“6:30! 6:30 Casie!” barked the alarm. Casie let out a groan and started to slowly rise. She knew it would not stop until the sensor sensed that she got up. She stretched and let out a long yawn as she took her first few steps out of her sleeping chamber.
“What would you like for breakfast Sweetie?” Asked her mom over the loud intercom to her room.
“Um, I guess bacon and eggs would be fine.” She replied.
“I will put that into the meal maker, I will see you in a minute.” Casie gave a sigh of okay and shuffled to the bathroom. She gave the mirror a tired glance go see what would be for lunch that day at school. That along with every other reminder circulated along the bottom of the mirror. She ran a brush through her hair, sprayed the teeth cleaning solution on her teeth, and then headed downstairs. She quickly sat downed ate her breakfast.
“Are you excited Casie?” her mom asked cheerfully.
“I guess, it is the last day of school.” She said with a mouth full of bacon.
“Can you at least eat like you are about to graduate high school after today?” her mom chuckled.
“Sorry! I just really want to finish fast and start heading to school.”
“Okay” her mom laughed “just slow it down a little bit”.
Casie gave a quick nod and then finished her breakfast quickly and rushed to her room.When she walked into her room, she made her way to her clothes machine. “Let me see what I want to wear” she thought. She typed in how she felt today and it generated an outfit. “Perfect” she said to herself. After finishing getting ready, she grabbed her hoverboard and shouted a quick goodbye to her mom as she went out the door. She hovered to the corner of Oak Street to meet Jet, as she normally did. Jet was already there and greeted her with a smile.
“Took you long enough!” Jet said jokingly.
“And when did you get here?” she questioned with a smirk.
“Let me see” he said as he looked at his watch. “About 45 seconds ago” They both laughed.
Jet was Casie’s best friend. They knew each other since they were in diapers. Casie was more of a shy type, but when she was with Jet, she was a different person. The one hard part of the friendship is that Casie had like him for years, but she never had enough courage to tell him. She was scared to jeopardize their friendship, so she just sat back silently when he had a girlfriends and convinced herself it was for the best. Jet was different then many guys in school. His personality was great and different, but so were his physical features. His dark jet black hair (hence his nickname being Jet) his freckles that were spread out around his nose, his hazel eyes,in her opinion, Jet was easily one of the cutest guys at school.
‘Casie could easily be one of the prettiest girls in school’ Jet thought to himself. ‘Her light sandy brown hair, the freckles that were on her nose, and just her personality in general.’ He really liked her for the past four years, but never had the guts to ask her out because he did not want to ruin the friendship. He had other girlfriends, but it was not the same.
After a minute of silence the both looked at each other emerging from their thoughts and smiled.
“Can you believe it is already the last day of school?” he asked.
“It has just all went by so fast.” Case said with disbelief.
“The world better watch out. Two awesome adults are going to make their mark” Jet declared. They both laughed and looked upon the lake that was coming up. “I learned this cool new trick over the weekend, watch!” Jet hollered as he raced to the lake.
“Does your whole life revolve around hovcore?” she nagged.
“No” he chortled. “It is just a hobby that I do whenever I have free time.”
At last she caught up to him at the lake. “What exactly are you doing?” Casie asked. “Well, what I am going to do is quite easy for an expert like me.”He boasted. “I am going to ride my hoverboard across that old telephone pole to the other side of the lake.”
“What will happen if you somehow break the telephone pole?” she asked.
“Nothing Casie! No one has used a telephone pole in over 20 years, we have the super satellites, remember?”
“I guess you are right.” She admitted.
“Of course I am right.” He boasted.
“Wait!” she cautioned. “If you are going to do this stunt, make sure you are strapped to the board good and wear your helmet!” “Oh and by the way, hurry up or we are going to be late for school!”
“Yes, Mother!” he teased. After strapping on his helmet and securing himself to the hoverboard he went to the start of the pole. His face showed deep concentration as he slowly hovered across. All of a sudden a bird flew out right in from of him. He yelled out of surprise and lost his balance. SPLASH
“Help!” Jet bellowed.
“I’m coming!” Casie screamed. She quickly got off her hoverboard and jumped in. The water was really cold and her body began to go numb. She quickly swam over.
