I walk down the hallway to where I heard my mom call for me. I keep my fingertips along the wall so I don't run into anything. When I feel the third door frame on my right, I turn and walk into the living room. My hand falls away from the wall, but I still hold it out in front of me to feel for the couch.
“Hey, honey, Celia texted. She wants to know if you'd be up to going out on a ‘girl’s night’ with her,” she says.
“Sure. That'd be fun,” I answer in her direction.
“Do you want me to help you pick out an outfit?” she asks.
“Of course I do. Last time I checked, I can't feel color,” I reply holding my hand out.
She chuckles a little as she walks over to me. She takes my hand and wraps it under her arm. She leads me down the hallway to my room. I hear the door shut behind us and sit down on my bed. I listen to her footsteps near the closet. I hear the shick of the hangers as she pushes them apart to see an outfit.
“I haven't seen you in purple in a while. How ‘bout that?” she asks.
“Can I feel it?” I request.
She lays the cloth in my lap. It’s soft under my fingers and there seems to be a squared pattern on the front.
“Is this a shirt or a dress?” I inquire.
“It's a shirt. I was thinking we could pair it with your black skinny jeans,” she suggests.
“Yeah, I think that would look nice. I could probably wear that black teardrop pendant you got me last year,” I reply.
“Yeah, that's a great idea. So, would you like to wear the purple and black?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I answer.
She walks back to the closet and returns with the suggested items. She helps me change and does my hair. When she's done, we wait on the couch and talk about the latest fashion trends. She was going to tell me about the “short shorts trend” when there's a knock on the front door. I feel her get up and hear her footsteps to the door.
“Hey, Celia! Come in, come in. How's your mom?” I hear my mom say.
They both sit down as Celia answers, “She's doing better since I came back from my trip, thanks for asking. How've you guys been, Mrs. Brund?”
“We've been doing okay. Thank you so much for taking her out tonight. She's been cooped up for so long and she needs to get some air,” my mom replies.
“Don't worry, Mrs. Brund, I'll keep in trouble but not too much. Besides, what kind of a person leaves the disabled to fend for their own social life,” Celia jokes, nudging me.
“Wait a minute, who are you calling ‘disabled’?! I'm special not disabled,” I joke back.
“You should probably get going. I don't want you out too late, you know. Have fun,” mom calls as we walk out the door, “Oh, Emily, would you like your cane?”
“Oh, yes. I almost walked out of the known and into the void without my trusty red and white stick to tell me where invisible objects are. I am so glad I have you, Mom. I could've died out there,” I exaggerate as she hands me my cane.
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141,415 Literary Works • 674,394 Reviews
Hey,
First Impressions: Cool concept, so far. And intriguing.
Positives:I like the amount of effort you've put into building your characters trough conversations, and the amount of dialogue is also note worthy. You've done a pretty good job at keeping it realistic and flowing, so that's great.
Negatives:
First paragraph, and you've already used I, me and my nine times. It's a little overkill on the pronouns there, which is something most writers do. In fact, this is my fourth review for Review Day, and so far all have needed this little note. So some tips on how to avoid this problem:
1. Take full advantage of ALL of the ways to describe who's doing what. You don't just have to use I, me and my, you can use other things such as "this guy/girl," "myself," "yours truly," etc. etc. This applies to he/she and they/them as well. Try to be really creative in how you use different synonyms of these pronouns, and you'll find it goes a long way.
2. Test yourself and play a little game; try to write a chapter of your story using only a single pronoun (per character) per paragraph, and see what happens. I think you'd be surprised at how little you actually need them, if you work some word magic.
3. Mask your pronouns by putting them AFTER the action or adjectives, and not at the beginning of the sentence, action or concept. "I was mad," can become something like, "Mad, it made me."
The only other thing I'd add is that your speech writing style seems to have a very distinct pattern that's easily noticeable. SUBJECT SAYS SOMETHING and then NARRATOR SAYS "she said."
Then repeat.
It's good to do your best to break this up by putting the narrative part in the front and the middle, leaving it out sometimes or doing it in an interesting way by having the narrator comment on what's going on. Obviously, if you're the narrator telling your story, you can't do this as much, but since you are telling the story about the past that already happened, you can change it up a bit by commenting on what you think now.
Overall:It's not bad. I like the flow and the feel, but I do think it could us a little love.
I give it:
I've been trying to find a way to not use "I" so much and this helped me so much. I have a bad habit of doing "Dialogue," s/he says. All I can say for that is I'm trying to fix it. Thank you for your review.
If people would like me to release entire chapters at once please tell me. From personal experience, I prefer to read small segments.
AnnMath
Heya, AnnMath! Casanova here to do a review for you!
Alright, three main points I want to cover in this. Plot, Characters, and dialogue.
Plot:
Now, there really isn't much of a plot. You have some things here, but the overall length is rather dissapointing. You could take this a bit further than you did, but the ending here just seems rather lacking.
Overall your plot IDEA is a good one, but I don't think you put the amount of work nor time into this to make it a good thing. Anyway, I feel like the overall plot is just lacking and a bit too simple, and I think you could do more if you added things.
Characters:
Your characters, overall, are really simple. They don't really display much emotion, and their actions aren't really together. Play around with them, let out emotion. That's the difference between us and robots.
Dialogue
Your dialogue is the simple cliche dialogue. He said, she asked, they screamed dialogue. It doesn't portray emotion nor feeling. Try something like he snarled, she sobbed, they echoed. Things like that which gives a bit more emotion. Also let the characters actions tell the story, the amount of dialogue in this was a bit too much.
Anywaym that's all I have to say on this one and I hope it helped a bit.
Keep on doing what you're doing and keep on keeping on.
Sincerely, Matthew Casanova Aaron
I'm releasing small segments of my work at a time. I realized my prologue in two sections and that wasn't very long. I'm probably going to do three or four for my first chapter.
This is the (hopefully) the second book I finish. I'm working on the characters. I Haven't the skill or the experience with writing normal stories so my characters might be a little bland.
Again, I haven't the experience or the skill with writing normal stories and I'm sorry my dialogue is too much, cliche, and overall bland I'm working on it.
Thank you for the review it helped a lot. This is the only feedback I've gotten besides from my literature/language teacher. This helped a lot. I knew I missing a lot of stuff and didn't do things as well as I could have.
Thank you for your review.
AnnMath
Also, it's very difficult to tell a story with action if you're telling it from the perspective of someone who's blind.
Again thanks.
AnnMath