Young Writers Society

Crunch, crunch, went the leaves, as Arabella walked home from her job at a nursing home. The stories of young and old love, marriages and children, travels and careers filled her head. She smiled, as the wing swirled around her causing the thin wisps of hair to circle her face. Imagining herself in one of those fantasy worlds, Arabella almost strolled right past the brick home she shared with her dog, Astro, and the homey decorations that engulfed her into the loneliness of her world. Arabella walked through the wrought iron gate and slowly walked up the gravely path to her beige front door. Pulling the keys from her pocket, she fumbled for the mail. Once inside, Astro rubbed his slick, black body all over her lower legs. Laughing, Arabella grabbed his leash and attached it to his collar. The one advantage to living a single life was that you could do as you pleased. She came and went without notice, but sometimes she wished she had someone to come home to, someone to cook and clean.

All the way across town, Christian slid the car seat, that held his precious cargo, from the backseat of his brand new escalade and carefully walked to the front door. Taking a deep breath, he entered his home and sat the car seat upon the kitchen table, after which he slung the diaper bag on the couch. His sleeping beauty looked so much like her mother. The peach fuzz that barely covered her scalp was a light blonde. Her blue eyes dazzled against her eyelids, and he knew as soon as she opened them they had the ability to look into his being. Christian unbuckled her, but let her sleep there, while he made dinner. The noodles had just begun to boil when he heard her high pitched screams.
“Daddy’s coming; daddy’s coming.” He walked briskly to her and sat the cat, who had found his way onto the table just to get in Marissa’s face, back onto the floor.
“It’s okay, princess.” Christian picked her up and gently rocked her, as her screams slowly began to quiet into whimpers and trembles.
Walking back into the kitchen, he sat her in her swing and handed her a pink plush elephant. Draining the pasta, he couldn’t help but think of Katherine and her accident. A daughter without a mother is a picture of the total unjust; Christian just hoped that this picture didn’t stay that way for long. He could see it all like it was happening present day. A drunken man, speeding to get on to the freeway, rammed into the side of Katherine’s car, causing her to skid against four lanes of traffic. Christian had gotten a call at work that his wife, who was six months pregnant, had been in an accident, and the doctors weren’t sure if she or the baby were going to make it. His heart beat upon it’s caged in walls of his chest like a gorilla banging upon the observatory glass in the zoo. Christian ran to his car and cursed his hands for fumbling the keys. The drive and the people he bumped into at the hospital was a blur, but the moment the doctor held his shoulders and shook him time went still.
“Mr. Galloway, good news is that we were able to remove your wife’s baby without there being any great risk to the child. She weighs around three pounds, so we would like to see her gain some more weight before she goes home. Your wife, Mr. Galloway, is in surgery. We had to stop the bleeding and were able to stabilize her enough to bring into surgery on her brain. There’s way more internal bleeding than we expected… Mr. Galloway, are you alright?”
“Katherine… baby… what… what happened?”
Christian rubbed his eyes and looked down at his cold spaghetti. Marissa’s gurgles and whimpers brought his attention to his darling daughter. Right on time, Christian thought, as he picked her up and swayed, grabbing a bottle and heating it up. Within the ten to fifteen minutes it took for the bottle to heat up, Marissa had lost all of her patience and was sobbing causing her tiny body to shake.
“Shh, daddy’s got your bottle all ready; lets go sit down.”
He walked her upstairs into her nursery and sat in the white rocker that had little pink flowers hand painted all over. Marissa fit perfectly in the crook of his arm, as he began to feed her. He was mesmerized by her soft skin, tiny fingers, growing body. He felt as though he had to memorize every detail of this tiny creature because this too could be taken away from her. Christian rocked slowly as she finished off the bottle in it’s entirety. The bottle had barely been empty for a second or two before the gas in Marissa’s stomach caused her to wail in discomfort. Christian set the bottle down and laid her over his shoulder to burp her. This was the most uncomfortable part of his day. He didn’t know whether he was being too hard or too soft, whether she had burped or not. She could feel his discomfort and always whimpered, he knew this to be true. When he finally heard a sufficient burp come from her tiny lips he laid her back into the crook of his arm and rocked her.
It seemed they had both drifted off into sleep. Christians dreams were filled with the remembrance of that night, and the last night he saw his wife whole. It felt as though the place was closing in on him. His mind was racing and his chest was banging, all he could remember how to say was, “I need her. Where is she? Where is she?”
“Mr. Galloway, if you would like to see your daughter Ms. Singleton here can assist you, as for your wife, I will come back out when her surgery is over and she is in recovery.”
The doctor walked away and a sweet young nurse guided Christian to the newborn intensive care unit. As the nurse explained that his baby was in the NICU just for precautions, all he could do was look at the baby that was in his wife’s abdomen just that morning.
“I need to hold her. I need to.”
The nurse looked into Christians pleading eyes and willingly obliged to let him sit in the rocking chair and hold this tiny being wrapped into a plush, cotton blanket. The coos and gurgles of this tiny infant made the tears of a grown man stream endlessly down his face. He couldn’t find the words to even think about or process the events that were going on around him.
waking up in a cold sweat and the air sucking into out of his gaping mouth, Christian calmed himself as to not drop Marissa. He looked down at the angel he was holding and thanked God for every perfection on her head to her tiny toes.
“Your momma loved you. She still loves you. Even though she can’t take care of you, she still loves you,” He whispered, as he stood and placed Marissa in her wooden crib.

