Young Writers Society

0.1

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Annette groaned as the shrill alarm beeps woke her from slumber. She pulled the satin laced pillow over her now golden hair and tried to get back to dreamland. It didn’t work.

She kicked the comforter off and rose to the bathroom, rubbing sleep out of her storm blue eyes. After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she slipped on an Abercrombie top and True Religion jeans. All the clothes were brand new, the tags still hanging off, ready for the first day of school.

Her room or rather, Selene’s old room, had stayed the same in the last two years, still pink, girly and cute. Annette carefully placed a green prescription contact over her right eye, blinking it in. Everything suddenly became clear in her right eye, the green glare of the digital clock gleaming 7:27.

The off-white door swung open and her mother, clad in beige pants and scrubs walked in. Annette flinched, dropping the box of contacts in surprise. She turned to the door with a tight smile on her face, her hand in a fist, covering the left contact. Her heart pounded slowly in fear, her breaths slow. She hadn’t slipped up in so long, she just couldn’t; not now, not today. She prayed that her mother wouldn’t notice the box of contacts or the fact that her daughter had one blue eye, one green.

“Morning, mom,”

“Oh good, you’re awake. Breakfast's on the table. Do you want me to drive you to school?” Her mom asked, her head cocked. Annette kicked the contacts under her bed then grabbed her bag.

“Um, depends. Lemme’ see if Amber can pick me up,” She replied before turning to her pink bedside table and grabbing her phone. She quickly slid the green contact in over her eye, her heart slowing to a normal speed.

“Alright, I’ll be downstairs. I’m leaving in five minutes though, can’t be late to my new job,” Her mom said, voice slightly raised in excitement before disappearing down the curved stairs.

Annette let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding then shook her head, as if trying to shake out the fear of being caught. If that happened, then everything she did, all the lies she told, all the blood spilt, would have been in vain. She would go to jail for the rest of her life and she would end up just another Nancy Grace special. And that was unacceptable.
~*~

Hey,

I'm very intrigued into what is going to happen next. It was very hooking which it needs to be.

Tell me when you post the next bit. Can't wait to read it.

PM for anything.

~Retro Disco666

Hey there, Jas

I'm here to review the beginning of your story for you. You reviewed mine, so I had to return the favour. If you have any questions or anything like that about my review, don't hesitate to ask!

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

This is a very cliché beginning. I know of lots of stories that begin with an alarm clock. I'm not saying that you have to get rid of this, I just thought I'd let you know that you see beginnings like this a lot.

Her room, or rather, Selene’s old room, had stayed the same in the last two years. Still pink, girly and cute.

Everything suddenly became clear in her right eye, the green glare of the digital clock gleaming 7:27am.

I just thought that adding an am sounded good here.

The off-white door swung open and her mother, clad in beige pants and scrubs, walked in.

“Oh, good, you’re awake. Breakfast's on the table. Do you want me to drive you to school?” Her mom asked, her head cocked. Annette kicked the contacts under her bed and then grabbed her bag.

“All right, I’ll be downstairs. I’m leaving in five minutes though, can’t be late to my new job,” her mom said, voice slightly raised in excitement before disappearing down the curved stairs.

Alright technically isn't a word.

Annette let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, then shook her head, as if trying to shake out the fear of being caught.

You don't need the last comma here.

If that happened, then everything she did, all the lies she told, all the blood spilt, would have been in vain. She would go to jail for the rest of her life and she would end up just another Nancy Grace special. And that was unacceptable.

This struck me as odd. She went from hiding the fact that she's wearing contacts from her mother, to suddenly have done something so serious, it could send her to jail. I think that you should mention her thinking about what she's done. If you want to keep it a secret, don't make her literally say, I did this and I'm sad because of it. Just make it more obvious that your MC has done something serious earlier on in the chapter, just so this last paragraph doesn't seem as sudden and weird.


