Young Writers Society

(Under major edit)

I'm back! Finally. I did this section a while ago, but then I lost it so I'm afraid this crit isn't as thorough as it should have been. Sorry.

But on to my comments!

I was woken by the sound of the beating of wings.

This sentence seems off to me. I think it’s the immediate use of the passive and then the double possessive modifier at the end. I would suggest changing it to something like: A whoosh that was the beating of wings woke me the next morning except it shouldn’t be lame like that. You get the idea.

Coeda was by the window: a beautiful girl with brown skin and almond shaped eyes. She had short-cropped hair with a white cone of wax on top and her white linen dress fitted perfectly to her shape. Coloured jewels at her throat shone in the sunlight and she stood as still as a statue.

Yay, pretty description!

I sat up in bed hugging my legs with my arms.

Seems like the “with my arms” is kind of redundant because I’m not sure what else there is to hug with. What about: “hugging my knees to my chest” or something similar?

She did not speak much of her former masters, she had lived for over four thousand years and her memories were sacred to her. Nobody really thought about daimons and how they lived, they were just servants to us magicians and that was all.

I like this detail here, because it makes the daimons more real, more human (dare I say? ) and reveals a prejudice in the common man of your story, which also seems to make this world you’ve created more real as well. Niiiiice.

I had three options. Firstly I could runaway on my own with Coeda’s help, secondly I could agree to go with Abednago the alchemist and lastly, the option I dreaded, I could just get married and live unhappily ever after.

I’m not sure I like this. I would change it to something like this: I had three options: I could run away on my own with Coeda’s help, I could go with the alchemist, and lastly, the option I dread, I could just get married and live unhappily ever after. I do like that last bit there. It puts a lovely sarcastic twist on the old saying.

Well, here was the thing. If I runaway alone

Try to run through your piece and make sure you fix all the “runaway”s that should be “run away.”

“If humans were meant to fly you would have been born with wings.” She snorted.

I like this little insight into Coeda’s sarcastic side, but I think you could tweak it a bit to make it less cliché. Though I do like the use of “humans” in the sentence because it emphasizes the fact that Coeda is not a human.

She hugged me. “Of course, I will.” She whispered into my ears.

I think this should read: ”She hugged me. “Of course I will,” she whispered into my ear. It just seems to make more sense to me that way. The comma felt unnecessary and whispering into “ears” gave me a funny mental image.

Overall, this is turning out to be a very interesting story. I think you could work a bit on your sentence structure to make sure your tenses are always consistent and brush up on your dialogue punctuation, but those seem to be your only technical errors. I’d like to see more of what the Wind Rider is thinking and feeling and less of what’s going on. I feel sort of like an outside observer, even though your story is first person.

It’s almost like I’m walking alongside Wind Rider as her friend and she talks to me every so often, but I never really get any glimpses into her mind that she’s not aware she’s giving me. Does that make sense? If not just tell me and I’ll try to explain differently… I’m so out of it right now, lol…

But in general, nice work!

Thank you so much! I always have a little trouble with this but it really shouldn't be because I know someone who went through what Wind Rider is experiencing so I think I need to concentrate on her a lot. I think I like Coeda a lot more than Wind Rider, and I just love to use description on what people used to wear thousands of years ago.

I'll edit as soon as possible and hopefully will post a massive piece once I'm done.