Aspen put her feet on the gas pedal, and they began their drive to the donut place.
It wasn't long before both of them rolled their windows down. The warm sunlight danced across Cass' bare skin as the crisp morning air blew in through the open windows. She watched the houses fly by out her window, the clear blue sky presenting the perfect backdrop to the scene. No other day would ever be as wonderful as this one.
Turning back to her best friend, Cass pressed the dial on the dashboard. A soft melody began to leave the car's stereo. It was so quiet that Cass could barely make out what the song was. But then Aspen got her hands on the dial and spun it as far as it could go. Music blared from the speakers. Cass wanted to cover her ears at the sound, but something made her pause just as she was about to raise her hands.
She stared at the stereo and furrowed her brow. “This sounds familiar.”
“It's a popular song,” Aspen said. “Considering how we heard it like five times yesterday alone, I'm not surprised that you recognize it.”
Cass continued to watch the radio. The explanation made sense, but she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else behind the recognition. The vocals became little more than whispers as the instrumentals – a beautiful combination of harp, cello and violin – grew exponentially in volume. It was then that Cass could finally pinpoint the source of the feeling. It was the way that the instruments were playing that particular melody.
There was an odd feeling of déjà vu to the whole moment. She knew that she had heard this song countless times before, but this time felt different. It felt important. It felt like something out of one of the strange dreams she had been having lately, even though she could never remember their exact contents.
She hadn't told Aspen about them. She hadn't known how, and frankly hadn't wanted to. There was something private about them, like they were for her and her alone. She knew it was an odd way to view something like a dream, but it was impossible for her to describe them in any other way. She had refrained herself from telling Aspen for the past month.
But not a single one of the dreams had influenced her like this.
She took a deep breath.
“Aspen?”
Aspen turned the dial down, the music dropping to the same inaudible volume it had been at earlier. Seeming to notice the tone in her best friend's voice, Aspen cast her the briefest of glances before watching the road once more. “What's up?”
“...Have you ever had a dream that didn't feel like a
dream?”
The lack of an immediate response made Cass regret
telling her. It had been stupid to bring it up in the first place. It
was just a weird little quirk in her life, one that could be easily
ignored if she told herself that it was somehow normal. Aspen had
always been understanding, but this would be pushing it.
Aspen completely shut the music off.
“Yes,” she said. “I have.”
The car pulled into the parking lot of Dunkin' Donuts. Even after Aspen parked it in one of the few open spaces, neither one made a move to get out. They both stared at each other. Cass was shocked that she wasn't the only one experiencing the strange dreams. And Aspen? There was a blank expression on her face – for once, she was unreadable.
“It's been happening for the past week or two,” Aspen admitted, leaning back in her seat. “Some are pleasant. Some are nightmares. I can't say that I ever really remember any of them, but it always takes awhile to shake the feelings that come with them. Is that the type of thing you've been talking about?”
Cass gave a small nod.
“They're weird. I'd say I don't like them, but they just feel right. You know?” When Cass remained silent, Aspen sighed. “Never mind. I'm just rambling – God, I really could use that cup of coffee right now.”
She went to open the door without giving a single glance in the direction of her best friend. It had only opened a crack by the time that Cass finally spoke. “I've been feeling the same way.”
Aspen paused.
“That-that's why I wanted to tell you,” she quietly continued.
After a moment passed, Aspen softly closed the door.
“Why now?” she asked. “I thought it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. You must have thought of it in the same way, right? Why bring it up all of the sudden?”
Cass took a deep breath. “That song sounded familiar.”
Aspen sunk back into her seat for a second time, though this time she kept her eyes on Cass and not the parking lot. “You said that already.”
“It felt like it was something out of one of my dreams.”
She looked at the radio with wide eyes. Cass would have likely done the same if she hadn't come to that realization minutes prior, but now all she was doing was studying Aspen. It was a wonderful and terrifying thing to learn, because it meant that there was more substance to their dreams than either could have ever guessed.
“Dreams take stuff from memories, right?” Aspen asked, eyes still glued on the radio. “So it could just be your mind playing tricks on you.”
She shook her head. “It wasn't like that.”
Aspen sighed again. “This just doesn't make any sense.” After another minute of staring at the radio, she looked over at Cass. “You haven't been smoking any weird drugs, have you?”
“No? Have you?”
“Nope,” Aspen declared, popping the 'p'. “I doubted you'd ever do something like that, but I had to cover our bases. There's also the possibility that we're both sleep deprived. Or that we're being tested on by the government. Unsurprisingly enough, the internet's really fond of that theory.”
Cass stared at her.
