purple peaches

bit nervous about posting this, this evevoled from what was ment to be a short simple story to a beginging. im finding it a bit to descriptive at this point and not quite sure if the 2 people perspectve quite works. this is just the beginging that i got done yesterday. no title, of and incase you were wondering the prompt was a train station a aging diva and a little girl - chose them from a short list. ps please dont be offended by my major spelling issues

she was 6, soft light brown hair that hung in 2 plaits down both sides of her head, big brown eyes, that sat too big upon a lightly freckled nose, clutching a teddy bear, she sat next to an aging ginger spice. in ginger spices hair a hibiscus sat amongst pink streaked blonde hair. a ruby red mouth, fish next stocking, a knee length green skirt with a respectable white blouse followed.

they both sat looking at each other, not sure of what to do next, measuring each other up and realising it was a long time till the little girl was grown. both sat waiting for the train to take them away to a new life.

Lauren was the 6 year old, Lulu (who was also a Lauren) was of an undisclosed age, but defiantly past 25 and proud of it! (who would want to be that again, she always said). Lauren was the niece Lulu the aunt.

Lisa connected them. lise who was always present even while in heaven. Lisa who had now connected them for life, each to look after the other.

Lauren rubbed her eyes, and bit the side of her lip, she kept watching for the train that would take her away. Lauren didn’t really want to go away. she wanted to stay until her mummy came back from heaven. surely her mummy wouldn’t leave her forever? her mamma loved her. but then why was she going to stay with aunty loopy?

aunty loopy rubbed her eyes, and looked around for the train, she wasn’t sure what to do. what was Lisa thinking leaving her to look after a child. Lulu hadn’t even successfully parented a cat. Morgan the stripped fat feline went and did what he wanted, disappearing for days on end, only eating the MOST expensive fish. children didn’t do things like that did they?

lulu looked for a clock among the people and pigeons

"ommm, I think it come soon. do you have everything"

Lauren looked at lulu, her small eyes bigger than ever managing to break lulus heart at the resemblance of Lisa.

"yes"

"ok then" lulu's voice tried to sound confident and secure, but coming out like jelly

"oh, look here it comes now"

the girls boarded the old green rattler, finding a double so they could both have a window seat. they say in silence the whole hour and a half trip. at the station lulu spoke again

"just a short taxi trip" this time she let her voice show how scared and concerned she really was. Lauren nodded and slipped her small, child chubby hand in her aunts. they caught a taxi to a place called Ram bells.

Ram bells was the only remaining fibro house in a street full of brick beauties and the only one whose garden was totally unstructured. the flowers, herbs, veg, weeds sat where they wanted against the pale blue of the house. too add to the effect various articles had been placed haphazardly in the garden, a broken statue, 3 empty bird baths, and an aging kennel (in which Morgan sat)

the fat aging grey tiger looked at the "mew" arrival , as a she walked through. Lauren smiled her first smile of the day, as she watched him.

edited to fix terrible spelling

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Sarah
my rambling

Ozmandius

Spelling issues are the least of your problems. Try hitting the Shift key sometime and see what it does. You might be surprised.

abrock

I don't want to be cruel (I'm sure many others will do that job for me) but I'll just suggest that you might want to take some english and writing classes before attempting to do any more creative writing.

NoWorries

Alright. I won't lie to you, you've got a lot to work on, but it's not an altogether bad story.

First of all, I'm feeling this rushing of electricity reading it, it feels like you wrote it in a hurry, like you couldn't get the words down quick enough before your mind was rushing to get to the next point. If so, that's awesome, because I can tell you have a passion to write. The problem there, is that certain details get left behind. Lauren and Lulu are well described, but nothing else is. I missed the train station all together, the only reason I knew they were in a train station is because they got on a train. If you go back over each scene and fill in the background, I won't feel like they're sitting on a scratchpad.

The two person perspective can work, but it doesn't here. It's written from your perspective looking in, then you try to go to the little girl, then to the older girl. If you want to do two person perspective, there can only be two people, you can't be sticking in your perception every paragraph. When you're in a 1st person perspective, the only person allowed to notice things is that person, there can't be a narrator because then the story feels cheap. When you do a rewrite, you have two choices, you have to write it soley in first person(I would suggest with the Aunt, since you're closer to her), or you can write it from the third person, looking in, like you started to do at the beginning. As an aspiring writer, I think that a third person perspective will do you the most improvement.