“The board is pulling me down!” he cried. He was pulled under water and was thrashing his arms but with his feet strapped to the board it was no use. Casie dove under water. At this point Jet was no longer moving. She grabbed him and using all her strength, pulled him to the surface and the end of the lake. She listed for his breath, but there was only silence. She began doing CPR.
“Please Jet!” she cried. “Stay with me!” She kept going but without avail. After another minute she gave up. “No!” she cried. “No,no,no! Please Jet!” she listened but there was still nothing.
“I never got to tell you how much I loved you.” The tears busted out, running like they were coming from a faucet. Slowly Jet began to cough.
“Jet!” she cried. Jet slowly opened his eyes and coughed up more water. He continued to until about a minute later. Casie began to cry again and hugged Jet. He smiled and hugged her back.
“I love you too Casie” he whispered in her ear. They sat in silence and just hugged each other, and the only sound to be heard was to soft sniffles coming from Casie. Slowly they separated and just sat next to one another.
“That trick did not seem so easy to me Mr. Expert” Casie smiled. They both began to laugh. The sounds of sirens startled them as an ambulance screeched around the corner and pulled over in front of the lake. Two men rushed out of the truck and ran over to them.
“Are you guys okay?” stressed the one paramedic. “A neighbor heard screams here by the lake and called 911”.
Jet and Casie explained everything that happened to the paramedics. They nodded and listened. When they were done telling them the story the paramedics took Jet and Casie to the truck and gave them both out to make sure that they were okay. Since both of Jet’s parents were at work, they gave both of their parents a call and they dropped both of them off at Casie’s house.
“You two rest up for the day” the paramedic told them. Casie’s mom ran out of the front door and gave them both a hug.
“And” he added, “Stay away from that lake for a while-especially with this hover boards!” Casie and Jet nodded in agreement and thanked the men as they drove away. After a long stern talking to from her mom, both Casie and Jet went upstairs to her room to relax.
“So about what happened at the lake…” Casie started.
"I feel the same way Casie. I want you to be my girlfriend because I almost lost you and if I did not finally tell you this, I would ever forgive myself. I have been in love with you for years and I never had the guts to tell you.” He confessed.
“You have really loved me all this time?” she whispered.
“Always.”
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139,504 Literary Works • 672,591 Reviews
Hello Chrissy, so I see that EternalRain has covered the nitpicks, but I'm feeling up to a line-by-line review of your short story, something that I haven't done in a long while, but I feel like it really helps you a lot in regards to editing. Anyways, let's begin, shall we?
Oh, so just for reference if anything is in blue like this:
word
That means that it's an error or something to be improved upon, and I will be referring to it in the points below. Now, I have decided to put the whole line-by-line or paragraph-by-paragraph in the spoiler as to not take so much space up!
Spoiler
As a general rule, beginnings should hook your reader completely in, like you are fishing and the fish puts it's mouth on the hook, you kinda get what I mean, right? Anyways, this first sentence already from the bat seems very mundane and typical. There's no "flashing sign" here to actually catch my interest at all, so here are only a couple of solution that I can provide.
1. Probably the number one rule is to not bore the reader, which you have successfully done here. This beeping (talking) alarm clock makes me picture my own cranky mornings, and it reminds me of those groggy memories.
Here is a quote from this article by Merlin34: "One thing you should do is begin with your best foot forward. If you're good at writing humor, begin with something funny. If you're good with imagery and mood, start by setting the scene."
Okay, so here your narration has way too many sentences of the simple fact of just getting out of bed, you don't how to describe it so thoroughly, because I'm sure that all the readers can imagine what's going on here.
So, I also wanted to mention that "sensor sensed" is a pretty repetitive phrase. Play with the wording a little bit and then you will get rid of that. Also, my pet peeve in writing (even though I do struggle with this myself) is just having two adjectives next to each-other, so overused and ineffective because they don't really get the intended meaning across to the reader.
Stay consistent here, if you capitalize Sweetie than you must capitalize Mom because it's her title/name.
I like how you used that "um" there, because it really does make the dialogue sound more real. I would also recommend though, that you remain much more consistent, therefore you should place a couple of more "um" in appropriate places further along in the text.
