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The morning after, she stepped out into the sunlight, paper grasped in her hand. She frowned, joined her eyebrows in worry. The essay had been due just last night, and to have gotten it back already...?
Nervously she unfolded the essay. She winced reflexively from the red marks, felt them tear at her insides, but kept turning to the last page. Not even reading the comments, her eyes searched first for the letter emblazoned solidly at the bottom. For a moment she was stricken, held in place by some invisible power of the symbol; but soon sheepishly averted her gaze.
She huffed a quick sigh and closed the paper, noting briefly the red marks and words littering the page. The ghosts of yesterday's half-hearted optimisms haunted her mind, teasing to the bitter chorus of her insecurities. She recalled then her freshman composition class, where her teacher had promised an early entrance to the bright and bustling world of academic writing. She remembered, wistfully, that her writing had evolved from a shaky, high school babble to a smooth locution of mastery, dropping essays like perfectly ripened fruit.
She became quite aware again of her mangled paper in front of her, the rough quality chafing at her winter-chilled hands, and wondered what happened between then and now to have crippled her so. She'd known yesterday, too, that somehow she wasn't as good a writer as before, struggled to squeeze out the sorry scraps of her ability; no matter how she tried the result frustrated her with its incoherence, its childishness, its confused and conflicted voice.
The rumble of the bus in the distance shook her out of her reverie. The backpack swiveled with a twist of her hips, and the forsaken paper was filed carefully at the back, out of sight. With a swift breath of the cold, sharp air, she took a measure of the breeze, the time, the way the last stubborn leaves swiveled down to earth, and melted into the general stream of students going about their daily routines.
:edit: better? oO
  
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Bahrain5288 Posts
put it in stanzas then ill read it
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Yeah haha its really hard to read it like that EDIT please.
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Where did you learn to write? That have exactly the same tone as a porn story...
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lots of long, complicated words
5/5
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Still, what are you intending on writing since that style certainly do not fit in most circumstances.
It works as a short story like this but if you write longer you need a pulse instead of cramming every bit out of everything like you do in this piece. You know how to vocalize emotions with text, thats good, but then you also need to realize when its appropriate to do it or its kinda worthless.
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A few too many descriptive words.
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On November 25 2008 03:45 Wurzelbrumpft wrote:
lots of long, complicated words
5/5
rofl. best marking scheme ever.
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I actually enjoy this style (Then again I enjoy Bronte' >< ), and I thought the piece was good too. It captured all facets of the feeling fairly well.
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it's a love story between me and the girl
cute
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On November 25 2008 04:59 paper wrote:
it's a love story between me and the girl
cute
The story tells us how lousy a lover you are though :p
The whole of it just reeks: Paper = failure.
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Wow, this is really good. 
It reminds me of getting so many essays back. P.S. What nubs gave this a low score?
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I liked it..
it would be better though if it ended with some action such as
"The rumble of the bus in the distance shook her out of her reverie. The bus was driving thrusting its way on the sidewalk and soon... it thrusted INSIDE HER!!"
or somethin
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Very nicely written, and I know I've done that before... But, is there a point to this?
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are you asian? O_O!
the reason I say this is because most asian people I know use way too many long, unnecessary long words just because they technically fit.
anyways, you tried to use way too many long, descriptive words in places where they weren't needed.
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yay thanks for the comments. I don't write much but I'm trying to get more proficient at it, so I figured I would post something for general feedback. so the criticisms were very helpful, and the compliments encouraging.
I was a little confused about the comments that the word choice was a little overdone...? I can see a couple spots where I should have edited but in general this is how I write - I didn't go out of my way to use extra big words or anything... I can sense that maybe the style I employed was a little off kilter for the scene at times, but beyond that I'm lost. So if anyone could point out to my biased eyes where the vocabulary was obstructive, I would be very grateful ^^
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don't listen to the critics. your writing is actually very good, in comparison with what most high schoolers are capable of. just lay off on the adjectives and clever metaphors. you don't need to adorn every sentence. you are sometimes kind of redundant, and I feel like you strain too hard to make some sentences work. i.e. why write "huffed a quick sigh" when you can write "she sighed"? Nobody winces nonreflexively, and you don't avert your gaze in any way except sheepishly. Shitty writers strain. Good writers work with what they have.
in general, as a beginner focus on the "big picture" before you worry about making your prose sound like hemingway. learn what makes an effective story or essay. write a lot... produce something longer than 5 paragraphs. there is nothing worse than reading about the world's most one-dimensional characters being described in fucking poetry.
