Is this a good start?

Hi guys, its me, PenNPaper.

Recently I thought of doing a story with different parts in it.

Im going to share the first part with you, see if its ok, if not, please feel free to suggest anyway that i can improve on this. Be it more detailed explanations, grammatical errors or etc..

Its pretty short, still, hope you guys will enjoy it.

Here goes:

I glanced through the note once more. I had read it several times, but I still couldn't figure out who had sent it.

'Go to the bookstore in town', it read.

I hadn't had much problem figuring out which bookstore it meant, after all, there was only one in town. James's Bookstore.

It was a mysterious note. I checked the back, no address nor name. I read it over and over again. Finally, I decided to pay the bookstore a visit.

I stood outside James's Bookstore. I pushed open the doors with much effort, it gave way, and I tumbled through the door, bumping into a man.

'Watch where ya goin, boy' he growled, then stepped out.

'Don't mind him, had a bad day at work' an old man behind the counter smiled, 'call me James'

He proceeded back to work, then asked, 'You need somthing, son?'

'Just looking around' I replied, I didn't want to mention anything about the note.

I searched the shelves, piled with books. None of them caught my interest.

I was about to leave when I saw it, the book that caught my attention. It was placed on the bottom shelf, right in a dark corner. I carefully slid it out, it was dusty.

I dusted off the dust and flipped the pages, this book was really old. There were lots of characters inside, but I couldn't understand them. I flipped to the last page, there were some scrawled words there. 'This book belongs to the Holder of Secrets'

That was it, the only words that I could read and they meant nothing to me. I sighed and put the book back, then hesistated. I pulled it out again, this time the pages were blank.

Then suddenly, I felt myself being sucked into the book, everything grew darker and darker, until I was engulfed into a total darkness, and slowly I fell asleep.

*Moved to Fantasy Fiction*

Hi Pen! I'm so glad to see you're already a part of YWS!

First off--I noticed several grammar mistakes.

I hadn't had much problemtrouble figuring out which bookstore it meant, after all, there was only one in town.

Hadn't had is not the same tense as the past tense, the one you used in the story up to this point. I'd change it to didn't have. Trouble sounds better in the story; change the first comma to a semicolon or a hyphen.

I checked the back, no address nor name.

Again, comma should be a semicolon or a hyphen.

'Don't mind him, had a bad day at work'

put in a comma before the closing quotation mark; same problem here:

'Just looking around'

'You need something, son?'

Add in the bolded e to somthing.

I flipped to the last page, there were some scrawled words there.

This has the same problem as one of the grammar thingies I noted above. First comma should be either a semicolon or a hyphen.

Now, on to nitpicks! You'll soon learn my critiquing strategy, although it changes every couple days.

I glanced through the note once more. I had read it several times, but I still couldn't figure out who had sent it.

'Go to the bookstore in town', it read.

I hadn't had much problem figuring out which bookstore it meant, after all, there was only one in town. James's Bookstore.

It was a mysterious note. I checked the back, no address nor name. I read it over and over again. Finally, I decided to pay the bookstore a visit.

I stood outside James's Bookstore. I pushed open the doors with much effort, it gave way, and I tumbled through the door, bumping into a man.

I just wanted to point out--you start a whole lot of sentences in this section with 'I'. Don't feel pressured to change it; I'm just advising it because sometimes the reader gets bored when many sentences start with the same word in one little section.

He proceeded back to work,

This part sounds a little awkward. Especially with 'proceeded' in there. Not saying it's a bad word, just that it doesn't fit in this particular sentence. You might say something like this: 'He went back to work,' works fine.

Just to let you know, I spotted a few other grammatical errors similar to the ones I pointed out above.

Still, this part was a real cliffhanger! I also like your opening. So my advice to you would be: watch out for grammatical errors. Please. If there's too many of them, readers can't understand what you're saying. But I liked basically everything else! This story is certainly shaping up to be interesting...just to let you know, I might review your other story for you....

Hey Pen! This story was quite good, and Fruit Basket got all the grammatical errors that I noticed, so I'll critique it on content.

Although the premise was intriguing, your writing fell a little flat. It consisted mostly of telling. 'He did this, he did that, he saw this.' You rarely show, and it's not very interesting. I could rant on and on about it, but instead I'll redirect you to this article to get some help.

In addition, who did the note come from? Why was it delivered to your main character? Those would be good things to cover in the first part of your story. Also, I liked the cliffhanger, but the idea of a book being the gateway to a magical world isn't exactly creative.

I think you should revise this first part before you continue. Fine tune the writing, because really, that's all that's really wrong here. You have a promising plot line on your hands.
PM with questions.

okay, I like the concept, and with some editing, you could get really far. The only thing I really have to say is that like Elinor said, it was a lot of telling, and also I have to say that you have many short sentences that you could condense into larger paragraphs.

"I glanced through the note once more. I had read it several times, but I still couldn't figure out who had sent it.

'Go to the bookstore in town', it read.

I hadn't had much problem figuring out which bookstore it meant, after all, there was only one in town. James's Bookstore.

