Young Writers Society

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It was a gloomy Sunday afternoon, and the sky was overcast with stormy grey clouds. The air was moist, yet somehow crisp and metallic, as though yearning for the rain that had been denied it. It was just a few minutes shy of 2.30, and my teammates were panting with exhaustion after two hours of playing soccer; Their faces weary, their movements half-hearted and sluggish, they played, kicking around a ball of black and white, by now so muddy that it was a uniform brown.

Feeling a slight dab of sympathy at their plight , I briefly considered raising my voice to call for a break. As the thought uncertainly crossed my mind, a bolt of lightning fractured the sky, at which the heavens obediently opened up their gates, and let the rain fall without restraint.

A collective groan escaped the group. I stifled a sigh as I looked around at the dejected faces of my fellow teammates. As team leader, having to keep up the mood of the team members would only get tougher as the weather worsened. An Inter-school competition for all the sports CCA's was coming up in a week, and everyone was training for it, rain or shine. Practice for the soccer club had started a little less than two hours ago, and since then we had been sharing the field with the Archery club, their underground range having been unceremoniously flooded during the previous bout of rain.

Having previously been trained to shoot under low-visibility conditions, the archery members were undeterred by the rain ; their faces shining with determination as they rentlessly aimed their arrows yet again. Coming back to the present, I stared at the ball planted under my foot. Bound by a sense of duty, and thus having no option other than to continue, I kicked the ball towards the goalpost. As the defender of the opposition kicked the ball back into the fray, time faded into the background, the sense of it only kept by the rythmic motion of the soccer ball.

After a short break and another half-hour of practice, the initial melencholy had worn off and a dense mist of enthusiasm hung in the air. Rain clung like sweat to our bodies, as our shirts stuck to our backs and we wriggled about in discomfort.

Hi there! 'Tis Lavvie to review.

Despite the fact you say you'd like to make this into something bigger, I don't suggest you do. It's more of a stand-alone scene of an intense, rainy soccer game. For now, I say you keep at that. As just little more than a vignette, there wouldn't be a whole lot more to write and thus it would be challenging to keep this going as even only a novella. Eventually, it would become a very dull novella since it would be predictable soccer games.

You've got some pretty decent narrative here, though. It's well-written and your vocabulary is executed nicely - nothing too elaborate to stray from the entire point of the short story. Not much to nitpick; lucky you! Nevertheless, there are some things:

The air was moist, yet somehow crisp and metallic

Can you explain to me how the air could be metallic? Are there motes of invisible metals flying through the air? And how would one know it to be metallic? Do they taste it? What I'm trying to prove by these silly questions is that it doesn't make sense to describe the air as metallic.

Secondly:

after two hours of playing soccer; Their faces weary...

The part following the semi-colon would do much better being a solitary sentence. You should altogether replace the semi-colon with a period and then tweak the new sentence so it works well.

Any questions about this review, don't hesitate to shoot me a PM.

Yours,
Lavvie

Anything you see in purple is something I changed. Look at my bits that I brought out and purpled then at yours and find the difference.

It was just a few minutes shy of 2:30, and my teammates were panting with exhaustion after two hours of playing soccer. Their faces were weary, and their movements half-hearted and sluggish as they played, kicking around a ball of black and white, by now so muddy that it was a uniform brown.

An Inter-School competition for all the sports CCA's was coming up in a week, and everyone was training for it, rain or shine.

Having previously been trained to shoot under low-visibility conditions, the archery members were undeterred by the rain; their faces shining with determination as they rentlessly aimed their arrows yet again.

I agree with Lavvie. Although you say you want to make this longer, I also think you should keep it short. The rainy soccer game scene is only good for so long and you keep it going for just the right amount of time.

I also have one other thing to point out: People do not go outside in a thunderstorm. It is very dangerous and the coach would not have let them (I just learned about lightning... They'd definitely not have been out there if they saw any of it). I know it adds onto the story but it makes it a bit less believable. If you make it just rain, I'm sure it'd be fine.

So, this is a good story. The flow is quite nice and you don't ever stray from the soccer story-line. It is a bit of a boring read but that just may be because I don't like soccer much.
I like how, at the end, you had the whole team get moving again and keep playing soccer. I thought they were just gonna keep moving around sluggishly but by keeping them moving you hooked my interest right before it was totally gone.

Good job with this.

Keep writing,
Just