Hey Yoshi! I was excited to see that you were the author of this, and definitely excited to read it!
Okay, so first off-- it's a very interesting premise. There were a few questions that popped into my head, like why a middle school wouldn't simply hire another coach or ask a current teacher to be the new coach (or why they'd let a student try to pull the basketball team together by themselves) but those are questions that can easily be addressed in later chapters.
One thing I will say to keep in mind would be that running a basketball team takes a lot more than coming up with plays and coaching players. You also have to be in charge of purchasing uniforms, reaching out to the local district league, planning and scheduling games, contacting parents, paying for rides to and from games, providing food for sale at games, collecting ticket money, etc... most teams have an adult coach and a team manager who looks after the financial side of it. Conditioning is also something that you didn't mention but most teams go through at the beginning of the season-- it's basically a really rigorous workout schedule for a few weeks designed to get the players back in shape after the summer. I can also say conditioning for every year I did it was one of the worst experiences of my personal life. I did it 7th, 8th, and 9th grade year, so they are likely at the age where they would do that sort of thing. That would actually be pretty interesting to read if Alex was the one trying to coordinate stuff like that... (Feel free to message me if you have any questions about conditioning or my experience in particular, by the way).
You definitely know your basketball terms, which was awesome! It would be pretty difficult to write a story solely about basketball if you didn't have at least some sort of background knowledge on it, so I'm glad you do.
As the other review mentioned, you did switch the point of view, but I could tell it was intentional. The only thing I'd say is maybe including something at the top like we do for storybooks so it's very obvious to readers that you are switching the point of view. Simply writing "Spencer" at the top would help clarify a lot if someone wasn't picking up on it at first.
The only other thing I'd mention is trying to continue to build out those characters. You're off to a great start with characterization, but don't forget to physically describe the characters too. You've told us their height, but what about their weight? Their race? Their hair color/style? Painting a picture for your reader to see while they're reading is one of the easiest ways to keep them engaged, because it's a lot easier to pay attention to a movie when you know what the characters look like. If they're reading it and seeing it play out in their head, they'll want to know what the characters look like, so including small details like that will really help boost everything!
And uh... I think that's it! Again, you've done an amazing job so far, so really-- bravo to you for all this work. I'm excited to see the other chapters that you've already posted, but I really hope this helps! As always, I'm open to talk in PMs about writing, experiences... pretty much everything. So shoot me a message if you ever wanna! : D
Alrightyyyyy, thanks for reading!
~Winter
Points: 5175
Reviews: 33
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