“Hey Jake you up for a fight?” Thomas asked me, usually I would have instantly denied something like that, but right now I was definitely up for some bets. And anyway it wouldn’t take me more than 5 minutes to kick his ass.
“Sure why not? But remember, if I kick your ass again don’t go running out to your mom” at that James and Luke who were standing close by burst, out laughing. And though, Thomas was glaring draggers at me I couldn’t help but smirk at that.
The fight began almost instantly after that. I let Thomas make the first move, but as usual he was slow and I ducked his punch and in return elbowed him in the rib. He doubled over, but did not lose balance. He then aimed for my jaw- as I predicted- but again I ducked and swiped his leg from beneath him. Now he was on the ground and I was about to deliver my final punch when I heard my phone ringing, at first I decided to ignore it, but then thought better and got my phone from my gym bag, that was lying on the floor by the punching bags. It was mom.
“Hey mom! Watsupp? Why did you call me right now? I was just about to win a fight?” I complained to her. She knew that 5 to 7 was gym time.
“Jake” her voice sounded strained and by the way she said my name I knew something was definitely wrong. “You gotta get home. Now!”
“Hey now hang on a second, first tell me what’s wrong ?And cant it wait untill later?” not that I wanted to bother her when she already sounded so strained, but I loved gym.
“Just get there! We really need to talk” with that she hung up.
By the way she said that I could say, that whatever she needed to talk about was anything but good.
(Page break)
Ten minutes later I was home and was seated on the couch and my mom was seated across from me.
“Mom” I began “why did you call me?”
“Well Jake we might have a problem here” I really did not like the sound of that “uh, I got a promotion but-”
“Well mom that’s great! We should surely celebrate it. Why don’t we go out and grab dinner, there is this new place that has shortly opened. I and Zeke went there last weekend and trust me whe-”
“I got a transfer order and we have to shift houses or rather cities.” She finished cutting me off.
Now that was something that I wasn’t expecting
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125,011 Literary Works • 672,841 Reviews
So I'm just gonna let Costa take credit for what he reviewed, but there's one thing that bothered me throughout the whole prologue: Quotations. If you got a quotation that gets cut off the narrators imagery, please add a comma. It shows that there's no comma and it annoys more than I it would.
Here's an example:
“Mom” I began “why did you call me?”
It just looks sloppy, does it not?
Let me fix it.
"Mom," I began. "Why did you not call me?"
Okay, I'll use another one to see why this can become a problem:
“Well Jake we might have a problem here” I really did not like the sound of that “uh, I got a promotion but-”
The sentence ran on. That is not good. In this case, however, the person who was speaking was implied, so the "he/she said" was not needed (which you did correctly), so putting a period at the end would be fine. Then you would punctuate the followup sentence. Finally, you would capitalize the next quotation since it is a new sentence. Now you got yourself the paragraph properly quoted. If you're still confused, a bet a Google search would teach this better than I can.
One more thing, actually. If you refer "mom" as only "mom" and not a name, you need to capitalize it. That is the name of the narrator's mom, so that would make it capitalized. It is different if the narrator shows possession like "my mom". If you say the name of your sibling like "my ________" then it would sound wrong.
Yes, my critique was sort of limited, but the first one is a major issue. Somebody would mention it later, so you might as well fix it early.
Good luck for the future chapters!
Ho-hum... there isn't much to be said on the story side, as this prologue is rather short. What I can tell is that Jake certainly sounds like a believable teenager, in both good and bad aspects.
I'm not exactly sure if this prologue needed to be written in the first place since the only important plot point is "mom got a promotion and we're moving". Isn't that something that could easily be fit in the first paragraph of the story?
Of course, if establishing his relationship with Thomas and the other kids is something you needed done ASAP, then that's different.
On the technical side, I'd say this could certainly use a bit of polishing. First off, there are a handful of grammatical errors. Take this, for instance:
Quick tangent, "right now" implies the narrative is on the present tense but the rest of your story is in the past. Back to grammar, your comma placement needs to be rechecked and, after the dialogue tag, it'd be best to isolate it with a period. A few tweaks in the order of words used could also make it flow better overall.
So, with all that in mind:
"Hey, Jake. You up for a fight?" Thomas asked me. Usually I would've instantly denied something like that but, at the time, I was up for some bets. It wouldn't take me more than five minutes to kick his ass anyway."
There's something to be said about a seemingly regular teenager using "instantly denied" instead of just "turned him down right away" but I'll withhold commenting on that since I haven't seen much of the character yet.
Another phrase:
I think you misplaced that "say" because it doesn't make much sense. I assume this is what you were going for:
"By the way she said that, I could TELL that whatever she needed to talk about was anything but good."
One more:
Unless it's a name, word tags always start with a minuscule letter. So, it'd be "she finished, cutting me off.".
Finally, you don't need to signal page breaks in your story. It doesn't really add anything in here since all texts are displayed continuously and, in fact, it kinda messes with your flow slightly.
Regardless, I urge you to keep on writing and expanding on this!