Young Writers Society

See Lovers if you would like to read this story.

Honestly: I didn't finish it.

This is a lot like the last thing I read by you, and like the last thing, many things could be fixed.

The beginning of your story did a lot, a lot, a lot of telling. No, no! You need to show us. You told us this, and you told us that, and he was this, and that, and it was boring and I didn't care and I only read so I could critique it. Writing a story isn't telling a bunch of stuff about the characters, then jumping into a light sex scene for the heck of it.

In a few of my novels I have had sex scenes, and even if you are writing erotica, you can't ignore the basic principles of writing for the sex scenes. Introduce us to the characters, get us into the characters, let us know the characters. Heck, give them names even!

Now, for the POV thing. You did this last time and it is beyond...weird. You do not need to tell us what POV you are in. And for that matter, pick one and stick to it. If you don't want to, learn how to switch POVs without having to tell us you are doing it. That is just as bad as all the telling you did at the beginning... POV changes should be seamless, and purposeful. In comparison to the last thing you wrote, this is the same.

You start in third person, then a sex scene shows up and you do a POV from one person, then from the other. It's lacking a story, and is over all uninteresting. I think if you really want to write short stories (romance or not) you need to work on the basics of plot and character first. You are more focused on specific things that don't matter.

If you'd like some help learning how to plot and all that stuff, there is one book I highly suggest: Writing Fiction. Also you can look around Writing tips and find a whole lot, and there are some user groups dedicated to both plot and character.


You can also PM me if you have any questions, and I'm willing to explain in more detail how you could improve on the areas where you are lacking.

Hope I didn't seem too....cruel? Bonne chance!

i agree with most of what Clau said on this, but I will crit it all anyway

He raise himself to the top

Should raise be raised here?

These two met at a tournment and secretly been together ever since then.

I'm not really sure that this makes sense, your tenses jump all over the place throughout and its a little confusing!

"My love, you came," she said as she ran into his awaiting arms. They hugged closer. Thier bodies mold into each other prefectly.

Aagin here, it just dosen't make sense, the way you are writing it.

He sighed. "We don't have time it," he said.

after this is she supposed to be interupting his sentence? If she is write it like this:
"We don't have time it-"
If she isnt then this dosen't make sense on it own.

"Take off you cloak and place it on the grass, the strip that dress that you are wearing,"

you - you're.

the strip that dress that you are wearing- I don't knwo if it's just me but this just dosen't sound right to me.

He is prefection in my eyes. He takes me into his arms and kisses me. he tasted like exotic spices and berries. He lowers me gently down onto the cloak spread out on the gorund then shows me how much he loves me with his body.

- you do the tense changing a lot here too:
He takes me into his arms and kisses me. If you are going to keep it in this tense then change the next part:
he tasted like exotic spices and berries
to:
He tastes like exotic spices and berries.

The lovers lay entwine with each other for a couple of hours into the dawn

Erm...again dosen't really make much sense.

He help her up and dress her

Should be:
He helped her up and dressed her.



If you want to make this into something then you need to take a lot more time on it, read it through and you will see what bit's make sense and what parts sound off, hope my crit help[ed with the mistakes and stuff!

Meevs
x

I'm never going to learn how about be a good writer. I always repeat my mistakes.

Meevs: I have read it thought and it sounds fine by me. i even have someone else read it and they said it was fine. what is that tell me?

M.... I, too, agree with Clau AND Maya. Don't worry, you can get better with practice, but try to learn from your mistakes rather than fix them and keep going as you have been.

That whole introduction that pretty much laid the story out plain and clear threw me off. I don't know, it just doesn't seem all that great of a way to do it. I'd say scatter it throughout the entire piece or start it out in a memory. It's your writing, and I'm sure you can come up with something better than the little ideas popping up at the top of my head.

The whole point of view thing? Ew. Try to never do that, especially with this kind of thing. You could have just... not switched, or you could have found a more fluent and flowing way of doing it. Work on it and I might come back and really read it through, nitpicking about every little thing like I usually do. lol.

I know. That's why i'm going to redo this thing again, but it's going to be longer.

I agree with all of the above, and one more thing that I don't think has been mentioned yet. At least once, I saw you jump tenses, from past to present. You need to do a once over and make sure it's all in one tense. It's a common mistake, don't worry about it, just fix it. Oh, and pick a point of view, of course.

And don't ever, EVER say you can't be a good writer. As soon as you say it to yourself, it becomes true. You CAN do it, you can do anything you put your mind to, but the first step is believing you can and taking steps to make it a reality. Keep the chin up and keep on writing.

Ooh, looks like Meevs beat me to it. That's okay, listen to her, she makes some good points. And it can never hurt to hear something twice, better than not hearing it at all.

Hey Night Mistress!

I saw some of your help topics around and decided to come take a look. First, I thought this should be rated R for sexual content (we have a lot of young eyes around here, you know? )

I'm never going to learn how about be a good writer. I always repeat my mistakes

Bah. The only way to become a good writer is to keep writing. You'll learn eventually.

Anyways, I find that my thoughts on this echo a lot of the above suggestions. The switching of POVs was a little strange and while I am not altogether opposed to it, I found that the different POVs were not substantial enough to contribute anything to the story. The knight's POV was no more than 2 paragraphs and all it did was describe how beautiful the maiden was - not important enough to warrant a new POV if you ask me. (If you want to know more about scene length and writing in that manner check out my Seven Deadly Sins of Island-Hopping)

The foremost issue I had with this piece was the lack of character development. You introduced the maiden and the knight, gave them some dialogue and suddenly bam! They were in bed together. Frankly, I have absolutely no emotional attachment to your characters and until you characterize them and make them real to me, I am not going to care what they do. I don't mean to sound harsh, but that is the truth of it.

I think that if you took more time developing these characters instead of suddenly throwing them in bed together, you could achieve a much more powerful effect.

The fact that the idea of the knight and the maiden is cliche doesn't help this any either - you must make your maiden and knight unique in order to engage the reader. I felt like you were just rushing through this to get to the sex scene and that is never good.

So, some suggestions on how to improve characterization:

1. Take your time and develop them. Give them more than one scene of dialogue - stretch it out and establish their personalities; give them the time to reveal themselves and you and your characters will be much happier.

2. Show; don't tell. Because of your rushing, you are telling us information that would be much more interesting if you showed us. You see, when you tell, you rob the reader of the creative process of getting to know the character and that makes the character flat and underdeveloped in the reader's eyes. That is bad. Very bad. So, start showing us more things and telling us less; this will hopefully come when you slow down.

3. Body Language. You have some very rushed dialogue at the beginning and while the characters are doing things, the reader is gaining little insight into your characters - all we get is their dialogue and the few actions. I would suggest including detailed body language like expressions, movements, feelings, gestures, all the things that normal people do on a daily basis. Go people watching one day and look at how they express themselves. Usually, they are not sitting and talking like a board, hands at their sides and expressionless. No, there is EMOTION leaking through their every movement and to make your characters realistic, that is something you have to describe.

That's all for now. I think these suggestions will be a good start. Nice effort here and I will anticipate reading more of your work. Keep on writing and PM me if you have any questions.

i have a feeling that i will screw up the story even more. I only want this to be a short story but it looks like i have to turn into a full story, which i really don't have time for because that means i have to write up chapter and everything.

face up , everyone, i'm a quitter.