Young Writers Society

Disclaimer: It took me ages to work up the courage to post something, but anyways here it is. Please review, even if you don't finish it. because then I will know that it is boring. THIS IS AN UNCOMPLETE WORK. I'm just posting it so you can tell me if I should keep going or start something else. I'm afraid that I made Leeroy too nice. Hopefully it's going to turn out all romantically in the end between Cedany and Leeroys son, but I wonder if I need something else other than romance happening. (Oh no, now I don't know if I should put this in romance or history. I think I'll do history because there is no actual romance yet so I don't want to dissapoint ppl looking for a good romance story) Also sorry about any spelling mistakes, I haven't proof read.
Anyway, enough about me, read and review please,
Love, Gretchen xx

Captain Leeroy of Beston hid his discomfort. The Baron of Middley had just sent word that his daughter Cedany would be joining the Captians family for the next year so as to better his chances of finding a suitable husband for her.
"Not someone too handsome" he had told her "He shall be an honest hard working man."
"But da!" Cedany whimpered "I don't want to marry and I don't want to stay with the Captain, he has boys and they're disgusting!"
"Now listen," The Baron said in a soft voice, for after all he loved his daughter and only wanted the best for her, "The captain is a brilliant man and you will learn such wonderful things when you live with him, I'm sure his boys will be on their very best behaviour and no doubt you shall teach them a thing or two. As for getting married, I'm sure that we will find a man who is suitable and who will love you."
His words had done little to comfort the fourteen year old girl, who pushed back a wet tendril of soft brown hair from her eyes as she stared out the window at the vast black sky, long after even the servants had gone to quaters.
Her face was silently contorted as tear after tear ran down her cool cheeks, feeling vast black emptiness. In her hand she clutched the only thing that she had of her mother, who had died during labour. A long copper pen.
"your mother would write the most beautiful stories with it." The Baron had said, "Of distant lands and wonderful creatures." They had been in love. It was a beautiful story in itself, a fairytale Lady of Beston had created with her own life. Her greatest story, The Baron often said as he looked at his daughter and saw nothing but the Lady of Beston in her eyes.
The stars shone through her tears and one sped through the sky. Cedany closed her eyes and wished the same thing she had been wishing her whole life.
*
"Are you absoulutely sure sir?" The Captain was sitting opposite Cedany's father. He was a middle aged man, with one deep scar running from his left eye to his jaw line. He held a hat in his hands and portrayed a sort of grimace. Cedany crossed her fingers behind her back as she peered through the door jam.
"Yes Leeroy," The Baron sounded bemused "Do you know how many more suitors we'll get once she's known to have a connection with Captain Leeroy? The Captain Leeroy?"
"Yes, yes but I'm not sure she should be away from you this long. Honestly Baron, she's but a wee child!"
"Leeroy, we have fought together for many years, I have lead you and then when I retired I gave you position of Captain. I ask you this one favour."
The Captian had nothing left. "very well." He said.
"It's for the best." The Baron whispered, but the Captain never knew if this was meant for him or if the Baron was convincing himself.
Cedany felt tears sting at her eyes again. The two men walked out of the room but she didn't care that she had been caught evesdropping. Captain Leeroy softened at the poor child. After years hard training in the kings service his heart still softened, he thought, the corners of his eyes crinkeling sympethetically at the child, who didn't see, as her head was in her hands and her body convolsing softly with her sobs.
"Pack your things child," The Baron said, "you leave after we supp, I shall send Kima up to help you pack."
His face was set hard, Leeroy thought. Cedany was startled when she saw this, she had never seen her father look so stern.
"Pa.." She croaked.
"Go!" He ordered and she fled off amongst a wirl of cries.
The poor fool, Leeroy though, he actually thinks he's doing her good.
"Miss Cedany?" Kima's soothing, feminine voice floated into Cedany's quaters. The girl was laying face down on the bed. "Oh Miss Cedany!" Kima said, cradeling the girl in her arms. "No, don't cry! Everything will be fine. We'll all be fine here, you'll be fine. We'll all be ok."
"Kima I don't want to go!"
"Oh sweet child! I wish I could help."
Kima was the closest thing Cedeny had to a mother, although the maid was only a few years older than Cedany herself.

