z

Young Writers Society


12+

My new life: Chapter 2

by EPICnumber1


CHAPTER 2

My mind lingers between heaven and earth, not knowing which to settle down to. I am partly counsious of where I am. No where. As hard as I try to open them my eyes stay clamped shut. I wait for something to happen, for my mind to decide for me and it does.

A bright, bright light. White light. Shinning down on me reflecting off almost anything in it's reach.  Blinding me. Shock, I was- am still in shock. Am I dead? I must be. My eyes drift down to my shaking hands. I hold them up to the bright white light. I can now see by my thin, bony hands that I must've been under for at least a week. Not suprising really as I have been in a coma for much longer in my lifetime. I am in a hospital, a bloody hospital. I gaze round at the unfamiliar instruments lying beside me. Nope definetaly not dead!

I can faintly make out a nurse enter my privite hospial room with a clipboared in her clammy hands. When her eyes meet mine I see relief overcome her. I can see she wants to jump for joy but she tries to control her self. "Miss. Ryson! You're awake!" she shouts a bit too loud.

 I finally ask the question that has been burning a hole in my brain."How long was I out for?"

"Miss. Ryson you were in a coma for almost a year, 10 months!" she claims.

" 10 MONTHS!" I squeek ( my voice still rusty) but I can't have it was only shock  from the funeral.

" Oh no Miss. Ryson you had a full on cardiac arrest" she says once again way too loud.

"caused by what?" I ask.

"We still arn't sure" she says. " You were lucky you didn't die" she continues. " your saviour was someone who knew a cardiac arrest when he saw one. A doctor, one of ours" she says once again with a smile on her face.

I slump back on to my bed forcing my self to accept what I just heard. A sudden bang! The door bursts open and in comes my mother. I see a blur of blonde hair, then a glimps of a blue shirt. She stands over me as I lie facing the white light. Blinding me once again but on purpose so I can't look my wrinkled mother in the eye. But I know she looms above my head saying words I can 't understand as her voice is blurred with tears. I feel something wet drop on my forehead, then again on my arm. Tears. Not my own but familiar, they belong to my mother. She forces me to sit up in bed and to take a sip of water- I drain the cup, still thirsty for more. I can see her face properly now, her tired eyes distinctive by the bags that hang dreadfully under her eyes and her blotched face, not a sign of makeup in sight on her worn down face. Unnoticably I have aged 10 months but even more unnoticalbly so has she, she looks like she has aged about 10 years. I can just about make out my reflection in her glitering eyes I know she is 38 now and I am 17 no longer 16 but we both look as though we have aged 10 years at least! I wrap my arms around her neck and her hugs me back.

I am not aloud out of hospital for another week. They have already done about a million tests on me in the last 8 hours I have been concious of anything. But they soon found the cause of my cardiac arrest. Apperently I had a heart desiese I didn't know I had before it happend and with all the shock from the funeral I had a cardic arrest. The funeral. I forgot, how I wish Rosa would come bursting through the hospital doors, arms filled with flowers. But she's dead so that's impossible. My head tilts upward hoping to see her in heaven. I can imagine angelic wings on her back and a shimmering halo above her head floating with no strings attactched. A white flowing dress floating at her heels. Another angelic look on her face as she floats off into the distance but of course this is just a frigment of my surreal imagination. As soon as the familiar voice of my mother wakes me up from my daydream I leap back under into a deep sleep as a surging pain shoots through my arm, a needle.

I dream of the accident I picture it clearly in my head. The swirling colour of the coach seats even. I am laughing whilst I watch her dance and sing in the aisle. I encourage her. A big mistake. Her beautiful voice singing in perfect tune drains out the sound the rain makes when It is battering on the windows. Then she moves further down the aisle towards the driver who is humming along but the the teachers are willing her to get back in to her seat. I wish she did. She dismissed them with a dramatic wave of her hand. Her foot slips on some left over sick that has been there for years. Rosa falls onto the driver causing him to smash into the side of the motarway wrecking the front of the coach, no harm done. But then the roof collapses, earsplitting screams fills the air. Almost everyone ended up in hospital but one death. Rosa's. Luckily the driver suvived because Rosa took full impact of the roof protecting him. Even in a dream, I can make out the smell of blood lingering in the air, then I see it a drop of blood on the floor. Rosa is covered in it.

My mind skips the next few details but the nightmare ends with the whole of our class including the teachers going home in about 9 ambulances. I broke my arm in the accident. I can remeber the exilerating pain shooting through my arm, a pain that never left my arm till I was in hospital. 2 teachers and 6 students ended up in full body casts for about 6 months or thats what they told me. I was lucky as I hid under a coach seat as I saw the roof wavering up above threatening to crush us all. I didn't utter a word but slid under my seat while everyone suffered. By sliding back out again is when I broke my arm the purple and green coach seat fell on to my arm braking it in 5 places!

