Young Writers Society

Setting: A garden in New York
Characters: Jackson and Laura

“I’m sorry,” Laura started to say but was cut off when Jackson got a hold of her hands.
Jackson caught her chin in his hands and raised it so she met his gaze. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”
Laura paid no attention to the tear that spilled onto her cheek. “Look, I have a life, a home, and family,” she had to look away it hurt too much. “I have a boyfriend, and we’re happy at home. He’s a good man, Jackson, I don’t know what I would if I hurt him.”
“What about you? What about your happiness? Do you even love him, Laura?”
“What about all that? I’m not the only one living here. Other people are in this too, you know. It’s not only you and me. Laura kept her gaze locked with his as she raised her hand and smoothed his hair down.
“I love you. Don’t you dare say you don’t love me, because I see it in your eyes every time you see me. We were meant to be together. Don’t do this. Please.” He whispered the last word; his voice was filled with agony.
“Stop, I can’t be with you and you knew. I told you.” She took her scarf and placed it around his shoulders.
Damn everyone to hell. He knew she was right. Oh, how he knew. She always reminded him for him not to get too attached, because this was only a fling. A one time thing, yet she still got under his skin, straight to his heart and the base of his soul. He bent his head slowly and kissed her tenderly. He needed this. He needed this. One last taste and feel for what he will lose forever. His one true love he never will see again. In such a short time, he fell in love. Love. Now that he had it, he never wanted to let it go. He spent more days without feeling anything he wanted the flare of emotions that Laura had brought to him. One last touch, he wept inside as she took her scarf and tied it around his eyes. All the CIA training in the world couldn’t stop of the tearing of his heart as he realized in the next few seconds she would be gone. Forever - without a second glance back.
As Laura finished tying her scarf around, she stood on her toes and leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “You’re right. I do love you. More than you can comprehend. Life with you will be an impossible life. Don’t follow me.” She kissed the corner of his mouth and walked away. She walked some distance away before she turned to her right and hide in the thickest of bushes. Laura crouched low and watched him as she let the silent tears weal up in her eyes and spill over.
Jackson raised his hands and slid her scarf off so he can see the light. Even as he stared off into the beauty of the garden, he wasn’t really seeing anything. He was numb. He couldn’t believe that the one time he could love someone; the universe was cruel enough to take her away from him. But he loved her enough to Let go. Love was a choice. She had to choose to be with him. If the pull was stronger with her boyfriend than it was with him, than he wouldn’t-couldn’t-stop her.
Watching him trough the green leaves hurt. It hurt more than a snipers bullet ripping through her arm. He looked as lost and sad as she felt. She imagined true love as life filled with happiness and passion. Not full of hurt and despair. It took all of her will just for her to stay put, and not run like a madman to him and kiss the sense out of him.
Jackson wandered over to a lone red rose and tore it from its stem, ignoring the pain as the thorn slit through his skin, drawing blood. This one rose reminded so much of Laura it was unbelievable. The silky pestle, how it felt like her smooth, soft skin beneath fingertips. The dark red resembled her passion. And her lips. How he can kiss them all night and still want more. The way the roses pestle barely opened up, but enough for him to slide under her skin. He softly put the silky rose to his lips and murmured something he should have said when she was walking away. “Goodbye my sweet, sweet, Laura. Your love will stay with me until the day I die.” He walked over to the lake before him and held the rose above the water. He let the silky flower slip from him as he did with Laura. He was disgusted with himself. As the flower fell away, from him. He watched the rose fall at a steady pace to the clear lake. Hopping his words will be drifted to her. Jackson composed himself, raised his chin and straightened his shoulders and walked away without a second glance back, at his loss of happiness, loss of hope. Loss of love.
Laura was torturing herself as she watched him . She watched as he picked up the rose and said something. She stood and turned on her heel. “Jackson, I love you. Always will.” As she walked away from her love. Away from their love for one another.

I think this is more of romantic fiction than lyrics.

Moved

Allllllll right. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you are a new writer. There's nothing wrong with being new. If you bothered to dig up any of my old work, I was new once too. Stuff tends to utterly suck, before you have the benefit of instruction, and peer counseling. But to get peer counseling, you have to give it. I see that you've only posted 5 times, and out of those, only one was a review. That's no good. When just starting out on this site, especially nowdays when there are so many people, you need to get really active in the writing tips sections. Read them. Ask questions. People here are happy to give advice to new writers.