***
The trip to The Captain's home was a quiet one. Cedany rode her fat little pony a few meters behind Leeroy's sturdy mare so he wouldn't hear her sobs as she remembered the tense good-bye back at Middley.
They stopped to lunch half-way along the trip. Leeroy kept his distancce from the girl, as he did not want to upset her further.
She will come around in due time, he thought, and he was right.
"What's his name?" The timid whisper came from Cedany. She had stopped crying, but her eyes were red and swollen. It took Leeroy a moment to think what she was talking about, but then he realised she was talking about his horse.
"Stormbringer." He said, "And she's a mare. I prefer mares," He explained "They're not as flighty as stallions."
"Mine's a gelding." Cedany replied, "All the Middley horses are. How come you don't have geldings?-Captain" She added cautiosley.
"Just call me Leeroy," He said, smiling, "Captian is for when I'm in the command. As for geldings, I just, never have, or never will, be able to abide to how they become so."
Cedany thought about this. "I suppose so." She said. "I've never thought about that. From now on I shall take mares aswell." She patted her pony, Sorrowsweet and they took to the road once more, in a much more companionable silence.
***
It was mid-afternoon by the time they reached the Captains home. It was very different to Cedany's home in Middley. Back home they had hardly any windows and no balcony's at all. Here, both were in abundance.

Hey, Gretchen! Welcome to YWS. I'm Jetpack, but you can call me Jet if you want. No need to be nervous about posting your work. Everyone on this site is really nice and will give you a fair review, so don't worry. As a heads up, though, don't use chatspeak like "ppl", because it's irritating, but at least you capitalise your I's. Also, watch out for writing in ALL CAPS, too. If you've been over to the Welcome forum, you'll see that the Greeters, whose names are in bright blue, can explain all these rules to you.

Anyway, a review. I think this would benefit more from a once-over than a line-by-line, so here we go.

My first problem is with the plot and writing itself. It seems that nothing actually happens here, but you move through it all very fast and there's no time for any emotion or characterisation. For example, your scene when Cedany (lovely name, BTW) is crying lacked any motive, it seemed. One minute she was happy, the next she was sobbing, and we didn't feel anything for her.

You have several scenes here, and I think you need to cut this down a bit. Take the first two, the meeting between the Baron and Cedany and then the meeting between the Baron and Leeroy. I think this could all be done in one scene. Leeroy would be expected to stand silently during any conversation, and Cedany would be used to having private conversations in front of officers. As Cedany's a girl, and therefore has much lower status at this time, she could easily be told to simply wait whilst the men discuss her. That combines the two scenes and allows for some more exploration of Cedany's emotion.

Another thing you seem to lack is description. There's practically none of it here, and medieval times - where I assume this is set - have a lot of potential for description. I would save the last scene, with the horses, until the next chapter, and focus on Cedany's leaving her father. There's a lot of untapped potential here.

I have no idea about the historical accuracy of this, but I have a feeling it may be off. I'll leave that open for another reviewer, though.

Lastly, the grammar and punctuation, and spelling, too. You do have a few typos. I won't point them out, because really you should make sure you check these things before posting them on YWS. Punctuation-wise, your speech is all wrong. Let me give you an example.

"Not someone too handsome" he had told her "He shall be an honest hard working man."
"But da!" Cedany whimpered "I don't want to marry and I don't want to stay with the Captain, he has boys and they're disgusting!"

This should read as follows.

"Not someone too handsome," he had told her. "He shall be an honest, hard-working man."
"But Da!" Cedany whimpered. "I don't want to marry and I don't want to stay with the Captain! He has boys and they're disgusting!"

I changed a few of the grammar and spelling errors here, too, but the basic gist of it was the speech. Google "speech punctuation" if you want a further guide as to how to write speech in properly. Don't feel bad about it, though; it's a very easy mistake to make.

I would comment on your characters, but I didn't feel like I saw enough of them to grasp their personalities. Describe them, slow this down, and describe their emotions. There are some scenes in here that you don't even need, such as the one with Kimi and the one with the horses; all of that can be worked into one fluid piece of prose, rather than different scenes with several asterisks. The horses, as I said, can even be worked into another chapter.

This wasn't a great review. I'm a little bit out of practice, but I won't be one to tell you to scrap this completely. Just take it a bit slower, maybe fill out a character form like the ones you find here - click this. You don't have to use all of that one, because it is really long, but you can take out a few questions and just ask yourself them. There's some great advice on characterisation around this site, too, so have a good look. Proof-read, and add some description, and hopefully you'll be good to go.

Hiya! I'm Rosey, here for a review.

The first thing I noticed was how you switched viewpoints right at the beginning. You start off with the Captain's, but then move to the girl's with a rather rocky switch. At first, I thought the "he" after the dialogue was the Captain, not the Baron. And since the first line talked about the Captain, then I was a bit surprised by how the viewpoint changed to the girl's, since they're not in the same room. Viewpoint switches without paragraph breaks are usually done when both characters are in the same room.

Plot-wise, I don't really see anything to keep me going. I was a bit too confused about the situation to really understand who was upset and what the situation was. Start off with the MC talking about her current situation (not thinking "woe is me" but maybe thinking about how horrible those boys are and curiosity at how her life will go now, maybe thinking of an old crush she won't have but wants to) and then add in the past history so readers know what's going on.

PM me with questions!

~Rosey