Chapter One:
I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock, ringing loudly and disturbing my sleep yet again. My door immediately swung open knocking at my table and tipping over my books again, as everyday. From downstairs, I heard my mum yell something muffled that sounded like a problem for my brother when he went down.
Before I could react, one of the most annoying people in my life charged at me.
I sighed as my hyper brother and dog dashed towards me and tackled me.
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” He yelled loudly as my eyes slowly adjusted to the loud interruption.
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m up, Liam, can’t you see,” I said, yawning and throwing my bed sheets off my cold body along with my brother who had wrapped himself around me like a koala.
“Lyssaaaaaa, my dear sister, can’t you just-“
“I am not doing anything for you, just to clarify Liam.”
“Aweeeee, mannnn-fine. Just come downstairs and after breakfast you can do what I want,” He grinned after he finished speaking only to be interrupted by a pillow thrown at his head. “Hey!” He laughed and left after petting my dog, Lilly, on the head.
Well, she is our dog but she belongs to me anyway.
Practically.
Lilly barked at me, her tongue hanging out her mouth, her tail wagging in between her legs energetically. I smiled and gestured to her to come on the bed. My mum doesn’t allow her to sleep on my bed, she has hers in the corner of my room but she sleeps with me usually anyway, apart from the few times when my brother snitched on me and told mum.
“Come here girl,” I smiled as she licked my face all over and growled happily. She has a tendency to growl when she's happy instead of barking or making any other noise. It’s so cute in my opinion but it tends to scare away little kids.
I freshened up and went downstairs only to get a piece of American cheese thrown aggressively into my freshly washed face. I groaned. “WHY do I have a piece of cheese on my face?!” My mum sighed as I took it off and glared at Liam who was grinning from ear to ear. “Knock it off Liam and Lyssa please be so kind as to sit down and have breakfast before we all get late.”
My eyebrows scrunched up slightly as I remembered I had school. I sighed. I never fit in and I wasn’t trying to be unique and special. I was told I was really special and a ‘miracle sent from the heavens’ when I not only survived the tragic accident from 5 years ago but also recovered really well from my shattered memory. It didn’t fit well with me but I brushed it off everyday, the sick feeling in my stomach was something I was used to at this point in my life.
I walked into the room and all eyes were on me. I was late again.
“Lyssa please sit down quickly if you’re late,” My tutor (Mr Thompson) said, pushing up his glasses.
“Yes, sir, sorry sir,” I hurried to my desk praying Jason wasn’t here today.
“Oh shoot...look away, look away, look away!” I prayed in my head as all eyes were on me still. I rushed to my desk and took out my latest piece of writing based on a fantasy series I was reading.
I started writing and just as the writing was taking me away and I was slowly drifting into paradise someone snatched the book anyway from me.
“Ooh, let’s see what we got here guys,” a familiar voice said. I sighed.
Jason.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I said. He smirked. “Huh, what did you say I didn’t hear anything SPEAK UP,” he shouted the last bit and just as my teacher started taking attendance he threw the book back and proceeded to sit right behind me. I put my book in my bag and tried to ignore the kicking on my chair which had already started.
I sighed. “Darn, my quiet voice,” I thought. Around half an hour later, the kicking still hadn’t stopped and had only increased. Finally, I had had enough. “Stop it for goodness sake!!!” I yelled so loudly that even the teacher stopped talking and Jason stopped moving altogether, his mouth open ever so slightly.
“Lyssa and Jason, detention for you two and get out of my classroom while you’re at it, the time will be notified later on,” Mr Thompson said, sighing.
“Oh great,” I thought to myself.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
Hello there, one of King Koopa’s loyal henchmen, here!
Hello again! ~ Writing Commentary
I really like this description, it does a good job of explaining where our protags mental state is at, and adds that it’s been 5 years since the “accident” that was shown in the prologue. I like how you highlight her different senses. A sick feeling in the stomach, eyebrows scrunching in annoyance, etc.
Aside from that, the writing here is solid! Since it’s a short chapter, I can’t highlight too many other things, but I like writing that is descriptive while also being to the point at the same time!
Love and…detention ~ Story Commentary
I read the review from AnotherCrowInRow below, and I do agree that there are some cliches here, but I assume that you are going to lean into the lore outlined in the Information of Zilus. Also, it is totally okay to have cliches in your writing, especially if they are to be flipped on their heads later!
School… ~ Closer
When it comes to continuing this, I will totally be around to read more if you post more!
Hi there @goodolnoah!! Thank you so much for reviewing my piece, means a lot! Thank you, I am so glad you liked it! I was beginning to think my writing was not as good as I thought, haha.
Thank you for that last bit! I felt relieved reading that, someone liked my style of writing and understood what I was trying to do with the continuous hit of cliches! Yes, I intend to go into lore and mystical stuff later on! Please stay tuned for that!! (I don%u2019t mean to be rude to @AnotherCrowInRow or anyone else by that by the way, hehe) Have a good day/night!<3
Hi! I am here with a review of this work.
The overall first impression looks pretty good. I see minor typos (I'm sure there should be commas in some sentences and dialogues).
