Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language.
Bzz
John glanced at his buzzing phone, uncertain as to whether or not he should answer it or not. It's probably just Lisa trying to set me up with someone again, he groaned, knowing today wasn't going to go as planned. He typed in the code to his phone, swiping the chat head that was popped up.
Hey, John! I have someone I want you to meet later, be on Skype later. Love ya, bro
John sighed, shutting his phone off and flopping on his bed. He wiped the blonde curls that were dangling in front of his blue eyes, trying to relax before he had to go to work. His leg; however, wouldn't stop bouncing and he couldn't relax. He huffed, sitting up and tossing his phone onto the nightstand besides him. Damn ADHD, he thought, his fists balling up in unheeded anger. Whether or not he could relax, he had to do something to get his mind of Sofie. He stood, stripping himself of his shirt. His usual workout routine didn't start for another hours(thirty minutes before he had to leave for work), but he figured he could get in a few extra sets. Wouldn't hurt, and might keep his mind off things for awhile.
He let himself drop to the floor, assuming the usual push-up position. He went down once, and came back up. Down twice, then come back up. On the third one, though, his phone started vibrating intensely.
He grabbed it from where it lied, answering it and barking,"What the fuck do you want now?"
"Uh, excuse me?" a sweet voice rang out from the other end in a sharp tone.
"Oh, Sof! Uh, hey, I wasn't expecting it to be you. Sorry about that," he wasn't pleased about her calling him, since earlier that day they had been in an argument about one of their friends coming over to visit her. But it was preferable to Lisa trying to set him up right now. "Did you need something? I was in the middle of my routine," he did his best to make himself sound out of breath, knowing she wouldn't leave him alone other wise.
"Well, nothing but if you're not busy later we have to talk. I'll leave you to whatever you're doing." the phone clicked, and he looked at it for a moment, noticing a Skype message. I'll get to that later.. He went back to his routine after switching his phone on silent.
~~~
John raced up the steps to the restaurant, his mind on the time. When he'd left the house it was showing a quarter till three. He was fifteen minutes late, and his boss didn't like that. He ran in, slamming the door wide open.
"Smith! Where in the hell have you been?" a tall, rather bulky man hissed at him from across the room.
"Sorry, sir, I got caught up at home. It won't happen again." John's voice sounded small. He hated lying to the man, but he wouldn't get off easy if his boss knew he was working out and didn't hear his alarm. He sighed, running into the kitchen and throwing on his apron. He came back out only to run face-to-face with his boss, Laurence.
"Oh, no you don't. You're not on cooking duty today. Grab a plunger, the bathrooms are clogged again. And remember to wear gloved this time you little bastard." His boss shoved him aside, entering the kitchen and slamming the door behind him. John groaned, his knees already feeling weak at the thought of being elbow deep in the crud again.
He grabbed the plunger from the back room, and a pair of gloves. He figured if he hurried and got this done, his boss might let him go home early. If not, he'd have to cancel that call with Sofie, and he didn't want that to deal with today as well.
The bathroom smelled of horse manure when he entered, and he'd forgotten to grab a cloth to wrap around his face. He gagged, almost puking on the floor. His stomach was rather sensitive, and this wasn't helping the eggs he'd had for breakfast digest. He went to work, plunging away and doing his best to clean up.
When he'd completed his task, he took a step back and grabbed a can of air freshener. He shook it and began spraying around the room, his nose covered by the collar of his shirt. He backed out of the bathroom, grabbing what little supplies he had and taking them back to the back room.
He was going to ask his boss to leave, but when he saw him he just waved him aside. John shrugged, taking this as an opportunity to skip outside for a quick cigarette. He sneaked through the kitchen, making sure his boss wasn't watching him and ducked out the back. He pulled a pack from his pocket, along with his phone.
The first cigarette went by rather quickly, but he decided to savor the second one. He clicked his phone on, and noticed a message from Sofie. He clicked the chat box, only to drop his phone at the message that waited on him.
John? I cheated on you earlier, and I've had a guy that's been staying with me for three days. Need to talk. xoxoxo
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,807 Reviews
Casa!
I don't know if I've ever reviewed for you before. My style is specific comments first, then overall thoughts at the end. Let's get started...
So this might be a bit of a personal preference, but I think you could find a way to start this a bit stronger. Right off we don't know who John is, or who Lisa is, or have any reason to care about either of them but you can already feel there's some tension. The foreshadowing is also a little heavy handed with "she's just going to set me up again" and then the text being her trying to set him up haha.
I think if you worked a bit more emotion and dread into this from the start it would do a better job of grabbing attention. Like, have John looking at his buzzing phone, debating whether or not to answer it. Show some anxiety about what it's going to be about. Make us feel his dread as he's unlocking the phone. Maybe have him see it's Lisa's icon and throw in some hesitation and just uggghhh as he goes to look at the message.
Does that make sense? I just think having some more emotions wrapped up in this would help us care about John a bit more and feel a bit worse for him when he sees the message, 'cause right now why should I care about him getting set up on a date? Lisa might be genuinely trying to be helpful and help him meet people. But if you kind of work up to her being a pushy interloper then we'd be more firmly on John's side from the start.
