Sapphire
Senior Writer
Gender: 
Age: 19
Joined: 23 May 2008
Posts: 233
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 Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:54 pm Post subject: |
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Hey! Alright so I’ll just jump straight into the critique. Normally I’ll make suggestions in bold within the quotation. If something needs more explanation I might comment afterwards, but not always, so if you question why I’d change something, just PM me.
Immediately what struck me when I read the first paragraph was a structure issue. If you read it through, you’ll notice the first six sentences are similar length and it doesn’t flow as well as it could. I’d suggest making the following changes.
I don't quite know where to start. I never should have begun in the first place; he was stupid to suggest it. Maybe I should stick to fairy stories in the future.
But I can't stop now. I also can’t write as if I were in the present. It would get even more perplexing then.
I know - imagine. Imagine ourselves back, way back, four years ago, when I was twelve years old. Let’s just rewind our memories to then. Into the past, the beginning of everything. And it all started with a maths lesson, on a normal day. All these things do.
I’ve also changed some punctuation and edited a few sentences slightly, however they’re just suggestions.
I really liked this introduction, especially ‘Let’s just rewind our memories’. Those final sentences really evoked the same feeling one might get when watching a movie that moves into the past for the main story.
Also, just as a small punctuation side note, I think you should leave spaces after ellipses. I know the rules regarding them are a little blurry, but in most books I’ve read they tend to leave a space after them.
| Quote: |
| My hand had started to shake, as I heard the sniggers of the other Year Seven pupils echoing, the whispers and the pointing. |
There’s a slight problem with the sense of what you’re saying here – ‘as I heard … the whispers and the pointing’. You can’t hear pointing, so it would be worth changing this around a bit.
| Quote: |
I had never quite gotten used to it. My hand shook even more and I dropped the electronic pen, its fall resounding with a clatter on the wooden floor. I turned red as a beetroot, and I felt the tears would come any second, what with as the class exploded with wolf-whistles and calls of, "Yes, Amelia!”
I leaned over to pick the pen up then swiped a hand across my cheeks to wipe my eyes, before I straightened again to face the board. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, I told myself until the tears stopped. |
I’m not sure if the ‘pathetic’s should be in italics. As lyrical_sunshine said, thoughts usually are, but with the first person narration you might get away with it.
| Quote: |
Yes, I was at the place where I normally make the third wish: halfway around the quad, at the shaded part where the benches were, and where Kirsty Brightman and her gang hung out. Oh no – I'd been spotted. Kirsty sidled up, the three Mini-Ks don’t think you needed the apostrophe following obediently: no space needed before colon Rhiannon, Martine, and Lucy. I have always called them Mini-Ks because they were faded versions of Kirsty, all little blank airheads obsessed with fashion and dieting, all 'disciples' of the Kirsty sisterhood. Please let her go away, please let her go away...
She didn't. Instead, Kirsty simpered in a fake baby voice, "Oooh! Melie-Sweet talks to herself." I winced at the familiar nickname. On my first day of Year Seven, my dad drove me to school. I begged him not to, but he did it anyway. Despite the fact that everybody else walked. After we reached the school, he whipped my door open for me, planted a smack with his lips right on my head, then told me, “Have a great day, Melie-Sweet.” Ugh.
Kirsty told everyone about the name after hearing it, and it spread around Year Seven. Talk about making a good first impression. Everyone started to think I was odd, and I didn't make any friends. All because my dad was into calling me made-up names.
I suppose I forgave him, just because for me, he was the perfect dad no comma was necessary and could do no wrong. Oh, he wasn’t a dreamboat. Not fat, but with the start of a paunch; not bald, but with hair thinning round the temples. He wore embarrassing jumpers and loafers when he wasn’t in his formal suit that he wore to the office. But I still loved him with all my heart. We were always closer than Mum (you capitalise ‘Dad’ so it’s only fair to capitalise ‘Mum’ as well) and I were; he always made that extra effort. Lovely things, like surprise trips after school, sweet, funny notes in my lunchbox, pound coins hidden under my pillow. |
I just thought I’d explain why I scored out ‘sweet’: with a list of clauses, normally if there is a comma within the clause itself, for example ‘sweet, funny notes in my lunchbox’ then you should separate them with semicolons:
Lovely things, like surprise trips after school; sweet, funny notes in my lunchbox; pound coins under my pillow.
