A boy slunk into the plush blue chair, although maybe that description was not applicable anymore. After all, this "boy" was nearly a man, even if his body hadn't quite realized that yet. Wide, almost vacant, blue eyes stared at the bright screen of the laptop in front of him. The monitor illuminated his slender hands as they loosely grasped the mouse; the occasional click and scroll was the only thing to be heard in the lab. It wasn't a biology lab. Nor was it a technology lab. But it was a mixture of the two... Yes, it was a biotechnology lab.
The silence was suddenly broken by the knock at the door. The boy jerked due to the sudden, sharp knock. He stood up making the chair squeal a creaky shreak.
"Who's there, man?" he shouted at the firmly shut door. His voice cracked a bit; it was still recovering from the quite unmanly noise that erupted from him at the knock.
" Zask, it's me... Ohio", came the known voice from outside.
The boy opened the door saying, "Oh, Ohio! How are you my friend?!"
They hugged each other quite loosely. Obviously, the glaring sun wouldn't allow anyone to hug so tightly.
"I am fine, Zask!"
"Come inside, my friend!", said Zask.
"I would come in even if you don't ask me to, haha!", said Ohio, as he stepped in.
"Well you are looking different today...", Ohio pointed out.
" Maybe it's because I haven't shaved my beard since many days..."
"But you have grown leaner too... What is it that has kept you so drowned in your work? Any new discovery or---"
"Ah...it is, a kinda-- experiment...well, hmm...ah yes an experiment... Umm... Oh, I'm not understanding how to explain it. But if it gets successful then...let's see.", said Zask, "And how are your surgeries going on, Dr Ohio?"
"My surgeries...yes, they are going smooth now. I haven't made any mistake recently. Patients come to the hospital with a glass sheet in their helpless hands...glass sheet of faith, trust and belief. And if it gets shattered, then a jagged piece of the broken glass may seriously hurt the person's heart really painfully. So it's a sin. Oye! I forgot that you called me doctor...now don't you forget that you are yourself a doctor, Dr Zask..."
"Hmm...and I am a doctor without a stethoscope.", said Zask.
"And our white coats resembles too...only you don't have an additional green coat like me."
"What would you like to have?"asked Zask.
"Anything cold would do..."
"Kolgi! Serve us two orange juices...cold...added with few ice cubes.", ordered Zask.
"Kolgi? Who's she?", questioned Ohio.
" Not she...say "it". It's a robot."
"Wow! That's great!"
Kolgi, the robot served them the glasses of orange juices and left.
"Nice bot, Zask!"
"Liked it, eh?!"
"It's lovable."
"Ohio, your phone's ringing--"
"Yes..." He picked up the phone.
"Hello... yes speaking... What!? Okay okay! Wait a sec, I am coming there immediately..." Ohio spoke on the phone with a frown between his eyebrows. His voice was serious and full of responsibility.
"Zask--"
"I understood, Ohio... You have an emergency. Go fast!", Zask completed Ohio's statement.
Ohio left the lab. Zask got lost in thoughts of his new inventious experiment.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,816 Reviews
Heya, Eros. Casanova here to do a review for you.
Anyway, let's talk. The first thing that I liked about this, surprisingly, was th dialogue, minus the ellipses. It's not that bad in any sense, and I could actually imagine people talking like this in this situation, so I will give you props for that. Anyway, onward.
Another thing that I noticed was that your chapters seem to end so suddenly, usually, and I think that you could continue on and let it end at a latter date. It's a short chapter, as I've seen you do quite commonly, but I do think the chapter would be stronger with more emotion and more description. That's one thing I didn't like about this was that you don't take your time to describe the scene properly, and that you don't seem to really initiate any contact with the surroundings around your characters and rather focus on the characters words rather than anything else. And That's good for a screenplay because everything is described when the play is in its physical form, but for a novel chapter you need to have more description so the reader can put themselves in the situation and the scene so they won't be completely lost at a later date, if that makes any sense.
I'll wait until the next couple of chapters to talk about your characters, but I hope this helped
Keep on doing what you're doing,
Sincerely, Casanova
Thank you soo much for the helpful tips, Casanova!!
Hey there Eros! Let's jump right in.
To start off, beware of passive verbs, like "was sitting." This is much weaker than "sat" here, and is basically a waste of a word here. The descriptions here read as awkward. "A fair boy in his late teens" mainly just screams robotic description to me. You also switch from past tense to present tense here. This is a common thing writers do (I've done it a lot in what I'm writing right now!) but it's still confusing; it's often better to pick one tense and just stick with it. Here's an example of me trying to not make the descriptions not feel as robotic and like they're being listed off, while also keeping in past tense:
^So this fixes a few problems with the first paragraph. It also serves as fitting the personality of the narrator more with later on in the paragraph.
I would also avoid weak verbs such as "got." There's so much more you can do with verbs (although ironically not much in this instance) but verbs like rose, stood, jumped all serve the same purpose, but are stronger verbs and thus create a stronger image with the reader.
