Forever rewrite chapter 1

Hey there Alice.

Maybe she’s coming back? She cringed at the very thought. Her dad was too much in love with her mom. He couldn’t see how horrid that woman was. Eve sighed. That had to be what was happening.

This is simply telling, because you are giving a basic recall of your MC's parental situation. It is not effective to tell the reader what is happening as I believe that is one of the key driving points of the piece. Instead, you should really be showing this later on in the piece. Describe her mother's appearance, how she acts when her husband is around, their dialogue etc. There are many ways to characterize that her mother was horrid to the MC.

She needed to talk to Jack. She snuck away from the window and called him. “Hey Jack,” she said sweetly.

“Hey babe, what’s up?”

“She may be coming back.”

“Ouch, got any idea when?”

“Nope.”

“You need a pick-me-up night don’t ya?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Meet ya at midnight?”

“Quarter after eleven.”

“Alright, see ya later babe.”

Have you actually been in a relationship before? I'm pretty sure the conversation isn't as brief and straight-forward as that. When two teenagers are in love, I'm pretty sure the conversation is more in-depth and convincing. It's like you are using the conversation simply to portray a key plot point instead of also fleshing out your characters.

He hung up. Aw damn, she really wanted to just shoot the breeze with him. She hadn’t talked to him all weekend. She sure missed him.

Why? How? What actions are portrayed to represent this idea?

Eve didn’t even bother replying she turned around and went back up to her room.

Semi colon between "replying" and "she".

“Go away,” Eve said as if an automatic reaction.

Automatic reaction? It sounds kinda mechnical and doesn't really fit with what is happening. If you are describing how Eve said it, try to relate your description to the concept. "Automatic reaction" gives the audience a sort of mechnical vibe which is not the effect you want with a romance concept like this.

Eve knew she was being stubborn and did not care.

How did she know?

Either way she’d need to look cute.

Why does she need to look cute?

She paced up and down the bathroom for a few minutes, and finally settled to sitting on one of the steps.

Omit the comma here.

“Hey doll,” Jack said, “you look hotter than my little sister’s Barbie.”

She hopped down the steps holding his hands, “you’re such a perv.”

Probably because I don't follow teenage life that closely, but I find it rather awkward that a guy would compliment a girl's look by comparing it with a Barbie doll...

Same with the last line, if the guy's dialogue was more vulgar, OK fine I would had accepted it. However, this doesn't seem to be the case here.

Overall impressions:

As I read this, I ask myself "Is this really a romance piece?" You seem to have a basic idea of how teenage romance works, but I'm not convinced with this piece. Firstly, you tell more than show. Important key points (like the MC's mom, MC's relationship with her father etc) only exist in like 5-10 words. These factors seem to have some influence on what is happening, but it isn't believable as you haven't shown us how these things are so. For example, if her Mum is a horrible person to her, then there are certain actions or dialogue that she would perform in the MC's presense to get her point across. Descriptions also give the audience an idea of how the family is going. For example, a neat tidy house tells a diferent story about the family compared to "a messy house".

Well I'm at it about the lack of details, we don't really get who the main characters are. Is the main character supposed to be a teenager? I'm not convinced due to the lack of details. You may have shown us what clothes she wear, but details are lacking in other places (such as what her room looks like, how she acts etc). Her dialogue is rather unnatural, as it seems so focused in just telling the audience that she is in a relationship with this guy. When teenagers talk, do they simply talk about one thing? No, their conversations are quite diverse in a sense. It changes from one topic to another quite quickly. As the dialogue is so centered in portraying that they are simply "in a relationship", the relationship seems mechnical and sterile as a result.

I can't really give you anymore specific help. What you can do now is practice in making your characters seem more like teenagers. Think about it, if you are with your friends, how would you normally talk/react?

Andy.

Alice wrote: She needed a hot shower, but since her dad was probably using it, she'd settle for a book.

If you make this one whole sentence instead of two separate ones, it will make better sense.

As far as capitalization goes, it seems as if you forget to capitalize the first word of a quote when you put description in front of it. For example, here:

Alice wrote:She hopped down the steps holding his hands, “you’re such a perv.”

So you might want to go through and check places like that.

I was a bit surprised at how fast her mom showed up. We hear that she's coming, and suddenly she's there. Either try making more time elapse in between when she learns that her mom is coming and she actually does come, or explain why she got there so quickly.

You definitely have a good idea here. It just needs a few fixes here and there.

Hey, Alice-chan ^^

Okay, I have taken a look at this, and as far as literary complaints go, there are capitalization issues, such as:

“What?!” Eve started down the stairs, “dad you can’t be serious can you?”

Dad needs to be capitalized, as it's a proper noun?

and some missing commas, usually before/after names, and such. As far as nitpicky stuff goes, that's about it.

Now! Onto the actual story itself!


One problem I had was that I didn't really get a sense of who Eve was. The little I could glean was that she was angry at her mother. Besides that, Eve seemed a little bit flat. I know that this is a first chapter, and all, but when you open a book characters should pop right off a page. They're the main attraction. If the character's are flat, the story could be flat. [/end ramble]

All in all, it has some potential, you just need to work on characterization a bit. ^^ If you have any questions, let me know, kay kay?

Sachi