I am looking for some harsh critique but English is not my mother tongue, so I apologize in advance for mistakes and incorrectly used proverbs. Besides, this is just a separate scene and thus an excerpt from a longer story. Which this is the reason there is no title.
My story:
My critique:
Posted Aug 1, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC · edited
You pointed out that English isn't your first language, and that may or may not explain the problems with your word choice and sentence structure. Either way, these problems are pervasive throughout piece. For example:
"It was one of those stormy Saturday nights, in which the rain pounded against the windows and the only thing lightening up the sky were the bright thunderbolts striking across."
Saturday nights are not any more or less stormy than any other night of the week. When I read that sentence I wondered what you meant. Also, is the day of the week going to be relevant later? If not then it's distracting information and I'd get rid of it. What about this:
"Rain pounded against the windows as lightning bolts flashed across the night sky."
This sentence describes the weather and the time of day just like yours did. But this one makes the point quickly. Also, this sentence is action; something is happening. Your sentence is description. You're telling the audience what kind of night it was, instead of showing them what's going on. You do this throughout the piece.
The other thing I want to talk about is your conflict. You clearly have an external conflict, which is Tony's sickness. You also have an internal conflict inside Aikko, but I'm honestly not sure what it is. She's afraid he's going to die. She's also blaming him for their situation. She's also attracted to him, but she doesn't want to be. Also he kind of deserves to be sick but she feels guilty for thinking that.
I understand that characters are based on real people, and real people can feel a lot of complex emotions all at once. But you're writing a story. Assuming this is the beginning, you need to frame your core internal conflict as clearly and quickly as possible. One of these things she's feeling is going to be her main internal conflict. The reader doesn't immediately need to know why, but we do need to know what. It's what you'll base your story around. But if you don't know what is, or you can't clearly convey it to the reader, then we can't emotionally connect with it.
What I'm trying to say is, you're trying to give us everything about Aikko's emotional state, and you're doing it too quickly. Narrow your focus; tell us (or better yet show us) what her primary emotional conflict is, and then build off of that.
So here's one more example of how you can show, rather than tell. This one is particularly egregious:
"A ride to the hospital was impossible during those times. The weather conditions didn’t allow the much-needed visit of a doctor."
This is a small piece of exposition. When you, as the narrator, straight up tell us this, it takes us out of the the story. I think you could completely cut it for now and not lose very much. But if you want it in there, you could make it dialogue. For example:
"Hospital," Tony moaned, "I have to get to the hospital." "The roads are still flooded," Aikko reminded him. She wondered if the fever was making him forget things.
Or
The siren wailed on the hour, rousing Tony from his delerium. "What is it! What's going on?" he panted. "Shh, it's okay. It's just the siren, Tony. The city is going to stay locked down until the storm breaks."
Hi! Doing my best to critique the story and offer some language suggestions below.
Structure & Style:
You mentioned that this is a separate scene from a longer story, so it’s probably irrelevant to dwell on the first line, but still it’s not particularly gripping. Talking about the day of the week & the weather is a rather common way to begin a section. It’s not bad, but you said you wanted a harsh critique so I just thought I’d note that. (:
Overall I liked the rather solemn tone of this. It’s packed with emotion. Just the right amount of description and internal thoughts. Your word choice is not overly refined, yet this piece still reads as pretty sophisticated. Very sensual in spots, too, like where she touches his face.
In terms of text formatting, I think it would be helpful if you either indented new paragraphs or added line breaks between them, as it feels like I’m looking at one giant paragraph. That’s just a personal opinion though. ha
Mechanics:
Making a few suggestions. I know you said English isn’t your first language, so I’m just going to note how I would reword these personally, but there are lots of options for adjusting, so of course take them or leave them.
It was one of those stormy Saturday nights, in which the rain pounded against the windows and the only thing lightening up the sky were the bright thunderbolts striking across.
It was a stormy Saturday night. Rain pounded against the windows, and the only lights in the sky were thunderbolts striking across.