It was a mysterious note. I checked the back, no address nor name. I read it over and over again. Finally, I decided to pay the bookstore a visit. "

This chunk, could be condensed, like so...
"I glanced through the note once more (could put again, or something). I had read it several times, but was still unable to figure out who had sent it. The note was mysterious (I'd move this around a bit), and after checking the back again, I saw it had no name nor adress. It read 'Go to the bookstore in town.' It took me no time to figure out the bookstore it meant, after all, there was only on in tow. Jame's Bookstore. I decided to pay the bookstore a visit. (Moved this lower, it seems to make more sense)"

Okay, so that's just my idea. Who knows, you have a very nice style, and I like it a lot. I completely understand the one bookstore thing, (ha, ha) That's how my situation is, unfortunately, they don't have many good books...
Thanks for watching me blabber, PM me if you get more written out... (or with anything else interesting!
~Tari

Ohhh.... I do find this piece intriguing. Really. And, I must say, I your YWS username is just great. Love it.

While your main character is at the moment a mystery, and you may or may have not intended on using that ploy to entice the reader, just remember, lack of description and leaving your reader in the dark too long will surely discourage them, and we do not want that. At all. xD Your MC, unfortunately is suffering in the way of attachment for us. We know very little about him except the following:

1. The gender- male
2. A boy, possibly twelvish?
3. He randomly receives a note out of the clear blue sky.
4. He, who is nameless, follows said note to bookstore
5. Randomly discovers a Antiquarian (antique or vintage) book.
5. Nameless.

Don't be afraid to show us what the bookstore looks like, perhaps smell too? I've been in some old shop where the air is actually very musty- poor ventilation, coupled with vintage books, it can reek somewhat. The smell is actually fairly hard to describe because my sense of smell is crap anyway, haha.

Also, let us in a little more in regards to your MC, as well as James. I just sense James plays a larger roll than you or "he" is letting on. Kind of like the book keeper in the novel, "The Neverending Story." What exactly is going through your MC's mind when he receives this note? Scared? Worried? Annoyed? Show us. Of course, in my experience, the logical solution to show the reader is emotions is change the POV to First Person, rather than mostly narrative.

Cliches are good! In fact, they are grand! I'm guilty of writing cliches in my own stories, and while your MC being "sucked" into another demension IS cliche, it's not nessesarily a bad thing. Now, you have the task of creating your new world, either by mapping it out on a seperate piece of paper, or just plain experimenting while writing. However you accomplish creating your world, you have the challenging task of "hooking" the reading into this Outworld, so to speak.

The story is a bit rushed, but hey, no worries, you got your ideas down on paper first, and this is exceedingly important. That's what editing is for. If it were me, my first course of action would be developing my MC more. Once you think you have a firmer grasp on his traits and goals, my next step would be focusing on description and finetuning the plot.

There is nothing wrong with your plot currently, but once we enter the new world, the current plot WILL change, trust me. xD

I love Fantasy. It's a shame I personally don't experiment more with this genre. Oh well, haha. I wish you luck in the final draft!

Cheers!

Haaai penNpaper! I find your name very clever, gave me a good chuckle ANYWHO! I'm not very big on grading grammar; I’m more into helping with ideas and details, so here is my opinion on what I would do if I were you! NOW: if I say something that you already new or something obvious, I’m sorry desu~

NOTICE: I have a tendency to phrase everything from a “What I would do” perspective, so don’t be flustered, I just find it more helpful to say it that way and give examples…

1. Pen, you started off in a way that will have readers saying "Wait, what's going on?" go back to what was happening before the main character found the note. Go into detail of who the reader is as a person before hand, what they look like and what their personality is like. I would suggest starting off at School, if your character happens to attend one (see, I have no idea if your character is a high school student or an old duffer!). I would start out something like thiBilly-Bob-Joe (you need your character to have a name, love! Character names are the foundation of stories!) sighed heavily, flicking his pencil so it rolled across his desk with the distinct sound of the flat squared edges clicking on the desk, then flicked it again when it rolled back. His tousled brown hair fell unevenly in his eyes, blocking triangles of his vision, his denim blue eyes following the pencil, boredom flattening his expression.

2. You need to fix your spacing, as many others have noted, because its very difficult to read in the format you have it in. The problem is because you have no chunk or body in your writing; you write one-liners. You need way more sentences in your style, and WAY more detail and emotions. Your writing skips time in unrealistic ways, and if you kept that up it will be painfully realistic… no offense… you need to practice following a rule where you need at least 6 or more sentences in each paragraph.

I think another problem you have with lack of detail and unrealistic style is because you aren’t putting yourself in your character’s shoes. What would you do if you found a cryptic note? I would go around asking people I suspected of writing it why they were possessed enough to write a note like that, and would have thought it was a joke. And this process would have taken longer and been more complex than the one liners you’ve been fond of using

I’m sorry if any of this sounded rude, but I’ve written one-liner stories before as well and have grown out of them with practice! Keep up the good work!

Hey Pen, olli here. great story, and thankies to fruit basket for the grammer corrections!!! very interresting, but againa book being a portal is quite cliche.

sorry ifit's too harsh feel free to mystory



---olli