So, there are two articles on YWS that explain dialogue grammar much better than I can. This one is simple to go along with and explains the basics well, while this one expands a bit on the previous one for more explanation. I strongly urge you to read them, they're very informative
Also, the use of "!?" or "?!" are poor ways to convey emotion that you can do much better by just describing how the person was saying their dialogue. For example, instead of:
You can do:
See, not only does it give the person much more personality, it also lengthens your story, which is mostly never a bad thing.
General Thoughts
So, I like where this story is going, but the execution of it seems... well, robotic. I found that I couldn't really get into the character's personalities because the dialogue itself didn't really have any personality. It felt like the same person was talking to themselves. I am interested in this "Sun" character and why it doesn't allow tight hugs. Maybe that's why they are also talking so formally, since they're being monitored.
I would love more personality given to these characters, both in their actions (as I pointed out in my review above) and their dialogue. Right now, the character that has the most personality to me is the narrator, and I don't think that was your intention. Nevertheless, keep writing, and I hope this has helped! <3
Hey, Omnom! Your review is really great! I loved how you have put the things up. You have very beautiful ideas. I have made the changes. And I really really appreciate your suggestions. I loved them very much. Thank you sooooo much, Omnom.
No problem! And thank you for the compliments
I hope to read more from the story, definitely
Ya sure, I will tag you when I release next chapter
That’s a bit much for an opening sentence. I suggest condense this and make it a little more compelling, what about this is so intriguing we must read on? Also I suggest to change the colour of the chair, it bothered me that his eyes were also described as blue in the same sentence. Either that or make a comparision of the two. Finally, you went into way too much detail to describe how he was using the mouse. Again, what value does this information really add to the story?
Silence is an absolute state. To then contradict this with a rotating fan was very strange.
When describing something, as a rule of thumb, focus on what it is and not what it isn’t. Reading two sentences in a row describing what the room isn’t was very annoying, even despite the fact that you clarified immediately after.
It’s a pet peeve of mine to be addressed directly from a story, unless there is a very good reason to do it. I don’t want to be reminded that I’m reading, I want to slip into the story and away from reality.
That’s two lines of dialog in a row with both a question mark and an exclamation point. Try to avoid doubling up on punctuation like this unless the situation calls for it.
It’s not obvious, because I had no idea the sun was even a factor until mentioned. I dislike bold narrations like this. Aleta mentioned the other point about how this is also confusing in general.
This means he literally said the words “ha ha”, which he didn’t, because nobody would.
Nobody says “two-three” days
This was extremely unnatural. I have no idea why they are talking like this. Also doctors call other doctors “doctor”. It’s their title.
Final comments:
1) I got to the part where a robot strolled onto the scene and had to stop. The dialog was very confusing and unnatural and made me lose all understanding of what was going on. Hardly any of the dialog had a tag, so I had no understanding in terms of body language or tone of voice, making both characters seem like bodiless voices exchanging gibberish.
2) I couldn’t remember any characterisation besides the protagonist having blue eyes. If you don’t help us envision the unique ways your characters react and feel to different situations then we’ll end up making things up for ourselves, which isn’t what you want (at least to this extent, it’s okay to sometimes let your readers generate information to fill in the blanks).
Overall I really suggest to focus on characterisation so we can truly imagine the exchange between these two characters. If you do make any improvements I’ll be happy to read this again and comment further.
Zoom
Thank you so much for your review, Zoom! Hmm... You are saying correct... I'll definitely edit the parts as soon as possible.
But actually the significance of Zask's blue eyes is given in the next part. And the description of mouse was to describe Zask's fingers. The robot was to show that he works in a an advanced lab, where he gets all the possible resources. And they are very close friends and thus don't like to give or take respects. They are friends more and doctors less. They don't want their professional lives to interfere in any way with their friendship.
But I also see the other part of the part and hence I feel the need to correct it's flaws. Thank you so much again!
Hey, Aleta here for a review. I'll be focusing primarily on punctuation or grammar mistakes.
I noticed with your dialogue that you seem to put the comma outside of the dialogue when it should actually be inside the dialogue unless you are just using a period or an exclamation mark. It would be proper to use the comma form like this:
"So you are the new kid," Jim laughs, "where did you come from kid?"
It was silence everywhere in the lab.
This sentence had some awkward vibes. If you read this aloud, it sounds odd. Probably because you wrote "it was silence". You could try saying something like: The lab was silent.
shreak.
Did you mean shriek?
Obviously, the glaring sun wouldn't allow anyone to hug so tightly.
I think this needs some further explanation. How would the light of the sun prevent them from hugging? Perhaps you could explain the light was blinding so they couldn't hug for long and had to move to a more shady spot? Just a suggestion.
et's see.",
Period and comma is not correct.
your surgeries going on,
Taking 'on' off completely would make this flow better.
loveable.
Just something small that needs to be fixed.
got lost in the thoughts
Got lost sounds awkward. Perhaps try something like: Soon after Ohio left the lab, Zask became lost in his thoughts of the new inventions experiment.
I hope I helped.
Firstly thanks for the review. Secondly thanks for the correction you mentioned. I will edit it, for sure... Yes, dear Aleta, your review helped me very much.
And the glaring sun suggests, that it was growing really very hot. So the heat prevented them to hug tightly... Like sweaty sweaty hug is not liked...
Oh okay the sun part makes more sense now.