Young Writers Society

I read the New York Times in my kitchen. I had a piece of jellied toast and a mug of coffee with cream.

I crunched, sipped, and read away the bright Sunday morning.

But as I read I found some words foreign to me, as if they were of a different language. At first I thought it was just a word or two I didn't recognize.

It persisted. Every paragraph became harder and harder to read. I squinted, I sounded out the words, but neither worked. Trying to puzzle out the definition by context became hopeless, as more and more words lost their meaning.

Finally I was shaking my head in disbelief at a page of completely incomprehensible lines.

“Jess?” I called to my wife. “Hey Jess! Can you come here real quick?”

I heard her voice yell something, but I understood only “...that?” The rest seemed like jabber, as if she was making up words.

“What? I can't understand you! Come here!”

There was no response. Finally I heard her footsteps as she descended down the stairs.

She stood in the doorway, a quizzical look about her face.

I stood and held up the newspaper, pointing to it. “I can't read this. Is it just me or something?”

She appeared completely flabbergasted. I saw her mouth move, more sounds leave her mouth, none of it understandable.

She held up her index finger, signaling for a minute. I understood that, at least. She left and I sat back down, folded the newspaper and returned to my coffee.

She came back a few minutes later with my rather large neighbor, Pete.

I frowned at them. “What's he doing here? And what's going on? Why couldn't I understand what you said?”

Her face showed concern, but I had no idea why. She looked at Pete and I heard more meaningless sounds come from her moving lips.

Pete also appeared concerned. I stood up and gave him a questioning look.

His response too was lost on me.

“What are you two—what the hell—what's going on?”

He said something to Jess in a low voice and took a step forward. More jabber, but I heard urgency in his tone. Jess left the room quickly.

I grabbed him by the shoulders, shouting “What's going on? Do you understand me!”

He wrenched my hands off of his shoulders and pinned me easily against the wall.

“What the hell! Get off me! GET OFF ME! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

After several minutes of trying desperately to convey a message, any message, across to him, and a concerned Jess standing with the phone in her hand, biting her lip, the doorbell rang and she ran to the front door to answer.

The next thing I knew a man with a gun entered the room and gave some order to Pete. He stepped back from me quickly. The man shot, and a dart pierced my left thigh painfully.

“Ah!” I fell to my knees clutching my leg. More men entered the room. Paramedics, I think.

My body went numb, my vision went dark, and I fell dumbly to the side, still trying to communicate. What came out was a slurred mumble barely understandable to me.


The next thing I remember is waking up in a moving ambulance with a straight jacket on and two guards armed with tranquilizers on the bench across from me.

I attempted to sit up, but the jacket stopped me and I flopped back onto the hard, metal bench. I tried to talk to them, ask them what was going on, but my lips were still numb from the tranquilizer. They rolled their eyes at each other apprehensively.

The ambulance stopped. The guards stood up and the doors were opened from outside. They heaved me up and half carried me out.

My feet hit the pavement of a parking lot. The sun had already set, and the area was in twilight.

They walked me towards a large, white building. My legs were uncooperative and the straight jacket made walking even harder.

The building had words on the front. I tried reading it.

Meaningless lines.

But I knew what it was; an asylum.


As my escorts tossed me carelessly in a cell, I thought, Has the whole world gone mad?

I called out all night for someone to take me out of the cell, but there was never an answer.

Why couldn't anybody understand me?

This was good! I liked that you got straight to the point and didn't waste time elaborating on details. I didn't notice any glaring mistakes, and that's always a good sign! I know it's a short-short story, but it seemed like the beginning of a short story to me. Maybe you could tell more about why the man had gone insane or what kind of relationship he had with his wife if the moment he started talking crazy, she had him hauled to an asylum... Another good part was how it wasn't as if he was suddenly illiterate; he gradually found more and more 'foreign' words. If you end up adding on to it, I'd love to read it.

You should be proud of it. I really liked it.

There were only two things I did not like and felt took away from the piece:

The rest seemed like jabber, as if she was making up words.

I didn't like the use of the word "jabber". Don't ask me why. I just didn't think it felt right for this.

Also, I feel that you need to make your MC way more stressed out. If I were him I would have been freaking after my wife walked away. He was just so calm, and that felt unrealistic.

