NVM 8

void.

Hello XxBrokenVainxX, and welcome to YWS.

As much as I would like to think that this was going to change that, I knew deep down it wouldn’t.

Why would the narrator worry as to how the incident would alter the way in which people access their lockers? It doesn't really make much sense.

The air picked up like a gust of wind was tearing through it.

But a gust of wind is literally still air itself. And where is this gust of wind coming from? Make this sentence clearer.

“Where have you been young lady? School’s been out for three hours.”

What on earth? Why would the mother call the cops for that? It's only three hours. How old this the narrator anyways?

Overall impressions:

OK, so I didn't particularly like this piece. Your prologue is confusing. You haven't clearly established as to what's happening and who the "entity" is. Is it a ghost? A spirit? Can you be a little clearer? I suggest doing some research on your chosen entity and use it to describe it in a way that the target audience can associate with in some way or form. The prologue also had some unexplained ideas. Why did the narrator struggle to open the door? What is she exactly afraid of? Why is she so worried about the lockers? etc etc. The prologue doesn't exactly make a whole lot of sense which actually repulses me as a reader rather than drawing me in.

Your first chapter didn't hold much for me either. It was basically a retelling of stereotypes of teen life. Rumours. Check. Labelling. Check. Argument with parents. Check. The problem is that you do not have enough specific detail in your piece to deviate your piece from just stereotyping/ generalizing. You basically touch on one thing and then move on to the next. There doesn't seem to be a clear purpose in your piece. It's basically a retelling of what the narrator did during the day.

However, I was quite interested as to why the narrator's so keen in books and her relationship with her mother. I have a feeling that her mother's very strict, but I didn't really get that impression. Show the mother more. Give more examples of her strict nature and behaviour toward her daughter.

On the whole, this piece isn't good, because there doesn't seem to be a clear direction as to where this is happening. Ideas tend to jump from one area to another and doesn't exactly provide insight for the audience.

Hope this helped.

Andy.

Hiya Squall,
First off, thank you very much for being honest and trying to be constructive. BUT as is seems you’re a bit confused. A preference is NOT a prologue. They are two different things. A preference is a piece taken from a scene that’s to happen later on in the book. Yes I suppose it might be confusing, but the intention is to make the reader think of the possibilities and piece together the story themselves. I realize that I put myself out in the open because this isn’t an entire book so the reader doesn’t have anything else to go by…
This itself isn’t a story it’s a piece of a story. You can’t rush novels to the point of action. You have to build the plot from the ground up. This is exposition, or background information. As a writer your first job is to introduce the characters. There isn’t a story without them. It’d be stupid to rush into a plot if you don’t the people in it. You claim this is confusing, what if I had thrown you right into the climax and you knew absolutely nothing about the characters, how the prior conflicts lead up to the main one, or why it’s happening. Yeah.
I agree though, I didn’t give you enough. The preference needs to be dumb down for slower paced people.
Let the title help. Black magic. Oh I wonder what the candles were for. Oh a mysterious book…do you think it has anything to do with the bookstore? Hmmm. Probably not.
Oh and the odd little connection to the book….yeah that has nothing to do with the fact that in the preference she talks about how she has to help him.
I think I should of posted a summary with this.

Summary:
Envy is your average everyday bookworm. If it has words she'll read it...So naturally when a new bookstore opens she's one of the first to check it out. The second she enters the store she is drawn to it. A thick white leather bound book with gold trim. Nothing seems special about it...Yet she can't leave without it. At first all of the pages are blank inside and she can't find a better use for it than making it her journal. The first night she makes an entry was after a large fight with her step mother. Strangely afterwards she feels comforted and safe. The next morning she awakes to find the journal that had been resting beneath her pillow on the top shelve of her book case. That's not all though....Someone or something has responded to her entry. And she finds a small golden tag on the spine that reads : Zane.
What happens when a book begins to speak to you...Ask for your help...?


I didn’t make it clear enough. Sorry. I know it seems boring at the moment, I agree 100% with you on that, and I do plan to add more scenes with the mother. There’s only so much you can add to one chapter. It just feels like you were trying to judge this as a short story, like this is the only information you’ll ever get. Sometimes things in books aren’t suppose to be point blank explained word for word. Sometimes it’s the readers job to piece together important parts as the story proceeds.
Thank you very much I know you put a lot of thought into your comment, I just feel you’re being a bit harsh.

“As much as I would like to think that this was going to change that, I knew deep down it wouldn’t. “
I agree that that line can be deceiving, in it’s position. I shouldn’t of placed it so close to the description of students loading and unloading their lockers. I should of cut that description. What I meant was that what was about to take pplace wasn’t going to effect how they lived their lifes. They’d still live on and do the stupid crap they do. I didn’t make that clear.

