1
The Halloway Forest
When my mom suggested that I would go for a walk, I thought it would be relaxing and relieving. Well not for me as the unlucky duckling of the family. It was midwinter, and I had forgotten to bring a scarf. Slowly I was becoming an icicle because of the horrible low temperatures here in Gerster.
My mother had told me to grab a scarf along, but I was somewhere else with my head when she said that. So here I was in the middle of the halloway forest. With my feet pressed deep in the snow.
It was the first time in years it had snowed. I used to pray to God when I was a little kid to make it snow, but now I hate it. Cold, wet, and irritating nothing but misery.
I blew out my warm breath that formed a white cloud in the air and sulked as I walked even deeper into the forest. may God save my poor neck, I thought
I turned around to head back home since I almost reached the middle of the forest, and mom wanted me home before eight.
I stared at the sky while walking home. The sky here was always so beautiful I could look for hours at it. But this time there was something shady between the clouds. At first, I thought it was an airplane. When it came nearby, I had to look twice before I could believe it. A giant ball of light came straight at me.
An ordinary person would run for his life and not look back. But my idiotic head works differently.
I was frozen in my place and went over my whole life. From the one time, my parents forgot me at the gas station as a baby until the time I put in blue contact lenses to get the attention of my crush.
I wasn't ready to die yet. I'm only 17, and I want to do so much more in my life. I promised my best friends that, when we were twenty-one, we would go to a show of magic mike.
With the thought of my future, a flash of light filled my entire field of vision, and an unknown power made me fall over in the thick layer of snow. A loud squeak filled my ears and made me shudder. I felt the cold soak into my clothes and grunted.
What had happened? Was I dead? Because if death felt like that, I would rather live a little longer. Slowly I tried to get up but slipped back into the snow and landed on my back again.
"I swear I'll burn away all the snow next year," I muttered softly.
I felt something wet running down my forehead and gently brought my hand to my head, and the sticky liquid came on my fingers, the liquid colored red, blood.
I slowly started to hyperventilate. Ever since I was little I had a phobia of blood. It was dirty and made me gag. As I grew up I knew how to deal with it. I thought about what my father had taught me when I had a panic attack. Breathe in once, breathe out twice, breathe in once, breathe out twice.
Slowly my breathing returned to normal, and I felt the panic attack fade away. I took the handkerchief out of my pocket and gently drained the blood. Holding a handkerchief on my head I slowly looked around.
The trees in my environment were either broken or slightly burning. What caused this? A shooting star?
A bit further on I thought I saw something moving. A shooting star doesn't move, right? My curiosity won it over the pain in my head and the fear. I decided to go closer to the so-called shooting star with my thermos full of coffee as my weapon. "I'm ready for it," I said to reassure myself.
"third-time right one," I thought when I tried to get up again. This time I stayed in balance and was standing. Slowly I approached the fallen object with small steps at a time. At each pass, I let a loud sigh of fear escape. "I want to live a long time," I thought, but I could not live without knowing what kind of thing caused that damage.
The thermos trembled along with me when I was so close that I could even smell a burnt smell. I held my breath when I was near and looked away because I would otherwise do in my pants. I prepared myself mentally and psychically. Slowly I opened my eyes and froze.
I couldn't even imagine what I saw here in my wildest fantasies. In front of me lays a creature curled up in a sphere. From the back of the creature, two giant wings rose. The wings looked like those of birds. Some feathers had caught fire," so that was the burnt flesh smell." I thought by myself.
The creature had the face of a man with angelic facial features. It seemed like it was peaceful sleeping. Was it dead? Maybe I'm just dreaming.
I pinched myself to see if I wasn't dreaming. I felt a sharp sting. Nope, I wasn't dreaming. I took a stick that wasn't burning and came closer to the thing. Carefully, I poked it with the wand and ran back some steps for my safety.
"Are you dead?" I asked like an idiot. I wasn't surprised when I didn't get an answer from the thing. I came closer to the creature again and sat down next to it. I now took properly my time to observe it since he wasn't reacting.
His wings were a beautiful white with at the tips some gold. I carefully ran my fingertips over his wings. They were as soft as clouds and as gigantic as at least an elephant. He didn't wear many clothes, and what he did wear was ripped and had a gold-colored liquid on it. His body was rather bony than muscular and had pairs of scars all over it.
My eyes landed on his face. His eyes were behind a curtain of coal-black hair that curled at the tips. He had an expression of pain formed on his face. If you were to describe him in one word, magical. Truly magical.
You could stare at him for hours, days, years. Eternity?
"Can you stop staring like a drooling dog, and I don't know help me?"
I jumped in the air when I heard the deep sarcastic voice coming from the creature.
It started moving and slowly came to its knees as it grunted in pain. Only then my glance landed on a gaping wound located on his chest. Thin strains of a golden liquid came falling from the wound as he moved.
"Are you deaf or something? Didn't you hear me when I asked for help?" it said through its teeth while looking me right in the eyes.
I finally came back to my senses and kneeled next to him. I had no bandage with me so ripped a piece of my shirt but hesitated when I wanted to wipe the liquid away.
