Young Writers Society

The battle was over. Rifles lowered, survivors fleeted…then silence. In a strange way, this quiet was far more eerie and frightening than the fight itself, as the emptiness revealed the war’s carnage, strewn across the barren fields. Horses and men lay dead, forgotten. Some still gripped firearms with stony hands. All had a story, tales that will forever remain untold.

And the wives and children, fathers and mothers…brothers, sisters, cousins…they wait. They wonder. Pacing the floor, eyes weary, torn apart in aching fear. These people wonder if their loved ones survived.

And will they ever know for sure? Faces broken and bloodied, bodies mangled, will they ever know who these lost people are?

Among them, a revolutionary lies. His skin turned pale as the falling snow, soft blue eyes glazed over, unseeing. His horse is at his side, taking her last shuttering gasps through smoke-strangled lungs. She nickers, nibbles his straw-colored hair, and still he does not move. Instead his hand slides from the rein. His blood-stained shirt shuffles in the wind, as though only sleeping, moving restless as he dreams. No; it’s just the wind.

Lost, the revolutionary, fighting for his country. Lost, is the battle, yet he will never know.


Never will he know he lost to lose.

The last stanza really threw me.

I'd prefer some back info really, not stuffy intellectual things but at least a location or slight season or both.

Now, the form of it all was very uniform. I'd expect this from a world war one correspondant, though I'm sure this scene is from a totally different conflict.

Thats another thing, what conflict, nation, 'revolution'. If It's American for example, is he a Founding Revolutionary, a Confederate?

Expand on these points.

Also, this was very, very short. This is something of a very brief epilogue.

I dont know if you're going to expand on this at all but if you do please, please build on information and setting.

This all left me scratching my head and though it was all pretty and heart-string tuggingly dead heroic, it was... blank.

Form is subject to the maker. This is true, but when that form requires information, lack of it spoils it all.

Just a quick point. If indeed this story is about the Civil War - that's my educated guess - early on in the very beginning, muskets were used, not rifles. Since muskets are notoriously inaccurate, it didn't take long for the men to quickly discard them.

You make no mention if bayonets were ever used. This is a mistake since bayonets were used from the 1750s to WW2.

I agree that you should further expand and give the reader a more grasp on the chosen period. What read was more of a brief Prologue. Not much to go by as your only protagonist seemed to be the battlefield and its aftermath. There are no characters really to speak of.

And the wives and children, fathers and mothers…brothers, sisters, cousins…they wait.

There should be a comma between mothers and brothers.

No; it’s just the wind.

The semicolon should be a comma.

Never will he know he lost to lose.

This sentence is confusing. He lost to lose?

This story is good, but a little short. Other than that, it is great.

I like the idea of your story set after the battle it gave it an eerie undertone.
I was very thrown by the last line though. "He lost to loose" was it a typo?
the story was a little vague, but in a sense it worked for the feel of the story.
I do agree with the other posts that it did read more like a prologue or an epilogue than as a whole or part of a story. there were some fuzzy bits on facts and I was confused whether it was the American Revolution or the Civil War. but you did a very nice job of giving the story the "hero died for his cause" feel.

For the most part a good choice of words. Entertaining. It is a good thing you brought it in for a review because it needs to be revised. There were some things that I simply did not understand. Another good thing to do before you write something like this is to do a lot of research on the subject and time period.

6 out of 10.

Whoa... That was great. It has a sort of (to me) sinister humor about it. Like someones doing the evil laugh in the background the whole time I read it. It really made me think about the horror of war.

But where's the story? It is so caught up in the horrors of war that it had nothing to base off of. It has a sort of WW1 feel to it. But, where is it? What year? What war? What battle?

Other than that is was great. It really made me stop and think.