Your piece kept me reading from beginning to end, and that rarely, RARELY, happens to me. Give yourself a pat on the back. I was desperate to know why the man couldn't understand anything, on paper or coming from someone else's mouth.

Are you going to write more? I need to know what's going on with the MC.

alright, since your the second person to ask, i'll just say right here: no, i'm not writing more on this. i leave you here to wonder and speculate. not all questions have to be answered by the writer.

Hullo there ^^

Now, I must say, your disclaimer almost worked. Considering what I want to say and the possible reaction from you, or others, I almost decided not to comment on your post at all. One never wishes to feel the bully in a situation. My own disclaimer points out that I’m not one to wish harm, or sadness upon another, and in my critique you’re almost definitely – more definitely than not – going to find things you disagree with. I think you need to consider your attitude to posting, most YWSers are only commenting to help you, and further your writing. I think you’ll find that sometimes the issue is with the writer, and not the critiquer. That said. I proceed with my critique. ^^

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Okay. You’ve got a good base here. I can’t say I like the narrative as such… merely because there wasn’t much there to like. There were words, and some vague meanings, but it has no substance. I felt like it was much shorter than it turned out to be. I think you would benefit so much from some description. We know what’s happening to him, and we know that he doesn’t know why. But now that we’ve lost the audio of the thing, we’re not getting sounds to him, we need to have some other way to convey the event. But there’s nothing. Do his hands flail, what does his wife look like, are the men in a particular colour, and were there warning signs?

You’re leaving the reader to create the world for you, and that’s not going to work effectively. You’ve got the bare bones here, but we need some meat. Imagery description, substance. What you do have has a level of flow, although not one I could consider particularly good. For example, your beginning;

“I read the New York Times in my kitchen. I had a piece of jellied toast and a mug of coffee with cream.

I crunched, sipped, and read away the bright Sunday morning.”

They’re statements. Short and concise, but they lack flow, you don’t slip from one to the next, you have to think about it first. Added to this is that you’ve got a lot of breaks, leaving you with “paragraphs” that are one line or sentence long at points. What I suggest, and it hinges on the expansion of this, is to add to each and make them full paragraphs, it’ll add to the flow and make the piece seem less empty, less short.

The piece in itself fails to satisfy in one way. You expect there to be more, there’s no conclusion, no answers. While this works for many different narratives, I can’t say that I think you’ve succeeded in using it here. You don’t need to give us answers, but I think leaving on that one ambiguous thought merely reminds the reader that the piece was all action and no explanation.

All of this aside, I do like the idea of this. And I think you’ve a good base to work with, to bring it up to something quite good. It’ll take work, and dedication – as all works do – but I think you can really do something here.

Pm me if you change anything. I’m curious to see it. ^^

*Hearts* Le Penguin.

I liked it im looking foward to speculating whats to come lol <333

is there going to be more? I really want to know what happens next! It is soooo good! ^-^

For starter's, ruining one's self esteem is not the same as popping a bubble of egotistical goodness. So long as you accept that while you may be proud of this work as an achievement on your level, it is hardly and achievement on the scale of Stephen King, or Isaac Aasimov.

That said, I think you have a good start.

A start, meaning you are not finished. As is, you have a good outline, and a nicely thought out series of events. However, in my opinion, everything is 100% rushed. It's akin to watching a movie in fast forward.

ThatandthisandandthisandthatandthisandGUNandthisandthatand oh look here we are in an asylum.

I think you even rush the beginning, not establishing the characters in the least. The change from coherency to madness should be gradual, not within the span of six lines. Give is tidbits of what he is reading, with strategically placed non-sense words to make us wonder. When the wife is talking, show us the nonsense words. Try to make us imagine what they might sound like.

Furthermore, how long wopuld it take for the paramedics to arrive? Would they bring police? Would they know to bring a tranquilizer? Would they not attempt to make an evaluation before putting him down? Even then, would they not make an evaluation at the hospital? (please note that they would likely bring him to the local hospital long before damning him to an asylum forever)

As you can probable guess by now, I'm saying that you need to slow things up a bit. Go back and add descriptions. Maybe rewrite the whole thing. You have an excellent start. Now take it up a notch.

