They were back wandering around the mall after rushing out of the store. Tony's head switched from right to left, scanning the array of stores hoping something would strike his interest. So far he only saw shoe displays, fancy jewelry stores, and many manikins blankly staring forwards.
His stomach began to growl and rumble. Obeying it's orders he asked, "Hey, do you want to get something to eat?"
"Sure," She replied.
The food court was not too far. It was just a few shops ahead and an escalator down. When they got there it was much more crowded with everyone gathered all eating and chatting away to their own private conversations.
Tony looked around at the surrounding options. Pizza hut caught his eye and his stomach's rumbling intensified, "I am kind of in the mood for pizza." he declared
"Sounds good," She nodded up to him.
They got in line with a few people ahead of them which made Tony ground inwardly. I hate lines. I can't help but feel impatient just standing around while my feet got sore. At least iit helps to have distractions like bothering my siblings or trying to think of ways to break the ice.
I should start a conversation. I barely know him. What would be something good to start with? Sports? Many guys like sports but I don't have any clue about them. Video games? I don't know much about that either. We are getting food though. Food is probably on his mind we can get a good start out of that. Fiona thought
"Um, so what is your favorite food?" Fiona said beside him.
"Anything," He replied. That really held up the conversation. We haven't been talking a lot and she doesn't seem like a chatty person. Yet, we hit it off during the plane ride. I guess I have to say something stupid for us to get the conversation off the ground.
When the last person moved on they were up to place their order. Tony didn't need to look at the menu for long to know what he wanted. "I will take the extra cheese supreme with a medium soda."
Beside me, I didn't hear Fiona say anything. She was reading the menu still deciding. The cashier in front of us was getting impatient while Tony was getting worried for her that someone behind them would complain.
"I will take a double slice pepperoni pizza and just tap water." She finally ordered.
The cashier and Tony shared the same look of relief as she typed down their order. "The total will be $12:23 cents."
Fiona took out my money from my back pocket and they payed their our share. They went to fill up their drinks and stood by to wait for their order. She took her first sip of soda and felt the cool liquid enter her mouth and slide down her throat. "Sorry, I took a longer to order." She apologized. "I can be so indecisive sometimes."
"It's alright. I can be like that too."
"The extra cheese supreme pizza and the double slice pepperoni pizza."
Fiona turned and went to the counter and collected their food. They went off to the seating area which consisted of wooden benches, chairs, and tables and a lot the tables were either taken.
Tony spotted an unoccupied square table a few yards away and made they way through the people and their pushed back chairs. They got to it and sat down with stuff.
They got settled and opened the boxes. When opened, the pizzas gave off a yummy aroma of cheese and radiated warmth.
He took his first tasty bite when Fiona began to say, "I could tell the cashier lady was pretty annoyed with me. I wonder how I would also annoy authority today," she joked.
Tony stuffed food to the side of my cheek I said. "Hm parents are a pretty easy to irritate."
She groaned, "Well, my mom is a easy target. She gets he panties in a twist easily."
"Why?"
"She is a micromanager of everything." She grunted.
"Control freak?"
"Control freak and perfectionist,"
"Ooh," He cringed for her and nodded. "Well, my mom is-"
"What about me dear?" A voice said from behind him.
Tony's heart figuratively beated out of my chest, his eyes bugged out of my head, and the blood drained from his face. Fiona was highly amused, sitting there obviously restraining a smile.
"What about me, Tony?" His mom repeated curious yet slightly suspicious.
"I uh.." The words in his brain were jumbled because he didn't even know what he was going to say in the first place but then it got worse.
"Honey, I got the food. Who are you talking with?"
He slid into my seat. Dad.
"We thought you were at the park, Tony?" His mom questioned.
"Well, I'm not anymore," He grumbled back looking at my food.
"And who is this cute friend siting across from you?"
Ears perking up, she was surprised by the comment.
There was a pause as Tony waited for her to introduce herself. Hopefully splitting the attention more evenly. Although, there was nothing "Mom, dad, this is Fiona. Fiona these are my parents."
For a second, he could see in her widen eyes and her agape mouth, she was freaked about a bit. Then her face soften and a small smile formed as she shyly said, "hi".
"Why are you guys here,"
"We had to buy a gift for Uncle Gabriel's birthday."
His eyes were forced on the food because he wanted to avoid Fiona's expression and looking at his parent's cheerful unaware faces wasn't even a bearable option.
"I see you guys got pizza and..." She observed and then her face suddenly lite with her motherly delight. "you're wearing Lee's hand me down. I've hadn't seen you wear hand me down since you wore Marc's footie pajamas when you were seven. You loved them."
Tony face heated up to one hundred plus degrease and if he sunk down in my chair even lower Tony would have completely fallen off. "I did not." He muttered.
In happy and comfortable situation with his dad he would have welcomed a warm arm around the shoulders but instead Tony tensed up. "So," He asked him raising his eyebrow curiously. "are you sure guys aren't more then friends. She seems too pretty too pass up." He subtly -but not really- nudges him in the side. His face flushed even harder not sure if it can worse from here.
Nobody knew how long how they sat there until his mom finally said, "Let's just take the silence as an answer, dear. Come, the food is getting cold."
And that was that. They left him embarrassed and Fiona... he gazed at her prepared for her to be even more freaked out but if face was blank like the manikins. He started to just eat the food again, despite humiliation from his parents a good substitute to satisfy his appetite.