My mind surges back to the sureal life I am forced to live. I finally let go of Rosa as I push the nightmare to the the back of my mind. Mother and about 4 nurses are fanning me with magazines willing me to wake up but I keep my eyes clamped shut enjoying these few moments of tranquility. But as always the tranquility ends with the sound of my mother's booming voice.


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Tue Aug 12, 2014 2:28 am
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ThereseCricket wrote a review...



Hi! Cricket here for another review as promised/threatened! XD

Couldn't help it darling... had to read some more!

Alright, before I start on nitpicks and the like, I do have one thing that I think I should talk about with you first.

PARAGRAPHING.

Well, I'm going to pull out a paragraph and show you what needs to be done to it.


I slump back on to my bed forcing my self to accept what I just heard. A sudden bang! NEW IDEA BEGINSThe door bursts open and in comes my mother. I see a blur of blonde hair, then a glimps of a blue shirt. She stands over me as I lie facing the white light. Blinding me once again but on purpose so I can't look my wrinkled mother in the eye. IDEA ENDS, AND NEW ONE BEGINSBut I know she looms above my head saying words I can 't understand as her voice is blurred with tears. I feel something wet drop on my forehead, then again on my arm. Tears. Not my own but familiar, they belong to my mother. IDEA ENDS AND NEW ONE BEGINSShe forces me to sit up in bed and to take a sip of water- I drain the cup, still thirsty for more. I can see her face properly now, her tired eyes distinctive by the bags that hang dreadfully under her eyes and her blotched face, not a sign of makeup in sight on her worn down face. IDEA ENDS AND NEW ONE BEGINSUnnoticably I have aged 10 months but even more unnoticalbly so has she, she looks like she has aged about 10 years. I can just about make out my reflection in her glitering eyes I know she is 38 now and I am 17 no longer 16 but we both look as though we have aged 10 years at least! IEA ENDS AND NEW ONE BEGINSI wrap my arms around her neck and her hugs me back.


OK, the problem we have here, is the combination of too many ideas into one. Paragraphs are one idea. ONLY ONE. Not ten, and not twenty. So I put in bold where an idea began and ended. Where it ends, a new one begins. OK?

Alright, so you see that there's a main focus for each part that I separated, right? Now a paragraph is typically three to five sentences, depending on the length of an idea. With a novel chapter, they usually stay that length. USUALLY. Now like I said before, it depends on the length of the idea.

Say you want to describe someone. Well describing that someone is one solid idea. ONLY ONE IDEA. BUT, if you want to go through some actions of two people, then that would be two separate ideas and you'll need to separate them.

Next thing I wanted to talk about is proper grammar. Now I know I gave you a long spill on it, and you're probably a little tired of it by now, but figured I'd better do it anyway.

OK, when a reader goes through, and reads something, their brain is looking for errors. Just the way the human mind works, really. If one word is mis-spelled is basically guaranteed that they'll see it (almost). If you have a funny way of saying something, or poor sentence structure, then, although they may not instantly grab onto what it is wrong with the sentence, but they will think something is wrong, and their eyes will sorta stumble over it. They basically won't get the point as effectively as you want.

So like cleverclogs demonstrated before hand, try to keep your quotation marks directly next to the speech, in all circumstances. Also, always have a comma before going into a dialogue tag (she replied, she asked, ect..). Capitalization for the beginning of a sentence, IS ESSENTIAL. Don't ever forget that, hon. XD

Now the next thing, I thought I'd talk about is your way of doing dialogue all at once in the beginning, and then three to four paragraphs of description in the end. Usually I wouldn't really talk about it, as it's usually a question of style and not error, but here I figured I'd comment on it anyway.

To really keep a reader fully engaged, you will need to keep dialogue and description balanced to a certain level. I mean, its totes alright to have a paragraph of some sort of description (as long as you don't do four paragraphs in a row of that), and then do a little bit of dialogue and so forth. But my main point is, you should typically have dialogue intermixed with your description, in order to create a even balance for your reader. That way they can focus on the setting and the characters, at the same time! :) Not only will you keep your readers attention for the entire chapter (or book, ect..) you will also create a balanced perspective for your reader!


2 teachers and 6 students ended up in full body casts for about 6 months or thats what they told me.


I'd suggest instead of putting "2" I'd just write in "two" instead. Same for the other numbers. XD

I am in a hospital, a bloody hospital


If it's bloody, then you'll have to describe that. HOW exactly is it bloody? Blood on the floor? Where? XD

OK, and that's it from me! Certainly hope this helped and let me know if you have any questions!

Keep writing!

