Young Writers Society

I’m a few paragraphs in and I haven’t really decided if I like this yet. Your word choice is well… interesting, which may or may not be in a bad way. I do think that you’re using too many words. “hustle and bustle”, “clitter and clatter”. It’s just a few too many words, try re-reading to take out extra words that won’t steal from the voice of your work.


So, finished now. I’m going to say right now that after “Hamlet” and “Native Son”, that “Great Gatsby” is probably my least favorite thing I’ve ever read, and I was seriously tempted to not read this at all. That and it’s fairly long and I’m fairly tired. I did review this because I don’t like how people on here don’t tend to read longer things. It’s just how it goes, maybe break it up into 2 parts next time, people find that more palatable.


I still stand by what I said about too many words. I read this story because I accidentally read the last sentence when I was scrolling down to see how long this was. You might want to re-work the first paragraph to be more attention grabbing.

I actually didn’t like the first part in the restaurant. I get the feeling that you wrote the restaurant scene and the rest of the story at different times. You spend an insane amount of time describing everything around Mr. Grey when it’s really not all that important. What it ends up feeling like is a school exercise. It comes off as pretentious and desperately trying to be scholarly… in other words like you’re trying to impress a college professor (This is something I fight very hard not to do, so I’m a little harder on it than most people).

There are a few key details to Mr. Grey’s point of view: how he dislikes the noise of civilization, the flash backs (though those are terrible confusing, and you should try to write them with a bit more clarity), the fact that his brother doesn’t believe him, the bit about his wife. Even some of the description is good. You have a very definite voice. Over all the section that needs the most work is the first part.

Now the dialogue with the little girl has a touch of magic to it. There are a couple confusing parts about how you structure the dialogue, since in one paragraph he’ll be talking, then he’s talking at the beginning of the next paragraph. That’s uncomfortable for the reader, and sometimes (or very often) avoidable, just watch out for it.

The best part is the scene with the girl and the dream. The characters are such a way that the reader feels like their spying on real people, so it’s a little unsettling. But there’s an innocence, and pain, and sweetness, and wrongness to that scene that is so very good.

Now, for the hotel bit. I’m not in love with it because I hate “The Great Gatsby” pretty much a lot. Yet, I liked this death scene, this suicide. It’s actually better than the book, and while I wish the story were less consumed by references to the book, I feel like Mr. Grey has become consumed by the idea of suicide because of the book. ((You hear that kids, “The Great Gatsby” makes you kill yourself!))

Over all Langtson Grey feels very real. He feels like a real, very troubled person, who just doesn’t belong anymore. Soldier suicide rates are actually up to an historically high level, and while I think this is actually post-Korean War, it follows on that idea, so I think it’s very relevant for now.

A couple of little nit-picks and then a conclusion: Langston Grey sounds like you combined the name of “Langston Hughes” and “Dorian Grey”. It’s the last name that throws me off. Next, while I didn’t see anything that proves it, I get the idea that the Grey brothers are black. For all I know they’re Irish, but I can’t really tell because while there is an insane amount of description of clothes there’s little description of faces, skin, hair, eyes, expressions.

The style feels very Cold War (which is why I thought Mr. Grey was a Korean War vet), but the date says 2033. I’m sure you have a reason for picking that date, but I don’t know why. The green stuff in the syringe is like morphine, or some type of drug, right? Not a poison, just a drug? I’m not sure. Also, please don’t use Langston Grey’s full name all the time, it feels as if you’re trying to stretch to fill a word count and it’s uncomfortable for the reader.

So here’s the conclusion: There are some pretty serious style errors dealing with a severe oversaturation of words (and yes, reading my review, I do understand the irony of me saying that), and a bit of a lack of clarity. This is fixable by rewriting. The story isn’t exactly stand out, but the characters leap off the page, especially the little girl and Mr. Grey. If a character’s bad it’s hard to fix them, but your characters are wonderful, and when they interact there is magic on the page, and that’s really hard to do. Yes, I did have problems reading this, but I’m so glad I did because I feel like I’m better having read it than I was before I started.

One last little request, try to shorten the description of the dream, use a few less words if you can. It’s just a little too long and too wordy. I think you can get rid of about 1-2 sentences worth of words and not lose the character’s voice, just try to cut back a little bit.