Tenyo!!! I'm back! I order you to appreciate this. I took about four plus hours on it.
Alright first of all im going to give an overview of this piece. I think that you've done pretty well to develop the characters, but the main character feels like a little bit of a scatterbrain. I like scatterbrain a lot, being one myself, but it would solidify the character if you add more thoughts, or occurrences from which thoughts can be inferred.
Regarding plot, I'm not that good of a plotter, and I usually just write a story as it forms in my head. If I don't put it down immediately I lose it. (Read scatterbrain) I will pick on plot in greater detail after tearing your grammar apart.
She took a seat at the spare desk that already had a name card for her sitting on it, and a few books that had been put there the Friday before.
I think I should just ignore long sentences as a Tenyo TM, but I die every time. I have like five lives left. As far as my short memory can take me, your previous part had no description of the classroom, so this immediately feels like many short stories incidentally being placed together.
How am I to know it is "the" spare desk without first knowing that it is the only spare desk in the room. If you put "a" in place of the other article, it makes the story a lot more interesting.
Word choice. Oh I hate the choice of words in this sentence. "Put"? Put?? What in the name of sanity obsessed you to put put there? That is not worthy of you. Placed, yes. Delivered? Maybe. Stacked, so-so, I like stacked. Put? What were you even thinking, Tenny?? It's not wrong, it's just so lame.
I think I have ranted enough for one sentence to fill an entire review. :/
Over the heads of the people that surrounded her she peered to see the rest of the class.
"The people" is flat. Like a runner out of breath. Maybe "her new friends" or some variation of that.
Over in one corner were the quiet kids, stealing occasional glances.
How do we know which corner? Where is the door situated? To the front of the class? The back? Somewhere in between? Near the board? Far? What about the number of people who could fit into the room? Was it unusually small? Big? Squarish? Roundish? Ugly-ish?
Again, word choice. "Were" is a popped troop from clash of clan. No damage dealt, sorry. Make it smashing. "Sat" and add an adverb or something, if you like. You could also try something else, although no other words are coming to my thick skull right now.
Occasional glances...at? At the other kids, at the two boys? This last part can be used to link us to the next paragraph, and that is a really interesting point of writing which I myself have not been using much as of late.
By the dust board there were two boys drawing pictures and then banging the black board to make them disappear again.
I understand that there are no school uniforms in the states, not as widespread anyway. Where I'm from, everyone wears a uniform. But puhlease!! Describe them. Are they dirtying their clothing, faces or hands, with the chalk?
Once more, word choice. I know we'll both tire of me picking on word choice but I'll still do it. "Drawing"? That's so ordinary. It doesn't tell us anything at all about the quality of the drawings. "Painstakingly sketching"? That's a possibility. Stretch definitions! Use "scribbling"! I like this last one!
The class clown was standing on one of the desks leaning out the window to see which car had just screeched into the car park.
Four lives. It's not that this sentence is long that it gets to me. It's that it is so...awkward. If it wasn't awkward I might have simply fallen into a coma, but it was. The class clown is doing two separate but connected actions. Try to make them so, in two sentences.
Mostly the girls and boys stayed separate, except in one corner where they glanced over with a mild indifference, and one couple sat together, she'd assumed they were a couple by the way the red-haired girl wrapped her arm around the waist of the boy who sat on her desk.
Single sentence paragraph. Three lives. Y'know, even though I had nine lives at the start of the day, I was murdered four times before reviewing. That made five, and now I have three. Cats don't live long do we?
After splitting this up, consider that the one corner is another corner. Is it on the MC's left? Right?
It was almost like every other school but not quite. There was no kicking of peoples chairs or paper being thrown, no subtle digs or extra tension that tended to exist between the fractions.
Long sentences 2.0 which also incidentally is the number of lives I have. The first sentence is rather awkward, split it up or change the words. The second sentence has a missing apostrophe and an additional r to fractions. Or is that intentional?
It was the group in the corner, the girls that wore boots instead of kickers, and the boys who wore their collars undone. The ones that thought themselves to be more grown up than any adult would allow them to believe.
This is a third corner right? I would prefer if "who" is used instead of "that" when referring to humen. It makes for a better read. try using a different tense for this sentence. "It was the girls, wearing boots, and boys, with collars undone."
She'd stick with them because they seemed to be more aware of who was looking at them rather than of who they were looking at themselves, and that's what she preferred.
Awkward as Tyrion Lannister in the Sky Cells. I think this is an epic episode of sleep depravation. One life.