She shrugged. “A little Google never hurt. I found a few things online that shared similar stuff to what we're experiencing, but none of it really matched. It looks like we're going to have to figure this out on our own, Cassie.”
She gripped the edge of her seat. She should have been comforted by the fact that Aspen had been undergoing the same experience, but now an anxious feeling had settled in her chest. There was something more to it. It wasn't just her mind, and now she was going to have to figure out what. Part of her wished she hadn't even mentioned it.
“Well, my coffee's waiting for me!” Aspen said, throwing her door open in spite of the truck that was beginning to pull into the spot beside the jeep. “Let's forget about that for today and just enjoy ourselves. Our dreams can wait until tomorrow.”
She shut the door after she hopped out.
Cass reluctantly followed suit.
It was one thing to say that they could ignore their dreams; it was another to actually go about doing it. Though Aspen seemed optimistic on the situation, Cass knew that her day would be plagued with uneasy thoughts about the source of her dreams.
Points:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,804 Reviews
~Weird dreams and familiar songs~
Aaah! Sounds eerie enough. XP But I love it!
Hi again!
Only one thing today... "Aspen put her feet on the gas pedal". Feet? I don't drive, but I'm pretty sure you only put one foot on the gas pedal.
-Gnomish
Hiya, Saen! Here I am again. Same drill as last time.
Small Comments
Your description is okay here, but it's a little bit on the cliché side. The sun is warm, the sky is a clear blue - it's a bit textbook. It's okay to describe a perfect day, but try to do it in a way we won't have seen before.
Unnecessary. You're not going to cover your ears at a smell, are you?
Both of these phrases mean the exact same thing, so I'd pick one and ditch the other. I like the first, personally, but either would work.
This is what the voice in my head says, then I end up googling the symptoms of my cold and the internet convinces me I have 24 hours to live.
Haha, I loved this little moment of characterisation.
It's already obvious what the uneasy thoughts will be about, so there's no need to state it here.
Overall Thoughts
This was definitely a big improvement on the first part, mostly because you've introduced a proper source of mystery by way of the dreams. It's good that you're still taking a slower pace with this, but we've got the right amount of intrigue now to hold my interest. BlueAfrica is right, however, that you introduce the topic in a slightly heavy-handed way, and it does strike me as premature for Cass and Aspen to be so certain that their dreams are linked. The chapter would benefit if they discussed said dreams in a bit more detail. I know they can't remember them properly, but if there was a handful of similar features that made their experiences unambiguously similar, it would make the certainty more credible. As it is, I'm left thinking 'how do you know that you're having the same experience? One person's idea of a vivid dream doesn't necessarily equate to another's!'
Be wary that main characters having strange dreams isn't exactly an uncommon trope, especially at the outset of a story. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use it, but take care to keep it fresh.
Your characterisation is still going strong. I love the moment where Aspen flings the car door out while someone's trying to park, and it's very telling that she's able to just shove thoughts about the dreams aside. I wonder if Aspen is as carefree as she seems. If she is, I'm jealous as heck, but I suspect she isn't. I don't think anybody is.
What else do I have to say? Your prose isn't quite as tell-y as in the last chapter, but it still has its moments. You could stand to integrate more sensory detail and specificity into your descriptions, as well. Generally speaking, I didn't feel like I had a great picture of the setting. Avoid describing the day as 'perfect' and 'wonderful', because they don't actually tell the reader a great deal. Give us actual objective details and let us infer the perfection.
Also: verbs. I never shut up about verbs, but someone has to shout about how great they are. At the moment, I don't think you're accessing their full descriptive power, so you often have to fall back on adjectives - which are altogether more visible than verbs are. Let's take this quote as an example:
Here you've got two verbs, 'became' and 'grew'. Now, they're okay. They get the job done. They communicate something. But all 'became' tells us is that something has turned into something else, and 'grew' - while more powerful than 'became' - only suggests that something has got bigger. Consider how the sentence could look if you chose more evocative verbs:
The vocals thinned to whispers as the instrumentals swept them away, words disappearing under a flurry of harp and violin strings.
Here we have verbs that have descriptive power in themselves. 'Thinned' gives the vocals a form and suggests that it is diminishing. 'Swept' introduces motion. It's also important to create a kind of metaphorical, spacial relationship between the entities in your sentences. Don't simply state that the vocals faded and the instrumentals grew - create a relationship between the two events, and suggest that one is responsible for the other. Perhaps the instruments could swallow the voices, or envelope them. It's that sense of cause and effect that brings a narrative to life, in my opinion.