In this sentence they would be a little over-the-top, so I took out ‘sweet’, the extra adjective. If you could find another adjective that conveyed both funny and sweet, that would be great.
| Quote: |
Mum tried as well, but she could see that she wasn’t going to equal up to Dad whatever she did, so she stopped trying. Mum hated feeling inadequate, so she became kind of distant to me for a while. She provided and cared for me just like a mother should, but there was never anything more. I suppose it was my fault, and my loss. Though I didn’t realise it then. I was too caught up with Dad. Once he’d said, "I'd never leave you, Melia. I could never stay away from you that for long." I'd asked him if that was a promise, and he'd said, "Yes. I promise," and we'd linked pinky fingers like we were little kids.
Getting snapped from my thoughts into the current situation Snapping from my thoughts back to the current situation, I turned red, as I always did near Kirsty and when I heard that nickname, and stammered, "Errr, no, I don't ever talk to myself, not never... I mean not ever. Um... no, not at all..." |
| Quote: |
"No offence, Amelia!" Lucy called out said (‘called out’ doesn’t really work), and they stood sniggering until they grew bored of me just standing there with a red face and sidled off back to their bench, where they got a good view of the boys playing football. I continued my usual circle around the quad. Life was not good. But it was bearable because it was constant. Everything was normal to me, just a usual routine, like the wishing game. And everything would stay normal. At least, that's what I thought.
The bus stopped, and as a few pupils filed out, I felt a tap on my shoulder from someone on the seat behind. For the umpteenth time this journey.
It was Lucy. Again. I just ignored her – what would be the point of falling for it and turning round? She wouldn’t come up with anything particularly original, anyway, because Kirsty wasn’t there. Neither Kirsty or Rhiannon took the bus;it was only the dumbest pair of the foursome – Lucy and Martine.
Lucy said, in a very loud voice, to Martine, who was sitting next to her Lucy spoke to Martine, who was sitting next to her, in an unnecessarily and deliberately loud voice. “Martine? Do you like your food?”
“Oh,” sighed Martine, and I could see her in the window reflection, flicking back her fake blonde hair, in perfect Kirsty mimic in a perfect imitation of Kirsty. “Once in a while. Calories tend to freak me out though.”
Lucy leant back over the seat, so she was right in my face again. Turning to Martine, she said, “Hey Martine. Do you think she likes her food?”
They were killing themselves laughing; They were spluttering so much you would have thought they needed CPR. I gritted my teeth and bore it. It might not have been very witty, but it still hurt like a knife was being twisted around in my stomach. I couldn’t cry now though – not here, not now, not in front of everyone. I bit my lip as I always did when I was holding back tears - little imprints, two rows on each teeth, one from the braces and the other from my teeth. Blood would sometimes run down the corners of my mouth I bit so hard. My glasses fogged up in my attempt to keep my tears inside.
I got home, nearly in tears after surviving yet another episode of "Let's throw Amelia's jacket around the bus". There was worse in store for me. Much worse.
I waited a few minutes for Dad to come out – he was normally back from work by then, waiting for me, but I noticed his car wasn't parked, so I went in by myself. We lived in this shabby block of flats in a dead-end place called Drayton Road. This was quite embarrassing, but expected, because mum's waitressing job hardly earned us anything and dad's work as a copy-editor got us just enough to pay the bills. I always wished that we could own a house, like everyone else did, so I’d feel more confident about having friends round for parties and the like. Although, I wouldn’t really have had anyone to invite, anyway.
I mounted the stairs two at a time, escaping Mrs Brown, the ground floor resident, and her complaints about 'noisy feet clattering on the floor' and 'doors banging open and shut, open and shut'. Stuffy old bat. I wasn't noisy in the least noisy.