Two-Person Perspective is hard, even for accomplished writer's, it's rare to see, because it is SO hard to make sure everything fits together.

Moving on, an important rule with children, is that they have to be at least as smart as you. When you try to write someone down, they just get dumb. In the story, no offense, Lauren(6) is stupid. I know she's not stupid, but her thought processes are. If you wrote her at your intellegence level, I think she'd be a worthwhile young, unexperienced child, but right now she is naive, dumbed down, and not a real character. This is not an insult, I assure you, it's a mistake everyone makes. I hope it's clear, if it's not, this author made the same mistake, read my critique at the bottom of the page about Guillermo, http://www.writingforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=5028

Also, throughout the whole story, I thought that Lulu was abandoning Lauren, only to be surprised at the end that she was taking her home. I kept thinking that Lauren was going to a boarding school or something. The lack of dialogue I think made me think that. I want to see Lulu consistently getting more comfortable with the thought of having a daughter as the story progresses.

Two things that drove me NUTS. You said, "they stayed in silence the whole hour and a half trip." That is TOTALLY not allowed in short stories. You just used that as a poor excuse to get someone somewhere. Talking, or thought even, is pivotal in the story, in fact, it's the only reason I'm reading. There is not allowed to be an hour and a half nothingness in a charged story. If they're not talking, they are at least thinking to themselves, I want to at least see that. You can stretch the dialogue out, like,
'Lauren asked, "Why did mommy have to go?" Twenty minutes passed as Lulu's eyes teared, "I don't know sweety." The answer jumped the gap in time and Lauren cried too.'
There has to be more dialogue or inflection into the characters and less of a narrative.

And finally, a nit-pick. NEVER name two characters the same name. It's not allowed, it just confuses the readers. Or, if you absolutely have to name Lauren after her mom's favorite sister, then that's gonna be her middle name, or little laura is going to have a nickname like Becky or something. The general rule is that two characters can't even have a name that starts with the same letter. Of course, J.R.R.Tolkien broke this rule with good old Sauron and Saruman, and I still think it is his greatest writing blunder.

In the end, the story has merit, it says something that I think you feel strongly about. It does need work, but for a first story, I have definitely seen worse.

When you rewrite it, please send me a copy.

Yours,

purple peaches

thanks for the replys, i realise it is so rough, its not even been edited from a first draft, and i relise its not terribly good its the frst time i have picked up a pen in over 5 years, baby bums have been taking up my time. its no excuse just a fact. i have fallen off my bycyle so to speak
i felt that about the train station too, i wasnt sure how to fix it. i am taking your tips on board and will see what i can do, esp as the perspective in my now not so excited state i can see what you are saying.. the main reason i posted such raw pen and paper work was to see if the idea had merit

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Sarah
my rambling

moonandsun

I'm a little late to comment as usual, but I figured I might as well. My first thought was "show not tell," where you say that she's six, and so on that's telling. As the story progresses try weaving in details about the charecters instead of just saying them.
Telling: Margie was mean and 22. She had red purse. The purse was ugly.
Showing: Margaret, better known as Margie, kept her hand stiffly placed against her hips with eyes narrowing as the minutes past. The other hand clutched a purse, a bright red color and tacky as ever.
I know that example was sort of wierd, but I think you get the gist or maybe I'm rambling.

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Praetorian

Right, but what you said above, moon, left out showing her age.

To show age, just throw it in there somewhere.

"Margaret, better known as Margie, kept her hand stiffly placed against her hips with eyes narrowing as the minutes passed. The other hand clutched a purse, a bright red color and tacky as ever. Her ever present frown brought out lines that made her look much older than her twenty-two years."

Or something like that...

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moonandsun

Ooh! yes, you're right.
I meant to have her hand holding a bottle of alchohol and mention something about being able to drink for a year, but I replaced the bottle with a tacky purse and forgot to fix it. Thanks for pointing that out to me!

__________________
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. "
-Groucho Marx