Hi there Rascalover. I'm here to give you your review for free.

Okay, lately, I'm not in the mood for romantic stories or anything like that, but I think like this. xD The story, in general, is very sweet and cute. And I like the fact that your vocabulary varies. Though, there's one thing that made me tilt my head. And that was this sentence: “Katherine… baby… what… what happened?” The fact that you used lots of eclipses is kind of distracting. I think you could've described what was happening instead. Like using words such as: "hesitated", "dithered", "stuttered' or something like that. But that's just my personal opinion. Overall, you did a great job!

Keep writing!

~Solly<3

Hey there--
I thought this was adorable and beautiful and heartbreaking. I loved the setting and although I haven't read any other parts of your novel, I think I just might because of this piece! I can't really find any grammar mistakes, although I agree with the person above me with that ellipse thing. But, it's a minor detail. Keep up the good work

~Jess

PS-- check this out: viewtopic.php?t=90182 I'm looking for more reviews on this one because I may end up publishing it. And word is, you are a good reviewer!

Rascalover,

At first I had no idea this was the opening scene of a novel since it reads so much like a short story. There are pros and cons to this. It's good in the sense that I already know so much about a character and his background/history in such a short span of time, that's refreshing, because most novels give you nothing, or else they start in media res, so most first chapters seem disorienting - this isn't like that. Everything is clear and straightforward. That plays as a double-edged sword, because I find myself asking, do I want to read on? And the average-reader in me says no, that this by itself felt complete and satisfying, and there's nothing in here that makes me curious to want to know what's going to happen next.

Or rather, I get the sense that this will eventually develop to be a love story between Arabella and Christian just by the way that it is set up (I may be wrong or what-not) but there's nothing here about Arabella and/or Christian that makes me wonder how they would be like as a couple, because everything feels and fits so cleanly. Arabella strikes me as a young dreamer who longs for married life; Christian strikes me as the doting father who has to get over the death of his beloved wife. I know these are all understatements, and I know the characters have yet to develop (there's only so much you can do in a chapter, I'm well aware) but it seems to me that what is lacking here is intrigue.

Right off the bat, I get a sense for the type of story, the characters, the conflict - and all of this sounds very good on paper, but the execution is off. Or rather, you go about things the right way, if we're going to talk about the technicalities of the piece and the techniques used - But these technical aspects fall short, or seem hollow, because the crucial elements of a story (characters, setting, plot) are lacking. I'm going to walk you through this, so you can get a sense of what I mean.

Just for this review, I went back to my own writer's checklist. I am sure you are familiar with it - it's a list about what you want to accomplish with an opening chapter. So...

1.) Grab your reader's attention
2.) Ground your readers with setting
3.) Intrigue reader with character
4.) Give the reader a puzzle to solve

Crunch, crunch, went the leaves, as Arabella walked home from her job at a nursing home.

I wonder why you chose to open the piece with an onomatopoeia. I mean, I suppose the words themselves are interesting "crunch, crunch went the leaves" (though honestly it reminds me of a children's book: bark, bark went the dog. Cluck, cluck went the chicken) This would have been more appropriate if you were starting the story with Marissa, to which I would then understand why you chose the onomatopoeia, but you chose to start with Arabella. And she works at a nursing home. Ok. So where's the hook?