With every hour that passed, the sweat stains on Tony's shirt got bigger and the number of times he had rolled over, making an aching noise, seeking for a more comfortable position rose
With every hour that passed, the sweat stains on Tony's shirt got bigger. A number of times he rolled over, groaning, seeking a more comfortable position.
“HEY!” This time her tone had become more forceful
Not sure if it’s really necessary to use all caps here. Probably just the exclamation point would do, and you could italicize “hey” if you want to emphasize it.
Aikko jolted Tony's shoulder, paying attention to not being too harsh.
Jolted is an odd word to use if she’s not being harsh; jolt implies a sudden rough movement. Maybe,
Aikko touched Tony's shoulder, careful to not be too harsh.
She was fidgeting from one foot onto the other.
Fidget generally means playing with something in your hands, so I’m not sure it makes sense to fidget from one foot to the other. Maybe try,
She shifted from one foot to the other.
And as much as she tried to convince herself that he deserved it to some degree, she could not stay mad at him.
Instead of And, try “Yet as much…”
It felt like ages since she had been so close to him and besides refusing to admit it, his hot back against her chest felt pleasant.
It felt like ages since she had been so close to him, and though she didn’t want to admit it, his hot back against her chest felt pleasant.
Instead of further trying to convince him, she increased the angle of the glass, forcing him to at least let a couple of drops between his lips.
Instead of trying to convince him, she increased the angle of the glass, forcing a couple of drops between his lips.
Tony laughed agonized before he choked, leading him into a painful coughing fit.
Tony laughed, which caused him to choke, leading to a coughing fit.
He clenched his fist and bent forward into a curled up position.
You used the phrase “curl up” on the first page, so maybe you can adjust this one to something else to eliminate the repetition. Maybe say fetal position, or a crunched position.
But her soft skin, and smile, voice, the way she cared about him even though she did everything to hide it made him crazy.
But he was crazy about her soft skin, smile, voice, and the way she cared about him even though she did everything to hide it.
This time it was Aikko’s turn to bend forward, not in pain but in a helpless attempt to assist Tony laying down.
There’s nothing mechanically wrong with this, but it’s just kind of an odd clunky line that’s probably not necessary, since she’s been assisting him this entire time and there’s no reason she would suddenly be in pain. Maybe just,
Aikko bent forward in a helpless attempt to lay Tony down.
Also, I’d recommend consistency in the way you write the word “Shh.” I think the most widely used is one S and two Hs (shh). There are a few places where you have two Hs and a few where you have 3, so just make them all the same, unless you intentionally want to drag one out into a long shhhhhhhh. haha
I made a couple other grammar and wording edits in your doc. One consistent edit is changing a lot of phrases that say “was _____” to “_____ed.” (For example, “was refusing” to “refused")
Another note, punctuation should go inside the quotation marks.
Characters:
Aikko and Tony seem to have a complicated relationship. Aikko seems to love-hate Tony. She clearly is fond of him, but I’m picking up that they have a rocky past, or they’re enemies, or something like that. He does accuse her of wishing death on him. I’m not sure what Tony did that hurt Aikko (which is mentioned in the second paragraph), but I assume that’s mentioned somewhere else in the longer story.
Aikko also says she’s incapable of hiding her fear from Tony, and I’m not sure what she’s afraid of exactly, although I assume it’s the situation they’re in and that Tony might die?
Tony seems like a bit of a jokester, making light of a grim situation. He seems confident even in his illness, like he enjoys that Aikko pretends not to like him. Like he enjoys being secretly sought after.
Aikko seems like a strong woman who doesn’t like to show her emotions because she thinks they make her weak. She seems like she has a good moral compass, and playing caretaker probably isn’t a new concept to her.
Dialogue:
Dialogue was fine. It all sounded very realistic. I actually quite liked the repetition of words like “hey,” “shh,” “for you.” They were calm and simple, yet nice added emphasis at the same time.