I'm surprised at how bad this post is. Yeah, I get it, "constructive criticism," not "destructive." And I will try. But this is honestly really bad. First off, nearly the entire segment is dialogue. Readers do not want dialogue. Readers want descriptions. Moreso, readers want interesting descriptions. You have some descriptions in here, but they're pretty tacky and cliche. Love is like a rose? Soft petals? CSI? Hiding in bushes? *head/desk*

Not to mention every single bit of the dialogue could be copy/pasted from any trashy romance novel.

This is truly not interesting. I actually cringed reading it. All I can say is that if you're serious about being a writer, you're in the right place. By all means, stick around. But review at leat two times as much as you post--if not MORE (and I do suggest more), read the greats (Nabakov, Cummings, Austen--you know the deal). Figure out exactly what you are trying to say in your writing. Honestly, as a reader, this section left me flailing. I do not know what point you were trying to get across, or why on earth I should care.

K, get back at me if you post something new. But please, please, refrain from the repetitions "he needed this. he needed this." Refrain from dramatacisms in your narrative, "God, how he knew." Refrain from tacky, CSI reference, silly gardens, scarves used as blindfolds.

I hate to say this, but I suggest you take this file and put it straight in the recyle bin. I don't normally say that, but I think this is just something you need to put behind you and move on. If you're serious as a writer, I hope to see something new from you soon---something without these repeated errors.

Hmm.. Well I liked this mainly because it was different to the other kinds of romantic fiction I usually read on here. I don't normally see any stories about people who are having affairs and I thought it was a good change.

Although the major thing I am going to say about this is that the structure is all wrong and you should start a new paragraph when a new person speaks. I sometimes couldn't tell when one was talking and then when you were narrating.

Another thing is that you have a number of different lines that have grammar and punctuation, as well as spelling, that needs to be changed! It makes the story drag and sometimes I couldn't even understand what was happening.

I agree with Misty when she talks about - what on earth is the reference to CSI? - I truly do not understand this. If you are going to keep it in the story, and I highly recommend you not to, then you should clerly explain to the reader why he is, how he is and if he is in CSI, whatever.

Also, the scarves for blindfolds? I liked this idea, but you didn't really portray it in all of it's good idea glory. Look over this and I'm sure you''ll see what I mean.

PROOFREAD!

Unlike Misty, I don't think you should get rid of this story and instead should just go through a drastic amount of editing. I liked the idea of the affair and it is too much to waste.

you need to put spaces in so it willn't look so mush together.

You just need to make spaces.
Youre new so I wont start with the spelling and stuff so yeah.

It is a nice story, but you could work on it a bit more though.

When I came in to read it, it took me out of the reading mode.You need to make spaces, that is vital right now.

Really nice for a new member so yeah

I've never watched a soap opera before (personally, I'm more into the destruction of relationships in completely comical situations), but this seems like the ultimate soap opera times ten. The reviewers before me were dead on about the proofreading. My friend is a good teller, but her stories get ruined by her spelling (for a freak like me, spelling errors make me go crazy).

The beginning needs a foundation. Without one, you just have a middle and a beginning. People will become frustrated and lose interest. Maybe you should have had an initiation. These types of selections always bore me, but that's just because I'm partial to continuation.

It was too romantic, anyway. Maybe I'm just small-minded, but men I know are never keen to revealing their true feelings to anyone. Studies even show that men react differently to everything than women. The biggest mistake anyone can make is writing that men and women are equal. They aren't. We're built different, we think differently, we're never going to be equal. These stories about men as saps just make me want to say "Oh, for goodness sake, where's your spine?!"

Maybe I'm just a bitter, insensitive brat, but I really was not digging this post.

Ok you really really need to put in paragraphs its hard to read otherwise other than it was really good very moving!!!

Misty wrote:Allllllll right. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you are a new writer. There's nothing wrong with being new. If you bothered to dig up any of my old work, I was new once too. Stuff tends to utterly suck, before you have the benefit of instruction, and peer counseling. But to get peer counseling, you have to give it. I see that you've only posted 5 times, and out of those, only one was a review. That's no good. When just starting out on this site, especially nowdays when there are so many people, you need to get really active in the writing tips sections. Read them. Ask questions. People here are happy to give advice to new writers.

I'm surprised at how bad this post is. Yeah, I get it, "constructive criticism," not "destructive." And I will try. But this is honestly really bad. First off, nearly the entire segment is dialogue. Readers do not want dialogue. Readers want descriptions. Moreso, readers want interesting descriptions. You have some descriptions in here, but they're pretty tacky and cliche. Love is like a rose? Soft petals? CSI? Hiding in bushes? *head/desk*

Not to mention every single bit of the dialogue could be copy/pasted from any trashy romance novel.