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Yeah, many can describe feelings using many words, only the masters can describe feelings with a minimum of words.
As an exercise try to write the same piece using roughly half the words, it will get a bit dryer but if you do it correctly and keep the parts you find the most important it wont get completely dry.
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You can't say that "Masters describe feelings with a minimum of words". You just can't.
Sure some of them did but far from everyone.
This is a perfectly legit style, and I for one, enjoy it.
When people just state "You use too many flowery words" please don't just accept that. Think about what you want to convey, and the method you want to use for doing so.
Of course your work can be improved upon but not via "recuding the amount of adjectives". That's not improving, that's changing the very fundamentals.
Read Jane Eyre (if you can stand the story lol) for inspiration.
Again: I liked this
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Just wondering, is this a high school short story? It reminds me a great deal of a short story that I had to write in Grade 11.
I don't know if you removed your adjectives in your edit(s), but currently, I don't find it superfluous. I mean, this IS a short story, adjectives are necessary and expected.
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On November 25 2008 22:46 KlaCkoN wrote:You can't say that "Masters describe feelings with a minimum of words". You just can't. Sure some of them did but far from everyone. This is a perfectly legit style, and I for one, enjoy it. When people just state "You use too many flowery words" please don't just accept that. Think about what you want to convey, and the method you want to use for doing so. Of course your work can be improved upon but not via "recuding the amount of adjectives". That's not improving, that's changing the very fundamentals. Read Jane Eyre (if you can stand the story lol) for inspiration. Again: I liked this
Yes you can like it, but writing like that is not that uncommon at all. And I did not say "Reduce the amount of adjectives" I said "Reduce the amount of words".
It works, sure, but he wants advice, and to me it seems like he have a hard time writing condensed and instead just rolls out everything he can. Also I did not say that it would get better if he wrote it with half the words, but that it would be a good exercise.
And your first point is correct of course, but it is not a contradiction of what I said. And in the end I just mean that this style is to writing as slicing is to golf. Do it but don't overdo it unless you know exactly what you are doing.
If its an assignment he could easily turn it in and get a good grade, but he never mentioned anything about that so I thought that he just wanted comments on his general writing style.
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She can turn into a unibrow at will? I don't know if that's attractive, but it sure is talented.
+ Show Spoiler +She frowned, joined her eyebrows in worry. Seriously though, this is right at the very beginning of your little work of prose, and this is setting the desire of the reader to enjoy your work immediately in a bad way. It's not only grammatically unsound, it also doesn't make any sense, and sounds kind of dumb. Frowning isn't something people do when they're worried, it's something they do when they're mad or sad. When someone is worried, they pull their cheek muscles back and bear a bit of teeth. And I don't know anyone in the world who can 'join' their eyebrows... not without surgery, or pushing them together with their fingers... Neither of which people do with their fingers. Maybe the word you were looking for was lifted slightly? That's generally the expression of helplessness, and it works with worry in a good way. Other than that... TBH I found the story uninteresting, and I didn't get attached to the lead character at all. Maybe the story will be enjoyable for you, and the girl you wrote it about, because you both already know and are attached to the main character, but for someone who doesn't... It's just meek and meaningless. We know she feels bad about her grade, but we don't know why it has such significance to her. Will her parents be disappointed? Did she need the grades for her application? Is she just a perfectionist who's going to beat herself up? We don't get any of her internal dialogue or background... It's boring. It's like "oh... shitty." When some random tells you they got a bad mark on a test. I don't give a fuck, I did great :D
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Ahhh I see the redundancies now...thanks for pointing them out. Whenever I get feedback I do always get both criticisms and compliments about my flowery style...sadly I have to admit that when it's overdone it just falls flat on its face  I can definitely see why those who are sensitive against this kind of style would say it's full of unnecessary words.
Again, thanks all for the feedback; it was quite helpful. I'll put this feedback to use, and if I end up writing something I think is an improvement I'll be back for help again. ^^
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bad writing is bad writing. no style about it. you're not a bad writer, just please don't disguise shortcomings as "style". you're wayyy too inexperienced to be able to use that word authentically.
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EPT