Does this grab my attention? Not really. Interestingly enough, the mention of leaves is about the only sense of setting that we get in this first part.

The love stories of young and old love, marriages and children, travels and careers filled her head. Parallelism error - I did a possible fix, though it does change the meaning a little bit, so it's something you might want to consider She smiled, as the wing wind swirled around her causing the thin wisps of hair to circle her face. Imagining herself in one of those fantasy worlds, Arabella almost strolled right past the brick home she shared with her dog, Astro, and the homey decorations that engulfed her back into the loneliness of her world. Arabella walked through the wrought iron gate and slowly walked up the gravely path to her beige front door. Pulling the keys from her pocket, she fumbled for the mail.

Okay, the phrase: "pulling the keys from her pocket" is a participial phrase. It functions as an adjective, because it describes. So basically, she did this while this happened. So she pulled the keys while she fumbled for the mail...? But how did the door open..? The next sentence has her inside already.

It sounds trivial right? After all, why describe step-by-step how Arabella opens a door? My answer to that is because you're setting a scene. And by setting the scene, you want to be as clear as possible and as concise as possible. The reader is trying to imagine a 3D space in their head and any confusion whatsoever is going to disturb the reader in this process.

I for one, had a hard time debating with myself what was wrong with this sentence, and as it turns out, grammatically, there isn't anything wrong. It's just that my brain kept wanting to say, "pulling the keys from out of her pocket, she opened the door" But that's different from what you have. In order to keep what you have, ask yourself, why chose to write it in that particular sentence-structure? Wouldn't it read better if you just say: She fumbled for the mail as she pulled out her keys to open the door. I'm not too fond of this sentence either, but at least it begins Subject + Verb, so we get the immediate sense of action.

But if you want to know more about participial phrases, this site here can explain it better than I can.

Remember that sentences are your building blocks to story-telling. It is going to be your choice of sentence structures that make a story read suspensefully, conversationally, immediate, distant, etc. etc.

Once inside, Astro rubbed his slick, black body all over her lower legs. Laughing, Arabella grabbed his leash and attached it to his collar. The one advantage to living a single life was that you could do as you pleased. She came and went without notice, but sometimes she wished she had someone to come home to, someone to cook and clean.

So this first paragraph has a mixture of scene and summary. That is good! Variety is good. Mixture is swell. But! If you think about it, you chose to write a scene about Arabella leaving from work, stepping on leaves, grabbing the mail, heading home, where her dog is there by her feet, and she laughs.

To compliment this scene, you have summarized the last sentence up there that I have in bold. So, Arabella longs for someone. I don't know about you, but I could care less about how Arabella gets home - I care more about the fact that she longs for companionship. This makes her relatable. I mean, you tell us this. But wouldn't it be more effective if you show this? If you make this a scene?

In a way, I feel as though you do this. I mean, Arabella comes home to her dog, maybe that image can be interpreted as her loneliness? But there's not enough to suggest that. There's no mood here. There's no atmosphere. There's no sense of "one girl and her dog in a big, empty house" - there's really very little here.

I don't want a talking head. I don't want a puppet. I want a character. There's a difference between saying:

Arabella walked home from her job at a nursing home.

To:

A young woman marched home in stained scrubs, enthusiastically stomping on the leaves in her path.

This goes back to YWS' mantra. Show, don't tell. (Although - I may have cheated a bit, because I have no idea what Arabella does at a nursing home o-0 but I imagine they wear scrubs, right? If they have to handle bodily fluids and such...? Maybe not. But you get the point.)

Anyway, Christian seems a lot more developed and you do a better job with his section. Actually, there's a lot of meat in his section. In 1000ish words, I already know his entire backstory and how his wife died. But if this is a novel, then remember, you still have about 79,000 words in which to hold the reader's interest (assuming average length of novels is about 80,000). That being said - a lot of people will hold off on backstory. But I just want to say that the backstory here didn't seem disconcerting to me at all. Probably because it was the most interesting part of this first chapter, but also because you handled it masterfully. You kept it brief, and you tied it to the immediate action, and it helps develop Christian a bit more, so I didn't mind the backstory - as I said - the only thing I am concerned about, is whether you told too much too soon, but you're the author here. For all I know, there's a bunch of content to explore and so it is better for you to reveal everything out front.

