Young Writers Society

Hello there, Skins!

I saw a chapter of this novel as a featured work at YWS homepage and thought it would be a lot better if I read it from the beginning not in the middle part. As for the mistakes, a lot of reviewers here have covered up all those things already.

One thing, I was really confused at the beginning part. Your MC's still a kid, if I'm correct and your plot seems to show that the boy's kind of in a "relaxed mode" and doesn't get scared at all even if his "deceased sister" would appear to him again then vanished and appear again. Doesn't he feel a little tensed to it? And surely, the MC could clearly define that the ghost "Annabel" is really his sister, maybe just by looking at her physical features.

Anyways, I love the whole plot even if that was just the start of your novel. It was kind of mysterious, you know. I'll try to read the other chapters.

Keep up the good work!

Peace out!

This is WritingWords with the super-fast review you requested!:D

Okay, I think this beginning really has potential for a novel. The voice was haunting to me. Just a few things you should make clear.

Did Maxxie ever see his sister? I was wondering about that throughout the chapter. I think it would be even creepier if he never saw her and now he sees her.

When did Annabeth die? And why would a seven year old play with Thomas the Tank? I mean, in reality, kindergarteners play with that. It made the story seem less real with the mention of those toys.

Again, as someone said, wouldn't a little boy be scared?

Ten minutes later, my mum, my nan, my sister Lisa, and I were sitting in the living room together.

What happened between those ten minutes? It wouldn't take ten minutes to go down the stairs!

Overall, I really liked the original idea of this. I will go read your other chapters soon.

Hey Skins Time to review your novel.

To start, I think this is amazing as a first chapter. The hook is instant, you've created a good sense of character and a sturdy starting point.

Try to avoid those one word clauses, like 'she was gone, disappeared' or 'made me feel happy, comfortable.' It's like throwing in an extra word that doesn't need to be there, and extra words tend to take away from the point. In cases like the latter, you can say 'happy and comfortable,' but with the former you're using two words to mean the same thing, which is best avoided all together. You could always work your way around it by saying '..she was gone. It was as if she just disappeared.'

The same principle applies with phrases like 'Around ten minutes later.' Even if it wasn't exactly 'ten minutes later' it sounds better, and makes you seem more certain as a writer.

It seems the thing you need to work on most is grammar; mainly the use of punctuation. Your sentences tend to be quite fragmented, so here's a very quick guide to sentence structure.

Every sentence needs a verb (that's doing or being, like run and shout, 'is' counts as a verb,) and a noun (that's the subject, like book, table, Fred, him, that, he.) Of course there are exceptions which we use for effect, but those two things form the main backbone of every grammatically correct sentence.

Commas are used to turn two sentences into one, or to make things easier to understand by adding a break in longer sentences. You overuse commas waay too much. Until you learn to use them sparingly, he best way to decide whether the comma should be there or not is to take it out. If the sentence still makes sense, you don't need it.

I'll probably explain more of that in later reviews.
On to chapter 2

I really liked this a lot, everyone else has already pretty much summed up the little mistakes so I'm just here to say i liked this a lot(: keep it up, i see great potential in this.

I loved this! Oh my God, I almost cried...
Keep Writing!
Nike:)