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Ghost of Theater two: Chapter one, "Four months later"



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Tue Nov 29, 2011 1:16 pm
BerlynnRae says...



The cafeteria was unusually noisy, as the senior boys talked about the upcoming football game and the sophomore girls swooned as they walked by. This is what I had returned to over empty summer days. High school. I slumped over in my chair and poked at the hamburger on my styrofoam lunch tray; it jiggled and I stuck my tongue out in disgust. A flash of light startled me and I looked up to see Kristy; a red head with long wavy hair and a camera in her hands.
"Got cha!" She winked, sitting down across from me.
"Whats your project this time?" I asked shoving my tray away from me, to the middle of the table. She played with some buttons on the device before replying, "Physical reactions to cafeteria food."
"That sounds exciting." I guessed, my voice very unenthusiastic.
"Oh it is!" She exclaimed flipping her camera over so I could see the film, "Look I got a picture of Denis Longgate with a cookie in his mouth." The small image showed one of the basketball players, wide-eyed and munching on a hard pastry; crumbs falling out of his mouth onto his jacket.
"If you keep taking pictures of him, he might file a restraining order on you." A deep bass voice added. I glanced up to see James rolling his eyes, some of the 'food' in his hands as well.
"Oh James!" Kristy squealed, "Do you wanna see?"
"No, not really." He sat down and she continued looking through pictures.
"Rebecca are you going to eat," He pointed to my rejected tray.
"No, because this is made of plastic. It's disgusting." I pretended to gag.
"Oh, can I have it?" Kristy's eyes lit up, "Please?"
"Sure."
"Yay." She grabbed they tray and dramatically bit the apple.
"Do you even eat at home?" James questioned me, opening his carton.
"I eat all the time, I'm just always hungry." Kristy interjected.
"Do you want mine?" James pushed his tray her direction, "I'd hate to see you when your starving."
"No thank you." She glared, took another bite and returned to her camera.
"How's Chemistry?" James asked, turning to me again.
"Ugh, we had a test last period and I totally bombed it."
"The final?"
"Mmhmm."
"Yeah, I didn't do so good on that either."
"Oh my goodness!" Kristy exclaimed gazing at her camera "Does it really...?" James and I looked at each other, he shrugged.
"What?" I demanded.
"My camera can film! Up to an hour!"
"Oh good, now you can film Denis playing basketball." James teased.
"Ha, ha, you're so funny." She rolled her eyes and lifted the camera up to my face.
"What are you going to film?" I asked, hoping she would veer away from filming people eating. She shrugged.
"Oh, that reminds me." James exclaimed, pulling a crumpled paper from his backpack. "I got it in my English class." He handed the paper over to Kristy. She studied it over, sipping her milk.
"We're doing it." She concluded.
"What is it?" I asked, leaning over the table.
"We're?" James looked at her.
"Of course we're you gave it to me so you're helping."
"What is it?" I asked again, straining my neck to see it. Kristy turned to me, her red hair shimmered at its new found light.
"It's a contest." She stated. I nodded my head, prompting her to continue.
"Its a scary contest."
"That's it?" I looked at her as she and James exchanged glances.
"Look," James finally said looking at me, "We know you don't like scary things." He looked back at Kristy and her head bobbed for him to continue.
"I mean, we watched War of the Worlds and you looked like you were going to throw up after."
"War of the Worlds is a scary movie." I said defensibly.
"Like I said, we don't want you to feel like you can't come because... well..." He glanced at the demon with the camera again.
"What James is trying to say is that if I win, I get five hundred dollars."
"Well, whats the paper say?" I requested, reaching for it again.
"It says," James read, clearing his throat, " 'Are you afraid of Ghosts? Are you into witchcraft? If so the Theater Department of'" He hesitated "Some name I can't pronounce." He skimmed over a few lines clicking his tongue. " 'Invites you to participate in the annual Haunt Me contest. Applicant's may submit one of the following: poetry, short stories, photography, music, et cetra, et cetra." Kristy mouthed 'five hundred' and held up a five with her fingers.
"So," I countered, "It can't be that bad."
"Well...no." James sighed, giving the paper back to Kristy.
"I want to film in theater two!" Kristy shouted, slamming her hand on the table. Theater two? That place of secrets, my secrets, mine and Miles. I hadn't thought of Miles in months. I had changed. I was different now. Better even.
"Oh." I finally said.
"That's why we didn't ask you to come. Theater two is the most haunted place we know. Even the janitors won't go in there." Kristy leaned her head in and cupped her hand to the side of her mouth, "They say there are ghosts living in there."
"There are no ghost's in theater two," James argued, "It's just an old building and things are falling apart. It's unstable, not haunted."
"There are! And I'm going to prove it, we're going to theater two tomorrow night. After the teachers leave."
"Guys," I hesitantly whispered, "This is a bad idea."
"No." Kristy countered her face full of food, "This is a brilliant idea."
"Then count me out." I said standing up and gathering my books.
"Want us to come with you?" James eyes held concern.
"Nah, the bell's gonna ring soon anyway. See you after school."
"Hey Rebecca, text me if your fears go away okay?" Kristy winked. I nodded. I needed to go back to the theater. I had left some unfinished business there, business from four months ago.
  





