Anytime, Author of 15 ^^ Don't give up! Writing a novel is a learning experience, so enjoy the learning and enjoy improving
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Hello, I am a 15 year old author attempting to write his first novel. This project was an offspring of extreme bordom one night, and although I always hate writing, it seems to be turning out pretty ok and I am enjoying myself. I am currently on chapter 9, but here is a little peek at chapter 1, tell me what you think!
Chapter 1.
My Favorite One.
Walls, a welcoming warm peach, the first thing I saw after brushing my long wavy brown hair with blonde highlights out of my eyes as I awoke in the strange room. Covered in a thick warm white blanket on a high double mattress bed. Where was I? I don't know. What was I doing here? No idea. How I got here? Again, not sure. Who I was? Nikki, a 17 year old girl born and raised in a small town in New York. Isolated from the world I had never gone more than 4 towns away from Bay Shore, my hometown, well until now.
At first, awaking in a mysterious place I wasn't sure what to do. A few thoughts ran through my mind, first, was I kidnapped and being held hostage, but the room was way to comfortable and inviting for me to have been kidnapped, second, how much did I drink last night, a joke, I don't drink, and third, where was the last place I remember being? I was able to answer that question quickly, I had just gone to bed. I was feeling sick and after barely touching supper I decided to head to sleep. Now remains the next question, what should I do now. In my mind I can conjure up three choices, Number one, get up and see if I can find somebody in this mysterious place who can tell me what happened. Number two, assume I am in danger and try to escape as soon as possible, then find out where I am and how to get back home. Or three, sit here and do nothing.
It was pretty easy to rule out choice number three, I am more of a person to take action rather than sit back. Then thinking about one and two were a little harder. I decided I would be able to escape pretty easily at any time, whether sombody is chasing me with a bat or not, so I might as well give number one a shot, then leave number two as my last resort. It may seem like I have much confidence towards my choice, thats because well, I do. Ever since I was 7 years old I was training to become a Runner, and no, not a regular runner. A runner through the concrete as well as grassy jungles of the world, I guess the proper word for it is Tracuer, but I call myself a runner because "Tracuer" sounds to french for me. Basically what a tracuer does is Parkour, but since that word is also to french sounding for my tastes, what runners do is they run. Runners are trained to get from point A to point B as quickly and smoothly as possible. If that means going over a building instead of around it, or taking the rooftops and trees instead of the crowded streets then so be it.
Ever since I was 12, after 5 years of training at ground level, the rooftops became my home, my roads, my escape routes, but best of all, my entertainment. There is no other feeling like the one when you are soaring through the air from a 4 story building to a 2 story building clearing a 15 foot gap.
I am very good at what I do, but there are more runners though none like me, or so I thought. There are proffesional runners, and amatures that are stronger, faster, and more skillful than I am by far but, there is something I have that they don't. Courage. The proffesionals and amatures that I know or have seen all spend a little while looking at the jump or climb or fall, whatever is in front of them, before going. I, on the other hand, taught myself to bite my lip and just go without planning it out. More dangerous, yes, more useful, yes. What is the point of devoting your life to a skill thats meaning is to get you from point A to point B as quickly and smoothly as possible if you spend 15 minutes staring at the course planning it out.
After pulling the thick blanket off of me, I was shocked to see that I wasn't wearing the same outfit as when I went to sleep. I fell asleep wearing loose gray sweatpants and a white shirt that just covers enough to be a shirt. However what I saw now wasn't that, but it was my clothes, I was in one of my very many Running outfits. My favorite one. It was a black shirt that was the exact same as the one I fell asleep in, which has a Medium cut neck and ends about 3 1/2 inches above my belly button, and some loose gray cargo pants that were tight enough to stay on but drooped a little with a loose tan coloured, not leather, belt. Under every pair of pants/shorts in my running outfits I always wear short black cotton shorts, sort of like boxers. Relieved to see these shorts on I next realized that even though my clothes were changed my undergarments remained the same, which were not very revealing, just the shorts and a black sports bra. This made me feel a lot better because I wasn't very comfortable with sombody changing my clothes.