"C-can I touch you?" I asked doubtfully. The creature chuckled softly because of my question.
"Yes, you may," he answered shortly. I slowly brought my hands closer to his chest and felt a shiver run down my spine when my fingertips touched him. The wound was worse than I thought. It went from his shoulder to his stomach and was inhumanly deep. I started cleaning the edges of the wound with my piece of fabric.
"What's your name," he asked. I was so surprised by his question that I forgot my name for a bit. He raised his eyebrows and gave me an impatient glance. "Well, are you going to answer me?"
"Juliet, Juliet Greenwright," I said quietly. I continued cleaning the wound without looking at him. I had to admit that I was afraid of him. I didn't even know what he was and why he is here. Maybe he was evil and came to destroy the earth, but the fact that he was wounded made that highly unlikely. My thoughts were disturbed by a firm grip around my wrist, followed by a small scream of agony.
"W-well nice to meet you, Juliet-" he said while breathing heavily. He swallowed before he continued. "I'm Cassiel, friends call me Cas, but-" he screamed again in pain when I tried to cut the surplus skin around the wound. "But since you are not any near of being a friend of mine, you will call me Cassiel."
The only sound heard was the cracking snow beneath our knees and some silent chirps of the few birds here. We stayed silent for a while before I had gathered enough guts to say something.
"W-what are you?" my voice cracked in the middle of my sentence while I tried so hard not to.
"What I am?" Cassiel asked unbelievably. I nodded softly. My curiosity most of the time brings me in danger but maybe this time it is the cause of my death, great Juliet just fantastic. "What do I look like to you?"
A monster, alien/ evil villain, oh no wait perhaps a brain-eating zombie? I could go further with my little list, but that would take too much time.
"Well, Uhm, some sort of mutant ?" Cassiel started laughing uncontrollably about what he regretted after he felt the stinging pain in his chest.
"What's so funny?!" I asked Cassiel genuinely. "You look like a mutant so-"
Cassiel started to shake his head heavily.
"Do I look like a mutant to you? I thought my beautiful face and wings would make clear what I was, but oh well." Cassiel gave me a weak smile " I don't know what else I would expect from a human-like you."
I frowned, " A human like me? Do you think you are better than me or something?" I heard the snow crack under my feet when I stood straight again " If so, u are free to help yourself Cassiel."
I started to pick up my stuff from the ground, which I used to clean his wound with. Who does he think he is some god-like being?! When I had all my stuff packed I turned around swiftly and started to walk away from Cassiel with fast passes. "Idiot" I muttered.
"Wait I need your help! You can't just walk away from me?!" Cassiel screamed at the top of his lungs. I sighed and turned around again what caused the snow to crack loudly.
"Come again? So I can't walk away, but you can disrespect me after I helped you?!" I screamed at Cassiel.
"Yes, I'm superior to you so, I can-" Cassiel said proudly.
I laughed at his words. he was actually serious.
I looked at my watch, 7 p.m. I really had no time for this my mom was probably waiting for me.
"I don't have time for this," I said and turned around. "Please, I need to get home," Cassiel begged.
“Home?”
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,013 Literary Works • 672,842 Reviews
Hi Ducklin ^_^
Zoom here for a review.
I like this. I like that you've thought about this character's development and how they've changed since childhood.
Beautiful how? This is a missed opportunity for some stunning visuals. Skies look different depending on where you are and when you are. Also when setting a scene try not to start with conclusions like this, because it's telling when you should be showing.
Also I think we transition too quickly into the angel's appearance, so starting with a longer description of the sky would help set up your character's ordinary world before you make it unordinary.
I like that you're taking advantage of this moment to slip in some character dev / backstory. Small details but you've cleverly revealed so much in two sentences. When people say "weave backstory into the main story" this is what they mean. Nice!
LOL
This is another example of what Madilyn was getting at. Sometimes the phrasing of your sentences are a bit off. "With the thought of my future" doesn't really make sense.
But that wasn't what I actually wanted to talk about here. The part in bold, "an unknown power", isn't a good description. I think I know what you meant, which is that an invisible force knocked your character down, but that's not what is represented by "unknown power". It's important to convey the correct meaning especially when it comes to the fantastical parts of your story, because those parts are harder for people to relate to already. So definitely work on this.
Sometimes the humour of your protagonist is a bit...in the way. It's great that you're really thinking about making them voicey, and for the most part you're doing a great job! But at times like this I'd rather see you elevate tension rather than alleviate it with comedy. And I get that that's what you're going for with this character: comedy in the face of danger. But you do need to strike up a balance.
You fumbled a bit here with this description. Wet implies liquid so no need to state liquid twice. This is a nitpicky comment to make which I try to avoid, but I only do mention this because I think its something you can work on overall, which is editing to remove unnecessary words.
I also try to avoid revising people's work for them, but just as an example so you're clear on how much direct this sentence can become:
Again, excellent instincts of when to slip in backstory. I think maybe you can go one step further and maybe add a short memory to showcase what sparked the phobia. It just felt like it needed a tad fleshing out.
Another moment I would have liked more visuals. "Slighty burning" is on the verge of "only a little bit pregnant".