Plot & Theme:
I don’t know if there’s enough for me to get a real sense of the plot, but what I gathered from this excerpt is that Tony got in some sort of trouble in the woods and Aikko, even though she hates him, saved him. Now they’re stuck together while she nurses him back to health, and this is going to be an enemies-turned-lovers thing. Seems like a story that is really going to dig into past events and backstory, with lots of character development. I like it!
Really liked these lines:
The sweat was accumulating on his face, paving its way down his temples.
Tony's voice sounded like sandpaper on unprocessed wood.
Her scent grazed his face. Aikko smelled like home. A home he had lost long ago.
Overall:
Aside from the large amount of mechanical edits, I thought this was pretty good, especially for English not being your first language. What I really loved is that you have a lot of internal thoughts, emotions, and reflections from the characters, especially Aikko. It really helps the reader get inside their heads and really feel how they are interpreting the situation, so great work with that!
For a non native english speaker it is really impressive that you can write so well. The vocabulary is relatively diverse and able to convey what i believe you’re going for. However there were still a few grammar mistakes that just sort of jumped out at me. There may be others but here are the ones I noticed.
1)huge run on sentence in the first paragraph. Sentence starts “With every hour that passed”. 2)The second problem I saw was with the same sentence. “Seeking for a more comfortable position” should probably be changed to “seeking a more comfortable position”. 3)“Aikko jolted Tony’s shoulder” might be changed to “aikko jostled Tony’s shoulder” 4)“But incapable of hiding the fear she had…” should be changed to “she was incapable of hiding the fear she had…” 5)Towards the end of the second paragraph, in the sentence that begins “There was barely anything left…”. The word tempting here gives a mildly sexual connotation, if that’s what you’re going for great, but it kind of struck me as out of tone for the extremely somber opening.
(Cannot seem to get the formatting quite right on this as I’m writing from my phone, very sorry for how messy this looks)
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FIRST IMPRESSION: In general I found it a good piece. There are issues but nothing big.
STORY: The story is about a young woman caring for a sick young man. They both love each other, that much is clear from the story. And if this was your intention to show, you've succeeded.
Now about some issues. First the opening line. It's about as cliche as you can get whereas reviewing the scene you could start out with many other stronger opening lines.
Then about the scene setup. There is very little exposition of the world. Yes it's raining, but you don't show us anything else. They're in a room (I think). But what's worse, you don't really expose your characters. Now that is okay if Aikko and Tony were introduced properly earlier. If not, reconsider exposing a bit more of your character. Warning: don't overdo it. At times I see exposition of characters like 'Aikko was a twenty year old woman with black hair and brown eyes. She was wearing a salmon colored shirt and..'. Try to write it in the story e.g. hair color 'Aikko caressed Tony's brown curls' or age 'Looking at him there was little left of the vibrant seventeen year old young man she met a month ago.'
Now the hard part for me is to understand were this is going. There is no clear goal here. There is clearly a conflict brewing between Aikko and Tony. And it seems to have to do with Tony being sick and Aikko blaming herself for this. But it remains unclear what the deeper message you're trying to send. Again, if it's part of a larger story this might be okay but since I haven't seen the part before this piece of text I can only issue a warning here.
STYLE/MECHANICS: There are some style problems in your text. They're easy to fix. As a general rule, indent a new paragraph for readability. Also, whenever a new person speaks start a new paragraph properly indented.
At some point your consistent use of POV (focus is on Aikko) is lost and you suddenly switch to Tony (see issue 8 below).
Also, about text introducing speech and text following speech: the correct way to do it is explained here: https://www.authorlearningcenter.com/writing/fiction/w/character-development/6491/8-essential-rules-for-punctuating-dialogue---article
THINGS NOTEWORTHY - A.K.A. MISTAKES :)
SPELL/GRAMAR ISSUES: English is not your first language (mine neither btw). My advice would be to look up the formal grammar rules. More specifically, check when to use comma's and hyphens.
Best of luck!