“The air picked up like a gust of wind was tearing through it.”
Yeah you’re right, I think I’m just going to cut that. I was hinting to another force reassuring her. *Cough Magic Cough*

And finally yes her step mother is very strict. The main conflicts between the daughter and mother are do to the fact that Envy doesn’t accept her new mother and the mother thinks if she tries to become more of a stern figure than Envy will respect her. (Again I’ll state this later on…)
For the record I’m plan dreadful at first starts and your comment did help. I think I should of put stronger hints into the detail and made it more entertaining. Just try not to be too quick on judging.
Thank you very much. ^^

Hello again XxBrokenVainxX.

I admit that I had assumed that your preference as a prologue. This is because of all the time that I've been a member on this site for and from the novels that I've read/seen, I have never seen the use of a preference. If you have read novels before, it can contain either a prologue or epilogue, not a preference (from my experiences).

But seriously, even if that's a preference, it's just too vague in my opinion. It lacks reasoning and logic on the whole and as a result, the audience wouldn't be motivated to read on to find out what's happening. If you want your preference to work, it needs to be more coherent with your audience. But really, you do not need a preference. I don't see the purpose of having one. In fact, not having a preference would achieve the same results as having one. This is because in every narrative, there is a plot. The overall purpose of a plot is to show how the main character overcomes conflicts/obstacles in order to achieve his/her desire. As the reader reads on, they slowly learn as to how the main character overcomes this conflicts/obstacles to get what he/she wants. If your first chapter hooks the reader, then they will be keen to read the rest. You do not need this preference, it achieves nothing.

This itself isn’t a story it’s a piece of a story. You can’t rush novels to the point of action. You have to build the plot from the ground up. This is exposition, or background information. As a writer your first job is to introduce the characters. There isn’t a story without them. It’d be stupid to rush into a plot if you don’t the people in it. You claim this is confusing, what if I had thrown you right into the climax and you knew absolutely nothing about the characters, how the prior conflicts lead up to the main one, or why it’s happening. Yeah.

I think you misread my critique. I said your prologue (or in which case, your "preference") is confusing. And it is.

Why do you need to include a summary into the original post? You do know that there is something called "characterisation". Have you ever seen a novel where a summary's shoved into the actual narrative? I doubt it. In order to create a strong impression of a character to the audience, authors use the technique "characterisation" to make them seem like people. Consider showing more of the following in the piece:

-Dialogue
-Relationships
-Conflict (both external and internal)
-Feelings
-Opinions
-Actions

The fact that you need to tell me the finer details of the piece in a post shows how much detail and reasoning is lacking in the actual writing itself. Please consider revising this, it's rather poorly written at the moment.

Thank you for responding to my critique.

Andy.

I understand completely. ^^ Really. Though I'd like to point a few things out...I responsed to your comment in the early hours of the morning (Like at 3 or 4am.) and I wasn't completely clear and rereading your comments I did misunderstand. Sorry. ^^ I do remember saying that I was going to add to this. This is a rough draft and my propose is to get help...So yeah. ^^ Alright I can understand the confusion on the Prefereance. They aren't commonly used any more....I think I know why. As for the summary, I'm just so used to having to post one. At the moment I post everything I write at a site called Booksie and they require a ssummary for each piece you post.
The prioblem is I've been writing on that site for so long, my personal style is fading because I'm adapating my work to the way booksie's adudience prefer it. But no you're completely right, this does need a lot more effort put into it and I guess that's just part of learning.
Thank you very much for your time and effort. I'll be sure to put it to use and not let it be in vain. ^^

This is an interesting beginning and it has great potential. I like the whole book worm character, and I'm interested in what happens later on to create the preference. And I'm really curious about the book, because that can't be just an ordinary book.

I like the description at the beginning of the story, as it gives us a sense of where we are, and part of what's going on. We know that it's a school, and that she's there after hours to do something.

As much as I would like to think that this was going to change that, I knew deep down it wouldn’t.

This has been mentioned as a problem sentence, and that's because of the two underlined words. 'This' and 'That' are very unspecific words, I'm afraid, and when they are just used on their own, we have no clue what you're talking about. For all we know, she's going to set fire to the school and stop them from enslaving the kids through mind control or something. Now, later on we see that she hopes her ritual will change that, but we can't know in the beginning. So, maybe try: 'As much as I would like to think that what I was about to do would change their routines, I knew deep down that it wouldn't.' Although, I think 'Opinions' would work the same as 'routines,' and that would fit in with the comment about the teachers.

My hair tangled backwards out of my face, reassuring my entire body. There was no backing out of this. He needed me.

This part needs some clarification. I know that this is taken out of the middle of the book, but you also have to keep in mind that this is also the beginning of the book. So, you might need to add in a few more things than if this were just what happened on page 44. I can get that there's this presence now there with her, but that's really only after reading through the rest of the preference. So, you might want to mention that this gust of wind is how he manifests himself, and maybe use that to clarify the underlined words. Cause I can't understand that clause at all, bodies usually don't need to be reassured, although minds can. At the same time, I can see how the gust of wind could refresh her body.

The others would meet me soon and I had to be ready--for anything.

