Chapter One
I sit at the edge of the rugged pier, my white tank top contrasting with my black swimming shorts. It's summertime, my favorite time of the year. The water droplets on my skin warm underneath the sun's evening rays as the slip down my bare arms, waves splashes up on my feet with a cool sensation. I close my eyes, listening intently to the waves lapping the white lake sand, the sound of the song birds chirping in the nearby tree line: silver and rose pink. I take up my canvas and oils, painting with an absract flair. The subtle undertones of rose pink and mellow beige contrast greatly with the metallic glare that I'm getting from cool silver and bronze strokes I've already added. Laughs sound behind me with the light padding of barefeet. I take my brush and paint bold strokes of magenta and Cadet blue on the top of my canvas. Once I'm done I place everything back in the case and turn to see my friends, Allison and Tyler running down the pier and headed straight for me. Quickly I jump out of the way and grab my things.
"I'm going to beat you!" Tyler yells as he whips past me and does an impressive cannon ball straight into the clear water. Allison screams and dives in after him, making me shake my head and laugh. I carry my canvas carefully in my hand with my paint case underneath my arm and head back to the lakehouse. I was here with my Allison's family for the summer, for a senior trip before graduation. It is the perfect place to wind down. As my bare toes hit the cool grass I can see a figure exiting the glass french doors. It's Andrew, my best friend since fifth grade.
"Paint anything new, KitKat?" He asks as he comes closer, flicking by damp pony tail over my shoulder. I nod and carefully show him my unfinished painting. He grins.
"What do you think?" I ask.
"It's amazing! I really think you should enter it in the Art Contest after spring break is over." He replies. I shrug.
"Maybe. I just don't know if it's good enough."
He pats my back, continuing his trek to the lake. " I think it's more than good enough." He says with a wink. " Go and put your stuff up and come back." I nod with a smile and trot back to the house. When I'm inside I go up to Allison's room and place my things on my bunk. I can hear their laughs as they dive and splash into the crystal clear water, I smile. It's a beautiful sound. I look back at my painting and note that I need some canary yellow and turquoise.
~~~~
We spend the rest of the day in the water until Mrs. Ann calls us into for dinner. As we walk barefoot along the sandy shore, I link my arm with Andrew's as a cool breeze grazes are still wet skin. In the dim porch light he looks down at me and smiles, I look up at him and his hazel eyes. They're dancing. I chuckle," What's that face for, Andy?" I ask.
He shrugs. " I'm just thinking about how gorgeous my best friend is." He replies. I laugh and stop walking, Allison and Tyler are already way ahead of us. He turns to me and I shove him playfully.
"Oh stop it." I laugh, walking into the water and looking up at the crescent moon in the navy blue sky. The crickets' chirps ringing in my ear drums: pine green and light gray.
"Why?" He asks, walking towards me," It's true! You just never believe me. You never have." I watch him kick at the soaked sand as his toes leave imprints underneath the gentle lapping lake waves. I shake my head with a small smile. "See! There you go with the little ' I don't believe' smile. I swear, Kitkat. " He chuckles.
"You're such a flirt." I tell him and run through the water. He grows jokingly and races after me. We run in circles in the knee deep water. Our laughs ringing through the night sky: sky blue and rose pink. His lanky arms envelop me as his deep laugh tickles my ear and I struggle to get away, enjoying this little wrestling match. The gravel and sand underneath my feet is covered in algae and my toes grip for a firm surface. The water on his arms drip onto my damp shirt. I break free and laugh as he rolls his eyes when I say:" You can't catch me!" Knowing there's a small drop off a few feet from where I am, I dive into the deeper water.
I hear a scream, it sounds like mine and a sharp pain in my temples. A flash of white seering light burn my eyes and a dull throb erupts in my neck and I groan, but my mouth fills with water and I can't move. My vision blurs and I shut my eyes, every sound is muffled. I don't know if it was because of the water or something else. The pain my head is unbearable as I feel something warm hit the back of my throat. My lungs expel the rest of the air that they have as I hit the bottom of the ledge. I feel a surge of terror. I'm going to die. I think to myself, but I can't move. I just lay there as my lungs scream for air. I feel myself drifiting off and I close my eyes as a light hits them. My body swaying with the gentle currents of the lake water.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Hey! Sky here for a quick review.