After getting over the fact that my clothes were changed I proceeded to get up, then looked around the room in a more detailed manner. It looked like a bedroom, but didn't have any sentimental pictures or items that I could find, and the drawers were empty, so it must have been a guest room. Immediately I headed towards the window. I looked out and saw nothing farmilliar, although the window was facing the side of the house so there wasn't much to see, but I have jumped across rooftops enough to know the view from that window if it was near my home. After I observed the two doors that were in the room, one looked more like a closet door as it was slightly more narrow and a little older than the other, might as well play it safe and see what in the closet first. I peer inside, all I see is some old clothes, and a small black box on the shelf. I pull out the box and see a giant lock, almost the size of the box itself, on it. After trying to find a way into the box for 15 seconds I realized without a key it was hopeless, so I put the box back and took a closer look at the clothes. Each hanger held an outfit, matching perfectly, all dark in colour, wrapped in plastic. The plastic was dusty and the outfits seemed to have sat there for a long time. Right as I closed the closet door I heard something metal hit the wooden floor. I looked down and a thin closed switchblade knife about four inches in length fell from the top of the door. The knife was rather elegant, it was in a solid gold case with a button to flip it opened, the spring worked extremely well as the knife jumped opened in my hand. It was crafted of extremely high grade steel, and had a design carved into the blade which looked like a half of a mans face with one wing in the backround.
I closed the knife and pocketed it thinking it may be useful later. Then I figured it was time to go further into the house. I was very nervous, even though I trusted my skills I had never been in a situation like this before and wherever I was, whoever had me here, there was a reason for it.
That was chapter one, but now for a few questions..
Even though my story isn't copywritten if I were to post it up someplace it would be unable to be stolen correct? Or does the whole plagerism thing not protect me from that? Not that I want to post this publically int he first place, just for future works.
Anytime, Author of 15 ^^ Don't give up! Writing a novel is a learning experience, so enjoy the learning and enjoy improving
=O Oops, guilty of not reading the rules. Sorry about that. Right after I finish this post I will go check them out. Thanks
Also, I am using Notepad, my computer has no other word processing program. On another note, this is un-edited. Huge changes to fix spelling and punctuation will be made.
Basically what I got from that was:
-I explain things way to much, which I am currently aware of and trying as hard as I can to work on. I guess I don't plan out things before I write them so I wrote all that for me to sort of get the image in my own head haha.
-I totally screwed up 1st person POV with the tenses I am using. While I was writing it I knew I was doing it wrong but I couldn't bring myself to write in a present verb-tense. Now that you gave me that example though I think I can go back and switch it. I just hope it doesn't sound awkward =[
-I should, instead of telling people things, show it to them. This one was a huge help, especially that guitar example. Everybody who said this was totally right now that I think about it. It makes it more exciting, believable, and helps capture the reader more.
-I have a problem with making sentances and paragraphs a lot longer than they need to be. I guess I read to much of those books where the author can spend 5 pages describing curtains.
-My spelling and grammar are even more horrid than I thought.
I believe these critisizing remarks helped me a lot and thank you to everybody who contributed. Using what you said I can help better this work and future works and it truely does mean a lot to me that you spent your time carefully reading all that and pointing everything out.
The amount of things you guys/girls caught was amazing! The amount of things that could be fixed in that chapter was even more amazing O.o. After reading everything I thought to myself for a second I should scrap the project and start a-new but then I thought this is what learning a new skill is.
Just keep on going through trial and error until you master it. So I will fix this chapter and the rest of the book, excluding grammar and spelling as that comes later on in the editing stage, and then see if I can keep up what I learned throughout the book.
Again thank you all for your help,
~Author Of 15
Greetings Author of 15. so you are creating your first novel at the age of 15? Yeah that was the age when I started to just type in random idea's for story plots and somewhat created my first novel. As like you I am new to the YWS, you should consider yourself lucky for discovering this site at an early age. Anyway, I had the same questions as you, "By posting on this site are my works being protected?" was my big question. I haven't got a reply about the question, yet. But anyway on with the review...