This is definitely not how semi-colons are used lol. The advice I was given regarding semi-colons was that if you're not sure whether to use a comma or a period, use a semi-colon. Obviously that's not fool proof advice, but it's a pretty good place to start. "His leg" is nowhere near being a complete sentence, so it shouldn't be by itself on one side of the semi-colon. I'd just use a comma here.
So since you already established that his boss was going to be angry about him being late, then I think you can go ahead and name him here instead of having a "man" as the descriptor. Like you could put "His boss hissed" and then later have a description of his name and appearance. Or you could even be like "Mr. ____ hissed." And then go straight into a "His boss was a tall, rather bulky man who..." and go into his appearance or personality a bit from there.
... Why... dare I ask, does it smell like horse manure? Rather than human waste? In a bathroom? That doesn't really make sense...
Why did he come to work if he's so keen on leaving as soon as possible? I mean cleaning the bathroom surely couldn't have taken multiple hours? Could it? If so you could work on describing how long it took a bit more to give us that feeling of it being a long time. Because right now it seems like he showed up not too long ago and is now doing his best to skip out as fast as he possibly can.
~ ~ ~
Okay! Overall comments.
1) I'm not really understanding the relationships in this chapter. I assumed from Lisa's trying to set him up that he was single. But now Sofie is cheating on him? So he's already in a relationship? Only... not going to be since she's cheating? I'm confused about why she called him earlier that day if she had a guy staying with her? And why is Lisa trying to set him up if he's already in a relationship?
2) Before the line break you mention a Skype message that he was going to get around to later, and then you kinda leave us hanging about what that's about. And I recognize that that might be what you'll go into for the next chapter, but then you leave us with this zinger of the cheating so I assume that's going to cover more of the next chapter in which case I'd like to know what the skype message is about.
3) You've got various typos, punctuation, and grammatical mistakes littered throughout this. I didn't bother commenting on each one 'cause I got the impressions you're planning on a revamp but you might want to look out for those if you do revisions.
4) I think the biggest thing I'd like from this chapter is to understand relationships a bit more. Right now in my mind I've got:
John is in love with Sofie.
Sofie is cheating on him.
Lisa wants John to meet someone else (so either doesn't know of or doesn't approve of Sofie).
And John's boss is a jerk.
But... I'm not overly connected to any of these characters immediately? Like yeah I feel bad for John this sucks for him, but at the same time I don't feel like I'm inside his head yet, and I don't feel like I'm experiencing all of this with him. I generally make my chapters around 1,900 words and that's more than twice what you've got here so you've definitely got a lot of wiggle room to expand this more and play around with relationships.
So I think if you really focused on relationships and emotional impacts in this chapter then it would help us care about your characters more, and, by extension, the story as a whole more.
I do think you've got a really good premise here. It's clearly got a lot of promise for being a very dramatic, angsty story, and I'm excited to see how the plot progresses from here. So I think your question was whether or not it was worth picking this story up again -- and my answer to that would be yes. I do think you have a good concept, it could just be tweaked a bit to make it a bit more engaging for the readers.
I think that's all I've got for you for now. Let me know if you have any questions/comments/concerns about what I said haha
~Shady
Yo, I was going to leave these til review day but meh I'm bored
Nit-picks:
A semi-colon connects together two parts of a sentence that could be sentences on their own but are also related to each other. Here what you want is just a comma but I'll give an example of when it would make sense to have a semi-colon.
"Biscuits spent £60 on books in one shop; she was on a bit of an Ursula Le Guin kick."
These two sentences would work fine on their own, but it becomes clearer that one is the cause of the other if I link them with a semi-colon.
Firstly there should be a space before the bracket. For the bit about hours, something's not quite right there, to the extent that I don't actually know what you mean
This falls a little bit into the "show don't tell" category. Give me a way of imagining the phone and coming to my own judgement about how it is vibrating ie through a simile or metaphor.
Also a bit tell-y. Maybe get this in subtly with through a later conversation or something. Hinting here, telling me that he wasn't happy to hear from her but not why, would be intriguing, and also not too explain-y.
Also about the speech. Do it as I've indicated above when the bit after the speech marks is not an actual speech verb. I think I explained this on the last chapter but it makes sense if you've not read your co-author's feedback. I think I explained it the best I can there though, so it's probably a good idea to go take a look.
Typo.
~~~~~~~
Woah, that's quite an ending! I am definitely intrigued and look forward to reviewing the next few chapters.
Characterisation: Yup, I'm getting a good feel of the characters, and they're all pretty well rounded so far. Be careful with the third person limited that it doesn't just become first person using third person pronouns. Basically be careful that you don't narrate a character's exact thoughts (except the ones in italics), because it takes a lot of the reader's job (connecting elements together to understand what's going on) out. And that's rather the fun of being a reader
Setting: There wasn't a lot about setting until near the end. Love the sensory description of the toilet, but it would have been nice to know some details about John's room to get a better understanding of who he is.