I know it may sound superficial, but starting a story with an alarm clock is not exactly a smart move. I do not mean it in a bad way! Alarm clocks are an absolutely normal part of our lives, but in the literary world they have built certain, ahem, unpleasant clichés around them. A lot of people I know often stop reading the story the moment the story starts with the alarm clock ringing (I'm also one of them sometimes, although luckily it didn't happen this time).
Ringing the alarm clock is often a step that writers who are not yet fully "written out" begin to take. From the overall text, I have the feeling that you also belong to them. Sorry if that sounded like an insult - it's not at all. Everyone writes somehow and starts somehow, and most of all finds their own writing style (a lot of authors struggle with this, so from this point of view it makes sense that the whole chapter is a bit interspersed with clichés).
Okay, let's move on from the complicated issue of alarm clocks. Next, we have another cliché with the annoying younger brother, but that's fine (siblings are annoying, especially the younger ones). And the dog! A good story must have at least one dog or cat.
The main character is late for school, there is a character that the main character hates and they both end up in detention.
Sorry, but the whole chapter goes down a very predictable and really stereotypical path. We learn very little about the main character (apart from a mysterious accident a few years ago, which is also a very used trope). So let's talk about tropes and clichés for a moment.
People often associate these two things with something negative, although in principle they are quite cool. But the catch is if you put too many of them in one piece of the story at once, as happened with this chapter. Your writing style seems pretty cool, but while reading it, it was very hard to find anything interesting or original - something I haven't seen two million times in different versions. Of course, this is only the first chapter, so the story will definitely move on with time, but in the future, try to be careful of clichés and try to include more of your own ideas in the writing.
I know that this review may have had a rather unpleasant impression, but I don't mean anything I wrote here in a bad way. I'm just stating how the text is - it has nothing to do with you or how good a writer you are. Simply take from this review what you find useful in the future and don't feel bad! We've all written something very clichéd at some point in our lives. Have a nice rest of the day/night/whatever!
Hello, thank you for dropping a wonderful review! I admit, I did get a bit annoyed reading that but I%u2019m not in my right mind at the moment either, haha. I understand your point and now that I reflect there are a LOT of problems in my writing%u2026 I am determined to prove you wrong though! Although it may seem very stereotypical in my writing, I%u2019ll prove to you that it won%u2019t be just like all the other tropes you%u2019ve probably read in books and step by step make an awesome book! Have a good day/night and thank you for dropping by!!
Hi! I firmly believe that the story will really continue in a great way - I know that starting stories can be very difficult. Sorry if the review seemed too negative - the story is not bad and I'm very sorry if you found my review demotivating!
Thank you so much! Haha, no not at all! Sorry, I feel a bit guilty I didn%u2019t take your review negatively, I tried to take it as improvements! That also means I have a goal- make the next few chapters so great and engaging that I can prove the stereotypes wrong!! Haha, don%u2019t feel bad at all! Thank you! <3
Hi, I’m toast and I’m here to leave a short review of your story Project.Xyria!
First of all, I read this first and thought it was a pretty decent start to a story.
However, after reading your prologue and introduction to Xyria and the entire Zilus universe, I realized there was much more to the story than I first thought.
Your world building seems really fun and I can’t wait for more information to be revealed about this world as I really love worldbuilding in a story.
Now on to the story haha.
The opening scene of the alarm clock ringing is a classic. An easy way to start a story as well as set the setting of the story.
a classic sibling relationship, i love it.
Really relatable lol. Having a quiet voice when you want to speak up us so frustrating.
The story was a really neat start to what I can feel is a vast and rich universe that we’ll get to explore as most of the things from the prologue are still left mysterious.
Overall, I could see some grammatical mistakes here and there, but it didn’t really bother me that much. Just a quick spell check as well as reading your work with proper punctuation and grammatical structure in mind might help a bit.
The paragraphs are really well cut. They’re not conventional, but I’d say the way you paced it made it easy to read and I really appreciate that.
Also, you could do with a few more “colorful” words that add flavor to the text. It’s not necessary, but could definite make your writing more dynamic.
for example)
this is a good example of a more “colorful” writing, as you compare something to something else.
More of these and stuff like ”ethereal sky,” “cerulean clouds,” and “halcyon drift” all sound alot more poetic compared to just “sky,” “clouds,” and “drift.”
This is totally optional thought and just a mere suggestion.
Can’t wait to see what you have in store for the next chapter!~
Thank you so much for your wonderful review! I appreciate the feedback and I would love if you could give an example of a grammar mistake and a spelling error? I thought I had checked my work but I must be mistaken, haha. About the suggestion of using more complex words, omg. I love doing that but I totally forgot about that. Thank you so much overall!
thank you for thinking of my review so positively!
so, I do not know how much mistakes there are but a pretty obvious one is at the beginning where
%u201C I woke up to the sound of the sound of my alarm clock%u201D has the word sound twice in it.
I am not sure if you did it intentionally but I think this is a pretty obvious mistake, so maybe just a little bit of dusting off messy bits here and there can improve the reading experience.
Haha tysm I feel embarrassed I need to remember to read my work properly before posting not getting bored and thinking it is fine, lol. Thank you again!
I changed it right away!