Overall

Considering this wasn't the longest of all chapters, this review probably won't be awfully detailed and long. I'll try to mention anything that I've noticed though! As a whole, this was pretty good! I really adore the mystery in it. It immediately got me wondering why your MC was so worried and anxious about things. When I found out that she had clearly done something very bad, or apparently done something very bad, it made me even more interested. It is always a great idea to include some mystery in the beginning of a novel; it's what makes the reader want to read on. You also didn't make the mistake of making things too mysterious. If you make a piece of writing too mysterious, it simply starts confusing the reader. As for your characters, I quite like your MC at the moment. I don't know all that much about her, but that's fine. It is only the first chapter so she has plenty of time to gain a strong personality. I can't tell much about the plot so far, but I certainly think that it could end up being a good one. When it comes to your spelling, it was really great! I didn't find a single misspelled word in this. As for your grammar, it was pretty good too. I found the off grammatical mistake but nothing too serious.

My main critique would probably have to be what I mentioned at the end of my nit-picks. At the beginning of this chapter, everything seemed rather light and not overly serious. When you mentioned your MC secretly placing contact lenses into her eyes, I assumed that it was because her mum wouldn't let her wear contacts. I thought that she was some kind of paranoid mother who didn't let her daughter wear loads of make-up, things like contact lenses, and wanted her daughter to go to places looking "natural". After reading the last paragraph, I had to look twice because you hadn't mentioned anything like that in the previous parts. I'm not saying that you should tell us what your MC has done and give us all of the details. That's the last thing I want! I'm just saying that you could maybe drop some small hints in some of the paragraphs now and then. I'm assuming that Annette is wearing contacts because she doesn't want people to know her real identity or something like that... I'm not sure though, that's just a guess. If that is the case, you could include some hints that she's done something bad with that. Tell us how she hated putting contact lenses into her eyes and she wishes that "it" had never happened. Do you understand what I mean?

Other than this, I don't really have anything else to say. Sorry if I haven't been an awful amount of help. All that you need to do is take into consideration what us reviewers say. You should then maybe edit things up a bit. If you do that, you could certainly have a great opening chapter here!

Keep writing,

xoxo Skins

Hey Jasmine. Here to review on PM request.

Well, first of all I think that you are having trouble naming this piece, right? Give it any title except for the long weird ones which are definitely going to scare away your readers. Maybe I might be of some help after reading this piece.

She kicked the comforter off and rose to the bathroom, rubbing sleep out of her storm blue eyes.

Don't you mean stormy? As, storm would be just a noun, and here you need an adjective. If you still want to stick with storm then go for 'storm like eyes'.

“Alright, I’ll be downstairs. I’m leaving in five minutes though, can’t be late to my new job.” Her mom said, voice slightly raised in excitement before disappearing down the curved stairs.

Annette let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, then shook her head,You don't need this comma. as if trying to shake out the fear of being caught.

This piece was quite short, and it didn't bring me the conflict, which might be good or bad. You kept the suspense of who might Selene be and why she doesn't live here now.

Now coming onto the serious review, this nowhere struck me as 'wow' or anything like that. Okay, imagine...a girl, probably a teenager getting up from sleep and obviously not wanting to and then getting on with her same boring dull routine. Then something unexpected happens and we get to know that she is hiding a truth from her mom. She wears green contact eye lens. Only this part gave me some fun, otherwise it meant like reading a diary of a normal person, with nothing too great about it.

I don't mean at all to change the setting, or to start it from somewhere else. I just mean instead of telling us she brushed her teeth, took a bath, reduce those things a bit, and try to concentrate on something else, for example your descriptions.
You really need to stop telling us and showing something. This might seem weird to you, but I am not able to make myself more clear.

As for the title, I think I won't be of any help as I didn't understand what exactly this all was about. So, I have to let you decide on your own. Maybe for the next part, I might come be able to advice something.

There's this thing I would like to tell you. You start so many stories and leave them halfway. I have seen many of your stories. I understand that ideas bounce un your head and you cannot stop yourself from writing, but you should try to concentrate on one at a time.

Have Goodtime Writing,
Shubhi

Helloa Jas!
Here as requested.

As Skins said, the start is cliched especially the groaning and grogginess after sleep. Maybe you could work around it to make it better and uncliched.

She kicked the comforter off and rose to the bathroom, rubbing sleep out of her storm blue eyes. After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she slipped on an Abercrombie top and True Religion jeans. All the clothes were brand new, the tags still hanging off, ready for the first day of school.

As a descriptive paragraph, this needs a load of improvement. See, what you're doing is a lot of telling. Okay, she put on 'this,this and this.' How can you make it sound better. Maybe show us some little nuance while she's putting on clothes. Or skip the clothes while you get Annette to think about something; what does she think of the first day? Scared? Happy? Experiment!

