Fate - Chapter One

Hey there Sushi! Let's get right down to the review.

Not bad intro, not bad at all. To me though it was misleading. I was not expecting a sixteen year old girl as the main character, haha. It seems to me like an unusually-put thought for a sixteen year old girl. I was kinda expecting a jaded forty year old man. But oh well, that may just be me. However, I do like your next lines. They're simple and effective. No beating around the bush with this character, huh? I like that.

Now you may be thinking, oh great. This girl is like all of the other romantic girls out there. She must love roses and mushy kisses and crap like that. Well, to be honest. I hate all of that.

And there goes any credibility whatsoever! Any sentence that begins with 'you must think I'm like all the other x' or 'I'm not like all the other x' is almost always not a good sign. You're telling us she isn't (or rather she is) instead of showing us.

Pulling back to take a general look at things, that's your main issue with this.

I was talking to my two friends Noel and Nut about this, (...)

Don't tell us, show us! Show us that they're friends somehow, and give us the dialogue (which you actually do to some form).

She hated Jack and was not the slightest bit subtle about her hatred.

I am dying to see a conversation between the two. There's no need to tell us she hates Jack, we could assume so by the way she acts or speak to him.

The show don't tell issue is the major one here. I'd say you should flesh this chapter out, give us more insight on her day, more dialogue and interaction between the characters. Especially your dialogue. In some places it feels unnatural, especially when your character makes that off-hand comment about the boyfriend. What friend intentionally hurts another friend, and why? You speak to your friends in real life, yes? Think kind of like that.

While we're on the topic of fleshing out, I would recommend description. Where are your characters? I can't understand from reading.


Your ending, on the other hand, is awesome. I really like it, gave me goosebumps. Or it would have, had I known where she was and so forth.

To recap: description, description, description. More interaction between characters.

Hope I could help
~Ita

Hi there!

Well, the whole Ceremony of Purpose reminded me of The Giver. Have you read it? It's a beautiful book.

So, my comments as I read the story:

"Now you may be thinking, oh great. This girl is like all of the other romantic girls out there."

Well, here I was honestly not thinking like that. All I know is there's some boy Jack. And there hasn't been much introduction to this character to facilitate this line. You could still use quick wit tongue in a different manner of introduction.

Noel and Nut! I kinda love their names!

Now, I stand on the pedestal, examining the crowd before me, anxious to find out what I think my purpose in life is. For a couple minutes I stand there when a thought occurs to me. Why must I stand here and announce my purpose in life after only living for sixteen years? Why should they care what I think? It's not like it really matters to them. Then the words slip out before I have the chance to bottle them back up. A moment of true clarity that this pointless world should never know.

This is obviously a big deal. Even for a non-girl girl; you need to drag out the emotions, the atmosphere and show us how she felt while this happens. I mean, you do show some questioning thoughts, but try to delve more into this particular psyche of your MC and make the reader feel the connection and solidarity of her words.

As a whole, I do agree with Arctic that you should get into some details.
One more thing I thought was, you should totally keep up the sassy attitude, but don't stick it just to narration? Try to show it in her action in dialogue too.
Also. The guy, is just a word in this chapter. Try to introduce him better, and show us more of their relationship etc. And perhaps of his character.

I did like this piece, and I'd like to see how this dystopian romance progresses!
Cheers!

Hi again Sushi!

So I've returned for the next part of your story. I'll start off with what I liked about this and that was that you've introduced some characters here and they seem pretty realistic. The dialogue between them was humerous and added more to the story already! Again, I'll just repeat that I do like your concept here, dystopia is awesome! So far, it doesn't seem too cliche or anything which is good, I mean that can be quite hard with dystopia. I'll now move onto some suggestions.

It's not that I fear death, or wrinkles or children, it's just not something that I really want for myself, not yet

I think this would look better if there was a full strop after 'myself', to look something like this:
It's not that I fear death, or wrinkles or children, it's just not something that I really want for myself. Not yet.

I think something which I noticed quite a lot throughout this was that nothing was really explained, as in the first part. Well, it's not that it has to be explained as such, it's just everything's quite short because a lot of the time you've told rather than shown. If you haven't heard of showing and not telling yet, it essentially means that rather than telling something- you show it. Rather than saying for example 'Kevin was rich', you could said 'Kevin owned a big house, had a fancy car etc.' To use examples from this story,

He's a player, so he probably wouldn't even care if I bothered telling him.

Rather than saying he's a player, you need to show it! You could talk about how many girls he gets and all that, rather than just saying it. Also,

This girl is like all of the other romantic girls out there. She must love roses and mushy kisses and crap like that. Well, to be honest. I hate all of that.

Again, rather than saying she's not this 'girly-girl', show it!

She hated Jack and was not the slightest bit subtle about her hatred.

Okay, I think you know the drill now You can show that she hated Jack instead, which you've already started doing. In her dialogue, it's already beginning to show that she doesn't like Jack, so you don't need to point it out too. If you want to read more about showing and not telling, I found this article here, which also states the different things you could do instead of telling.

If Jack doesn't even acknowledge me, then that must mean I'm not worth acknowledging.

To me, this bit just seems a bit out of place and it leaves your character looking like one of those people who only cares about the man in her life. I wasn't sure if this sentence was supposed to be sarcastic, but I really hope this character doesn't become one of those girls who JUST cares about this on guy, because I'm really starting to like her. I'm sure she won't, but it's just something to think about. I mean, it almost contradicts what she says before about her not caring about romance, because here she then says she cares about what he thinks.

Another point to make here is I think you could go more into detail about how she's feeling when she put in front of that crowd in front of all those people. Probably nervous, right? Even if not, you should try and explain that because it just seemed something I, and possibly other readers, would be interested to know about. I think it's important to remember here, and something I often forget too is that, readers only know what you tell them! You probably have a great picture in your head of what you're writing, so I think you should write it all. Obviously, we don't want pages and pages of detail about all of this, but just a bit more would be really good.

A last suggestion I'm going to make is about your sentences, and it's just that they're not very varied. They all sound pretty similar and in any case really, repetition can get a bit boring. I think this is mainly to do with the beginnings of your sentences, and there were quite a lot that started with 'I' or 'We'. I say, don't be afraid to start with something different such as adverbs, adjectives etc. You can take the sentences you've already written, and sort of just mix around the structure a bit so they sound different. You can also try joining two sentences together to make a more complex sentence, because right now I think this piece is lacking in them.

Alright I think I'll shut up now before I start going on and on. In all honesty, I did enjoy reading this and I really like the idea of your novel which leaves me wanting more, so make sure that you let me know if and when you post up chapter two. The critiques I pointed out aren't too major, but I think they're also the sorts of things that can help with all sorts of prose you write- showing not telling, varying sentences and such. Anyways, i hope this review was helpful. As always, feel free to PM me with any questions you have or if you'd like another review on anything.

Keep writing!
-Arc x