You have to watch for excessive use of ellipses, as there are other bits of punctuation that might work better as that break that you intend. I thought this sentence could use a bit of remodeling, because your sentences are a bit short, and I think a few of them could be connected together. But, anyway, this sentence seemed to have a bit too much punctuation in it, so I deleted the comma and put in an 'and' and I also added a dash instead of the ellipses.

I inhaled and carefully opened the book to the page I had been studding since the start.

I'm assuming she isn't putting the book out to pasture? You have a lot of little tiny spelling mistakes like this, and I'm not going to go through and pick them all out. You can probably use a spell checker and a grammar checker to find all of these mistakes. Grammar checker can be a bit annoying, as it goes through and completely ignores the context of some of your things, but keep hitting ignore until you find the words that don't quite fit for your story. You do have to be careful, as some grammar checkers are horrible, mostly from that context thing.

Another thing I have to remark about is your formatting. It's driving me crazy how you have your dialogue on one line and your speech tags on another line. I'm not sure if this is just because your copying your work from one place to another or not, but it makes it really hard to tell just who's talking. It's fine in the beginning scene of the first chapter, but it gets harder to tell as the story goes on and you add more characters.

I was skilled in the art of multitasking: I could successfully consume a loaded tray of hot food without taking my eyes from within my book’s pages.

I think that this small paragraph should be added to the paragraph above it, as I thought that she was already eating when this scene began, and was confused as the scene went on. I'm also adding in a colon to defend against short sentences.

The biggest problem in my life at the moment was trying to convince half the people I knew that I did NOT have feelings for the new kid.

It might just be that this is the first chapter, and you kind of skip around a lot, but why do they think she likes the new kid? I understand the best friend, best friends can tease one another, but what happened to let what seems like the whole entire grade think that she likes this kid? And, why do they care? Details, please?

As far I was concerned, he was just Justin Daniels--the new kid in town--and I was still just Envy: the girl who fantasizes about living inside one of Anne Rice’s novels.

Punctuation is fun. YWS has a knowledge base with a lot of good grammar sections. The grammar checker can also suggest some bits of punctuation.

I shuddered a little and finished picking out my lunch despite the growing pain in the pit of my stomach.

Why does this matter that much to her? I can kind of understand her not wanting to get close to people if this was in the timeline with the preference, but before this she should just be a normal girl--and you haven't given us proof beyond this.

I think you could also work on your transitions, instead of just giving us a paragraph's warning. Or, at least give us a dash cutting one scene from another. It also gets hard, because you have three short scenes that don't totally seem to be connected while you read through, so it feels a bit disjointed.

Part of me had been hoping that it would be a small piece of time from the past, like a refreshing heaven within a blazing hell. Butno it wasn’t anything special.

I'm not so sure about this sentence, as usually one waits until they're inside the building to see how special it actually is. Your character should know the saying 'never judge a book by its cover.'

There were several large posters advertising bestsellers like the newest book in the Eragon series and specials on Harry Potter box sets. Thus epenthesis on ’nothing special’.

Of course, as a new book store it would have advertisements for the popular series. Most bookstores are out to get profits, and if the owner can't afford to be in business solely for used books and book repairing, then they would sell what would get the most money.

She snorted clearly just as upset as I was by the lack of specialty the store held. I pursed my lips.

What on earth are the 'specialty' and 'rare and valuable' books that they are talking about? And how can they know this after only spending less than five minutes in the store? Also, what kind of teens would be able to buy 'rare and valuable' books and what kind of bookstore would keep those kinds of books right where any teen can come in and look at them? I'm just saying, don't forget your layers. Also, you need to do more description, because, as it is, it seems like your character only focuses on one book and then dismisses the entire store.

It was steal…

I think you're missing a word there.

He raise one of chalky gray eyebrows and sighed.

Also, what does he have against the book? Why isn't he saying anything about it? And why is so so tired and uninterested when he's just opened up this new bookstore? He should be excited, or at least feeling something. I think he really needs more development, even if he is a throwaway character. Part of it is that I don't think you should throw the bookstore away. If they don't have a Barns and Noble, then she should be happy about a large bookstore like that.

Again, the scenes need a bit more of a transition, I mean, what was she doing for the three hours? And why didn't Ari's mother ask about permission? And, I do have to say that the stepmom was a bit pushy, and we don't really see the reason for this. I think she should be a bit more exasperated than angry. And where is her dad? I mean, if 3 hours after school is enough to call the cops, then shouldn't the dad be home already? I think we just need more details within the story, even if you have it all worked out within your head.

Overall: It's a very interesting beginning. I can't wait to see what happens to get her to the point of the preference, and who all of these character are and will be. I think you really just need to add in some more details, and to try and connect some of your shorter sentences together. You have potential, it just needs work for the true story to shine through!

Good luck with your writing, and feel free to PM me if you have any questions!

- Tatra

Thank you Tatra, that was very useful. ^^ It's clear what I have to do to improve this now. ^^
Thanks so much for your time and effort, I won't let it be in vain.