Jasnah arrived at Desa Mahkota School at early morning. It was a national secondary school, but the teachers had told them this one was different than the one they attended before, that this was the kind of school for students of Form Six, the highest form for a secondary school, the step before they went to the university. They had three semesters, the first one starting at the middle of the year, while the last one at the middle of the next year—at nineteen, Jasnah was on her second semester.
She liked this school. Interaction could be hard since most of its students were Chinese who spoke Chinese, so when they talked to each other, she could not understand them. It was when they communicated with her that they used Malay language, and even then, they would mix it with English. She was not a strict national language’s enforcer, but it seemed to her making a full sentence using one hundred percent Malay should not be that hard.
She parked the car at the parking lot beside one of the school blocks and went to the block’s elevators, placed side by side near the stairs. She appreciated them since they made ascending to the next floor easier and faster, but often times, when the carrier was at the higher floor, it moved down slowly. In that case, she would resort to using the stairs. It did not matter that the classroom was at the highest floor, the third one when arriving there by stairs was faster, albeit more tiring. But there was no need to rush when there was still fifteen minutes before the bell rang, so she stood there, her yellow bag slung around her shoulders.
‘Jasnah!’ said a feminine, silvery sound.
She turned around and saw Rachelle walking towards her with a pink bag slung around the shoulder, a style that made the bag seemed to be hanging from a hangar. Rachelle never came to school early; naturally, this exception meant there was something more to it. She wore a bright grin; this, too, was an exception, as Rachelle never looked forward to coming to school, and the reason was related to the first exception—she did not like waking up early, being disturbed from her much-needed sleep. Much-needed sleep, because she was not an early sleeper, either.
Most of the times, Rachelle was easy to read, and Jasnah could easily conclude this must have something to do with yesterday’s happening. It must be—the frown Rachelle had given to her in reply for her explanation was a clear clue.
‘Rachelle.’ Jasnah put on a faint smile. ‘You’re up early.’
‘That much is obvious,’ said Rachelle, chuckling. Her eyes twinkled. ‘You didn’t reply to my messages, my calls, and I’ve been wondering why. You’ve never been this way, and if there’s something that could make you like this, it must be that thing happened yesterday.’
As they went Jasnah chided herself for being as transparent as Rachelle, at least when she was around her closest friends, which were not much, as they were Rachelle and Manisha. And because that was what they meant to her, she had spent quite a time to think whether she should tell them or not about the occurrences that happened to her (she pondered on this while her phone vibrated Rachelle’s calling after she put it on silent mode). She recalled how, when she was alone at the canteen tables, nervous to join any group of students who were strangers to her, Rachelle and Manisha were the ones who joined her. Like her, they did not live at Desa ParkCity, the area in which the school was built, and so, could empathize with the feeling she had, like a deer stumbling onto a village.
They did not find her quietness a discomfort; in fact, Rachelle remarked how similar Jasnah was in that aspect with Manisha. Manisha countered—she only did this to Jasnah and Rachelle, and rarely to the teachers—how Jasnah and herself were complete opposite from Rachelle. All of these the girls delivered in a teasing voice, so it was not much of a deal. They ended up giggling and laughing when Jasnah said she could be the middle between them three; not as quiet as Manisha, not as talkative as Rachelle.
At the end, Rachelle and Manisha gained her trust, so why did she hesitate to share this detail with them, something that was bothering her? She realized she worried about their reactions; how they would not believe any of this just like how she herself thought she was hallucinating when all of these things happened. These things were nothing but normal; they could be supernatural or even fantastical. Anyone with their right mind would not believe it—the one who experienced it being an exception, of course, after a while.
‘I’ll tell you later about this. After school,’ said Jasnah, voicing out her decision, as the elevator’s door opened.
They walked through the corridor, and then the open doors to see Manisha already sitting at the front seat of the class. She was busy writing down something on the exercise book, and it brought a smile to Jasnah’s face. Manisha was always the earliest to come to the school; the Indian girl was also the most hardworking student she had ever known. She envied Manisha’s determination beyond the quiet demeanor, and since knowing this, had made Manisha the source of her motivation to study smarter.
