Young Writers Society

Her stolen life

She wants to escape the darkness that rules her sight and soar through the skies with wings of a butterfly

WANT TO DELETE STORY BUT NOT SURE HOW

This is really awesome!

Hi there(:

Alright, firstly, I like the story. The plot is interesting and the idea is a good one; it's emotional and sweet. But there's a major problem: it's moving too fast. Too fast as in, way too fast.

I understand it's a short story and it's an action story - so clearly, it has to have a fast pace! - but it seems more like a summary than anything. Remember the first rule of writing: Show, don't tell. In this case, you're telling us exactly what happens, but you're not really showing us anything. When a story moves this fast, with major, life-changing events taking place in four paragraphs, the reader doesn't really get the feel of it. It's not that great because there's no detail or quirks to keep the reader's interest. I think the idea is great, but a person could lose interest fast because it's so dry. I think this would make a wonderful, inspiring story, as long as there was more flesh to the body.

A big problem is that the reader can't sympathize with the heroine here, because the pace is too fast for it to be possible to develop her character into something real and deep. I don't know anything about Miriam after reading this, asides from the fact she's had a hard life. What's her personality like? Is she defiant or more meek? What does she look like? After all, of the best parts about reading a book is putting yourself in the MC's shoes and feeling their emotional struggle.

I think you should especially focus on developing Miriam's relationships with the other characters. For example, Adam. Her relationship with Adam has a huge impact on her life and ultimately leads to marriage, but she meets him and marries him in all of four paragraphs! Are there any struggles in their relationship? (Because after all, no relationship is perfect.) What is Adam's personality? You could even put in a detail like how he proposed to her/she proposed to him, because a lot of people are suckers for that kind of sweet thing. :3

Overall, I liked the idea but didn't like the pace. The speed creates a lot of problems and ruins the appeal in many ways. I loved the ending and the last line is amazing - but I think you should start from the beginning, and add proper, defined, scenes, lots of dialogue, and enough detail to keep a reader hooked. Good start, though, and good luck!

I know this isn't a review but to Dasiamari and Parigirle if you read this I just had to say thank you so much. As you can see I am pretty young and this is my very first story ever. I have never had any experience in writing at all. Thanks for your feedback - it was really helpful. I definitely agree about it going way too fast but I guess I was just really excited. I made it all up as i went along and didn't really have a plan - which clearly is not the best idea. I will definitely remember what you said. Thank you

Before beginning my review, Welcome to YWS *Hands a milk cookie* Anyway, nice story. But before I go into specifics I should repeat the fact mentioned by 'Parigirle' The story is too fast paced and not intricately detailed. In a story, the writing does his or her best to paint a word picture in the reader's mind and to show a live animation of the plot through the use of delicate words. But your story lacks the main quality of a story, extreme detail. D
Description makes up most of the story, and when it's not there, the story becomes more of a grey journalistic article rather than a colourful story. So be sure to learn this as the first fact in the beginning of your hobby as a writer.
Okay, let's move on to the review.

Mistakes

Miriam dashed behind the alleyway way

We don't use an extra 'way' when using Alleyway, pathway, roadway, as it's grammatically incorrect.

She looked down at her 2 year old brother

When writing a number less than ten, you should always spell it out. It's one of the rules for writing numbers and numerals.

She looked down at her 2 year old brother and grasped him tightly in her arms.

This sentence makes me imagine two things. One at the beginning of the sentence and the other at the end of the sentence. First one is that the brother is running beside her or something, which is totally unbelievable. The second is that she is holding him in her arms close to her chest. I suggest you change the whole sentence so the latter meaning is seen from the beginning to the end of the sentence.

She scanned the empty street for her mother

I thought she was running in an alley? Either change the word 'street' or say that she came out of the alley into a street.

Deafening screams came from a girl who was being carried into a building by two men. She was thrashing violently.

This sentence was really out of way from the part you were writing. As in, it came out of nowhere. I would really suggest changing this sentence into something like this,
"She glanced back at the girl whose deafning screams reverberated throughout the alley as she was dragged into a building by two faceless men. She watched helplessly the girl disappered through the door, thrashing violently." Each sentence should feed life into the story, and make the characters more real.

Miriam’s mother bolted to hug her and her brother the second she saw them, overlooking the fact that she could possibly be exposing herself to any authorities.

Together they soon managed to get to their home safely.

Read these two sentences carefully. Do you see the missing void between them? When interconnected, they make no sense at all, and turns all the action into a grinding halt. Add more detail. Keep up the suspense so that it keeps the reader on the edge of his seat.

Miriam pulled back the sheet in the doorway to her mother’s bedroom.

I think it should be 'Miriam pulled aside the sheet'

Suddenly she felt someone firmly grab her arm from behind. She began planning an escape anxiously.

I really can't see how the second sentence matches the first at all. No one can do what implied she did. I mean anyone would be startled by someone grabbing them from behind and loose all rational thinking for a few minutes. The first instinct would be to find out who actually grabbed her.

“I know where your mother is,” a man whispered.

It's more better to say, 'the person whispered'

She’s just had a bit of a… an issue.

