Cold Blood

Hi Peoples! This is the_bronze_pen. I deleted my short Cold Blood and I wrote it as a novel and this is just the first chapter. I changed it from third person to first person so Analiegh is the narrator. Please leave a message if you like this chapter!
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Cold Blood
Chapter One:


“Ouch!” I yelp into the cold darkness of the cave. I know in an instant that it is a bat that has just bit me; the cold sharp teeth that had plunged into my arm couldn’t belong to anything else. I can just barely see Leslie feeling her way across the cave. We had forgotten our flashlight and are helplessly blind in this light.
Finally, she makes her way over to me. “What’s wrong?” she asks me, her voice seeming to coo like an owl.
“I think a bat just bit me,” I reply, pulling my long, brunette hair to my chest, giving my wound air. I begin to feel my way out of the cave.
“Oh… wait! Analeigh! Be careful! You can catch meningitis or some type of ..um… dreadful disease if you aren’t careful!” Leslie screams behind me. She actually listens in Mr. Garkem’s class. He just teaches us about animals. I mean, I listen too, but I don’t want to answer every question he asks. Leslie scowls under her breath when he picks on someone else.
I am almost out of the cave now, my sneakers sloshing in the mud outside. I walk up to Mr. Garkem and tap him on the back. He turns around casually and then freezes, his eyes seeming to pop out of his head. Leslie comes up behind me and I think, What now, I’m Medusa?
Leslie answers for him. “Analeigh, you look so pale, you look like you’re about to h-”
“Well… um… I think a bat just bit my neck so if I could just get a bandage, I-”
“A BAT BIT YOUR NECK!” Mr. Garkem screams. I guess Leslie was right, because the first thing I know, an ambulance is roaring down the gravel road path that leads to the cave. I think I should be able to say that this is the worst field-trip ever.
My mother is informed about my “injury” and she has to leave work. Mom works at a diner called Shelby’s and she is one of the waitresses. Mom made a deal with the bus driver that he drops me off at Shelby’s because Mom doesn’t get off work until six o’clock.
But today, I’m not going to Shelby’s diner after school; I’m going to the hospital.

A bat bit her neck! Pleaseee say she's gonna turn into a vampire, we need a good old vampire story around here.
It's great actually because with all the modern vampire stories at the moment there bitten by an actual vampire, it's interesting that you've chosen the bat instead. It's almost a bit vintage now with all that huff about Twilight.

Izzy

xx

Well at this moment all I can say is it sounds like a good beginning. I hope you write more so I can give you a critique, I want to know what happens.

Hi, I'll give you a review. Second vampire story of the day for me.

I think the title is a little cliché. You could probably think of something a little more offbeat. At the moment, it just screams 'vampire': it's only a hook if vampires are a hook for you. I suppose the title doesn't even have to be a hook, but this one could do with a little more attention.

I start with nitpicks.

I know in an instant that it is a bat that has just bitten me

Just a slip with the grammar there. It should be 'bitten'.

We had forgotten our flashlight

Tense change. It should be 'have'. I don't know if this is the last time you make this error; present tense is sometimes quite a hard transition to make if you're very used to past tense, and vice versa. Make a choice before you start, maybe depending a little on the story but mostly on what you're comfortable with. Then again, skimming through I think this might just be a typo.

“I think a bat just bit me,” I reply

I think that's the third 'just' so far. Try to shift your sentence structure around a little bit. At the moment you're very uniform.

“A BAT BIT YOUR NECK!” Mr. Garkem screams.

Personally, I hate it when exclamations are capitalised. It's supposed to add expression, but this is what the exclamation mark is for. Unless you use it frequently, it should have enough impact, and combined with 'screams' I think we've got it. Even so, the teacher screaming? And a guy, at that? It just seems odd.

his eyes seeming to pop out of his head.

seeming to coo like an owl.

Two different occurences of the same issue here. If I were you, I'd ditch the 'seeming to', because the reader is intelligent enough to work out that his eyes aren't popping out of his head really, and ditto cooing like an owl. I used to insert 'seemingly' and suchlike all the time, but it was usually just me trying to insure myself in case the reader took it upon themselves to take me literally. You can give us a little more credit, you know.

Mom works at a diner called Shelby’s and she is one of the waitresses. Mom made a deal with the bus driver that he drops me off at Shelby’s because Mom doesn’t get off work until six o’clock.

You could rephrase these sentences, since they're a bit stilted. I'd suggest something like:

Mom works as a waitress at a diner called Shelby's. She doesn't get off work until six o'clock, so she asked the bus driver to drop me off at the diner.

That doesn't sound too much better, and you can probably change it a little more, but it helps.

The style doesn't allow for much description or elaboration of any sort, but try to avoid just telling the reader what's happening. I think the voice would annoy me after a little while as it is, so try and make it a little more interesting and unique. That she's going to become a vampire is fairly obvious from this point, and I will be very surprised if I'm wrong. So it's up to you to try and keep the reader going even though they're waiting for something to happen, and to ensure that when it does happen they aren't disappointed.

I love this sort of origin story, but you're going to have to work pretty hard to distinguish it from the template. As yet, I think you need to flesh this out a little and give your characters some more personality, even in this early chapter. It is quite short, so you can mess around with it a bit. You started to do this when describing Leslie and Analeigh in class.

So far, it's all right, but there's a lot of directions you can take this and a lot of ways you can make it or break it. Good luck.