or word, it means that you should come up with a different synonym of the words, since the one you chose is boring and well-used.
Have you ever heard of ‘six feet under’? That means no one up top can smell the rotting corpse. Not only that, but coffins are made air-tight these days. I think you should remove all references to the rotting-flesh-smell.
If I ever
strike outa phrase or word, it means that you need to cut it.When mentioning numbers in writing, you should always spell their names. ‘Fifteen’ instead of ‘15’.
‘Pore-less’ is a strange choice of words. I think you should use ‘smooth’.
Shoulder should not be capitalised.
Your phrase ‘that was neglected the most’ is awkward. I think you meant, ‘She was small for her age, being the most neglected girl in the family.’ How I rewrote it makes sense, but is not logical. ‘She was small for her age, and thus the most overlooked girl in the family’ makes logical sense.
I think you should say ‘the last priority’, since it gives it a more forceful feeling.
Inserting her name here is sudden and not very well-thought. I know that you’re introducing her here, but really, the name should have been brought in much earlier (and you would have been able to use it).
You italicize the words of the tombstone; good. But you should also centre them. Type the [ center]text[ /center] code. Also, use ‘too’ instead of ‘to’.
You shouldn’t bold ‘William’. Since you’re referring to the words on the tombstone, be consistent and italicize it.
The next bit makes no sense, but since it refers to the rotting-flesh-smell, go ahead and cut it out.
You need to change ‘though’ to ‘thought’.
For the skies to be ‘black as coal’ makes no sense. Dark grey maybe, because of the impending rain, but not black. How could she have walked to the cemetery? Fog alone was bad enough.
The bit about the grave keeper is useless. Cut it.
The names are deviations to the story, and make no sense. Cut them.
‘Say’ should be ‘said’, switch your tenses, dear.
‘Earning a new found courage’ is too clichéd. Likewise, ‘this was what William wanted for her’. Change both.
You say ‘move on’ and ‘move’ four times! Cut, change, shift or rework these.
Both the mention of Japan and Folklore (which should not have been capitalized) are more deviations to the story, and distract the reader.
‘Day’ should not have been capitalized.
Alright, nitpicks over, there’s something else: you didn’t tell us much.
Stories are meant to convey ideas, and in this case, you conveyed a sense of mysterious affection this girl has for visiting her dead boyfriend and a renewing synergy born thereof. This is debatably workable. However, we never find out how he died. The other names she mentions probably explains this, but you never told us about them.
Work more on getting the background story into it, just so that we can understand it.
Hi,
This was very nice. Very good imagery. A good opener for a novel I thought. There were some things I thought I would point out.
Basically you just had structural and grammatical errors with a few typos. I thought it was sweet.
Megsug
I liked it. It was sad, it reminded me of a boy in my hometown who passed when he was twelve, I never knew him but my friend did and it broke my heart.
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~Cassie~