Also, that dialogue tag "she replied" shouldn't be needed at all. And I know that you have written a post about stopping the he/she said, but honestly as Meandbooks pointed out, sometimes dialogue tags aren't needed at all, for instance, if Casie is alone in the room. You really have to work on that obsession xD
I think of these verbs as "do" verbs, which don't make your writing spicy or flavorful. Your structure in this sentence is basically I will do _________, I will do ____________. A wise author friend of mine once told me: "You need more specific, precise, and exact verbs instead of using so many telling adjectives."
I don't understand that blued phrase. Why would she express that out loud, when her Mom was doing exactly as she had wanted to?
I wanted to know, which other reminders are circulating along the bottom of her mirror? Like what type of topics and life things did it even cover. Also, instead of slowing the pace down and reading about her normal morning routine, I would suggest that you just go straight into the action/dialogue here ^^.
Refer to that paragraph about forced dialogue tags, as I am going to attempt to fix them right now so that they actually look more natural.
The problem is, that this is our only interaction of dialogue between her and Mom, but I don't get a sense of their relationship, or the underlying conflict that is supposed to be hidden in here. You really need to fix up the dialogue-because right now you have two talking heads-, and so I actually have perfect article for you to read all about that. There are some helpful points in there so I would highly recommend it.
We already have inferred from the dialogue that Casie is rushing quickly, so I think that you need to give the reader a chance to read in between the lines, and not just reinforce the telling of the rush.
When character are thinking, it's much more professional if you have the quotes put into italics.
~How did she feel today? You never really showed us how exactly she felt, even though you might have told us. One way to do this is to make it shine through with your behavior a little bit more, (her actions, words, thoughts, and gestures,etc.)
WOW! What a cool watch this is that's made in 2041
That term is so cliche, because everyone seems to have a best friend these days, but you have to show why they have such a unique relationship dynamic between them. I want more experiences then just the diaper, because I think that you could do a mini "storytelling" of "good times" which built them as people and made their relationship much better.
Info-dump alert! For a short story, you do really tend to focus on things such as looks and appearances and cute and not cute, instead of focusing on heart matters and beliefs and the core/root of this said person.
Between the paragraph with Casie and this paragraph, I think that you need some sort of line break on both ends, to cut up the paragraphs of perspective and make them a little bit more separated, if you see what I mean.
Is this a coincidence, or did you actually mean 4 years of liking each other in secret for both of them. Honestly, that probably would make sense because personally as a freshman in high school, I can observe a lot of people getting closer and bf are a serious and popular topic here. >.<
It makes sense that you would want to start graduating day with a "time flies by" remark, but honestly, I think that you could again, have another little "storytime" moment where they can reflect on some point during their high school career that actually struck them as memorable.
Boasting isn't really an admirable trait, so it's kind of contradictory to all the awesome-sauce that Casie painted about him. When I think of boast I think of rude and too full of himself, not in a good way though. And why is he boasting again, because he assumed that he is right, knowing the obvious knowledge? Not only does this piece of dialogue make him look bad, but it also makes Casie look really bad as well.
Refer to my above paragraph about your over-usage of the word "quickly". Gosh girl, you really need to thin it out, or tone it down. xD
So, if my estimations are correct, than this whole ordeal took maybe a total of three minutes correct? Well I would like to see so much packed in those minutes, show me so much emotion and feelings and lovey-dovey dripping down the whole situation.
Why would they do this?? I don't really understand their reaction of separation, because it seemed like they have been waiting for this thing for a really really long time here.
Didn't the thought of missing graduation day cross their mind at all??
That ending is probably the cheesiest way to end, to be honest, so I think that you should definitively do a little bit more of a realistic conclusion, (maybe that's all because I'm such a realist at the brain)- but anyways, that's just my personal opinion.
Overall, there is tons to work on, and I won't do an overall, because I feel like all of the things that needed to be said were said in the points under all of the quotes. That's all from me today, and I hope that this review helped you improve. If you have any questions, you know where to find me.
KEEP ON WRITING!
~P.S.
Holy cow what a long review! Thanks so much!
Hello!
I won't say much about technical stuff since there were already a couple of reviewers who did that, but I'm going to give you a review on what I think about this story.
The flow went a little fast, and I understand that this is a short story and all, but you still have to consider the feelings of your character and how it could infect the heart of your readers (especially if it's in a romance genre like this).
The connection made between the characters - Jet and Casie - is a bit hurried. You see in one paragraph you say that Casie loves Jet, and on the next Jet feels the same way with Casie. Now, us readers understand that they have mutual feelings that the characters do not know exists, but what we lack here is the character development.