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Wed Nov 30, 2011 2:56 pm
pettybage says...



Hi, BerlynnRae,

This seems like a nice start of a teen adventure, possibly in a Stine vein – I can imagine ghosts and stuff.
Sentences and word choices are midway between fine and clunky, but I won’t enumerate – you will develop as a writer, and by this time next year you’ll be able to detect all the clunkiness in your older pieces by yourself.
What I will call attention to is three purely technical things concerning dialogue.

1. "Oh it is!" She exclaimed – even if your word program insists that there must be a capital letter after the exclamation sign – ignore it. Capital letters, except for names of course, come only and only after a full stop. Everything else counts as a comma in this case. It should be "Oh it is!" she exclaimed

2. "Look," James finally said looking at me, "We know you don't like scary things." Here, the second part of his speech shouldn’t start with a capital letter. You only need one – the “L” in the “Look”, everything else is just a conctinuation. Now, if there had been a full stop after “looking at me” – then a new sentence would be starting and the capital letter would be correct, but since there is a comma, so it’s technically the same sentence. It should be "Look," James finally said looking at me, "we know you don't like scary things."

3. "Then count me out." I said standing up – here the “I said standing up” is obviously connected to the prior spoken words which should therefore end with a connecting comma, not a cutting off full stop.
  





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Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:35 am
Lavvie says...



Hi there, BerlynnRae! I'm here as you requested back in my WRFF.

I'm going to jump right into this.

For starters, your opening sentence. The opening sentence for both the prologue (if there is one) and first chapter is crucial to the rest of the story. It's what develops a first general impression for readers and pretty much lays out the kind of the story and kind of writing you'll be executing for the rest. In your case here, I wasn't too crazy about the opening line. It's pretty general, vague and, for lack of a better word, mainstream. There's no excitement or attractive hook in the first line like there should be. The first line is simply describing a stereotypical high school setting. What is so important about swooning girls and hot football players? Nothing that we don't already know. Or is it something very important to your story? Somehow, I doubt it.

Secondly, I'd like to discuss some about grammar. I don't usually in a review since either the writer has decent or exemplary grammar or the errors are so minute and far between that it would be utterly redundant to include in a review. However, you have many repeated grammatical mistakes that are rather hard to simply ignore. The thing is, they are simple errors that are just a misplacement of a comma or the lack of one. I'm not going to point out all of the errors since that wouldn't be good nor encourage you to improve on your own by spotting them yourself. Nevertheless, I'll include an example directly from your chapter:

She exclaimed flipping her camera over so I could see the film.


There should be a comma inserted between the words 'exclaimed' and 'flipping'. It doesn't make sense otherwise. If you're having trouble spotting the rest of these repeated mistakes, it's totally easy to read or whisper aloud or having someone else read. You'll realize that in sentences like this, we would naturally pause between 'exclaimed' and 'flipping'. That is what a comma is there to represent - not quite full-stop punctuation, but a pause for either emphasis or to catch one's breath. Obviously, it equally applies to the written word.

