Part 2 of fighting gods,saving lives and abit of.....

Starts with dylans p.o.v Enjoy!

Dylan


As soon as Nixxie (my name for Phoenix) fell and got knocked out, I tripped over a brick and got knocked out and I had the strangest dream… It was some guy talking to me saying

Hello, Dylan get to Washington now!
Everything you need is in the safe under
Phoenix Andersons bed
Hurry the Gods are Angry…

Then I woke up… and I thought about the dream… it made perfect sense and no sense at all… I understood the words but what did they mean and was it true?. I got up at the sound of Phoenix’s groaning. She was half sat up going “ow…ow…ooowwwww” I walked over to her side and helped her stand up. She stared at me for a moment then asked me “Dylan…did you have a dream telling you to go to Washington…?” I stared at her in amazement “yea… I also got told of some crazy dude that everything was under your bed in a safe” I told her “yea that happened too..” she looked confused but was still rubbing her head wincing. We looked at each other for a while until I decided to ask: “Well what are we suppose to do?” she thought for a while then she smiled… “What do you think?” she said in a very smug tone then grabbed my arm and dragged me to our dorm…
When we arrived she walked over to her bed a lifted up her mattress with ease ( she was really strong, trust me you wouldn’t want to get on her bad side) and stopped and stared I went over by her side…and I saw it.
There was an open safe under her bed… containing two one-way plane tickets, stash of money, and valid American driving licences. I was shocked I grabbed the plane tickets to check they were real, they were I turned to face Nixxie “Pack your bags and get changed, the plane leaves in six hours…” she had a glimmer of excitement in her eyes, I was excited two but one part of the dream was bothering me The gods are angry what did it mean? I have no idea but Nixxie was taking it well.
I got changed and packed my bags, I was dressed in a Jacket, baggy jeans and pumps, Phoenix was taking longer, but she was a girl what did you expect? Finally she was ready, she entered the bedroom from the bathroom lugging a bright pink, black and blue suit case behind her. She was wearing a knee length dress, tights and converse high-tops…with a flower clip in her hair to top it all off, she looked amazing.

Phoenix

We ran to the entrance of the school, and saw a taxi, I asked him to give us a lift to the airport and he seemed to know us “ You two are Dylan and Phoenix I suppose?” I was surprised he knew us, but after everything that had happened I suppose it was normal…
Me and Dylan threw are suitcases in the boot of the car, and got in the taxi.
It took us about an hour to get to the airport, all through the journey it was just quietness, me and Dylan both knew what we wanted to talk about but we couldn’t, because we had no idea who this taxi driver was, just because he knew are names, was no exception.
When we arrived, the taxi driver got our suitcases out of the boot and then drove off leaving us stood at the entrance of a very big airport…
We walked up to the stand were you get your passports and tickets checked, then hand in your suitcase we was expecting something to go wrong like our passports were out of date of something. But everything when smoothly… we ended up having a few hours before the plane was due, so we decided to use some of the money we had been given, as half of it was pounds and half dollars. We when to KFC for some food, then looked round duty free, Dylan bought me a small bottle of a perfume I wanted and then we just bought a few books and waited

We finally boarded the plane, it was packed, I felt abit claustrophobic and freaked out Dylan seemed at ease and settled into his seat… as I sat beside him I started to think…what did the gods are angry mean? I asked Dylan, he said “ Nix, I don’t know but whatever it is it think its true…everything else has been…” then he lifted up the seat arm and fitted it between out seats. He put his arm around me and I leant against him “ Don’t worry Nix everything will be ok” he kind of reassured me, but I couldn’t be possibly sure…

After I while I fell asleep…

Hello there! I saw that you posted in chat, and I decided to give you a review. Since you're fairly new, I'm not sure if you're aware that you should be reviewing other members' works. Basically, I'm sure you enjoy receiving reviews, so, if you want your work to be reviewed even more, it's a good idea to review others, and the longer your review the better.

Now, as far as your story goes, the first thing I noticed is that you have a lot of basic spelling mistakes. This really isn't a good thing, and it made me not want to read this. There's really no excuse for such terrible spelling, especially since most word processors come with a spelling checker already installed. If you don't have a word processor with spellcheck, I suggest getting OpenOffice -- it's free and it works great.

On another note, your grammar is equally bad. There are a number of great articles on grammar that you can find in the Knowledge Base section of this site (Resources > Knowledge Base > Grammar & Research) or I have a collection of useful writing threads in my Anthology.

The girl is named Phoenix? Really? That name just struck me as completely unrealistic. If you have a reason for why she's named such an unusual name other than that it sounds cool, you're fine; it could potentially add a lot to the character. Also, you need to slow things down a little. There's almost no space in between Nixie getting knocked out by a fall and Dylan tripping and getting knocked out. What specifically knocked them out? Did they hit their heads on rocks, or something? Right now, with how it reads, all it takes to knock out a person is for them to fall on the ground, which makes no sense. It takes quite a bit of force for a fall to knock someone out, and you need to show the readers this.

a bright pink, black and blue suit case

Wow. That must be some suitcase. It manages to be three colors at once. This goes back to the slowing down and showing us things. Is there a pattern on the suitcase? Mention it before you mention the colors.

The one thing I notice in all of this is that your descriptions are either infodump or missing. The important details that we readers need to know, such as what knocked out Phoenix and Dylan, are not here, yet completely unnecessary and boring description, like their clothing, is lumped all together in one spot. Right now, everything is happening all at once, and it's all actiony and stuff, but I don't care/can't be bothered to care as there's no sense of where this is all happening at.