Also, first day of anything is another cliched start, but I'll give it a go and see what you can come up with.

Everything suddenly became clear in her right eye, the green glare of the digital clock gleaming 7:27.

This, is technically weird. Unless she's looking at things with only her right eye, things will still look weird and fuzzy. That's how your eyes work.

The off-white door swung open and her mother, clad in beige pants and scrubs walked in.

Here, description needn't be so bland. Descriptions help us form the person's character especially in the first few chapters, so try to show us the person. You don't have to stick to telling us the clothes. There's always tons more to describe like the atmosphere in the room, the emotions etc.

On the paragraph with her mom and the lenses. This intrigues me a lot. Good. Like, I want to know why her mom doesn't know she has coloured lenses, because she'd obviously know that her daughter has power in her eyes. It would do you good to maybe start with this para and build around it more.

The end was okay. Not too bad, not too good either. Just a little bit of suspense, but it could get better.

So, overall, it was a bit clunky. But you could do more, I'm sure. Edit this out, and you'll have a good piece.
Hope to've helped.
Cheers,
~Lava

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Annette groaned as the shrill alarm beeps woke her from slumber. She pulled the satin laced pillow over her now golden hair and tried to get back to dreamland. It didn’t work.

I don’t get what you mean by ‘now golden’ hair. Was it not golden before she woke up?

She kicked the comforter off and rose to the bathroom, rubbing sleep out of her storm blue eyes. After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she slipped on an Abercrombie top and True Religion jeans. All the clothes were brand new, the tags still hanging off, ready for the first day of school.

I’m not sure if ‘rose’ is the best word to describe walking.
Great descriptions besides that. Loved the storm-blue eyes!

Her room or rather, Selene’s old room, had stayed the same in the last two years, still pink, girly and cute. Annette carefully placed a green prescription contact over her right eye, blinking it in. Everything suddenly became clear in her right eye, the green glare of the digital clock gleaming 7:27.

I think it’s- Her room, or rather Selene’s old room, had stayed the same during the last two years; pink, girly, and cute.

The off-white door swung open and her mother, clad in beige pants and scrubs walked in. Annette flinched, dropping the box of contacts in surprise. She turned to the door with a tight smile on her face, her hand in a fist, covering the left contact. Her heart pounded slowly in fear, her breaths slow. She hadn’t slipped up in so long, she just couldn’t; not now, not today. She prayed that her mother wouldn’t notice the box of contacts or the fact that her daughter had one blue eye, one green.

I don’t really think you needed to describe the door color, but oh well.

“Morning, mom,”

“Oh good, you’re awake. Breakfast's on the table. Do you want me to drive you to school?” Her mom asked, her head cocked. Annette kicked the contacts under her bed then grabbed her bag.

“Um, depends. Lemme’ see if Amber can pick me up,” She replied before turning to her pink bedside table and grabbing her phone. She quickly slid the green contact in over her eye, her heart slowing to a normal speed.

You should probably just keep it ‘let me’, or take the apostrophe off at the end. Wouldn’t her mom see the contact? Isn’t she right next to her?

“Alright, I’ll be downstairs. I’m leaving in five minutes though, can’t be late to my new job,” Her mom said, voice slightly raised in excitement before disappearing down the curved stairs.

Annette let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding then shook her head, as if trying to shake out the fear of being caught. If that happened, then everything she did, all the lies she told, all the blood spilt, would have been in vain. She would go to jail for the rest of her life and she would end up just another Nancy Grace special. And that was unacceptable.


This was a very surprising ending. It came SO unexpected, however, that I don’t think it worked really well. You should’ve hinted about it a little earlier, like maybe have Annette even MORE nervous when she thought her mom would see her contacts, possibly sweating in fear. That would tell us the contacts are a more serious matter than we would’ve thought. Basically, it really took me by surprise, and you should make the beginning seem more sketchy than your normal morning routine. Keep writing! And if you need any more help or have questions, send me a PM.

Oh, and before I forget, I wanted to make sure you new this is very cliché so far. I’ve probably read about five first chapters on this website alone starting along the lines of ‘beep beep beep, the main character wakes up groggily’. Like the other reviews said, it’s not bad, but if you were aiming to make your story stand out, make it more original. Right now, you have so many directions to take this so I’m not worried.