Plot: Yup, as I said I am intrigued. Although it would have been nice to drop Sofia's name in a couple of times in the prologue like I mentioned in my review on that. Would have rooted John more to what he was dreaming of losing.
Flow: Sometimes there were a few grammatical choices that weren't errors but that threw me off a little. This may just be an element of everyone's styles being different but I'll keep an eye on it and tell you if I think it's anything more important.
Hope this helps,
Biscuits
Hi.
First of all, I'm curious to read the rest. For now, it's a little all over the place - home, work, Sofie, Lisa - but I'm confident I'll get it later. I agee with the others, there are some repetations and parts of the story sound awkward but it's normal to still have some kinks to iron out. What matters for now is that you have a hook - a very good one, as it so happen!
Sofie's last message...Oh, boy, I loved it.
I was laughing so hard at the "xoxoxo". So cute and blunt.
i feel for John, I really do. He has ADHD, he works a shitty job in a restaurant - pun intended - and he is about to get dumped.
I can relate. Everybody can.
Haha XD. Thank you for the review, and I loved the pun!
Hello, Steggy here for a quick review!
I haven't read the prologue so if I get anything wrong, let me know!
The first thing I notice right off the bat is the beginning. We know the phone is buzzing the with extra buzz you put in the beginning. Basically, I don't think you would need the word buzzing there. Also, you shouldn't have or not in the same sentence twice. It feels a bit repetitive with it. I like the thought about Lisa. I'm wondering who she might be: a crazy ex who still wants to be with John or maybe his girlfriend who he doesn't like? Perhaps you explained their relationship in the previous chapter. However, with one quick skim over in the prologue, this chapter doesn't have anything to do with it. Although it does give us some background on John, which might come in handy later on in this novel.
The semicolon you used in this case doesn't bring the two statements together. An example of how to use a semicolon might be this: I have a big test tomorrow; I can't go out tonight. In this case, I think it would be best to just use a comma. Also, although wouldn't is read nicely in my head, I think would not sounds better.
A bunch of info in this small chunk. From what I gathered, John works out because he is nervous. Sofie could be an ex girlfriend that John still loves. He's nervous about thinking about Sofie. One question: who is Sofie? I figure you might explain who she is later on but it might be best to just include some background info about her in the beginning or even in the prologue.
Like the reviewer mentioned below, you go ahead and just transition quite quickly from work out to going to work. I think I mentioned this before but try to re-read over your work. It does come in handy for smaller things that lead to bigger things. You as the writer should pinpoint a single thing that can come off as unreadable or not making sense. But of course, no one is perfect and we all make mistakes.
The ending of the this chapter feels a bit rushed. I just want more info. I'm craving for what is going to happen next. Even though this feels like this should be a cliffhanger, it is more of a big hill with a short fall. What I suggest is have some form of pent up anger afterwards, like John goes to Sofie's house or something similar. Once you have that, then it can be a cliffhanger.
Also, why does Sofie want to break up with him over text? Was that why she called him?
Overall, this was a nice piece to read. I enjoyed John because frankly, I can relate.
If you have any questions, let me know!
Steggy
Hey Cas! Ever here!
So I like this story, but it seems rather rushed. You have a great character that is very believable (and I can't help but wonder if this is written from a personal experience?).
First off, the beginning is good, but starts off with a lot of anger that the reader doesn't have much of a foundation to understand. The ADHD kind of explains it, but not really. So I'd like to see the character grow into that anger instead of just have it be there. The girl setting him up is also a good reason to be angry, but we don't know why. Is he just sick of her doing it, is it because of Sofie? It would be great to see you explain this more so that the reader can understand all that aggression.
Second, you transition really quickly from the workout, which is hours before work, and then straight to work. These hours just aren't there and that is confusing. This chapter is quite short and it wouldn't hurt to expand there, along with other places with John's feelings and inner thoughts. We really feel rather disconnected from this character.
Next, I'd say that you need to work on the whole base for the Sofie/John relationship. It sounds complicated and John seems rather detached from it, even though this would be a time for him to be overly involved. So I'd like to see him more try to either stay talking to Sophie, more emotion when he reads her message, because honestly, even characters like John that act stoic and emotionless have them. They should be shown because that's what brings the reader in.
The message from Sophie is so, so blunt. This is part where I started thinking "Is Cas writing this from personal experience?" because it seems rather odd and not something you would think to write unless this had happened to you. As a girl, and a girl that has been in that situation before, I would not break the news to someone by saying "Hey bruh, btw I've been sleeping with some other guy lol xoxo love you" It would more be along the lines of "Hey, this is really, really hard to tell you, but you should know that I've been cheating on you. It didn't seem right to keep it from you any longer. Im sorry." Because what sort of heartless bitch puts xoxo at the end of a message that she knows is going to crush someone? It just doesn't seem realistic, especially from what I know about this character.
Your character is great and I think you have a good story to tell here, but you really could work on it and make it longer.
Ever <3