[ CC ] `` I just ca n't do it ''

I do n't have a lot of time, but some preliminary thoughts. 
 
 > Tai started to stalk away from me. 
 
 > as she began to take off in the opposite direction. 
 
 > The wind began to pick up 
 
 > The air began to moisten 
 
 > My stomach began to do backflips 
 
 > my phone started charming 
 
 > My legs started carrying my weighty frame 
 
 > I started to frantically run through the house. 
 
 Stop doing that. There is no reason to clarify that these actions have a beginning. That is obvious. Just give us the action. Think of how much punchier it is, therefore more effective, to say: `` The wind picked up'' or `` Tai stalked away from me'' or `` The air moistened.'' 
 
 In general you have an over-reliance on adverbs, which in the amateur's hands tend to attach to verbs that imply the adverb anyway. For example, `` Whipping violently'' ( which you use twice in one paragraph ) -- whipping tends to be a violent image, so what use is it saying so? By contrast, `` gently whipping'' would be an interesting image, and a fine place to drop an adverb, but the word `` violently'' does n't add anything. Be precise and be succinct. 
 
 But really the main problem with the piece beyond these style mistakes ( everyone makes them ) is that the whole `` beautiful suicide'' thing is old-hat. Shakespeare did this in the 1600s, so the bar is set a little high. And you have n't done enough legwork to establish why I should care about these star-crossed teen lovers. I barely know their names before they're slitting their wrists in despair. 
 
 A little characterization will help the story a lot more than leaning on melodramatic phrasing that only serves to elbow the audience's ribs and say `` be sad now.'' When I read a line like: 
 
 > Yet now, I stood numbly. I stood alone, tears streaming down my pale face as I ignored the storm that was now setting in, making the sky as dark as midnight, mocking the romantic midnight back in May. 
 
 Well, I know how you want me to feel -- the keen sense of losing a first love -- but I do n't feel it because you have n't taken me through it far enough or deeply enough to make me understand these two as real people in a real human relationship. Flowery language is not a tenth as effective as building up tangible characters through tangible details -- who they are, how they act, what they actually do together.