--King

What was this story about? Yes, I know it was about a woman who loses the ability to understand what's going on around her and is thrown into an asylum. But it seems like just a scene in something much larger, not a stand alone short story. There were barely any details in it. No matter how short the story is, it still needs details. Details bring readers into the story and gets them hooked. And you give no reason for the woman's sudden loss of understanding. It doesn't matter if you don't even explicitly mention it in your story, everything must have a reason behind it. If there's no reason for such a major thing in your story other than, "it just happened," then there's no reason for the story to exist. Sorry about the harsh review, but this story does have potential. You just need to expound on some things and it ought to be very good.

Ok now if I was writing this Id have another perspective show whats really happening because iM LOST!

conrad rice...the MC was a man.

alright, alright! you guys win. since nobody understands what the message of this story was (or even what's actually going on) i'm going to CONSIDER expanding or creating a sequel to this story.

although now that i think of it, i don't think there is anything in the story that proves the MC was male...

My first review. Ever.
Prepare for pain and anguish. ;]

Okay, I'll be brutally honest with you: I like it.

The story itself is well-written. Your use of language allows the reader to comprehend your message effectively, since the text is written in a fairly simple manner.
Throughout the text you use several colloquial terms, which I felt had a detrimental effect upon the text, most notable to me was the following:

The rest seemed like jabber, as if she was making up words.

This line was almost frustrating, as nowhere else in the text is the story so light-hearted and, with want for a better word, unreal.
The use of 'jabber' put me in mind of a toddler, babbling on and drooling. Whereas your reference to the wife seeming to 'make up words' implies a complexity, a turn of events and a new intelligence, thus adding to seriousness underneath the obvious situation.

I felt that the message of the story was good. The way it is conveyed without being stated blatantly adds to the testament that you are a skilled writer, and that your skill allows you to express the story's theme without blathering on about it repeatedly.

All in all, I'd say it was brilliant.
As I said it does have some low points, but the story easily redeems itself.

Congratulations.

-Akira.

Conrad Rice wrote:What was this story about? Yes, I know it was about a woman who loses the ability to understand what's going on around her and is thrown into an asylum. But it seems like just a scene in something much larger, not a stand alone short story. There were barely any details in it. No matter how short the story is, it still needs details. Details bring readers into the story and gets them hooked. And you give no reason for the woman's sudden loss of understanding. It doesn't matter if you don't even explicitly mention it in your story, everything must have a reason behind it. If there's no reason for such a major thing in your story other than, "it just happened," then there's no reason for the story to exist. Sorry about the harsh review, but this story does have potential. You just need to expound on some things and it ought to be very good.

I have a question.
Did you actually read this story?
I'm new to this whole 'Review-and-Write' concept, but I'm pretty sure that in order to review you require some basic observational skills.

Now, why would I bring this up with you?
Well, let us review your comment.
You refer to the main character as 'woman'.
I know I could be wrong when I say this, but I'm SURE the main character/narrator is MALE.

My evidence- The constant references to the characters wife, Jess.

Unless the main character is an unstated lesbian then I believe you have made a severe mistake in your reading.

Just wanted to point that out to you.
Care to prove me wrong?

-Akira.

Akira:

You probably shouldn't be so crass in your dealings with members. If I understand correctly, insults are not to be flung in the forums. You're being unnecessarily standoffish.

That said, the only valid point you make in criticizing the review is that the reviewer made the mistake of thinking the protagonist was a woman. And that's hardly a tragic mistake, seeing as how the protagonist's name was never mentioned, nor was a description of the protagonist given.

The rest of the review that you so harshly criticize, in my opinion, was quite valid. The story itself was very vague, mostly (as mentioned in my own critique) because of the pacing. Details would indeed benefit the story.

To the author: Rather than merely assuming that the reader's did not get the point of the story because we are morons, I suggest you merely accept the advice. You need not implement it if you do not deem it necessary, but don't criticize your readers. I do look forward to seeing if you do decide to take the advice, though. 'll be watching out for a revision.

--King

king, i know the story is vague. i never called my readers morons. and i did mention that i WAS in fact thinking about taking you guys' advice.

your suggestion is well taken. please leave it at that.