Renegade children page 3

“If it was nothing, you wouldn’t be scared; you’re not scared of anything! You’re the bravest! This means we should all be scared…” He said in his adorable voice that only a small child has… Oh, if only he knew, he wouldn’t call me brave. I wish there was someone I could tell… But they’d all hate me.
“Go check on him!” I said sternly.
“But Alice! All of the others are worried about you, and you aren’t making them go away! Do you hate me?” His lower lip started quivering as he started to cry silently.
“Aw, Jet,” I hugged him close, “I could never hate you.”
“Then tell me Alice…” He looked up.
“I don’t think so, not right now, but please check on that boy for me, and don’t worry, not about me, not about anything.”
“Why do you treat me like I’m stupid Alice? You know I care about you, and I know something is wrong! Why don’t you ever tell me anything? And don’t say it’s because you want to protect me, ‘coz I know it’s not!”
“I know you can take care of yourself Jet, I don’t need you to take care of me too, but this, this isn’t something I can tell you.”
“But why?”
Well, you gotta admit, he was persistent. But how do you tell someone they’re either gonna die or they are gonna be tortured for the rest of their lives.
“Jet, can you please give me some time to think?”
“Alice!” He whined.
I was over this.
“Go Jet…”
“Fine,” He huffed and walked to the cinema, our infirmary, on the other side of the roof.
One disaster ends, another begins… What was I doing wrong? These people never give me a break. Ah, it just keeps getting better. I caught Jared glaring at me in Sam’s arms, before he turned and stormed off.
“Jared,” I started as he walked through the entrance Jet had just gone through, to his room, and abandoned music shop.
I began to follow him, my eyes locked on his back, that look of fear I never let myself show to anyone was clear on my face.

Hey there questcrewforever! I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this! Great to see you're continuing this! So, I'm being introduced to more characters here, and you seem to have a pretty good idea of who all the members of your cast are. I also like some of the dialogue going on here--the characters for the most part have pretty strong voices, and I like that.

As for how I generally thought about this, I feel like I'm repeating what I said from page 2 of this. It's moving too fast. It seems rushed, and I'm really not getting a good handle on the characters or what is happening even. Your dialogue isn't bad. In parts, I really enjoyed it, and it is definitely contributing to character development, but it's not enough. The dialogue just barely gives me the interactions between characters--I'm glimpsing only a small piece of their dynamics and it's incomplete and very vague right now. The body language isn't happening; the narrative voice isn't shining. I think if you just slowed down and really started to visualize what's happening, really enriched this with detail and included body language, this would improve immensely and put you down the right path. I think before you continue with this, you really need to think about your pacing, let yourself slow down and write clearly and with detail. It doesn't mean you have to describe for paragraphs on end; it just means you need to let the details flow.

Reading also helps with this--observe how other authors include detail, how they move just the right pace for the characters to begin to shine and the story to make sense. You have a good idea here; I'm interested to see where it's going, but you really need to slow down. I hope this helps! Keep writing, m'dear! PM me if you have any questions.