I woke up that morning to the crumpling of paper outside my bedroom window. I rose from my bed and stepped out on the front porch. In front of me, I saw a little paper plane. I picked it up and noticed that it had some writing on it.
I scanned the area to see if anyone was around who might have dropped it, or if someone was playing a prank on me. I couldn’t see anyone, so I opened up the paper plane.
“Ophelia.” I read it aloud, looking at the first word on the page.
I smiled to myself, knowing he would now explain why he had done what he did.
Ophelia,
I didn’t want to leave you hanging, for I care about you too much to see you beat yourself up over what happened to you.
I’m sorry, but I had a reason for what I did. You see, a few years before I met you, when I first got here, I had been inhabited by what I believe might’ve been a demon. Every year since then I’ve been slowly becoming less human, less of myself.
There’s not much you can do to help me, and I fear that seeing you again will result in you being infected by me as well. But I miss you, and if you wish to see me again, I will bring back the river for you.
I just need to see your face one more time, you were the only human being that ever spoke to me. Others had been chosen, but they all avoided me. You gave me a chance, and you gave me your friendship and love.
Come by the river tomorrow. It’ll be there.
x Dan
A single tear rolled down my face, and I clutched the plane to my chest, I would keep it forever. I went to go explain to my mom what had happened, and I read the letter to her. I was a bit hesitant to show her at first, but I realized that I would be in even more trouble if I left without notice.
Of course, she was against it, and thought I was making it all up just for the sake of missing school.
“With all the honesty left in me, I absolutely swear, that I am not lying, and if you still don’t believe me, it doesn’t matter, because I know what is the truth.” I shot back at her, knowing my place. I would fight to see Dan again, because he showed me the magic in my life.
And finally, she believed me. Or at least, that’s what she said. She knew I hadn’t seen any other friends in that small time I was home, and that the writing on the letter wasn’t mine. I was glad to go see him again, and I didn’t care if I’d be taken over by demons, ghosts, or anything in between, I couldn’t lose the chance to experience the amazement of that world, I even wanted it to be my death place, it was too amazing.
So that night I slept like a child, waiting for the time to come when I would die beside my best friend, withering away and losing my humanity right with him. I almost couldn’t wait to get back to the land of my dreams.
End of chapter
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139,354 Literary Works • 672,540 Reviews
This is nicely written, and very heartfelt. I understand the all-consuming longing one child might have to be near another child and go on adventures with him.
I do have some questions, though.
How old are these children? I suppose I can answer this myself, if you go back through the earlier chapters. The reason I ask, is because Ophelia's seriousness and self-confidence mark her, in my eyes, as almost adult. Probably a teenager, and no 12-year-old either. At least fifteen. Both she and Dan speak and write in a somewhat antiquated style... too adult for many teenager. Now, I have known teenagers to talk or write this way, but they are usually very smart and often are amateur writers. Are Ophelia or Dan in this category?
Ophelia still living at home with her mother also confused me a bit. In most of these novels where children are in love and/or exploring demonic and magical worlds, they are on a journey far from home or their parents have been killed off in some incident, forcing the children to grow up quickly, and making for a lot of character development in the novel.
Do the characters leave behind a boring suburban world and go through a portal of some kind to enter a magical world? If so, then that would shed a lot of light on this chapter.
As you can see, my questions are mostly about the content of the story, and I could probably answer these questions myself if I looked through the earlier chapters. Take my words with a grain of salt.... but if you find that maybe you haven't actually answered some of these questions earlier in the novel, then it might be a good thing to do to clarify them for the readers.
Your questions would be answered if you read the first chapter. There is no portal! And they are in "that" category I suppose, but I'm trying to create a sense of mystery.
OK - alright.
Hey, I'm here to give you a review!
First of all, I apology for not understanding your novel fully since I only read this chapter.
Here, I can see you have a nice, emotional event. I like the use of paper plane to convey a message. I just hope you don't tell us about it in one go. Try putting in the protagonist reaction when read parts of it. When she reads the part about Dan leaving her to stop her from beating herself, what's her reaction? What's the process after that? It can't just go to her crying.