‘Clever girl, you sure are busy,’ said Rachelle, teasing Manisha as she sat on Manisha’s left, while Jasnah took Manisha’s right.
Without looking at them, Manisha shrugged. ‘Of course,’ breathed she, lost in concentration. ‘I’m a busy young lady destined to be a professor.’
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140,691 Literary Works • 673,612 Reviews
I'm back again!
Right, so, I don't have heaps to say about this extract because it's not super long and there's nothing especially outstanding happening as it is the mid-section of the chapter. Hopefully I'll be able to formulate some kind of useful comment though! This was a decent extract on the whole, and it's really good that you're beginning to introduce us to characters in more detail. The school Jasnah attends seems pretty interesting, and there are some quite intriguing aspects to it, such as Jasnah being a bit of an outsider there due to a language barrier. You've got a pretty good pace so far too. I'm able to keep up with everything easily, and nothing seems too rushed, so kudos to you on that.
As for critiques, you fall into a bit of a trap in this section with regards to telling (as opposed to showing). For example, you tell us that Rachelle hates waking early, stays up late, isn't the biggest fan of school e.t.c. instead of us figuring that out ourselves via her dialogue and behaviour. You're pretty good with Manisha--you note her writing in an exercise book, and she comments on her goal to become a professor in her dialogue. Before we actually see her doing all this though, you tell us she's a hard worker and what not, but you don't need to! We can gauge that from the dialogue and behaviour we're about to see, which makes your previous statement about her redundant. Err, does that make sense? Just keep an eye on that one, as it's more entertaining for us readers to be shown than told.
On a similar(ish) sort of note, I would've liked to see more dialogue in this, particularly between Jasnah and Manisha when they spot each other on their way into school. This could be a great time to show us Jasnah's love of late nights and late mornings, as opposed to just telling us in Jasnah's dialogue. So far, including the first section of this chapter, we've seen a lot of Jasnah's narration (whether it's normal narration or journal entries), but not heard much conversation. This section of the chapter is the ideal time for that, so it is something I'd like to see more of. Even if it's just to mix things up a little, so that we get some breaks in-between Jasnah's narration. Not that I dislike her voice or anything, it's just more engaging for us readers that way, y'know?
Anywho, negatives aside, you're definitely onto something good here. I'm really intrigued to find out more about the powers(?) Jasnah seems to have, and I hope we learn more about them soon because it'd be interesting to see how long this has been a thing for her. I've no idea what kind of plot this will develop into, which is a good thing because I like unpredictability and it's nice knowing that this could go anywhere. I look forward to the next section!
Keep writing,
xoxo S(k)ins
Thanks for the review! You're fast - I love it. :3
I'm glad I was able to portray Manisha's character nicely, because I'm afraid, between her and Rachelle, she's the one I haven't figured out yet. You'll find out more about them afterwards. :3
Oh, the plot is typical fantasy one, y'know. :3
Hello again!
This portion of the chapter wasn't quite as engaging as the first part, but that's fine because this is only a segment of the chapter and it still reveals some interesting character stuff. I think my biggest critique for this chapter is that I thought it tended to get wordy at times and that some sentences could either be shorter or a couple sentences could be combined into one thought.
Some examples:
I liked that you introduced the school, but I think this is way too much information. To me, the important pieces here are that it's a national secondary school for students in Form Six, the next step for them is university (which I liked because it helps readers that have different school structures know where we're at in the bigger picture of school, Jasnah is 19 and in her second semester. The rest is filler and you don't need it. You can take a couple of sentences for this information. Maybe like: "It was a national secondary school, the kind of school for students of Form Six. At nineteen, Jasnah was on her second semester, and after this year she would be able to go to the university." Those same major points are in there, but it's done with far fewer words so you can save those words for when they're really going to count.
I liked this little addition. I think this make-up of the school is so interesting because in the States the vast majority of people speak English and anything else is the minority. It's interesting that here Jasnah is sort of in the minority because even though she speaks Malay language (and I'm guessing they're in Malaysia) her classmates don't always use that language exclusively.