So these are my two cents. I feel like I've been harsh, but I'm really a big fan of romantic fiction ^^; I like the direction of the story, and the characters seem promising, you know? They seem like real people and I get a sense of certain characteristics - but I want to see living, breathing characters. That should be the focus here - develop your characters, because in a romance story, that sort of thing is highly important.

I look forward to seeing how this develops, also let me know if you have any questions. I promise I don't bite.

~ as always, Audy

I know, I know, I'm late... well fourteen days late for the review in fact. Let me make it up for you.

Before I get into the story itself, I feel like I should point that something is off about the story's format. It seems to dwell on the second character rather than the first character, while the first one just serves as a background for the more important second one. But that is not what you intended from my impression. What you did want was the reader to know that they both were separate lives or two inclined lines that are going to be joined in a place along it's length. But I just don't see any connection between the 1st character and the 2nd character other than the fact that the first character feels like she wants a companion who does something other than barking and the second has a child whom doesn't have a mother. It's not unique, not intriguing, and a story should be about that. It should have it's own uniqueness and a special way to create intrigue in the reader, making him/her want to read more.

Another thing is that the you have shown more interest in developing the second character while leaving the second character in dust. If they are two more main character, you shouldn't actually show less interest in one compared to the other. Because if you do, the readers forget that there is certain character like that and would become more connected to the other character.

Also, don't explain everything about the character's background on the 1st chapter it self. Leave the mystery to the later chapter where you would be able to create interest in the reader, and also give the information more slowly, than rushing out. Rushing does not suit any story as it will give the reader a chance to wonder and imagine the scene, or character in their mind. So, they'll proceed with a half formed character in their mind. So, keep your eye on those things.

Okay, on to the review,

Mistakes

All the way across town, Christian slid the car seat, that held his precious cargo,

I think you mean "safety seat" Otherwise, it's gonna sound like he ripped the seat out of his car.

He could see it all like it was happening present day. A drunken man, speeding to get on to the freeway, rammed into the side of Katherine’s car, causing her to skid against four lanes of traffic.

This sentence makes it seem like he's having a flash back, rather than imagining it. I don't know how to fix the sentence, but see if you can correct it.

There’s way more internal bleeding than we expected

I'd say, "There's a lot more internal..." because, doctors usually talk professionally.

He felt as though he had to memorize every detail of this tiny creature because this too could be taken away from her.

Say "being" rather than "creature"
Also that should "him" not "her"

Christians dreams were filled with the remembrance of that night, and the last night he saw his wife whole.

Write it like, "Christians dreams were filled with the remembrance of that night; the last night he saw his wife whole."

Plot

Well, I have to say that the uniqueness of the story is not there, as this is a heavily used plot path you are following. The girl is alone and wants someone, and the other is a father who thinks his baby needs a mother. Doesn't that sound familiar? Well, I hope you intend to add your own unique touch into the story, because unless you do that, the story is not going to be that interesting.

Also, keep in mind that the mystery or problem you create in the early stages of the book is what keeps the reader interested. They wonder on what the mystery is, or how the problem will be solved. I once read a book where the mystery about the main character's past isn't fully revealed until about 500 - 600 pages of the book were read. So, you get what I mean. Try to work on that.

Descriptions

Descriptions of the setting were good. They were well written and told to the reader at the appropriate time. But I can say that the first character's perspective lacked descriptions as I can barely picture anything about that character or anything around her. So, please see to that.

Another thing is this,

Arabella almost strolled right past the brick home she shared with her dog, Astro, and the homey decorations that engulfed her into the loneliness of her world.

Don't say loneliness outright. Let the readers feel the loneliness by the character's feelings, what she see, etc. It makes up for a more realistic experience than saying "she is lonely" You could use the colors the character see, the quietness around her house, emptiness.

Character Descriptions

Now, I'm dealt with two faceless characters for the entire chapter. And that's okay for the first chapter, but be sure to include atleast one single characteristic character of the character in the first chapter, because after a few chapters, the readers would be imagining their own made up character, and those characters may not look at all like your real characters. That's why you need to describe your characters early on. For example, I keep imagining the 1st character as a grandma That's the impression I get from the 1st chapter because their's no direct reference to her appearance in it. So, please see to that.

Overall, the writing of the 2nd character was good, but you should work on the points I mentioned above.

Good luck

- C -