Also, there's a lack of settings descriptions here. Try to show us more about it, and how the protagonist connects herself to it. When she's arguing with her mother, does the air become intense? Is it silence between arguments? Settings are crucial to bring up the atmosphere. It would give the impact multiply bigger and better than what you intend to do.
Despite that, I think the narration of the event is nicely done. I'm a bit troubled about how she doesn't care about taken over by demons, ghosts, or anything just to see Dan. This kind of moment doesn't work for me, this act of unconditional love. I dunno, I think you can leave it out. We've already knew how far she would go for him by wanting to go meet him despite the consequences, so thoughts following that up is unnecessary.
Okay, I'm stopping here. Hopefully I'm able to review the next chapter. Keep up the good job!
Heya! Gravity here for a review.
So there's really not much here to review, I just wanted to see this piece get out of the green room. I haven't read the rest of your novel so I have no idea what's going on. But I do have a few things to nitpick at.
The first thing is when Ophelia is telling her mother about Dan. Why would she do that? Her Mom wouldn't believe her? I doubt that even after knowing Ophelia hadn't seen any friends and the letter was not in her handwriting her Mom would believe her, especially since Dan talks about a demon. And, in the event her Mom did believe her, wouldn't she fear for her daughter's safety? Once again, I haven't read the rest of the chapters so I really can't make a judgement of character, that's just the kind of vibe I got.
The second thing is how short this is. The standard book is about 5.5 by 8.5 inches. This chapter is 558 words (being the nerd I am, I put it into a word count tool) which means that this chapter would fill 2 pages front and back, 3 at the very most. I don't know if short chapters is your thing like James Patterson, but I couldn't get through any of the Maximum Ride books because of all the 1 and 2 page chapters. It disrupted the flow of the book and just made reading it very awkward and it made it difficult to keep track of what's going on.
Also, if the rest of your chapters are this short and you have 10 chapters plus an epilogue... that makes this about 30 ish novel pages. Which.... isn't even a novella. The average publisher wants a novella between 20,000 and 50,000 words. If you have 10 chapters, 11 plus the epilogue, even if they were 1,000 word chapters, this isn't even a novella. I think the concept is very interesting but I think you need to keep adding to it.
I'm sorry if I sound mean, I really did find this singular chapter very interesting. Keep Writing and please keep adding to this, I think it's really good so far.
XOXO,
Grav
Sorry, but this is my first completed novel. I'm not the best at writing really long chapters as no one on here would read them or review them. I am not experienced enough to properly write a novel, so it's not my fault.
But thanks for the review nonetheless.
Hello, hullo, how's it going, howdy - yeah. RagingLive here to review Chapter 9 of Paper Planes, yes indeedy!
I haven't read any other chapters of yours, so I can't offer you much feedback on the plot, however I found this chapter short and sweet, regardless of what I don't know.
By reading this chapter, I wonder if maybe we could improve on details. You seem to tell us a lot of what is going on, but you don't really show it. I'll quote you opening paragraph for you and kind of try an example of how you could spice it up a bit.
Okay, the flight of paper planes - I'm assuming that is what she heard - doesn't equal crumpling. Unless, of course it had an unfortunate flight directly into the window. Did Ophelia (I love that name by the way) rise from bed and step directly out on the front porch? Is her bed right next to the front door? This may be a bit nitpicky, but I'm trying to get you to think of ways you could add descriptive details and imagery. Here's an example to get you brainstorming.
Spoiler
Long? Maybe. But I hope you see that it's much more interesting to read. While you're writing style probably isn't identical to mine, try to incorporate some imagery and details using your own style. I think you will find your stories much more colorful and gripping.
The ending was very gripping, and other then the lack of details and such as mentioned above, I couldn't find a thing wrong with this chapter! I hope to catch up on them later, if I may!
Until then, keep writing and keep on smiling!!
~RagingLive
Thanks, Rage! I appreciate this review~