Hiya, Dest! Happy Review Day! I'm Pan and I'll be frying up a quick review for you today. I'm just going to read through the piece and comment on things as I go along.
Curi knew she was dreaming. She just simply had to be.
Part of me wonders if you could condense this into one line: 'Curi knew she had to be dreaming.' It's up to you, but it's usually better to use less words if you can.
The clouds were fluffy and the sky a mellow blue color. Clear fields of yellows and aqua greens and what looked like a mountain were in the distance.
This description is a little pedestrian. 'Fluffy' is a quite a clichéd way to describe clouds, so it doesn't really grab me. Also, remember that description is more than just using adjectives. Verbs are incredibly powerful descriptors - the most powerful, I'd argue. If you said that the mountain loomed in the distance, or that sunlight honeyed the fields to golden yellows and greens, the images would be much stronger. Always think about your verb choices and whether they contribute to the image.
Slowly, as if someone placed the last remaining piece to her puzzle, she recognized him. This boy had been in her dreams lately. Every time she would try to focus on his dark eyes, she would abruptly wake up. This time, however, she had been granted the chance to truly see him.
I feel like you're giving the game away too early here. This opening is intriguing, but I don't think you need to tell us straight away that the boy is in her dreams and that he always disappears before she can look at him. You could just infer it through her reaction. She could look at him and say 'you', then reach out, only for him to disappear. Then she could wake up.
Try not to explain too much. The audience is smarter than you think, so only tell them what they really can't work out for themselves. The more information you keep from us, the more questions we'll have, and the more interested to read on we'll be.
She opened her mouth to say something, not exactly sure what, but the words never came. To her surprise, the boy had disappeared. She reached her hand out towards him, but only touched air.
Good end to the scene. I like that last line particularly.
Once her parents had thrown their final extravagant dinner party, the dreams started. Her party-animal parents had called it quits on future parties, and in the absence of them, they had started trying to write their own movie.
A part of Curi thought her dreams were influenced by her mentor and her watching so many fantasy movies. Despite the irony, Curi had become close to Ophelia who had sabotaged her parents' party. Somewhere between the months, the young woman had decided to take her underneath her tutelage. In a way, she owed her for being the reason these parties were canceled. She couldn’t exactly explain when the young woman had become her mentor and something of a family friend. Their relatively new closeness still didn't mean Curi understood all of Ophelia's thinking or like how flaky and selfish she could be at times.
Okay, I got a bit lost here. It feels like you go off at an abrupt tangent and I can't quite follow what's going on. Try not to explain everything at once - stay focused on a particular point. Here, you hop from focusing on the dream to the parents' parties, then to the prospect of them making a movie, then back to the dreams, then to the mentor and movies again, then to Ophelia - a character who we know nothing about. It's too much at once. Try to be more gradual.
"Mom…Dad?" She called out softly.
This shouldn't be capitalised. No matter what punctuation dialogue closes with, the following tag shouldn't be capitalised. Examples:
"This is the correct way to format dialogue," she said.
"This is also the correct way!" she shouted.
"This is also the correct way, is it not?" she asked.
"Hmm... I thought someone like her would send one of those young people messages. Texts!” He sounded so out-of-touch with modern life.
This seems almost parody level out of touch. Even older people who aren't too hot on technology usually know what it is.
Her mother, Essence Andrews, got too involved when it came to her daughter’s business which is why Curi had learned to be selective of what she told her.
You don't need to tell us this, because her nosiness is already clear from the fact that she reads Curi's letters. Don't tell us things that are already obvious from the actions of the characters. This type of advice is usually banded under something called Show vs Tell, which I'm afraid I don't have the time to delve into in this review. However, I can direct you to this brilliant article, which gives a great overview of how showing and telling work in writing.
So, I think that's all for specific points. This has real potential as an opener. The first scene with the dream world grabbed my attention, and the question of who the boy is and why they keep appearing in Curi's dreams does interest me. However, I feel like you go a little off-piste once she wakes up. You depart almost fully from the question of the dream boy and start focusing on movies and Ophelia instead, which is a little jarring. I feel like the chapter needs a clearer focus.
Your writing style is mostly pretty good. I've not really got any grammar complaints, though I think your description could be a little more evocative. The biggest thing you need to work on is organising your information. As I've mentioned earlier, you have a tendency to go off on tangents, and it doesn't feel like the points you make lead into one another than smoothly. That's the kind of thing you can sort out in editing, however.
Hope this helped!
Keep writing!
~Pan
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