Well there is nothing for me to say that has been already been said in the previous reviews. There is way to much detail, hell I never knew that so much detail is actually bad. They call it "Info dumping" and they are right, it is like reading an information pamphlet. You must give the reader more unknown suspense, if you are to go anywhere. I also advise not to come out too quickly with the introduction of the main character. I see it best to intro the main character gradually in chapters, but then that is just me. Of course when you reveal or play history of the main character, you must present a trigger why. Example would be: When your MC (main character, barely notice the abbreviation, lol!) does all these crazy high flying moves to get to one place to the other, that will be a good trigger to tell about her "mobility" style of Prakou (I think is what you called it?).
People are somewhat intimidated by long paragraphs, but I too write in long paragraphs too. Just try to keep the interest in a long paragraph and don't throw it off subject with another event. This will make your paragraphs less fearful to the reader, of course that is if the reader is brave enough to attempt to read them (Damn scaredy cats!). If you are unsure about public posting your pride and glory work... don't, I know for sure I am not going to put up my best one if I am not fully protected. Another thing forget what people say about the spelling errors, that is something that everybody does and it is real easy to fix, so there is no need to be slammed by them.
There you go, there is my review.
-Chaos Angelfish
Hey Author of 15 ^^ I'm Shina, one of the instructor-greeters here on YWS!
So, welcome to YWS! This morning I'll be doing a review for you.
Hello, I am a 15 year old author attempting to write his first novel.
This project was an offspring of extreme bordom one night, and although I always hate writing, it seems to be turning out pretty ok and I am enjoying myself. I am currently on chapter 9, but here is a little peek at chapter 1, tell me what you think!
My Favorite One.
Walls, a welcoming warm peach, the first thing I saw after brushing my long wavy brown hair with blonde highlights out of my eyes as I awoke in the strange room.
Covered in a thick warm white blanket on a high double mattress bed.
Where was I? I don't know. What was I doing here? No idea. How I got here? Again, not sure.
Who I was? Nikki, a 17 year old girl born and raised in a small town in New York. Isolated from the world I had never gone more than 4 towns away from Bay Shore, my hometown, well until now.
At first, awaking in a mysterious place I wasn't sure what to do.
A few thoughts ran through my mind, first, was I kidnapped and being held hostage, but the room was way *to comfortable and inviting for me to have been kidnapped, second, how much did I drink last night, a joke, I don't drink, and third, where was the last place I remember being?
I was able to answer that question quickly, I had just gone to bed. I was feeling sick and after barely touching supper I decided to head to sleep.
Now remains the next question, what should I do now. In my mind I can conjure up three choices, Number one, get up and see if I can find somebody in this mysterious place who can tell me what happened. Number two, assume I am in danger and try to escape as soon as possible, then find out where I am and how to get back home. Or three, sit here and do nothing.
It was pretty easy to rule out choice number three, I am more of a person to take action rather than sit back.
Then thinking about one and two were a little harder. I decided I would be able to escape pretty easily at any time, whether sombody is chasing me with a bat or not, so I might as well give number one a shot, then leave number two as my last resort. It may seem like I have much confidence towards my choice, thats because well, I do. Ever since I was 7 years old I was training to become a Runner, and no, not a regular runner. A runner through the concrete as well as grassy jungles of the world, I guess the proper word for it is Tracuer, but I call myself a runner because "Tracuer" sounds to french for me. Basically what a tracuer does is Parkour, but since that word is also to french sounding for my tastes, what runners do is they run. Runners are trained to get from point A to point B as quickly and smoothly as possible. If that means going over a building instead of around it, or taking the rooftops and trees instead of the crowded streets then so be it.
Ever since I was 12, after 5 years of training at ground level, the rooftops became my home, my roads, my escape routes, but best of all, my entertainment. There is no other feeling like the one when you are soaring through the air from a 4 story building to a 2 story building clearing a 15 foot gap.
I am very good at what I do, but there are more runners though none like me, or so I thought.
There are *proffesional runners, and *amatures that are stronger, faster, and more skillful than I am by far but, there is something I have that they don't. Courage.
The proffesionals and amatures that I know or have seen all spend a little while looking at the jump or climb or fall, whatever is in front of them, before going.