I think this paragraph can be condensed a lot as well. I think it's fine to show how she gets to class, but do we really need a whole paragraph of her thoughts about the elevator versus the stairs, the pros and cons of each, and when she uses each? I love thought processes as I'm sure you know, but I think there are more interesting places to show her thoughts.
There's a lot of repetition in this paragraph that makes the meaning a bit hard to convey (like the word "exception") and I think this paragraph could also be condensed.
Let's look at what you're trying to get across here. Rachelle is walking towards her. Jasnah is surprised to see her because Rachelle usually doesn't come to school early and is surprised to see her looking so happy because Rachelle usually isn't excited to come to school because she'd rather sleep. That's the basic idea here and I think you tried to explain each component of the basic idea a bit too much and that made the meaning a little harder to figure out. How simply can you get the main idea across here? How concise can you be with your words while still getting the point across?
I'm not sure you need this part. You just showed us what she looks like in the previous paragraph and I think from there we can keep the momentum going forward and get right into their conversation.
Content wise, I would like to see more of their conversation and the conversation needs to have a point - we need to learn something through this conversation. It's interesting to learn about the nature of their relationship and how they became friends and everything, but remember that the plot still needs to be moving forward. I think you have the ability here to further a sub-plot with Jasnah and Rachelle and some of the broader implications of what happened the day before and Jasnah's secret abilities, but I think to do that we're going to have to see their conversation.
Other than that, I'm still intrigued about where this story is going to go! I'll skip on over to 1.9 here in a bit, and in the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions or if anything I said was confusing!
Greetings from The Swordsman!
There is nothing that you particularly did, but I couldn't get into the story on this. It is partially because I haven't read the rest of the chapter, but it was really slow. Not much really happened in this section. I understand that you wanted to cut up your chapter so that you can get more focused reviews, but there really wasn't much that can be read from this.
But I will do my best to review. I will say that your description of someone that has trouble fitting in at a school with completely different people felt very organic, like you might have experienced that same feeling yourself. Your characters themselves don't feel very fleshed out. The most I gather is that Rachelle is the loud one, Manisha is the bookworm, and the main character, Jasnah, is the new girl. I realize that this is the first chapter and most of this will probably come to light in the later pieces, but what is so important about these particular characters? Why should we care about this rather 'slice-of-life' situation that we are given in this narrative?
Overall, I thought that this was well written and the dialogue had good flow to it. I would say that there doesn't seem to be a destination at this point. I don't see where the plot is going but this is a relatively small section. Add just a little more so that there is something drawing the reader to want to find the next piece and read through it. Thank you for sharing this with us and I hope to see more from you.
Happy Writing!
Andy here, with the review I said I would make in the last chapter. As I said earlier, your writing is brilliant. It is very descriptive and engaging. It places a picture in my mind of each of your characters, and they don't all blend together. Since i'm quite certain I've missed parts, I'm sort of stumbling around in the dark. (I would go to your profile and check but my internet connection is so bad I dc every minute or so so its basically impossible to navigate. I'm just writing in word and copy/pasting it to here).
One thing I noticed that you might have a tiny issue with is commas. This particular issue is one I have as well, and it bothers me to no end when I find it in my own manuscripts. For example, you wrote 'Most of the times, Rachelle was easy to read, and Jasnah could easily conclude this must have something to do with yesterday’s happening.' Like the last chapter, you don't need that second comma after 'read'. Also, the 's' in times is also unnecessary. So fixed, your sentence would read 'Most of the time, Rachelle was easy to read..."
A few times, your grammar has slight 'jolts' What I mean by that is you say '...that they used Malay language' and that reads somewhat bumpy. Perhaps you could change it to 'that they spoke in the tongue of Malay' or, 'that they used THE Malay langauge'. But that might just be personal for me. One other slight example of a jolt would be the repetition in the phrase 'hanging from a hangar'. It just doesn't read well because you have 'hang' in there twice. Perhaps 'suspended from a hanger' might read nicer?
Either way, i'm still very interested to read more.
Until next time!