Chapter 2
IVY
Ivy was 16, she had been accepted into Great London College which would start on the Tuesday; three days from the day her parents were murdered. But instead of salvaging her remaining days of freedom, she sojourned in her bed, locking herself away from the outside world. Damon, being the exuberant demon that he was, found the following days tedious. It was as if he had been told that he couldn’t collect souls, what the hell would he do with his time if that was true?
But when Tuesday came around, Damon refused to sit idle and wait for Ivy to get over her deceased family.
Though to his delight, he didn’t have to do anything. When her alarm rang at 6am she shot out of her bed and went into the bathroom. In the meantime, Damon made the only food he knew – toast.
After Ivy finished in the bathroom, she got dressed into her usual flannel and jeans and went into the living room where she was greeted by an excited Damon with a plate of toast.
“Morning,” Damon sang. “Ready to make those bastards pay.”
“Can’t I have one minute to fully wake up!” Ivy snapped and snatched the plate of toast from Damon’s hands.
Damon raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, I didn’t tell you to wake up this early; your college is literally a few minutes away from here.”
“This is the time we usually woke up,” Ivy reminisced with a full mouth. “To watch TV shows before her friends spoiled it for her.” The memory brought a smile to her face.
After Ivy finished the plate of toast she sat on the grey couch and Damon sat on the one opposite her.
“Where’s the tea?” Ivy asked.
“I’m not your slave, make one yourself,” Damon ordered coyly, crossing his arms.
Ivy narrowed her eyes sceptically. “You don’t know how to make tea, do you?”
“Of course I do!” Damon said offended.
Ivy laughed as she got up and walked to the kettle. “If you’re goal was to make me laugh you’ve outdone yourself.”
“I’m a demon what do you expect of me!” Damon moaned embarrassed. “I eat souls not drink – tea”
“Everyone knows how to make tea!” Ivy said flabbergasted. “Damon, look,” she got a tea bag from the jar. “Teabag,” then poured in two spoons of sugar. “Sugar,” poured the boiling water from the kettle into the B.A.P mug her sister brought her. “Water,” and lastly added the milk. “Milk.”
Damon watched intently as she showed him how to make tea. “That’s it?”
“Yes,” she said as she took the cup and sat back down on the couch. “I can’t believe you don’t know how to make tea,” she sniggered.
“I’m glad you find fun in my shame because I need you to be bright and happy this week.”
“Why?” she asked before taking a sip of the tea.
“We have to plan your revenge, darling, speaking of, how do you want it served?”
Ivy leaned back in thought and after a while answered. “Slow but painful. I want their families to suffer like I have suffered – and I Gardens of Eden burned to the ground,” she declared adamantly. “It’s what my father would have wanted.”
“And you’re mother?”
Ivy shrugged apathetically. “How am I should I know, I barely knew the woman?” Damon raised his eyebrows in surprise. “And I have you to blame?”
“Well I have my hands full,” Damon said evasively as he stood up. “Be ready by eight.”
“Why?” Ivy enquired curiously.
“I’m taking you to college,” Damon informed with a cunning smile.
When Damon offered, well more like demanded that he was taking her to college she thought it was a kind gesture. But if she knew that he’d take her on a motorcycle, speeding so fast that she’d meet God any second now, she’d have sharply declined.
“Slow down!” she ordered but her voice was like a whisper in the wind to Damon who was grinning like a Cheshirecat.
Finally, when they arrived at Great London College Ivy felt her temple throb from dizziness. She was surprised no police cars had stopped them or that she even made it to college alive.
“Come on, love, it wasn’t that fast,” Damon informed.
“Said the speedometer,” Ivy frowned. “Don’t bother picking me up.”
“You sure?” Damon smirked.
“Definitely,” Ivy sneered with a fake smile. “I’m going now.”
“Hey, no kiss goodbye?” Damon said before puckering his lips.
Ivy curled her lips in revulsion. “Go home, Damon!”
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,781 Reviews
Hey there RavenBlack and a very late welcome to yws! And also happy review day. It's just Lizzy dropping by real quick, so without a further ado, let the reviewing begin.
I was going to base this review around the dialogue tags and such but it seems Blue, has already gone really in depth and I wouldn't want to tread too much over that. Let's talk about characters and character interactions instead.