I, on the other hand, taught myself to bite my lip and just go without planning it out. More dangerous, yes, more useful, yes. What is the point of devoting your life to a skill thats meaning is to get you from point A to point B as quickly and smoothly as possible if you spend 15 minutes staring at the course planning it out.
After pulling the thick blanket off of me, I was shocked to see that I wasn't wearing the same outfit as when I went to sleep. I fell asleep wearing loose gray sweatpants and a white shirt that just covers enough to be a shirt.
However what I saw now wasn't that, but it was my clothes, I was in one of my very many Running outfits. My favorite one.
It was a black shirt that was the exact same as the one I fell asleep in, which has a Medium cut neck and ends about 3 1/2 inches above my belly button, and some loose gray cargo pants that were tight enough to stay on but drooped a little with a loose tan coloured, not leather, belt.
Under every pair of pants/shorts in my running outfits I always wear short black cotton shorts, sort of like boxers. Relieved to see these shorts on I next realized that even though my clothes were changed my undergarments remained the same, which were not very revealing, just the shorts and a black sports bra. This made me feel a lot better because I wasn't very comfortable with sombody changing my clothes.
After getting over the fact that my clothes were changed I proceeded to get up, then looked around the room in a more detailed manner. It looked like a bedroom, but didn't have any sentimental pictures or items that I could find, and the drawers were empty, so it must have been a guest room. Immediately I headed towards the window. I looked out and saw nothing farmilliar, although the window was facing the side of the house so there wasn't much to see, but I have jumped across rooftops enough to know the view from that window if it was near my home. After I observed the two doors that were in the room, one looked more like a closet door as it was slightly more narrow and a little older than the other, might as well play it safe and see what in the closet first. I peer inside, all I see is some old clothes, and a small black box on the shelf. I pull out the box and see a giant lock, almost the size of the box itself, on it. After trying to find a way into the box for 15 seconds I realized without a key it was hopeless, so I put the box back and took a closer look at the clothes. Each hanger held an outfit, matching perfectly, all dark in colour, wrapped in plastic. The plastic was dusty and the outfits seemed to have sat there for a long time. Right as I closed the closet door I heard something metal hit the wooden floor. I looked down and a thin closed switchblade knife about four inches in length fell from the top of the door. The knife was rather elegant, it was in a solid gold case with a button to flip it opened, the spring worked extremely well as the knife jumped opened in my hand. It was crafted of extremely high grade steel, and had a design carved into the blade which looked like a half of a mans face with one wing in the backround.
I closed the knife and pocketed it thinking it may be useful later. Then I figured it was time to go further into the house. I was very nervous, even though I trusted my skills I had never been in a situation like this before and wherever I was, whoever had me here, there was a reason for it.
Even though my story isn't copywritten if I were to post it up someplace it would be unable to be stolen correct? Or does the whole plagerism thing not protect me from that? Not that I want to post this publically int he first place, just for future works.
Hey Author! I'm Mark. 15, too. So let's see if I can help at all. ^^
Before I begin, just wanted to direct you to the rules. You gotta do two reviews. And welcome to YWS! Why not introduce yourself in the Welcome forum?
I have a few issues with the first paragraph. It's very confusing for the reader. You're info-dumping on us - a lot of this is irrelevant. We don't yet need to know about how high the mattress is, its size, the main character's hometown or hair colour or length. These are all turn-offs for a reader. All that's happened is that someone wakes up in a strange room, but you're making it seem like a prison cell, but then also calling the walls "welcoming". So, it's confusing. It's really just an adjective overkill, and you'll need to chop down on them. If they're unnecessary (as many of these are) then they will just clog up the piece. Give us a hook! Place the information in small chunks throughout, as and when necessity calls.
At first, awaking in a mysterious place I wasn't sure what to do.
A few thoughts ran through my mind, first, was I kidnapped and being held hostage, but the room was way to comfortable and inviting for me to have been kidnapped, second, how much did I drink last night, a joke, I don't drink, and third, where was the last place I remember being?
It was pretty easy to rule out choice number three, I am more of a person to take action rather than sit back.
Points: 4362
Reviews: 263
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