~Cricket




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Mon Jul 14, 2014 2:14 pm
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cleverclogs wrote a review...



Hello there!

The first thing I noticed when I read this was the title. All the exclamation points are very off-putting to me, and I almost didn't bother reading this because of them. If you want to be taken seriously, I suggest removing them. After all, Shakespeare didn't write Hamlet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, did he? :)

Also, many of your paragraphs are pretty long. They're a little daunting and tiring to read. Maybe you could break them up into several paragraphs?

Overall, this was a pretty well-written work, but it has a lot of typos and confusing errors that could probably be fixed with some proofreading. I'm not going to comb through this and pick every single error out because I don't like to hold writers by the hand and tell them to do this and that exactly, but I'll show you a few so you have an idea of what to look for.

"Miss. Ryson you were in a coma for almost a year, 10 months!" she claims.

" 10 MONTHS!" I squeek ( my voice still rusty) but I can't have it was only shock from the funeral.

" Oh no Miss. Ryson you had a full on cardiac arrest" she says once again way too loud.

"caused by what?" I ask.


This dialogue is very sloppy. Not because of the content, but because of the technical errors. It looks unedited. If it were written correctly, it would look like this:

"Miss Ryson, you were in coma for almost a year! Ten months!" she claims.

"Ten months!" I squeak, my voice still rusty. "But I can't have. It was only shock from the funeral."

"Oh no, Miss Ryson, you had a full-on cardiac arrest," she says, once again way too loud.

"Caused by what?" I ask.


This is much neater and also grammatically correct. I'll point out a few more things, then leave you to proofread yourself. :)

I am not aloud out of hospital for another week.


"Aloud" should be "allowed".

I can remeber the exilerating pain shooting through my arm, a pain that never left my arm till I was in hospital.


"Remeber should be "remember". Also, you not only spelled "exhilarating" incorrectly, you used it incorrectly. Exhilarating means "making one feel very happy, animated, or elated; thrilling". I'm sure that having a broken arm didn't make the narrator feel happy. Maybe the word you were looking for was "excruciating".

Also, you tend to change tenses sometimes, like here.

Then she moves further down the aisle towards the driver who is humming along but the the teachers are willing her to get back in to her seat. I wish she did. She dismissed them with a dramatic wave of her hand.


You're in present tense for the first two sentences, and then you change to past tense in the last. Tenses are very important to writing; please try to same in the same tense! Fortunately, this doesn't happen too terribly often in your piece.

There are many more typos and mistakes like this, which I'm sure you'll catch if you read through it. Now, content!

I want to talk about your third-to-last paragraph, the one that starts with "I dream of the accident". It was confusing to me at first, but only because I've never heard the word "coach" be used for a bus. Once I understood that it made more sense. It seems a bit silly to me, though. I know that if I were on a field trip and someone started dancing and singing in the aisle, they would be sitting right next to a teacher in no time. It makes me feel absolutely no sympathy for Rosa, and I get the feeling that I'm supposed to be sad for her death. I'm not. She endangered the lives of an entire bus of people by goofing off. Maybe you could write her death in a way that she seems like less of a selfish jerk. I don't like Rosa right now. See if you can change that. Make me feel for her. I can tell that the narrator feels guilty for egging her on, and that's good.

Okay, rant over. Now I can talk about what I liked.

I'm generally not a fan of works written first person present tense (Hunger Games couldn't quite pull it off), but I did like the way you used it in yours. It makes the whole scene seem kind of surreal, and it really gets the reader inside the narrator's head.

I liked your description, too, it was very elegant at times. The part where the narrator was talking about how her mother looked like she'd aged 10 years instead of twelve months was particularly good to me.

Overall, this is a good piece, but it would definitely be better if you could proofread and make sure that everything makes sense. It's part of being a writer. Keep on writing! :)




EPICnumber1 says...


Ok thank you for reading this I will use all of your ideas for this piece :)



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Thu Jul 10, 2014 7:50 pm
EmeraldEyes wrote a review...



Hi.
I was really confused by the way this was written.
You had all the dialogue at the top and all the description at the bottom.

There's a few typos and things in this:

"We still arn't sure" she says. " You were lucky you didn't die" she continues. " your saviour was someone who knew a cardiac arrest when he saw one. A doctor, one of ours" she says once again with a smile on her face.


"aren't" and "your" should start with a capital letter.

'"ours"' you also need end of sentence punctuation there. :)

You also need a capital letter at the beginning of the second song:

" Oh no Miss. Ryson you had a full on cardiac arrest" she says once again way too loud.

"caused by what?" I ask.


"caused."

This work is good, but it could be made great with editing. :)

Keep writing!




EPICnumber1 says...


:) thank you for your review




Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
— Robert Brault