You should have said more about what he/she feels when they see the other. What get them going (other than being best friends), etc. etc. The piece will be a little longer, but I tell you that it is worth it. Just close your eyes and picture everything out.
You're still young and you have good years ahead of you. Please, don't stop writing and keep on reading books too.
Bye.
Thanks so much!
Hi!
The paragraph in which Jet is talking about how he likes Casie, sounds rushed and a little off. I feel like the story is rushed but other than that I love it! Also I think the name Casie is spelled with two s's but maybe you want to spell it the other way~
~Never, ever stop writing
Rachel
Thanks so much!
Hi! I wasn't tagged but thought I could be of some assistance~ I'm on my phone (my laptop ran out of battery) so sorry for any weird format/typos.
Off we go! Since this is for a class assignment, I'll point out grammar errors I spotted c:
I think a comma instead of the period (after 'fine') here would be better. And then you can lowercase 'she'.
A bit of an overused way to start -- the whole alarm thing -- bit I don't know if you're willing to totally change up the beginning of your story.
I think you meant "down and ate" or something like that?
Make sure you have some sort of punctuation I'm your dialogue. So in this case you need a comma or another form after 'okay' and before the dialogue mark. I also noticed this later on in your writing often, so just make sure you tidy those up!
There isn't anything grammatically wrong with this -- but perhaps you could jazz this description up a bit and instead of simply starting that Jet said this jokingly, maybe you can SHOW?
*liked
And ooh, poor Casie D:
This sentence sounds a bit awkward. :/
*they
*Casie
I think this sentence would sound better if you divide it into two seperate sentences. So where the comma after 'years' is you could place a period.
Maybe italicizing this and adding an exclamation point? This can make it much more dramatic!
This doesn't really seem fit for the mood - maybe Casie says this but her eyes are shining sadly and instead of just "a smile" it's "a sad smile"?
This whole statement seems a tad bit unrealistic to me. I love how they both confessed their feelings towards one another though!
All right. So the time period is obviously 2041, but there's not much description of what's different than today. There's hover boards and the clothes machine -- but what of the WORLD? Is it polluted? Is the water Jet was trying to do his trick on garbagy? I just think a little MORE about it would be great.
I loved the overall concept on the story, though, and I love how Casie and Jet had both liked each other but were too afraid to admit it, and then they end up confessing. It was really cute and I enjoyed it immensely!!
I think that's about all I have to say! Good luck on your assignment^^
~ EternalRain ^.^
Creepily enough, this is the message I got after I wrote my review: You know, I wonder how they'll write reviews in the future... will they use special future technology?
XD
That is slightly scary.
Nate's a prophet... oooooThanks so much for the great review! <3
)
(And I knew I forgot to tag someone
Hey there. This isn't really going to turn out like a review, but I'll give you my thoughts, just because you asked nicely.
When I read the first line, the lack of a comma got on my nerves. “6:30! 6:30 Casie!” In my mind, there should be a comma after the second 6:30, before it says Casie. But I'm not sure if it is an error, because I don't know how alarm clocks talk in 2041, having never been there! “Let me see what I want to wear” she thought. However, I am certain that you need a comma after wear.
“Let me see” he said as he looked at his watch. “About 45 seconds ago” They both laughed. I don't think you intended this at all, but this bit of speech holds a lot of meaning, in my opinion. It shows just have 'fast' things have become. Twenty years ago from our present, you had to go to the library to get information. Nowadays, it's much faster and you just have to pull out a device and tap on a few buttons. In the future, there will probably be an even quicker method. That's a terrible example, but what I'm trying to say is that in your future things seem to have sped up a lot (with the food and clothing machines, etc) and this line really cemented that idea. She only took 45 seconds longer than Jet, but he still said she 'took her time', even if he was only joking.
“I guess you are right.” She admitted. I thought I'd point out the way they talk. At times they seem a little 'robotic', which might be how you intended them to sound, but maybe not. Instead of 'you are', I think it would sound more natural if she said 'you're'. The same goes for the beginning when her mum says 'I will' instead of 'I'll'.
This is a really sweet plot, I'm glad Jet didn't drown, because for a moment I thought you'd written a futuristic tragedy! But, umm... Always? I don't think half the Potterhead population is ready to hear that yet.
Thanks so much!