You need to focus your descriptions more. Go through and think about your details: if you removed this detail, would the story be completely changed? If not, it's unnecessary. For example, if Nixie had been wearing jeans and a shirt instead of a dress and tights, would that have changed the story? No, so it's unnecessary and can (and should) be left out.

Another reason you should slow things down is because the characterization suffers. Right now, I have no idea what Nixie and Dylan are like as people. They're just puppets that do whatever the writer feels convenient at the time. If you were to take the time to develop their personalities and relationship to one another, then they'd be more realistic and more interesting to read about. I don't even know their ages, and that, considering that they've been given drivers licenses, is a pretty important detail about them.

One other thing you need to work on is making sure your facts are correct. This requires research. For instance, drivers licenses in the US are not just licenses for driving; they act as a person's main identification document. Where you live, what you look like, your driving history, your medical history, and your criminal record are just a few of the things tied to a drivers license. They are also state-specific. Basically, that there were two valid US drivers licenses available and that it was obvious just from a single look that they were valid smacks of "did not do the research". Before you include something in your story, it is always a good idea to research it first to make sure you at least have all the basic facts straight. This prevents you from looking like an absolute idiot to someone who actually knows about those things you're writing about.

ermmm, hi did you read my first part?

Kyllorac wrote:Hello there! I saw that you posted in chat, and I decided to give you a review. Since you're fairly new, I'm not sure if you're aware that you should be reviewing other members' works. Basically, I'm sure you enjoy receiving reviews, so, if you want your work to be reviewed even more, it's a good idea to review others, and the longer your review the better.

Now, as far as your story goes, the first thing I noticed is that you have a lot of basic spelling mistakes. This really isn't a good thing, and it made me not want to read this. There's really no excuse for such terrible spelling, especially since most word processors come with a spelling checker already installed. If you don't have a word processor with spellcheck, I suggest getting OpenOffice -- it's free and it works great.

On another note, your grammar is equally bad. There are a number of great articles on grammar that you can find in the Knowledge Base section of this site (Resources > Knowledge Base > Grammar & Research) or I have a collection of useful writing threads in my Anthology.

The girl is named Phoenix? Really? That name just struck me as completely unrealistic. If you have a reason for why she's named such an unusual name other than that it sounds cool, you're fine; it could potentially add a lot to the character. Also, you need to slow things down a little. There's almost no space in between Nixie getting knocked out by a fall and Dylan tripping and getting knocked out. What specifically knocked them out? Did they hit their heads on rocks, or something? Right now, with how it reads, all it takes to knock out a person is for them to fall on the ground, which makes no sense. It takes quite a bit of force for a fall to knock someone out, and you need to show the readers this.

a bright pink, black and blue suit case

Wow. That must be some suitcase. It manages to be three colors at once. This goes back to the slowing down and showing us things. Is there a pattern on the suitcase? Mention it before you mention the colors.

The one thing I notice in all of this is that your descriptions are either infodump or missing. The important details that we readers need to know, such as what knocked out Phoenix and Dylan, are not here, yet completely unnecessary and boring description, like their clothing, is lumped all together in one spot. Right now, everything is happening all at once, and it's all actiony and stuff, but I don't care/can't be bothered to care as there's no sense of where this is all happening at.

You need to focus your descriptions more. Go through and think about your details: if you removed this detail, would the story be completely changed? If not, it's unnecessary. For example, if Nixie had been wearing jeans and a shirt instead of a dress and tights, would that have changed the story? No, so it's unnecessary and can (and should) be left out.

Another reason you should slow things down is because the characterization suffers. Right now, I have no idea what Nixie and Dylan are like as people. They're just puppets that do whatever the writer feels convenient at the time. If you were to take the time to develop their personalities and relationship to one another, then they'd be more realistic and more interesting to read about. I don't even know their ages, and that, considering that they've been given drivers licenses, is a pretty important detail about them.

One other thing you need to work on is making sure your facts are correct. This requires research. For instance, drivers licenses in the US are not just licenses for driving; they act as a person's main identification document. Where you live, what you look like, your driving history, your medical history, and your criminal record are just a few of the things tied to a drivers license. They are also state-specific. Basically, that there were two valid US drivers licenses available and that it was obvious just from a single look that they were valid smacks of "did not do the research". Before you include something in your story, it is always a good idea to research it first to make sure you at least have all the basic facts straight. This prevents you from looking like an absolute idiot to someone who actually knows about those things you're writing about.

ermmm, hi did you read my first part?

Yes, and everything I said still applies. I just didn't review the first part because you've already got a number of excellent reviews on it, and I had nothing else to add.

Also, I don't know why you quoted the entirety of my reply, but I suggest you edit it out. It's huge and it takes up most of the page.

Hello there, Butterfly!

I have to agree with Kyllorac. You should get something like Open Office or maybe use the Spelling Check build into the YWS posting system, as well as work on other grammar and punctuation. Another thing you should do is separate the dialogue, like I mentioned in my critique on the first part. Also, a lot of this doesn't seem realistic to me. No one else noticed the earthquake? No one helped them? I don't think many people would bring up a dream like that to the other person. You also went too fast with the story, especially at the start. She got knocked out. I got knocked out. I had a dream. We went to the dorm. We got on a plane.

Make sense? You need to spend a little more time plotting the story and trying to imagine who these characters really are, because right now they seem like shells with no personality.

Good luck.

~Heather