So the first thing I want to say is I absolutely love love LOVE the color use in this. I think it is absolutely extremely clever especially because the hues match the mood. I just love it.
Now let's get to the actual criticism. I'm really just fixing some grammatical things that I picked up while reading because I think that the rest is just amazing.
It should say either "waves splash up" or "a wave splashes up..." I honestly don't know what to call this but you made a few small typing errors here and there in the story. A quick read should fix it easily.
So above are quite a few examples and there are a few more after. When you have quotation marks, you have to be careful with the punctuation. You actually didn't finish any of these sentences so you have to replace the period with a comma, and then leave the first letter of the next word lowercase unless it is a proper noun or an I, in which case it would remain capitalized. I fixed these in red for you. Another thing, watch your spacing. "..." You can just start right away, you don't need a space before the quote.
Last thing I want to comment on is the point of view switch. It was very sudden and hard to understand even with the ~ marks there. Especially since it happened a couple times, it took me a little bit to understand what was happening. Maybe try putting the name of the person instead? Just a small suggestion.
I have nothing new to add anymore to this. But I have to say it again, it is absolutely A-MA-ZING!!!! I love this so much.... okay I'm done... sorry
~Sky
Hey there!
I think you've got a really good set-up for a chapter here. I appreciate how you already have introduced the main characters and some sub-plots pertaining to them, like the romantic subplot between Andrew and Louisa. It makes for a really exciting chapter and I'm eager to find out more about what becomes of Louisa after the horrible accident - which was quite the shock.
I commend you for developing some of the basic points of your characters so well right from the start. It definitely gives the reader a reason to continue reading and you're just ahead of them with your plot bait. Sometimes people are really slow getting to this point and sometimes going to fast can also be detrimental, but I think you have balance it well here. Of course, there are always some points for improvement, so I'll get to those now.
Generally, I think your writing is good and descriptive. However, I do encourage you to branch out and find different ways of describing things. I really appreciate how you maintain Louisa's painter's perspective when she describes things in colours, but I feel that sometimes they fall flat. For example, by describing the sky as "navy blue", it seems a little lacking for Louisa, who is obviously a talented and passionate artist. There are quite a few moment where she just points out the colours, which is fine and I agree that you're on the right track, but I think that you can be more creative in weaving in the Louisa's "colour perspective" (for lack of a better term) into her narrative. Consider intertwining her emotions with colours, so that the colourful description is less clunky. An example might be: "The sunset swept the sky like watercolours on a canvas: blue, pink, and creamy orange." That's just off the top of my bed, but I think what I'm trying to get at is that you need to incorporate your colourful descriptions a little more smoothly and more creatively, since Louisa is so artistically inclined and this is obviously central to her narrative.
The romantic subplot between Andrew and Louisa is interesting, although it feels a little forced and a little much coming from Andrew's side. Louisa also seems to be entirely oblivious to his obvious moves, which is not very realistic because of the fact they are so obvious. I feel that since they have been best friends for awhile, Andrew would respect that and not be so explicit in his crush. While I think it's important to have the romantic subplot present here, I think you should let it be more subtle, since I imagine the romance will develop more as Louisa recovers from her injury and deals with its consequences - which is probably going to be a big chunk of your novel, if I am inferring correctly.
I have a little side question: why does Andrew call Louisa KitKat? It really seems so unrelated to her actual name. For the first half of the chapter, I thought maybe Louisa's name was Katherine or something. The nickname doesn't seem very relevant (Lou might be a more sensible option) but perhaps you will explain this in a future chapter. If the nickname is irrelevant to the plot or character development, I might consider a more straightforward option.
I have a few nitpicks:
I'm not sure how this is relevant to its preceding statement or really relevant at all. If you insist on describing her clothing, I think you can find a more suitable place to do so than in the opening line of your chapter.
they
abstract
delete "my"
When did she get up from her canvas?
There should actually be a comma between "over" and the closing quotation. There are actually a few other places where the dialogue is incorrectly punctuated. Let me know if you have any questions about that!
What? Did you mean "grins"?
This is a fragmented sentence. I suggest you correct this.
Louisa
Overall, I think you have a good start to an exciting novel with good prospects for the future plot development and character development. I suggest you do some extra proofreading since most of my nitpicks were tiny spelling errors. Otherwise, this is a really solid chapter. Well done!
Let me know if you have any questions!
Best,
Lavvie