This is truly not interesting. I actually cringed reading it. All I can say is that if you're serious about being a writer, you're in the right place. By all means, stick around. But review at leat two times as much as you post--if not MORE (and I do suggest more), read the greats (Nabakov, Cummings, Austen--you know the deal). Figure out exactly what you are trying to say in your writing. Honestly, as a reader, this section left me flailing. I do not know what point you were trying to get across, or why on earth I should care.

K, get back at me if you post something new. But please, please, refrain from the repetitions "he needed this. he needed this." Refrain from dramatacisms in your narrative, "God, how he knew." Refrain from tacky, CSI reference, silly gardens, scarves used as blindfolds.

I hate to say this, but I suggest you take this file and put it straight in the recyle bin. I don't normally say that, but I think this is just something you need to put behind you and move on. If you're serious as a writer, I hope to see something new from you soon---something without these repeated errors.

*blinks*
well, dang. I didn't think it was THAT bad. yes, a little bit cliche at times, but you write rather well for the age you are. and I personally like a lot of dialogue. characters make stories interesting. but definitely watch your puntuation. you forgot quotation marks a couple times and i had to make sure it wasn't still the person speaking.

edit it, make him a janitor instead of a strapping CSI, and you'll have yourself a pretty decent short story. :D

Okay someone told this was really bad and honestly...It was so good! It reminded me of the summer when I started writing and how I always made the male character way to sappy....But I think considreing this was their good bye it was half way acceptable.


I enjoyed it because I could tell where the dialogue went and where a new paragraph should begin...I could help you with that so others can read it more clearly. And like JackBauerHasABaldSpot said I do tend to spell a lot of things wrong which can affect my writing.

Just maybe plan this out more in your head, maybe make an outline. Trust me this may look good now but once you go back and look at your writing a few more times you'll be like, " Why'd I put that?". "This doesn't make sense" Also remember what it is your aiming for in your story and remember your reader can only see the pieces you present.


So over all it was good, but it could be a lot better. Good luck!:).

Time to get cracking *cracks knuckles* <--(another cliche)

Okay, first off, romance has to be original to be interesting. Like what Misty said, all of the relevant dialogue was copied and pasted from every other smutty romance novel out there. ( I didn't get the CSI reference, either >.>) Sure, some people like angst and the like, but this whole thing kind of killed itself with it. Since you're knew at this, it's understandable for you to want to make it uber dramatic, so I won't ding as many points on your final grade. That's why we critique: to get better at what we do best.

Spelling and grammatical mistakes abound in this, expecially strange overall sentence structure and absence of commas. I don't have the time to note all of them, but you may want to prance on over to google and look up some basic rules of grammer. They've done wonders for me, and they should do the same for you. There may even be a few links in this site, so go ahead and look around.

I must say, you were brave to post this, because it's the most cliche thing this side of the Milky Way. Don't trash it just yet. Build on it, kill every srap of dialogue you currently have, slap an interesting plotline onto it that doesn't scream "anst," and you've got yourself a start.

Good luck, and keep writing! =3

Mmmm...
I agree with Misty and KingKamor. Misty usually doesn't bomb writing pieces, but I think this pieces deserved some kind of an attack on it. With KingKamor, I think the suggestion he had for this was amazing.

All the bad things here weren't unique or something I never saw before--they're the most common a writer can come upon. It is very cliche. You know what cliche means? Something that has lost its meaning because it was overused so many times in a bad way-- it made me not care at all for the characters you created. I was reading and then I just thought, "Something needs to be done to flesh out these characters"...

And that's the main help I will give you on this. Of course, SO many punctuation / grammar mistakes, and huge blobs of writing that should have been divided and separated at least ten times, but othe most major mistake is the actual plot and characters.

Writers just write--and it is true, there is no "instant success" or "always working tips". But of course there's magic! And this story needs it. Something I found really good to create intriguing characters is to make them quirky, with personality. They twitch every time a word is mentioned--they love any song that has the word "Tears" in it--their eyes are half green, half white. Mostly, however, it's much more subtle. To take an example from yours: "His voice rattled in the soft air, like deep scars on cheeks." or "The tears dropped down quickly, onto the earth, the ugly dirt." Maybe you can sneak in some theme with that, don't you think?

Gotta go...you have some potential here...but you must utiliza some literary concepts or else--bah.

Don't be scared to make any more posts--this is basically what happened with my first post, but I am still here so it's all right!

PM me if you have any questions!