Norm-Chapter One

I took the original off of this site! sorry!

Hi! I'm Teardrop. First of all I thought this was a good start and has a lot of potential. However, it could have used some editing and a lot of detail/emotion.

Spoiler

fallingstars wrote:My eyes snap open and I’m awake. The room is dark. No lights are on.
It must still be day.

Sentences like this can easily have more detail/depth to your story which will make it more interesting for the reader. If I were you I would have written this and the following like this:
-My eyes snap open with a jolt. I find myself in a dark room, unaware of where I am. My mind is swimming of possible answers but I find myself facing a large amout of discomfort. Holding my breath I count the seconds that pass, facing the impossible fact that I can't find out what time it is.- And so on. All stories need depth, really put yourself in your characters shoes and describe what your character is feeling.

fallingstars wrote:I hold my breath comma counting seconds in my head.

fallingstars wrote:I roll over again and put my hand against the wall. Cold hard metal.
I sigh and run my fingers across the surface in little circles and lines.

How does this feel against her fingers? Is this normal? Etc.

fallingstars wrote:The sound of silence is all I hear around me and I plug my calloused fingers into my ears

I kind of thought this was odd, how you can't really hear silence. Anyway, just wanted to point out my opinion. ; )

fallingstars wrote:I see the other Norms climbing off their beds and onto the steep ladders that lead to the Change Floor
and I pull myself off the bed and force my feet to find the first foot hold in the small ladder and then climb the rest of the way down.

Watch for run-on sentences there. As well, could have used more description.

fallingstars wrote:I wait patiently behind a Norm with long black hair.
My own hair is between red and blond and cut in a short, choppy bob.

Okay, this kinda sounds like unnessesary info-dumps. If I were you, I might have fit it in a bit better; maybe like this:

I wait patiently behind an unfamilier norm. Her long ink-black hair cascaded off her shoulders, reminding me of how bland my hair was compared to hers. The choppy bob cut and the blond color, sprinkled with red, was nothing compared to hers.

Or something like that. : )

fallingstars wrote:The uniform looks the same as always, the shirt is long-sleeved and gray with a black slanted line across the front and the back. The pants are only gray. Both are tight fitting and made of a water proof material for when it rains. They fit me perfectly and period I place my sleep clothes in the little bag and take it to the small place in the metal wall where it shoots the little bag up through the pipes and into the laundry rooms.

Okay, so you need to show not tell here! I might have done something that explains her looking in the mirror, exactly how it fit her so perfectly, etc.

fallingstars wrote:Most of the other Norms in my bunk are older than me. I’m the youngest and newest in the work force.

Sixteen.

Didn't really fit well here, maybe as I said earlier when she was changing, you could have mentioned her age difference. Like "I was the youngest amongst my bunk, pushing me harder to keep up in the work force." or something like that, i don't know.

fallingstars wrote:It is tasteless as always and has the consistency of the tooth paste that I remember from my old life.

You could have added more detail about this.

Okay, so you kind of just take your reader straight into the middle, so to say, without really introducing your plot. But, you wouldn't want to just dump a paragraph or two describing your plot, but as of right now the reader has no clue what's going on. Maybe you could sprinkle a bit more about this in here, or keep that in mind in the next few chapters.

-By the way, I'm sorry if this is harsh, really, I think this is really good!

Overall, I think you have a good, complex plot. Keep up the good work! Keep writing!

~Tear

This has potential. But I think there are a couple things you could do to make it better.

I'm not sure about your first few lines. I mean, the idea is good, though 'waking up' is used a lot. The commonness of this theme isn't what I have a problem with, though, because I think it'll be fine as long as you do it well. The part that makes me pause is the redundancy of these first few lines. "My eyes snap open and I'm awake." We already know he's awake if his eyes are open. "The room is dark. No lights are on." Obviously. Maybe this is just how the character talks, and you're trying to do something with the style of narrative or something, but so many lines saying exactly the same things doesn't really grip me. Maybe they'd work later on, but with them being the first words that I see in this... I'm not really gripped yet.

He can't sit up straight. So is there a ceiling to this walled-in bed, too? Because sitting up straight doesn't require much horizontal movement.

"No lights are on... The only light in the small space..." So there's only one light. Why did he say lights plural earlier?

"The door to the room slides up when it’s time to work and the bed slides out into the changing area.
It’s a while until work I’d guess... finally I lay flat on my back and stare into the darkness until Work Call...
I lay flat on my back as the door slides open and the little mat that they say is a bed slides out into the Change Room." Not only are these sections a little repetitive, they're also a bit confusing. I think you can cut out the first sentence I've quoted entirely. We'll see the door slide open and the bed slide out later on, when it actually happens. For now, he can just make a brief mental allusion to Work Call, and we'll be able to piece it together as we go. We already know that he's laying flat on his back, so you don't need to say that again. I was confused when you called the bed a mat, because I don't picture a mat being surrounded by walls. Are there still walls around him, or did they retract when the door slid open, or what? I can't really picture what's happening here very well, because to my way of thinking I've got two conflicting images in my head.

Oh. So this is a girl? :/

If this norm culture is trying to make everybody the same, giving them the uniforms and all that other stuff, when why let them have different haircuts? Shouldn't they all have the bob, or a short cropped look, or something to further take away their individuality? I don't picture these girls going into the norm salon and picking out their favorite styles, or having much free time to do something themselves.

"All of them…except me." Here we go. Conflict! Plot! Intrigue! Up until now it's just been your generic, grey-wearing slave society serving the oppressive leaders because they don't know any better, but this line gives us our first hint that all is not as it seems. Our MC isn't a normal norm, and that makes us want to keep reading.

That said, the story up until now hasn't been that gripping, nor has the narrative. Is there a way you can give us a hint of this earlier? Some kind of interaction with the black-haired norm, or some inner thoughts or dialogue that show us our MC isn't exactly what we would've expected based on the people that surround her? You need to grab us from the very beginning, and hold us until we get sucked into the story.

In conclusion, I think this has some potential. I'd like more of a hook at the very beginning, more emotion, more show and less tell, less info-dumping, maybe a little more of a hint about why she and she alone is different. Obviously, if this is a novel, you're going to have a lot of time to tell us how she got to this point. But right now, I don't know if she's a spy, or if the memory-altering device thingy malfunctioned or has no effect on her, or if she's a royal who's had to flee for her life and hide among the normals... You've given us a handful of lines that hint at the plot of the story, but they're few and far inbetween. Right now, I don't know much about what's going on and I haven't formed enough of a connection with your main character to even care. :/

Keep writing. :]