Well, yeah? This is another joke that wasn't well placed.
Wait, so after being knocked to the ground and having their forehead sliced open, they are still armed with a thermos? Surely that would be lost in the snow somewhere by this point.
There are times where you slip into present tense, like this.
This is another example of describing something with a conclusion instead of details I can visualise. What is angelic to your character?
Try to avoid clichés like this. You don't have to be entirely original 100% of the time but if you're using a phrase you know you've seen a dozen times before then think about not using it.
Why are we now in second person? Focus more on how the protagonist perceives this angel rather than how the reader will. I get that you probably meant this in a colloquial way but it just felt odd in this context.
This was brilliant. A very good, realistic question. I didn't expect this but it makes complete sense, which is a good thing to do with your writing. Surprise, but maintain logic.
Ooh nice, I like that.
Present tense. I'm guessing you've used present tense in another story recently. Don't worry, everyone does it. If I even read a book in another tense to what I write then the next scene in my story will be that tense ^_^
Wait what? Why is she doing this? How did we go from "can I touch you" to cutting skin without any warning of doing so?
LOL
This ended quite abruptly. If this is the end to the entire chapter I advise you to gear up to it a little better than this. Like, maybe emphasise that the way Cass says "home" suggests something different to Earth, or wherever this is set.
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I'll follow along with spunkyspacekitty's glows/grows structure of giving feedback because it looks fun ^_^
Glows:
1) Even though there were parts where I thought Juliet's "voice" was a hindrance to the story, you were remarkably consistent. The voice was distinct all the way through, so good job. Voice is one of the more instinctual components to writing.
2) The pacing was also really good on a sentence structure / rhythm level. You moved along nicely from one thing to the next. Like, it was easy to read, if that makes sense?
3) Something that helped with 2) is that you didn't bog down the story with exposition. When someone as young as yourself (don't hate me for saying that) nails exposition I'm always really taken aback. Even more impressive is that you did include exposition, but in really strategic places. And not just with that, but with other things too, I could sense that you'd given careful thought to where you place things. Like the way you introduced Juliet's age, I can tell that you realised it was important and found a good place to do it. I like that you're very conscious about what you need your first chapter to do.
4) You made me laugh on a few occasions, which promises some really good character interactions going forward.
Grows:
1) Missed opportunities for visuals
2) Editing words / sentences that don't pull their weight
3) Toning down voice so you can tone up tension
4) I think the inciting incident came too soon, and here's why.
(Because I made this exact same point in one of my last reviews I copied the comment. Just replace dragon with angel and it applies)
Spoiler
Usually in these "protagonist meets dragon and goes on quest" stories, we get a taste for the status quo first. We get to grips with the protagonist's day to day life so that we understand how meeting a dragon might change everything for better or worse. Take the first How to Train Your Dragon film for example (I love using this as an example of story structure). First we see that Hiccup's village is terrorised by dragons, so we have a clear sense of setting. Then we see how Hiccup is ridiculed by his family / the other villagers, which shows us the obstacle Hiccup needs to overcome in life. We see that he is the kind of character who wants to break the norms of his village and think of a new way to help, so we have a goal and motivation. Then, finally, we get to the encounter of a dragon, and instantly we know exactly what that might mean for Hiccup. We see how befriending Toothless correlates to Hiccup's goal and instantly we are invested in his journey.
That should do it! I had a lot to say, mostly good, I think!
Please continue exploring your talent. Things you do well are things that really, really matter, and the things you need to improve are things that don't matter so much.
-Zoom
Thankyou!! I%u2019m really gratefull for your review
And Will work hard to improve but Since english is not my first language it Will be a little bit harder. Ah Well i Will survive !
English isn't your first language? Woooooow. I was impressed before. Now I'm entirely blown back. You're doing a fantastic job. You should be so proud of yourself.
Grows: just some grammatical errors that make sentences not make sense. Like this one, “ ... told me to grab a scarf along,” this sentence would make more sense as ..told me to take a scarf along... or ...told me to grab a scarf... just stuff like that. Here is another example, “ Cassiel started laughing uncontrollably about what he regretted after he felt the stinging pain in his chest.” This might make more sense as, “Cassiel started laughing uncontrollably but then regretted it after he felt the stinging pain in his chest.” Just watch out for little stuff like that.
Glows: I love your character! You really make her come alive with those all too human moments and reactions, like this one, “ An ordinary person would run for his life and not look back. But my idiotic head works differently.”. The characters really make me laugh and Cassiel’s complete and total belief that humans are inferior and obligated to help him is very consistent. And a fun touch to the story.
Is your profile picture the angel?
I see my usage of doing Glows and Grows is spreading...hehe
Yes, yes it is.
Thankyou for the review!! I completly agree with the grammatical improvement that needs to happen, but english is not my first language so grammar sometimes CAN be a mystery! But i%u2019m currently looking for a program that can help me with grammar
And the angels is my profile picture but i%u2019m sure you can make a lot more spicy in you imagination
Lol, that%u2019s cool that you are writing in a language you are not fully familiar with! I think Microsoft Word and Google Docs both check basic grammar.