Thirdly (and possibly lastly), I thought you could have definitely incorporated more narration here rather than an abundance of dialogue. Dialogue is nice, yes, but it can also be tedious in a first chapter that should be moving along rather nicely. Instead, I felt the dialogue was like your easy way out from detailed descriptions and descriptions of how Rebecca is feeling about all this (and what is this? I'm curious to learn what she has going on with this theater). Don't be afraid. What are these characters doing while they're discussing? What is the relationship between the three? Best friends? Are a certain two lovers? One cannot be sure and so you must take it under your wing as the designated writer to be precise and sufficient with information.

Overall, I think this is pretty interesting. I'm definitely very curious to see what's going to happen.

Yours,
Lavvie


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Thu Jan 05, 2012 7:40 pm
Rydia says...



Hi again! Here I am to review the next part :)

Line-By-Line

1. Line 8: Got cha should be one word.

2. Line 9: Whats should be What's.

3. I'm not sure the use of 'I guessed' as a dialogue tag works. Admittedly a high school girl might say, 'That's exciting I guess' but the way you've used it, it's too easy to read it as the standard meaning. What I'm trying to say is that it works in the present tense because its been developed for that use by high school girls across the world, but as soon as you try to transfer it to past tense, it just feels awkward.

4. Uh... what class is this project for or is it a personal project? I think you need to make that clearer because I can't think of any high school subject that it could relate to and it says a lot abour Kristy's chracter if it's a personal project.

5.
"Do you want mine?" James pushed his tray in her direction, "I'd hate to see you when your starving."
Don't get sloppy! If you're missing words out, you clearly haven't thought carefully enough about your dialogue and/ haven't proofread.

Plot

There's not enough happening in this chapter. The first section is very mundane dialogue and we learn little about the characters. There's a typical school canteen setting and it basically needs spicing up. Give them something exciting to talk about that's going to impact on your plot later. You've done this a little by introducing the crush that Kristy has on the other guy, but it needs more than that. Maybe they can tak about a party someone is going to host that they plan to attend or some homework they need to do. I don't know what your plot is so it's hard for me to advise.

Also, this is a single scene, that's not enough for a full chapter. A chapter should have at least some movement in it. You can't just leave your characters sat at a table, eating food and talking or our readers will fall asleep.

Info Dump

The end part of this chapter gives the reader too much. Suddenly every line has something crucial to the plot and you're not even trying to hide the fact that there is a spooky theatre room that has a scary past for the main character and they're going to end up filming there and you will slowly tell us what hapened in the past blah blah blah. You need to be more sneaky about things like that. You've got to hook the readers but leave them some mystery and make this feel 'real' instead of over dramatised and very obviously a 'story world'.

Overall

I like Kristy and her camera and her project. There was a lot of this I wasn't fond of but she saves it from being completely dull or unoriginal. She's spunky and fun and she has some good basic personality traits. The others are currently cardboard cut outs. Worse, your MC is a bit of a Mary Sue in the whole 'this cafeteria food is like plastic' way of thinking and your male character was the typical 'cool' and unconcerned high school boy.

Also you need more description! What makes this cafeteria different to any other? What are the chairs like, the lights, the trays? Give us some sense of setting to help draw us in to your story.

I hope this helps a little,

Heather xxx
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Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:20 am
Lauren2010 says...



Hey Berlynn! Here again as requested!

Let's get right to it, shall we?
"No, not really." He sat down and she continued looking through pictures.
"Rebecca are you going to eat," He pointed to my rejected tray.
"No, because this is made of plastic. It's disgusting." I pretended to gag.

Alrighty, this is one of the few grammar things I ever comment on: dialogue construction. You see, dialogue has certain rules to adhere to grammatically speaking. From what I've quoted here, this is how it should look:

"No, not really," he sat down and she continued looking through pictures.
"Rebecca are you going to eat?" He pointed to my rejected tray.
"No, because this is made of plastic. It's disgusting," I pretended to gag.

