It was the end of the school year. That time of almost unparalleled joy for many students and teachers. Two such students, one with bouncy, curly blond hair and a The Who t-shirt, and the other with clipped brown hair and a sensible polo shirt were walking out of their high school. They were making plans for their summer, many of which wouldn’t be fulfilled. They both stopped at the almost-overflowing, graffitied dumpster outside Westwood High to throw away old school supplies while they still had a chance.
“I don’t have anything left, man; I just pulled up a garbage can and tossed everything in my locker into it,” Jeremy, the blond-haired one, said.
“Wait a sec, I have a notebook and some pencils to throw away real quick,” Jake, the other student, said as he tossed the school supplies into the dumpster.
“Alright, let’s go then; Angela’s having some people over at her house,” Jeremy prompted.
Hours passed. All the students, faculty and janitors had left the high school before anything happened to Jake’s notebook and pencil. Then, under cover of darkness, a small nimble figure crawled up and jumped in the dumpster.
“Wow! A whole backpack! Nice!” she exclaimed as she started to shovel books and other discarded items inside it.
Her name was Sarah. She appeared quite normal; ponytail, semi-dirty charity run t-shirt, glasses, straight brown hair, nothing out of the ordinary for a 13-year old girl. She craved knowledge; she hadn’t gone to school in half a year and she usually had her nose buried in a book whenever she could find one.
Sarah hadn’t been an orphan for very long. It was only 2 years ago her parents decided to abandon her and her 8-year old, black-haired brother, Blake. Just like they were nothing but possessions. They had been moved to 3 different foster homes, each more horrible than the next. After one particularly horrible incident, she just ran away. In the middle of the night she grabbed her brother and just took off, hoping to find somewhere to stay. They had actually been doing alright due to Sarah’s quick thinking and resourcefulness; she was wearing a scrunchie made from the plastic that holds soda cans together and colored with purple sharpie. It was her idea to search through local dumpsters to find supplies.
“End of school is always the best…” she said to herself.
She spotted Jake’s discarded notebook and flipped through it.
“Whoa! No writing in it at all! And all these pencils by it!”
Deciding she couldn’t carry any more, she jumped out of the dumpster.
“What did you find?” asked Blake.
“If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be?” Sarah asked excitedly, disregarding his question.
“Umm, well I’ve always wanted to meet a dragon...” Blake replied.
“All right. Dragons it is,” Sarah declared.
Blake watched, perplexed as his sister wrote so fast it seemed as if the paper in the notebook was going to start on fire. He looked on excitedly, wondering what it could be that was possessing his sister, making her eyes glaze over. He had seen her write and doodle in notebooks before, but this was different, like she was in a different world.
Sarah always seemed to like writing in notebooks, Blake remembered. One time, when they lived with their real parents, Sarah practically sprinted home to show them something she had written in class. When their parents had shooed her away, she spent the rest of the night in her room, filling up an entire notebook.
“Okay. It’s done. Read this,” Sarah said as she handed him the notebook.
Blake read the story, his eyes growing wider with excitement the farther he got. Finally, once he finished he kept turning the pages, hoping there was more.
“That was awesome!” he declared. “It’s like I was really there! With the dragons!”
“I know, right?” Sarah said. “This notebook and these pencils are our ticket to anywhere. Anyplace or anything you want to do we can do. We can fight monsters, fly over the Empire State building, you name it! Anytime you feel sick of living on the streets you can just write what you’d rather be doing. I promise that everything won’t seem as bad then.”
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,781 Reviews
Wow! This was good. Are you writing more? I loved how you explained the characters! I didn't see any thing wrong. But hey. I stink at the kind of stuff. well hope you write more!
--Jessie.
Hey Hypknowsis, Evi here. ^_^ This was a nice little read. I don't really think you need to make this any longer, really-- you have enough story to work with, and it would be pointless to try and tack another scene onto this just because you want it to be longer. But! That's just my opinion.
Info-dumps/Showing-vs-Telling
Basically, your main issue is information delivery, or info-dumps and telling things you should show. What exactly does that mean?
First of all, this was well-written! However, there were two main issues I found:
So! You're going to hear this advice a lot over your time on YWS.
This is a mixture of an info-dump and a whole lot of telling. The first sentence, for example, tells us what day it is, when readers should be able to tell just because of what happens in the story. You don't need to tell us school is ending when you show your characters dumping out their school supplies and making summer plans. Showing instead of telling makes things more interesting, and generally gives more description. ^_^
And in the third sentence, you're giving us straight up description of your characters without being very informative. For example, we don't even know their genders through what you're telling us. If you must do a sentence of pure physical description, play around with imagery-- is he smirking like a criminal who didn't get caught? Add some more personal touches to the way you explain their appearance to us, besides just hair color and shirts.
Secondly, I think your perspective is a bit jumbled. Even though it's in third person, and so there's no real main character, the transition between Jake and Jeremy's part of the scene and Sarah and Blake's part might be smoother if you chose a more solid perspective. Which really means I'm suggesting you write from Sarah's POV the whole time, instead of having her jump in towards the middle.
How would you edit this that way, though? Well, I'd just add some parts in the beginning where Sarah is watching two boys (she probably wouldn't know their names, so neither would the readers) dump out perfectly good school supplies. She might feel a bit angry at their waste-- perfectly good notebooks and pens! --but then she realizes that no one else will use those supplies, so why shouldn't she? This way you can show readers more of Sarah's character development through her reaction to these lucky boys' conversation.
So, overall, this has tons of potential! ^_^ I'd just make your main character clearer by focusing the story through her viewpoint, and showing instead of telling things!
Oh, and also.
All of those numbers? (13, 2, 8, 3) They need to be written out, like thirteen, two, eight, three, etc. That's just a general rule of thumb. Write out numbers that are two wrods or less.
PM me for anything!
~Evi
I'll be somewhat of your reviewer.
You are giving a series of things and you should seperate faculty from and with a comma.
Other than that, it's a reallly good read. I liked it, although it was kind of heartbreaking that they ran away and lived on their own. But you had a good way of making them feel like they were in another world... it was cute.
Keep writing!
As to making it seem longer, I would maybe see where they go from the dumpster? Follow their story more, but don't change anything. Add.