The Journey chapter 1

Jason ‘J’ Barth was not happy. He should be. It was late November, winter break only a few weeks away, he should be happy…except he wasn’t. He looked down at the snow and sighed and looked at the report card in his hand. He read it aloud
“ English…B.”
“ Chemistry…C”
“ Spanish….D.”

Jason felt like he was listing the alphabet. He sighed deeply and putted the report card back into his pocket. He looked at the new York skyline and wondered how long doe’s a person fall off a 20 story rooftop. He continued looking down and then suddenly heard thunder from above.

” Great.” He mumbled and looked up and saw that there was no clouds above him.

” What the…” Jason whispered and then took a step forward…bad move.

” AHHH!” Jason yelled as he slipped on some ice…and began to fall off the building. He had only five seconds before blackness swallowed him to think of two things. One, with the report in his pocket many would think of this as a suicide. And two, He never even got to sleep with a girl before.


Suddenly he was in the middle of a crop, but he kept screaming with his eyes closed. He then felt the ground on his butt and he stopped screaming. Without opening his eyes, he patted the ground with his hands.

“ The ground.” Jason whispered and opened his eyes to see a bunch of plants around him.

This is not possible. Jason thought as pushed himself up. A moment ago he was in New York city, a place devoid of natural growing plants.

“This is not possible.” Jason smirked and grabbed a piece of the plant and sniffed it.

“ Not crack.”
He then chewed and piece and then spitted it out, it was too spicy for him. Jason once went farming for his cousins in the country and had a plant like this once that grew on the window still.

“ Tea leaves.”
Jason began to walk out of the tea leave forest.” Not exactly the way I imagine the afterlife.” Jason sighed and continued walking out of the crop.



“Two crates of tea leaves…four bottles of tea. We are wise Taira-san.” Yamada Sato reported as he and Taira Kato rolled their wagon from the Tea leave farm.

“By chance, did you happen to find that book of records I gave to you ?” Taira nodded and pulled out from his pocket a small booklet and handed it to Yamada.

” Ah, very kind of…Taira…this is a book of how to whistle.” Taira nodded eagerly and then putted his finger in his mouth and whistled as loud as possible.
“No, I need the Book of records. Not the book of whistling.”
Taira kept digging in his pocket and then hold his hand for Yamada to stop moving and then grabbed his rucksack.
“ that is…”
Taira then pulled out a large book. Yamada took it and looked through it to find that it is the records book.
“ You keep your stuff in my rucksack instead of yours?”
Yamada opened his bag and saw many of Tiaras belongings. Including a book on how to speak English.
“ Taira-san…why do you want to speak English like me? You can’t even speak.”
Taira shook his hand and drew with his finger on the dirt road, His name spelled in the Alphabet.
“ That’s great Taira-san…but foreign customs are disappearing from the Japanese world.”
Taira scratched his head, Making it Obvious that he doesn’t know what Yamada was talking about.
“Didn’t you know? The Shoguns are putting all foreign people out of this country and anyone with a foreign face.”


Jason looked at the old man farmer and repeated what he was saying even more slowly,
” I….am…American….Take me…to nearest….airport!”
The farmer kept looking back at the strange talking boy and thought that he must he must be a demon.
” Get out Demon!” and jabbed the Hoe at Jason.
“ I just need to get home!” Jason yelled and kept dodging the Old man’s hoe while he kept yelling in his tongue.
“ Okay! I’m leaving! I’m leaving!” And began to run to the dirt road.
“ And my Daughter say’s that I’m too old for fighting.” The old man beams and continued to hoe the ground.


Jason kept running and wondered what in the world is going on, if this is the afterlife, then it really suck’s! The first thing I see is Tea leaves, a old man swinging a hoe at others, speaking in some weird gibberish.

Jason was so busy with his internal monologue that he didn’t notice Yamada and Taira until the last minute.

“Stop!” Yamada yelled but it was too no avail. Jason ran into them and suddenly they were on the wagon…on the top of a hill. Yamada looked down and saw the town of Sapporo. Jason looked down as well and saw that it was a steep. They began to slowly get off…when Taira saw a bug land on Jason’s nose.

Yamada saw what Taira was about to do.

“DON’T!” Taira swatted the bug on Jason’s nose and Jason leaned back…and the wagon began to roll down the hill. Suddenly it got faster…and faster.

“ Hang on!” Jason screamed and was surprised to see the other boy’s do what he said. He finally found someone that actually understands him!

“Someone knows my pain!” Jason Laughed…and all three experienced pain when they hit that wall that protected the city of Sapporo.

Dude, you've been on this site long enough to know that you have to double space between paragraphs. Please! It's impossible to read without it. Please do it.

I'll come back when you do it.

-Jared

Ah! My eyes! *shields them*

Yes, please put spaces in between your paragraphs and each new line of dialogue by a different speaker. As is, it is all in huge chunks that is major pain to read. *quivers and eyes bleed*

Anyway, on to your story. I was a little confused as to how he ended up in the middle of plants. And in the same breath, I would use a different first word other than 'crops.' 'Plants' might be better, as it brings up a more immediate image than 'crop.'

You randomly capitalized some letters that didn't need to be capitalized.

Tea leave

And again in the same breath (*is getting breathless*), it should be 'leaf', not 'leave.'

Leaf - the vegetation
Leave - to go away

jabbed the Hoe

kept dodging the Old man's hoe

in the Alphabet

Jason Laughed

All of the bold letters don't need to be capitalized.

Also, you left out a capital letter in "stop" when Yamanda is yelling at Jason.

After this story, I was a little confused. Was he somehow transported to ancient Japan or something? How did falling off a building trigger that? Is he hallucinating? Why ancient Japan (or whatever it happens to be)?

You did a bit of changing of tenses in your story. You went from past to present in one sentence ("The old man beams and kept hoeing.") and go right back to past in the same sentence.

I was confused as to who the characters were that we saw after Jason. We didn't get to see much of them. In fact, we didn't get to see much characterization at all. Jason seems to be kind of jerky and maybe not the most straight character since his first thought as to what the plants might be is crack and his second thought when he was falling was the fact that he was a virgin. Not exactly the most savory of character types it appears, though I could totally be wrong. Take you time and show us a little more about his character. Does he actually care about his bad grades? Did he put any effort into his school work? What exactly is he doing on a rooftop in the first place?

Whew, this piece needs a bit of work. I would have someone like a teacher or parent (or another writer friend) go over it and point out the grammar mistakes and any other capitalization errors that I missed.

Good luck!

~GryphonFledgling

Ok, I'm back due to your PM's.

There are a lot of grammar mistakes. It hurts to look at them. I would go back with a red pen and highlight everything that doesn't sound right.

There are some major things that you need to work on.

- Characterization: we need to like Jason before we read his story. If we don't like him, why read about him?

- Detail: everything right now is action. What about the heat? The setting? We need to know these things.

Keep it up. But this needs some work.

-Jared

The story seems choppy. We don't even know Jason yet. He seems exceptionally flat and boring.

Also, it looks as though you are trying much to hard to get action into the story as fast as you can. Don't. Don't force it - it just comes out painful and like it;s being shoved in our faces, which technically, it is.

I see a bit of potential for the story - there's a good plot under all the rubbish. you need to work on the plot more, first. Polish it until it shines. Put in details, work out what it is you want, and most importantly, DON'T GO TOO FAST.