Young Writers Society

I remember when I left the states and looked out the window and saw nothing but water. I miss that, I remember when I used to be able to walk on a beach on a nice Sunday morning without being shot at. I am a pawn in the United States Navy, I've moved my turns and taken out my adversaries. I've had my share of good ole days, and days where you just want them to be over. I remember you, Lucy Starstruck. My dear next door neighbor who wrote sweet letters to me during training. But that doesn't count anymore. The only thing that mattered now were the guys to my left and my right. The boys who have been with me through thick and thin, sweat, blood, and tears; the guy's that would keep me alive throughout my entire tour of duty in Korea and someday come back home with me.

The Days here in Korea went on and on, and the food here was dry and plain. The weather constantly changed, and there was never a day where you wouldn't here some sort of explosion going off. One night a few guys and I were sent out to Inchon to clear the beach of its obstacles. I remember the boat we were in dropping us off in the freezing cold water and having to swim to shore undetected, then crawling out of the unforgiving ocean and making our way to it's barricades. Just to put explosives on them. That night when we were clearing the beach a North Korean soldier had spotted us and alerted the others. Yellow tracers from the bullets passed by my head as the never ending rain of metal zoomed by.

I looked over to my right side and saw my swim buddy Richard trying to make his way back into the ocean. There was no time for fear, I had to try and make my escape to sea. The bullets had gotten closer and closer to me, In the background dog's were barking. Flashes of fear shot through my mind as if a supernova was exploding within me. I was overwhelmed by what was happening and I tried to make sense of everything. But still i had nothing. There is a saying in the Teams; it goes by this, "Slow is Fast and Fast is Slow." I just got the point of that saying. If I did things slowly I could think faster and in fact save myself Faster. It worked.

That night had to have been my worse experience since i got to Korea. I could have sworn that nothing good was going to come out of it. But the thought of thinking about you, Lucy, got me through this.

I'm laughing right now because i remember the time that we went shopping at the old town center back home and you kept saying that everyone looked different in different clothes. Well that's definitely true. There was this one time that the boys and I went to Seoul, Korea and stole from the Marines. Honestly, we were tired of these rundown uniforms that were donated to us by the Army. So why not get fresh, smooth uniforms instead of old and smelly ones? When we get back home I'll show you what we stole and what we didn't. See if you can tell the difference.

I Miss you right now Lucy, I really do. In fact I'd trade everything to be with you. I'm tired and scared of being alone and having nothing but my friends to make me happy. I'm sure as your reading your looking at the half moon that somehow always appear when you get my letters. Strange isn't it? As I write this to you I can only be happier that there's only eighteen more days in my deployment here. When I get back, you and I can go anywhere you'd like. I don't care if we even go shopping for days and days as long as I get to see you.

But I don't want to have to go see you're crazy mother Teresa, Last time we saw her she almost had a heart attack from throwing dishes at me and screaming something like, " Get out of my house!" Oh well hopefully she's gotten used to be being around you a lot.

There's something I've been wanting to tell you. Today when we were called to go deep into enemy territory, I found a small bracelet with an Angel as it's pendent. I've sent it to you along with this letter, so hopefully you get that as a gift. I know it's not the best, but it's all I can do while I'm out here.

I'll be home soon and when I am you won't have to wait for anything anymore. Just keep waiting and don't think that anything bad is going to happen to me or my shipmates. When you worry, I worry, and that doesn't help and of us. So get ready to have fun and be ready for when I get home because we're going to have a blast.



Sincerely

Patrick.

Epilogue

The day was cold and dim when I got his letter. Almost thirty one days after my beloved sailor's plane crashed in the Unforgiving Pacific Ocean. Some people believe in superstition and that things happen for a reason. But how could something of this magnitude happen for a reason? What good will come out of this event? Tear after tear hit the ground and made a puddle on the shiny wooden floor.

His family was devastated even more that I had been. Patrick was a good man and he didn't deserve to come home and see his loved ones and enjoy his time away from that place. But with the events that just so happened to unfold, that looked like it was never going to happen. There is nothing I could or anyone else could have done thought to save him besides keep this letter he sent me and to always remember him and what he did. So in that way his memory will live on and he will always be remembered.