Not that she was interested in high school politics, in fact it was never politics at all to her.
I like this, but I would liker it if it were two sentence. Two is better than one.
She could suppose that's because it was a small town.
You switch tenses faster than Lady Gaga switches dresses at her concerts.
One persons uncle worked alongside another persons father, who routinely went over to the house of someone else's grandparent to help on the farm.
Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! I need the flying comma brigade. Drop another life, lynchpin. I'm out.
The time you live on now, reviewer, is borrowed.
In a society this close it was impractical to hold grudges, and perhaps that's why it all seemed to function so peacefully.
Ground crew! Fix the commas.
Nothing was nobody's business, and so it wouldn't be long at all before news got out that she was living with Luci.
"At Luci's" is better than "with Luci" considering what is connoted by the latter. (Hope I spelled that right)
But like he said, it would be better to postpone that news a little.
Reduce your word count. The main sentence could be written in a more concise manner. "That news could wait" is six words less.
There were four lessons a day. One from eight until ten, then ten thirty until twelve thirty, one thirty until three, and the last lesson was more like a club, ranging from half an hour to two hours depending on which ones were opted for.
This is a mess of a list. The method you use takes an alternating first term. One...then...one...then.... But! But! You have one thirty. Readers will ask what in the name of sanity is thirty o'clock.
Which ones? Make it more personal. Relate it to a choice of the student. Make sure to mention the student, or teacher.
You just said four. "The first" replacing "those" is better.She was glad that in two of those three lessons her seat was on the shadowed side of the classroom.
Afterwards she went outside to wait by the gates until Luci came out, his hair ruffled and top buttons undone.
Wait. Wait. I thought we were just getting started on the day? Are the teachers and new people she's meeting so insignificant? What are they like? A whole day is missing from her life. Did she...shadedream? Daydream? Scribble on her paper? Or is the story good only when both she and Luci are in it?
Right after this i borrowed another life.
'We're going to the library,' he said as she pulled up at his side.
By or at?
Library, in every place she had been to, was the word you tell parents when you're actually going to hang out with a boy, or someone else your parents wouldn't agree with.
Live count: -3
Split up the part about getting the parents to know blar blar blar.
She followed the stream of students down a long road that fell under shadow in the evening.
Shadow of what? Mystical energy?
The library faced eastward, which meant any time after four o'clock the sun set its face on fire with a warm, yellow hue. Here, that social dance she was so accustomed to fell apart.
Catch no **** as we say from where I come from. This makes no sense.
There was a set of steps leading up to the huge brown doors, and a grassy yard filled with statues;
Set? Why? What happened to flight?
Every once in a while there would be an applause as someone crashed down onto the grassy earth.
Omit the "an" it makes no additions to the story.
Nerds and athletes mixed, girls and boys, older students sat in pairs or threes while the younger ones ogled them and their words of wisdom.
Omit the before younger. It flows better.
you could combine the last two descriptors. Try "curious amusement"while the weathered stone lion watched with curiosity and amusement.
Mele let her feet lead her up the steps.
To many "le" makes the story weird. Read it out loud.
The children’s section was an alcove with cushions carpeting the floor at the end of A to Z bookshelves marked with bright coloured letters.
The story flows much better if you placed "A to Z" at the end.
The geography section had ornamental leaves and vines along the shelves, with cotton moss up along the sides of the wood.
What up? This isn't a movie where you can have any random word for a title. Ran up? Danced up? What up?
What you did with the library, do with the classroom.
She picked up the blue pen and started to carefully write her name. After she signed it the ink faded straight into the paper.
I dislike this section. It doesn't fit in the slightest with the flow. Sure it adds to the story but it's like a bit of information we need to know hence is dumped on us.
Paper was too easily tampered with, in the city everything was done throguh computers, checked, double checked, security tagged.
My fourth borrowed life. Run this through a spellchecker.
'You can do it, we're about half a minute away. Come on.' He put one arm around her back to push her forward and could feel the rattle and cough of the turmoil that still cursed her breath. 'We're almost there.'
With the wisp of the rain, the point of view has changed yet again! Imagine that! Such awesome switches. No warning! Full of surprises.
Yeah,..that might not be harsh enough but I'm not used to harsh words....and some will call it harsh...whutever.
Oh I forgot to mention...I think because its past midnight here lol....don't put information into (stuff) when you are writing a story. It breaks concentration. Use proper sentences, even if it means making another 500 words.
Keep writing!!!
Points: 2296
Reviews: 133
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