The flat was silent and empty, and this scared me. I went into my tiny bedroom no comma was necessary and sat for a while on the windowsill, surrounded by what I like to call ‘creative mess’. This was because I fancied myself as a writer somewhat, and so adopted stereotypical traits of The Writer. This meant: messiness, absentmindedness, clutter, and disorder in general. My desk, which took up half the minuscule room, was cluttered with trinket boxes, snow globes, pen pots, stationery, clay animals and paper. Dad wouldn’t buy me a P.C, so an old and well-worn need a different adjective electric type-writer took on a rather supercilious air in the middle of the desk. |
Although technically it should work, ‘well-worn’ just sounds strange describing a typewriter. How about ‘old and overworked’?
| Quote: |
The windowsill was the place I liked to sit and get inspired whenever I had writer’s block, or just needed to escape for a while. I called it my dream-sill. It was extremely wide for such a small room, and long enough for me to sit with legs outstretched, although I preferred to sit curled up on one of the reed cushions. It was the perfect place for inspiration or escape because it overlooked not only the street, but the opposite block of flats. You wouldn’t imagine the scenarios I had conjured up just by sitting there watching observing the windows. Behind every window lay a story; events happened behind them every day, leaving details to the imagination. With a vivid imaginations such as mine, this wasn’t hard. |
I changed ‘watching the windows’ because the phrase appears again later and seems better placed at that point. That’s just a preference though; you might want to keep the repetition.
The last sentence doesn’t read very well but it just needs edited slightly. Perhaps:
With a vivid imagination like mine, supplying those details was not difficult.
Or another word for ‘supply’.
| Quote: |
And sometimes I’d spot Dad coming, and he’d spot me at my windowsill. He’d always pretend not to notice, and then so I’d knock three times on the glass, whereupon then he’d look up, feigning surprise, and mime climbing up the wall to the window. Whenever his car pulled up, the force of it made the silver wind chimes outside our house tinkle. He would always whistle softly, along with the wind chimes, and I would whistle back. Silly really, when I look back on it.
But Dad still wasn’t here, and neither was Mum. I felt a sickening panic attack coming on, so I sat down at my typewriter and wrote a few opening words to a story. I had no ideas though, and that didn’t go very far. So, to keep myself busy and my mind off worry, I went and paced around the house, nervously clicking my fingers. I didn't want to stay in the living room, with all the strange, modern paintings gaping silently at me, so I went into the kitchen, and sat at the crowded counter, rooting through homework for a moment. It was then that I saw a note clumsily pinned with blu-tacked to the edge of the crockery shelf. I got up from the chair, and at the same time the note fell to the floor. I thought that it can’t couldn’t have been very securely pinned stuck, I thought; whoever wrote it must have been in a hurry.
I bent down, and picked up the note. I read it out loud, crouched on the floor.
Amelia,
Go to Sellyoak Hospital as soon as you read this.
It was in Dad's handwriting, big, slanted and bold. |
Most of what I’ve changed is for sense or punctuation. However you sometimes have a tendency to say the same thing twice. For example:
They were killing themselves laughing; they were spluttering so much you would have thought they needed CPR.
The second part of the sentence is essentially saying exactly the same as the first, but in a much more interesting way. If you find other examples like this when you read through it, just trust that your reader will understand what you ‘show’ (second part of sentence) without being ‘told’ (first part).
The final point I would make is that the words aren’t quite leaping off of the page yet, which can happen with first person narration. Amelia is a good character to tell the story, being a writer, but at the moment she’s only telling us. We’re not fully experiencing her memories. I think you can combat this by more references to the setting and more interaction with other characters. She communicates her actions but doesn’t often say what she sees, hears, and so on. Try to incorporate all the senses, though not all at once! As for other characters, we’ve had her encounter with the stereotypical girl gang and the maths teacher but they don’t feel like enough. Perhaps this is something that will change when I read the next chapters and see interaction with her parents.
Well, I’m away to read the rest! |
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Dancing through life down at the Ozdust, if only because dust is what we come to – Wicked the Musical |
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