That's not to say that you should go for the most powerful verb at all times, or that more procedural verbs don't have a place. Sometimes you stay low-key so that it creates a bigger impact when you go all out. It's all about balance, like everything in writing.
I think that's all for this review. Overall, this was a massive improvement on the first chapter. Stuff's getting more interesting now, and Aspen and Cass continue to charm me. I can't wait to see what happens on the hike!
Keep writing!
~Pan
Hello again!! Sorry for the delay!
You do go into it, but I want more information about what's going on in her mind. I'm going back and forth whether she should tell Aspen about her connection and they should share the connection at the same time Cass makes the connection or if that should be a different day/moment in time. I'm kind of leaning towards different, but I'll weigh in more after we get a little farther into the story.
Let me know if you have any questions or if you'd like feedback about something I didn't mention! See you soon 
I like that you've taken the time to put in scenes like this one where we can see some real interactions between the girls before they find these lockets and things start getting crazy. Obviously if the reader doesn't feel the bond between these girls it will be harder to feel as connected to the story. Their personalities aren't super well-defined yet (but it's only the first chapter so I wouldn't expect to see every facet of their personality yet) but they're both likeable enough and they're fun enough together that I definitely want to see more of them.
I think the dream thing is an interesting little subplot and I have a feeling it'll loop around at some point and become important to the main plot. I'm not convinced this is the place to introduce it and I think we have too much information at the moment.
I love me a slow reveal (just like I love me a slow burn :p) - hints at something and then boom it all comes together. For all I know you have a larger slow reveal in the works involving this dream stuff, but I think you could slow down this reveal over the course of a few scenes. I'll weigh in more about what this could look like as the next few chapters develop and as I see where this plot line about the dreams is going to go.
I think it could be cool to actually see Cass have one of these vivid/lucid dreams before she has the connection to the song. I like how you started this chapter so I wouldn't go back and change the opening scene to Cass waking up from a lucid dream. I'm not sure where you would put it yet, but I think it would be cool to see so we'd have a little context and know what she's referring to when she make the connection to the song. Then the connection to the song might be later that same day or a different day and I'd like more inner monologue about how she makes the connection and what she makes of the connection. I love me some thought processes
Their assessment of the dreams - mind playing tricks, weird drugs, google, some experiment felt a little sudden to me as well. I think that kind of processing and assessment should come later too once we the readers have more time to process and come up with theories on our own (once we've seen one of the dreams and have more info to go off of).
Overall though I'm glad we have this new little layer of juicy to add in to the plot!! Looking forward to seeing how they find these lockets and how this all plays out
Back again!
So I think you've got some really good bits of characterization going on in this chapter that show how different Cass and Aspen are, even though they're best friends and had the same sort of dreams and somewhat the same reaction to those dreams.
Cassie doubting that even her best friend will understand her dreams - but not wanting any secrets with Aspen - really sets her up as someone who's so unsure of herself that she sometimes even doubts her relationship with her best friend/worries she might be a bother/worries she might be misunderstood.
And I love the details about Aspen in this chapter - the way she "pops" the p on "nope" and the way she flings her door open even though a car is pulling in next to them. They're little details and quirks that really help make these characters come alive.
I like that you introduce the strange dreams here, because it starts introducing the conflict that was really missing from the first part of this chapter as they just think "woohoo, best day ever!!!" However, it definitely did feel a little heavy-handed. Or rather, it's not so much that it felt heavy-handed as it felt like Cass was ascribing a bigger deal to the dreams than how big a deal they feel like they should be from their description in this chapter.
It might even be that they aren't described in this chapter! And also I think it's that Cass immediately concludes this:
But she doesn't know any specifics about Aspen's dreams, she has no clue how similar they are to hers - she only knows that they both feel sort of the same way about the dreams they've had lately. So it was hard for me to buy that they can already conclude that these dreams are similar, tied together in any way, or signify something significant about real life.
Thanks for the review! I was really nervous about this chapter, so I'm glad that my characterization is at least going strong! Cass is inspired a lot by younger me, I think. I'm definitely getting better with being more confident, but I'm nowhere near the Aspen level of confidence yet.
So, basically, in future drafts I should elaborate more on the dreams when they're talking to each other, and not make it go so quickly? That way it can build up the suspense, and show why they're so important to real life?
Thanks again for the review!
Yeah, I think it would help if we knew the gist of dreams' content and that came up in the conversation.
Hey, and with this I am now two thirds of the way through the LMS chapter 2 quest!
Nit-picks:
This is quite odd phrasing.
I don't know about this. I'd say a dream is pretty private. This seems like an odd thing to say, and thereby a way to engineer suspense that I'm not really sure is earned.