I believe that this is a good letter, but not necessarily as moving as you would expect from a war letter until the epilogue. You definitely have great details to what it would be like to be at war, and the only thing keeping the soldiers sane is that one person back home. The memories of the times and people back home were touching moments. However, there were quite a few capitalization errors, especially with not always capitalizing 'I'.
Also I felt like putting the epilogue took away from the letter in a way. Maybe you could start with the Lucy in the beginning anxious to open the letter because she knows that Patrick is no longer with her. Then at the end you could put that she was in fact glad she had read it because it had reminder her of their memories, etc. Just a suggestion, but overall nice job!

Right off the bat, I can tell you're not sure how to use commas, so I'll link you to a couple of articles about commas. It should help. =D Good grammar is the foundation of good writing. ;D

Commas, by Mythic Writing

Run-on Sentences, by Canislupis

Commas vs Semi-Colons, by Evi

Punctuation Marks, by Rosey Unicorn

Apostrophes, by ProfessorRabbit

You're vs Your, by Canislupis

It's also important to note that there are fragments scattered about this piece, and not intentional fragments either. They're likely to be unintentional, and it seems you don't really realize they're fragments, judging from the way they're constructed.

My dear next door neighbor who wrote sweet letters to me during training.

I picked out this sentence for two reasons. One, it's a fragment. If you intended for it to be a fragment, then maybe you should reconsider its construction. The way it's phrased, it seems as if you think "my dear next door neighbor" is a subject, and "who wrote..." counts as a predicate. It's not, just to clear that up. "Who wrote sweet letters to me during training" refers to "my dear next door neighbor", but it merely modifies. Fragments of this kind (I like to call them the "who" kind) are to be avoided because it's usually unclear if the writer meant for them to be fragments or not.

Second, this is infodumping. A small infodump, but one nevertheless. I'd rather we found out some other way, because this kind of kills and cheapens the relationship between the two of them. It's like saying, "She's my best friend." There's nothing wrong with that, but you can't really see the depth of the relationship behind it. It's not the same as it would be if you were there when she stuck by me during a rough period with an eating disorder, saw us being part of an official school field trip that was composed of only three people running around town doing errands, being forced to dress up in silly costumes, etc. Showing situations that marks out their relationship would be a much stronger way of showing the relationship.

(And yes, that was a show-don't-tell spiel. x])

To be honest, my eyes glazed over for most of this piece, and I frequently had to rope my attention back from lala land back to this piece. Your biggest problem is your propensity to show, not tell, but this is strongly due to the constraints of framing the story the way you did. Letters are difficult mostly because they never seem to come out right (for me, at least), and I've yet to find a story/letter that really speaks to me, unless it's a series of letters, like Anne Frank's diary. Even then, Frank's diary got a bit tedious at times, so you can only imagine the enormity of the task you set up for yourself.

See, a letter is a short first-person narrative that's essentially a conversation with the other person. You wouldn't go about mentioning things the other person would already know because that'd be a waste of time and space, especially given that he's in war. He'll probably be more concerned with telling her he's fine, and he'll back soon. He'll want her not to worry, probably, unless he's an attention hog, and he'll also want to comfort her.

He did none of these in this letter. I think it's obvious you tried to make it seem like he did, but there isn't enough emotion in this. Emotions in letters should come across poignant, crisply, but clear as day. It's difficult to move someone with a letter unless you're the one the letter is specifically written for, so I'd really advise you to either change this frame or amp up your writing. I think you can do it, but this just isn't quite cutting it yet. Give it a little more time and effort. ;]

Also, this entire piece hinges on emotional impact, which you failed to do. Emotions are invoked when you speak to something deep inside the reader (when you hit home), or when the reader sympathizes with the characters so much you might as well have killed the reader's brother when you killed the character. Because of the lack of characterization in this, I couldn't manage to sympathize with the characters. This didn't hit home either because I don't know anyone who's gone to war, and so I can only imagine it in my head and it comes out so flat.

As many flaws as the letter might have, it does provide good characterization. We're all characterized by what we find funny, what we choose to include in a letter, how we view our situation, etc. Here, Patrick comes across whiny and more than a little annoying. I don't think you really want the reader to dislike him, especially since we're supposed to mourn his loss at the end. ^^" You'll want us to love him so much that when you rip him apart, we hear the sounds of our hearts breaking. To do this, sharpen your characterization. Add in bits of Patrick's humor, maybe how he views the situation as a little dim, but he hopes it will turn around, how much he and his men try to make it all seem better than it really is, etc.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. 8] If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, all right? ^^

Sincerely,

Octave