Essentially, when a pronoun (he, she, etc) follows a string of dialogue along with a voice tag (said, asked, exclaimed, etc) the pronoun is not capitalized. The end of the dialogue, in the same way, is not ended with a period but with a comma inside the quotation marks (unless it's a question mark or an exclamation point). If the pronoun follows a string of dialogue and is being used with action, it is capitalized and a period is used inside the quotation mark and not a comma. Proper nouns (James, Rebecca, Kristy) are always capitalized no matter what. Here is an article that explains all the dialogue punctuation rules that you can refer to if you still have questions.

Theater two? That place of secrets, my secrets, mine and Miles. I hadn't thought of Miles in months. I had changed. I was different now. Better even.

This makes me think that the prologue is something before the action of this first chapter. Which is rather disappointing because what was going on in the prologue was exciting and interesting and I wanted to know more about what happened with that. Frankly, I could care less about high school cafeteria food. Even if it's not very tasty, it's not very interesting to read about either (though, I adore Kristy and her photo project - Kristy is a character I could get along with; however, this Rebecca is not nearly as interesting as the Rebecca from the prologue).

Anyways, all this talk of Miles and secrets. We're going for mystery here, not total confusion. Right now, I'm sitting here thinking "secrets? what secrets? I don't understand what's happening and Rebecca has secrets and Miles is vaguely mentioned but have they robbed the bank already and why is Rebecca not talking to Miles anymore what happened there?". These are a few too many questions to be having this early on in the story. We want to keep our readers in the dark long enough to keep them interested, but if we completely shut out the lights they aren't going to know which way to go. ;)

I nodded. I needed to go back to the theater. I had left some unfinished business there, business from four months ago.

*long whistle* What an ending do we have here. This goes along with the question-raising the previous quote brought with it. Not enough happens in this chapter, and not enough is explained to get away with this sort of ending. As readers, we have absolutely no idea what sort of business Rebecca could have had in the theatre and why she would need to go back. We're lost, and awfully clueless when it comes to directions and we need a detailed map to get us where we need to go (a hint: that map is the story ;)).

xD All in all, this chapter is short enough that it could benefit from some serious fleshing out. Show us more of Rebecca's character and make her feel less cardboard-y and more real (same with James, I wanna know more about James). Give them small actions to do - even just how they're moving around in conversation/at lunch gives insight into their personalities. Explore more of their surroundings. Show us why we ought to care about this particular high school cafeteria and this particular trio of teenagers enough to keep reading.

Also, we need a lot of backstory. Or, at least enough so that we can follow what is happening in the story right now. We need to know why Rebecca has secrets, and why she has unfinished business in the theatre. The benefit of a first person narrative is you can impart this information through thoughts and it feels less info-dumpy and more conversational than it would in a third person narrative.

That's about all I have to say! If you'd like me to keep reviewing this for you, feel free to shoot me a PM or drop a note in my WRFF thread and I'd love to! I'm intrigued as to where this story is going, because it has promise. ;)

If you have any questions or want to discuss something further, feel free to shoot a PM my way!

Keep writing!

-Lauren-
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Mon Jan 09, 2012 2:46 pm
Noelle says...



Hi there!

Alright, this chapter is a little disappointing after the mysterious prologue. Who knows, maybe you'll go back to that in the next chapter or something, but I was expecting something more. I did like all the dialogue, however, it really helped to shape the characters.

One critique I have of this is that we don't really know anything about the characters introduced here. Who are they? What do they look like? What grade are they in? How did they become friends? Are they all best friends or is one sort of shoved to the side every so often? Dig deep into their relationships and tell us what goes on between them. Also, tell us what they look like. Sure, I know that Kristy has red hair and James has a deep voice, but that's all I know. Tell me more.

I do like the sense of adventure and mystery you have going here. Someone mentioned earlier that they were confused because you didn't give much reason for what Rebecca is about to do, but I think it's great that you haven't told us. The unknown here really makes me want to come back and read the rest.

Good job with this overall. Can't wait to read more! Keep writing! :)
Noelle is the name, reviewing and writing cliffhangers is the game.

Writer of fantasy, action/adventure, and magic. Huzzah!

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