Young Writers Society

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I think this has a wonderful, and very relatable lesson in it.
There are a lot of people who have experienced a loss in their family. However, there are also a lot of them that aren't able to get over it and move on. It takes a lot of strength to do that, and to read about how you did is invigorating. Just being able to read that you can accept the death and are happy about your life lights a fire in my heart.
I hope you keep going and write another story soon!

Greetings, Ms. Carraway. I have somehow become one of the judges for the 150 words contest, and it is my duty to critique. Critique, I shall.

Flash fiction is all about economy of words. It's about every word carrying weight and rocketing us toward the end of the story. It's about choosing your words carefully because each one bumps out another word you might want to use later. On every entrant's piece, someone has mentioned Hemingway's supposed 6 word story. I guess I can't break tradition now.

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
-Ernest Hemingway

Each word is necessary. Each idea is crucial. There is depth in the story, even if it's not given to us on a silver platter.

Now, observe what I said about "each word carrying weight."

Now let's look at your story. We have phrases like,

I don’t know how I could live.

It was harder, but it was new.

I learned to grow up way too fast

I could no longer relate to any of my friends, and thus I lost many of them.

has prepared me for any and all of life’s crazy curveballs

These phrases are lacking in depth. In weight. Actually, just forget the whole "flash fiction" thing. Let's just look at these phrases as phrases in a story. You've told us a lot of things, but you haven't given us any reason to believe them. You haven't shown us anything. You'll see a lot of people on this site talking about "showing" instead of "telling." The difference is this:

"Jane is a psychopath."
vs.
"Jane strangled my cat."

One sentence told us that Jane was a psychopath. The other sentence showed us that Jane is probably nuts. Which holds more power? Which holds more weight? I think we can all agree that the second sentence wins, hands down. And, furthermore, they're both 4 words long, so we see that "showing" doesn't always have to take up more room.

So look at the sections from the piece that I quoted. What else could you say? How can you show us the narrator's plight? How can you give us concrete examples?
Yes, "I learned to grow up way too fast" tells us something, but "I worked three jobs to scrape together cash" tells us more.
"I could no longer relate to any of my friends, and thus I lost many of them" tells us something, but "I didn't go to parties because I couldn't stop crying from exhaustion" tells us more.

What you have here is a no-frills summary of someone's life as it was affected by a single event. A straightforward essay. As if you were given a prompt that said, "Name an event that changed your life and what did you learn from it." Make your piece breathe. Bring it to life. And then when your words come alive with every step, then worry about writing a piece of flash fiction.

One thing I have noticed judging this competition is that most YWSer's are better suited to extended prose. As soon as you put word limit in, people can't seem to adjust their style. They are still tautologous(is that a word?), they still repeat themselves and quite frankly waste words, some more than others, but invariably, people can't seem to kill their darlings. You have at times done well, but at others you have used too many words to convey a simple idea. Let's begin.

mollycarraway wrote:“We’ll see Dad again,” Mom says. I have to believe her, because if I didn’t, I don’t know I don't how I could live?

This line also seems a little awkward. It seems to jump between tense, but not quite. I don't know, maybe it's just me.

His was a slow departure, beginning around my twelfth birthday and ending just after Valentine’s Day when I was fourteen.

There is a better way of saying this. We know so far the story revolves around her dad's ill health/death. So you could replace 'His was a slow departure, beginning' with 'It began...'

His death, for me, was the very beginning of a whole new life. It was harder, but it was new. I learned to grow up waytoo fast, filling the role of co-parenhelping mum raise the others while still trying to finish high school. I could no longer relate to any of my friends, and thus I lost many of them.

The last phrase could be shown a little better.

My friends wanted to party and I wanted to survive, this is where I lost them.

Now none of that matters to me now. You see, death, in a way, has prepared me for any and all of life’s crazy curveballs. And while death has caused me a great deal of sorrow, I have to be grateful. It made me who I am, and I’m proud of that.[/quote]

Okay. Let me say this is a fantastic take on the theme you were given. It's not entirely unique but you have set yourself aside from many of the clichés that plague the idea of death. I think the story is about the warped perceptive of your narrator after experiencing the loss of a parent, so most of the weight of the story, should be, and in a way is placed on her conversion, the changes in life. The main gripe I have with this is the last paragraph. It is too tight, you want to leave it a little bit open, you have baited the reader, not leave them with something, foreshadow future doubt or loneliness or so on. Other than that well done and good luck!