Chapter 1
I dreamt about a boy last night. He wore a mask. It was a pure white and it covered the entirety of his face. I remember wondering how he kept it clean because his clothes were charmingly dirty.
This skinny, slender figure in a navy long sleeved shirt covered his hands up to the delicate fingertips on top of decrepit jeans and faded loosely tied converse sat on the sill of my open window. As he clashed with the pale colors of my pastel room, his long white-blonde hair ruffled in the slight breeze.
He hummed a peaceful tune and watched the city go by. I smiled, because I secretly watched this boy happen. He didn't know my eyes analyzed his calm demeanor of one leg over each side of the window sill.
I drifted back asleep in my dream.
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The morning after, I read my writing on a crumpled paper about the dream I had had. The handwriting was a bit messy compared to the neatness I attempt in school and I made the conclusion that I wrote it in the middle of the night so as not to forget it. Even though I didn't remember writing it, I'm glad I did.
I put the paper on my nightstand and clumsily dragged myself to the bathroom at the end of the hallway.
My shower was quick and my makeup routine even quicker . However, I spent time to blowdry and style my hair. I decided with conflicted feelings to pull on a beige oversized sweater, denim skinny jeans and my beautiful maroon Doc Martens. I traded the original laces for delicate velvet ribbons.
On the way out of the house, my bag was slipped over my shoulders and my large scarf over my neck.
I pulled out my phone, pressed play and plugged my earbuds into the jack.
It was pleasantly cold and suddenly wished I had made tea to drink on my way to school. The morning was quiet, but as we walked into the upcoming day, I could've sworn someone was singing a song I loved.
Hello (: That is chapter 1. I really would love to make it a longer chapter. Any suggestions? Please be brutally honest with your reviews. I'm here to learn and do not take critique personal. Thank you.
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140,210 Literary Works • 673,042 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okayy...with this one...the one unmistakable thing here is the lack of paragraphing..but...checking with the fact that the chapter title and the author's note is also bunched up in that same paragraph I'm assuming this is probably some sort of glitch and not intentional....but uhh...if it is...well..separating those things out are important not to mention, the part of the paragraph with the story itself could also benefit from being broken into three or four paragraphs here.
Anyway, moving swiftly on from that, this is a pretty normal looking start here, nothing too crazy going on besides perhaps a slightly intriguing dream sequence, but everything seems to just kind of be a very normal day in the life of this person, which does make me ask the question of what is meant to be the hook in this story here....I kind of find it hard to see what the main things here is that's meant to catch your attention. There's some neat description, and you get a sense of this protagonist and what they're like..but besides that, there's not too much to go on here. The mask in the dream is singlehandedly kind of holding the whole sense of mystery together and I feel like that should get a bit more support here considering this is a first chapter you've got here. Anyway, I believe that is about all I've gotta say here, its a decent piece, but it needs a little more something to really make you want to read on and find out more here.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hai Neko, Laure here for a brief review!
You have two conflicting element here, how can his clothes be charmingly dirty?
Do you see the above paragraph, that was basically one huge paragraph of run-on sentences meaning that you have too many sentences together without a full stop. And I'm not sure about the description of the shirt either, I had no idea what happened there because the description seemed so strange. When you said he clashed with the pale colors of your room, how exactly did he clash? Was it his clothes, his skin colour, what was it?
I don't quite understand how exactly you can watch a boy happen.
A crumpled paper doesn't make sense, you're missing a collective noun there. Maybe you meant, 'a piece of crumpled paper?' Also, the second had is redundant. You don't need it.
Blowdry has a hyphen between, so is blow-dry. The question I have is that do we really need to know about her routine and what she's wearing. I suppose if you're writing this to convey to us that she's the type of girl who spends ages before school each morning to beautify herself this wold work. If not, I don't see the point.
Because this is written in the author's POV, writing as if in the third person POV makes everything seem strange and awkward. Instead of saying, 'my bag was slipped' you could have written, I slipped my bag over my shoulders and my large scarf over my neck'.
So you wrote this on your phone, you should put this at the start so reviewers know what to look for. Now I can rip apart your chapter guilt-free. I'm joking don't worry.
Alright, so basically I've pointed out some of the technical stuff above and I want to comment a bit more on the content. Hm so, we've spent the chapter seeing a girl whom dreamed about a boy and then we spent the rest of the chapter learning about her morning routines and saw she walked to school. well, probably not the most interesting chapter opening I've seen I will admit and the writing isn't exactly best-seller either. But don't let that put you off, I'm interested about the boy she saw in her dreams. Dreams are fascinating.
One of the major problems I found while reading this chapter was that, there wasn't a lot of interesting things going on. I mean we're here to read interesting things, we aren't exactly interested in what she had for breakfast, and did she blow-drys her hair in the morning and that she listens to music on the way to school. If you're going to say these things then, are there something special about them? Or if you are going to tell us these things, at least show it to us which brings me to my next point.
I notice for the majority of this chapter, you narrate and told us thing and didn't show them to us. In fact, you just basically stated everything in this chapter. What she did. What she wore. How she walked, I can't even fit in a description within these mechanical things. Try and describe things with figurative language, such as similes and metaphors instead of saying them plainly. You also need to vary your syntax a little, I noticed that you started a lot of sentences with 'I', try and vary that because everything just sounds like 'I' and 'I' which can be a little bit annoying.
Granted, this needs work but I'm interested. So keep on writing and never give up!
-Laure
Ugh were you sent from heaven? Thank you so much for telling me piece by piece everything that needed editing. Thank you and I definitely will work on all of this. I wrote it first in a notebook and edited it as I Texted it to a friend, then put it into my phone's notepad and continued to edit it. Thanks c: Your review was very helpful .
Heaven? O.o Nah, I'm sent from the SevenSeas. Jokes aside, I'm really glad I was able to help you.
Hey! IamTraunt here to review!
Welcome to YWS!
So, I was just wondering, after all the '-----', was that you narrating? Or was it part of the story? I was just a little confused at that point. Seeing as your new, I'll direct you to Lumi's tips:
The Big Book of YWS Codes. So you can put your comments in bold or italics or whatever
This was really short as you commented, so I don't have all that much to say. Just a quick nitpick but you don't need to put 'chapter one' in your story if you've already put it as your title. Some people do, but they usually put 'Chapter One', then leave a space underneath.
Okay, so I haven't got a lot to work with here. All you've said is that you've dreamed about a boy and the genre is 'teenfiction/romance'. So that could be a variety of things.
Maybe you could create a dystopian type society and world as that's very big right now. If you've read Divergent or Hunger Games then you'll know what I mean. But just incase you don't: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia
You have a good use of Vocabulary. Love some of the words you've got in there! And you spur the reader on by getting them to ask questions, such as: who is the boy? Well done!
Keep on writing ^^
Much thanks. I'm not one to write dystopian societies. Thank you for the suggetion. I'm using this on my phone and for some reason, it would not let me make a space heh. I do not comment inside my works so this was from the main character's P.O.V. I'll be posting Chapter 2 tomorrow so more information will be released. I was thinking about just using this as a prologue maybe, because of the length unless I can figure out something more to do. Thank you for the suggestions and what not c: It means a lot!
No problem! I'll review chapter two if you like
I also write on my phone so its strange that it won't let you :-\ maybe because its a different type.
Anywho, good job.