Afterr he finished chewing on the crust he said, "I am done. Want to go?"
She nodded as she swallowed her last mouthful.
They collected their trash and went to throw it away in the garbage can a few feet away and put out trays on the top. They went back to the rest of the mall joining the stream of the crowd.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Hello, I'm back again for chapter three. And yes, I will review chapter four as well. You're not getting rid of me that easily. So it his chapter, I've detected a lot of the problems that were present last chapter as well, along with some others. The same was that this cahapter seemed to be a filler as well, there isn't been any major character development and I don't quite see what the readers are meant to take away. The entire story so far feels like someone narrating what did they for the day. But when you're writing a novel, you're not just telling us this happened. You have to tell us what exactly it is you want us to take away from this situation. Otherwise, your story is lost on us. There are also scenes where you could have used me for character development, but instead you didn't. The same thing with telling and not showing. Here is an article that shows you how to show and tell equivalently, because you need both to create a good story. take a look at this]here is an article that tells you how.
Such as the scene where they got pizza from, we don't need to know the exact type of pizza or the exact price of the pizza they ordered. That's not important because it doesn't contribute anything to the plot or the character. However, the scene was a great conversation opener for them to talk about more in-depth things.
Let's talk about the rest of your chapter, I really don't see the point of Tony's parents turning up having anything to do with their date. Because all it did was to prolong the chapter without adding anything on top, it's redundant and random. Wouldn't it have been better if you spent that time telling us about who they are, or why they're on a date? Along with that, there is a logical flaw in the scene, Tony's parents have never met Fiona and after that explanation, they just left it alone? Doesn't seem quite realistic. Also, they assumed she was his girlfriend just because she's pretty? Wow...his parents must be
Speaking of charatcers, you really need to work on character development. Here is an article to help you with character development.
Creating characters and some more here.
Lefty has already said this, but you tend to shift from first to third person POV. You have to keep to one POV, just one throughout the entire novel. Otherwise, the story will be extremely confusing to read.
Technical nitpicks and language suggestion:
You don't have to say figuratively there because we already know that is figuratively, if it's literal than that 's when you need to say it. And try and avoid cliches in your writing, that description right there is very cliche. Make it your own, add a twist.
'After' with one 'r'. There's a few of these typos scattered throughout the piece, just remember the proof-read before posting. A tip on dialogue here, your tone so far suggest colloquial. Instead of writing 'I am done' write 'I'm done' as that is more suited for your tone. Avoiding contraction in dialogue is a general convention to make the speech sound more formal, in your case, it's the opposite.
Your dialogue could also use some improvement in terms of how to write it. You've got the first two from this article. Read the article and be sure to avoid them again in future writing. And here is another article that tells you how to write better dialogue.
Hope I wasn't too harsh, and if you have any questions, please feel free to PM me.
-Flite
To be honest your review was brutel but in a great way. I learned that I don't know how to fully accept critisms. You had different insight and higher standard compared to my other reviewers. Thanks for the review and articles.
You seem to be accepting criticism just find, and no worries,I'm glad my review helped.
Hi, there! Lefty here to review chapter 3! I must say, I was a bit excited when I saw this in the greenroom. Anyway, onto the review!
This was a decent chapter. Getting food was good and you were able to show that they both have some issues with their parents. Character development is good! Now, onto some nitpicks...
Although I liked the way you described this, you previously mentioned that she had gotten tap water.
Now, I would like to talk about point of views. It's fine if you show what each of them are thinking every now and then, but it got a bit confusing in this chapter. For example:
Tony's(Third Person) heart figuratively beated out of my(First Person) chest, his(Third Person) eyes bugged out of my(First Person) head, and the blood drained from his(Third Person) face.
Be careful with that. If you switch first POV's too often, it can get confusing, even if it's every other sentence. Like I said, if you wrote the story in third person but you have the occasional first person thought, it can work out. But if you frequently switch between each of their first person POV's then it can get hard to follow, not knowing who is talking when you say "I".
There are books that do duel-narritive, meaning it switches between two(or more) characters first-person POVs. This is generally done per chapter to keep it from getting confusing. So for instance, if you did that, one chapter would be from Tony's perspective then the next would switch to Fiona's, never going into the other characters head for that specific chapter. The Legend trilogy by Marie Lu did this, switching between Day and June's perspectives. The story I'm working on, The Fighter of Aldea, also does this, switching between Lydia and Daniel's perspectives. I hope all of this made sense.
Like I've mentioned in the previous chapters, just be sure to read over it and make sure there aren't any missing words or letters, capitalization, got instead of get, etc... I found some things like that throughout so just be sure to give it another look over at some point.
Ok! So like I said, this was a decent chapter. I'm really quite curious to see where their relationship goes from here. I like the characters and am curious to learn more about them. You describe things really well and I was able to picture everything crystal clear in my head. You sentence structure flows nicely in this chapter so good job!
I like these sentences! Very nicely written. There is usually at least one sentence in each of your chapters that think are very beautifully done. Nice job! I'm looking forward to reading the next chapter. I hope this review didn't seem harsh, I didn't mean for it too. Just trying to help you out the best I can. Keep up the good work and happy new year!
-Lefty
Thanks a lot for the tips. I will be sure to do some more editing and revising. With the point of view errors I actually switched it from first to third point of view at last second. I decided not to do that next chapter.
Ah, that makes sense. No worries! Have a nice day!