Again, it doesn't really feel like that dramatic a thing to say, therefore the stakes (of losing a friend) don't really feel earned.
Overall:
So, I think you have successfully established a hook, which was missing from the last chapter, as I said. There's definitely something weird going on here, and the tailing off of thoughts and speculation adds well to the suspense.
However, I'm not really sure what the big deal is? Plenty of dreams are extremely vivid. I'd need something like dreaming you got punched in the stomach and then when you woke up your stomach being sore. Or maybe there's a specific theme or event in the dreams that they both experience. It just doesn't sound like that big a deal, which contrasts weirdly with how seriously they're taking it.
Hope this helps,
Biscuits
Thanks for the review! I was really struggling to find a good way to describe their dreams, and it probably didn't help that I wrote half of this in a car ride and the other the night I got home from a long trip. I'll try my best to make it more clear in future chapters (and revisions) but basically the dreams are weird because they don't feel exactly like dreams. They happen when they're sleeping and tend to be hard to remember, but that's really the only thing they have in common with normal dreams. I'm just not good at describing what they feel like because I'm still trying to figure that out.
They'll make sense eventually, but that's the best I can do at the moment. I promise everything will be cleared up when they learn why they've been having those dreams.
Thanks again for the review!
Hey. Thanks for the tag.
I don’t think she would place both feet on the gas pedal. I know that wasn’t your intention haha, just pointing this out.
This seemed a bit overly narrative for my liking. I get that you want the story to begin upbeat and fun so that you can then turn that on its head, but let that happen organically without pointing at it too much.
Use her name. No need to remind us of their relationship, you did a great job showing us this in the previous chapter portion.
This isn’t a great verb choice in this context.
This dialog is mechanical and long-winded. “I’m not surprised. We heard it like five times yesterday.” Will do just fine.
Inaudible = silent. Also I felt that this was missing the clarification that Cass needed to shout over the music in order to be heard, when she said “Aspen”.
I recommend deleting this paragraph in bold. I don’t understand why the lack of response automatically made Cass regret her decision to tell Aspen, surely she wanted a serious answer. If Aspen wanted to brush her off or make fun then this would have happened immediately. I much prefer the pace without this paragraph.
This is another example of your influence as a writer creeping back into the story.
Again I would delete this paragraph. You already perfectly set the expectation that Cass isn’t on the same page as Aspen with her reluctance to follow suit. You need to have more confidence in your ability to portray atmosphere through the story itself, without relying on these narrations.
***
Overall comments:
I think you have some tone issues. You opened with the warm sunlight, the crisp morning air, no other day will be as wonderful etc etc, and then immediately sidestepped this to focus on their dream issues.
In fact, the dream issues seem tangential to the first portion of this chapter.
In 1.1 you focused a lot on how today is the perfect opportunity to execute their hiking plans. 1.2 now comes across as a massive footnote like “oh btw they are both having unusual dreams, remember that for later”.
I didn’t quite buy the logic behind their conversation. Dreams are already unusual by nature, and I’m sure almost everyone has had dreams that have felt a bit too real. Therefore, if I’m going to believe that they truly have something to worry about and that their dreams are connected in some way, you’ll need to justify this a bit more convincingly. I think the only way you could do this is by showing us how their experiences are outside the realm of possibility – what exactly about Cass’s dreams makes her suspect they are not normal to the point of needing to tell Aspen? What was so jarring about Aspen’s dreams that she just had to jump on google and research? You’re setting the expectation that the dreams are otherworldly but not describing them in line with that.
With all of that said, again I thought your writing is decent, which is why I’m more than happy to stick with this story, because I can see that you’re mostly having issues with the arrangement of the content and not the writing itself. As you alluded to in your wall post, this is what first drafts are for.
Also I’m finding their dynamic very intriguing and can’t quite figure them out yet (which is good). Based on 1.1 I’m assuming that Cass like-likes Aspen, but perhaps this is unrequited or she is too scared to find out. I’m really eager to see at what point in the story this will unravel. I can totally see why Cass finds Aspen appealing, she seems to be more carefree and confident. ^_^
-Zoom
Thank you so much for the review! I'm really impressed by how quickly you read and reviewed this.
Thanks for pointing that out with the gas pedal! I still haven't learned how to drive (despite being legally old enough to) so I was guessing I'd have at least one mistake with how car works. Thanks for your other comments as well. This chapter was a struggle to write. I'm not surprised that it's filled with little mistakes here and there, but I'm sure I'll be able to fix it up in the next draft by following your advice.