More better to say 'She had a bit an......issue."

Miriam handed her ticket to the conductor and slid onto a discoloured and dirty train seat with her brother. Hours later the train stopped in a place that was unfamiliar to Miriam. She knew it was certainly nowhere near where she had planned to go with her mother. She asked the engine driver if there was any way she could get back home but instead, she was thrown off the train. Another man emerged from behind her with a sack in his hand; Miriam could see that there was something in it. She looked around confused and afraid but by now the train was out of sight.
The man shook the sack and a young girl fell to the ground. She didn’t move. She had bruises all over her body. Miriam knew better than to ask questions or even make a noise but in her head she was screaming.
The man hit the girl over her head. Her legs trembling, she rose to her feet.
The man grabbed a gun from his jacket and threatened the girls that if they said a word or tried to run and didn’t do as they were asked, he would shoot them. They walked for 3 days drinking only muddy water from any creeks and rivers they could find and eating dead bugs off the ground. Miriam trusted that she would be okay because she knew that God would be with her all the way.

Before I go into the mistakes in this paragraph, I have to say that I noticed this whole para, excluding the first sentence, seemed like the girl was travelling alone and not with her brother. You might want to edit the parts where this fact is shown.

She looked around confused and afraid

Better to say, 'scared' than afraid.

she was sure she would be beaten like the other girl must have been.

Cut the 'must have been' The rest of the sentence brings out their meaning.

When they were alone Miriam asked the girl if she was okay, she realised it was dangerous but knew it would be her only chance.

Cut the 'she' in the part underlinded and replace 'realized' with 'realising that' and also change 'knew' to 'knowing that'

I’m Sophie. I don’t know what I’m doing here, please help.

The sentence seems like something you would write in a note, than say. Change the last line to 'Please, help me'

The man who had taken Miriam’s brother off her marched in

Cut the 'off her' part, it's irrelevant

He explained to Miriam and Sophie that they were to never talk to each other again.

Put 'to' betweent never and talk. Change the 'to' underlined to 'with'.

“Hey! You come back here!

The exclamation mark should be after 'you'

walked until morning before finding the school Sophie had been enrolled at before being kidnapped.

Cut the 'at'

On her way home Miriam’s mother had been ambushed and forced to reveal where she was going. After she had given the least information possible, as she attempted to scurry home to get her son and daughter to safety, she was shot.

I had to guess that this was Miriam's mother telling what happened to her, but you had not written anything say that it was retelling, and not something that was happening right now.

Miriam discovered some of the men her and Sophie had described

Add 'that' between discovered and some.

After more time passed, Miriam could still not shake her experiences and suffered deeply.

I would change this sentence to something like,
"Althought some time had passed since she had escaped, Miriam still couldn't forget the mortal sufferings she endured in the past, and grieved about them silenty."

Plot

I liked the idea of the plot given here. Although it is a common route you took, you added your own touch here and there, and made the plot more interesting that most. I appreciate your work with the plot, but it's ties with most of the other stories that have the 'and they lived happily ever after' ending is a bit of a let down. But on the whole, the plot was good.

Descriptions

Here's the place where most of the good stories fall to the bottomless pit. Many-a good story had fallen into despair because they lacked aspects in the 'Descriptions' department. Now, a good story is a descriptive story which draws every reader to the story. Anything below good descriptive content has to survive on plot or content. Not many stories survive that way.
Essentially, a good story contains a good amount of description of most of the basic things needed by the reader to imagine the scene you are trying to portrays, otherwise, the story is made into an article. Creative thinking is needed in a story to paint the word picture of the setting of your story in the reader's mind. But the writer also has to learn where the descriptions should be written in lenght and where to stop. Because too much description often get's in the way of the story, and it does not let the reader imagine most of the things him/her self. So, keep in mind that the way to good story is by feeding in some amount of description into it.

Character Description

Forgive me for saying this, but your story lacks in every aspect regarding character description. I actually only one or two facts to even come close to understanding the personality of the characters portrayed in your story. This is a crucial fact in story writing. The readers should understand the characters, by the little amount of character description you should give. Otherwise, the readers are left with faceless characters who might look like anything they can imagine.
In other words, you should write brief physical descriptions of the characters in natural ways, like when a character sees herself in a mirror or sort. Personality descriptions are not actual descriptions but, hidden facts which when read added personality traits to that character. In novel, it takes a long time for a reader to understand the personality of a character, although personality descriptions are mostly given at the time the character is introduced. So keep these in mind when you write your future stories.

The name

I really liked the name you have given for the story because it matches well with the plot of the story and also does not give away the plot to the reader. Well done on the name.

Overall

On the whole, this story was good for beginner (I believe you are a beginner right?) and you had a great idea for a story. I congratulate you for that. Just keep your eye on the points I've written above okay?

Hope you find YWS as exciting as I do.

For the person who reviewed first,

Reviewing is not like making a comment on a video or a picture that you've seen on the internet. Reviewing is helping the writing by pointing out the flows in his story and appreciating his/her effort in the story. A simple "This is really awesome!" would not help the writer in anyway. First read the reviews done by other people, then make up your own reviewing technique to help the other writer.