I'm just sort of jumping into this novel but I find it's pretty easy to figure out what happened before. And I particularly like when authors write chapters as individual short stories almost. (Maybe just because it makes it easier to jump in mid green room but also because it's compartmentalized. You know that there's more out there but for now, these are the only things you're dealing with.)
The characters speaking to each other while doing the morning tasks is where most of the exchange happens. I feel like that was written in so the the questioning wasn't quite so plain or outright. The addition of the tea skit, certainly lightens the mood for moments before plunging the reader back into the pit of darkness.
It's sort of odd in the dialogue tags how your main character, thinks that she can control this demon. Maybe a bit naive is the right word to use here. And I don't particularly like this character just because she seems a bit too calm for the situation. (Some business about trading her soul for revenge.) The demon seems very fun and actually reminds me of Crowley from SPN to be honest. I always like the slightly sarcastic demons people write into things, rather than have them perceived as like super black forms of seriousness.
The overall reaction to this chapter, was that it was good. It helped move along your plot to a new place to work from and further developed this weird relationship between ivy and Damon. I thinks that's about all I've got to say for now, so I'm going to go ahead and leave.
Have a nice day.
~Lady Lizz
Thanks for the review Lizz. I've written Ivy's reaction to having her soul taken was addressed in chapter 1 I believe but I understand that she seems calm, probably should change that
Oh my God, I love Damon so much. To reiterate, even though I know I said something akin to this in the last section: I really enjoy how you've thought of things he doesn't know how to do because they're human things, not demon things. Like in the last chapter he was like, "There, there" and awkwardly patted her on the pack because he doesn't know how to handle emotions like sadness, and then in this chapter he made toast, because it's the only food he knows how to make, and didn't even make tea because he has no idea how to. It's sweet that he tries, but he's also such a complete failure at it. I think the main reason I love it is, like, demons are really powerful, right? So it's just nice to see him be bad at something, even if it's something silly that he's only bad at because he's never needed to know how to do it.
One thing I noticed in this chapter that I'm not sure was in the last chapter was a lot of this.
HOLY MOTHER OF NOTICEABLE DIALOGUE TAGS, BATMAN! You might feel funny using "said" constantly, but here's a little secret about the word "said": It's virtually invisible. Readers will skip right over it, unless you use it after literally every line of dialogue, so it doesn't get repetitious, even though you might think it does.
("Asked" is basically the equivalent for questions.)
What readers do notice is "smirked," "sneered," "quipped," and especially things like "informed" and "stated." Dialogue tags are useful for readers to know who's speaking - and sometimes, when you want to get specific volumes like "shouted" or "whispered" across - but you don't want to draw too much attention to them, or readers will start to trip over them. It's the same reason you don't want to use an adverb or adjective to describe every single "said" you use. If you want to get a character's tone across or clarify whether a line is intended seriously or sarcastically or as a joke, make use of character actions and expression. That way, you also avoid the redundancy of things like "declared adamantly" or "enquired curiously."
Just as an example, here are some spots where you did exactly what I'm suggesting. In these cases, you typically did away with the dialogue tag. You can do that, or you can use a character action in conjunction with a tag for the sake of variety.
(In this example, you could even do away with "apathetically," because the shrug + the question make her apathy apparent. On that note, it was weird to me that after her outburst in the last chapter I read, Ivy would suddenly go, "Whatever, I barely even knew my mum.")
Remember your script! Actually, I recall you did use a lot of adverbs in your script, because I remember commenting on it there, too. But you didn't have tags, because of course you didn't, because it was a script. I don't know whether you're more used to writing scripts or prose, but use your script-writing knowledge here to help you pull back a little on extra or overly-informative words like this!
Thanks so much! I'm glad you like Damon he's my favourite character and fun to write. Thanks also for the tips in dialogue tags, didn't know much about them but now that I do i can improve my work. Thanks again.
I love how the first paragraph describes the main character! Love it! Though, it's sad that Ivy's family is dead.
I also love Damon's personality. Would love to see more of him.
All in all, good job writing this! (mine's kinda crap though, if you look.)
Thanks for the comments! No mine isn't good, i though it was rather bad actually. But we'll both improve through our trails and failures.
Haha, agree.