While walking home, I notice a crumbled leaflet beside the bench on the plaza. It's colourful and draws me into picking it up. Scanning my eyes over it and feeling instant appeal to the title, I dust it off, fold it and put it into my pocket. Art competition. Interesting. Something I might possibly throw myself into for a while. Well, specifically it is a logo-art competition for a photographer opening a shop in town sometime in Spring. Peaces of Me photography. Challenge accepted. Leave it with me.
Wait, I know that voice. I whip my head diagonally to see Sinead Gallagher and Bernie across the street at the Dancing Rat Inn. I quickly check both sides of the road and stumble my way over the zebra-crossing while holding onto my bag. Sinead is laughing wildly and I notice there is a table full of lads from school near them. Joyous.
"Rach!" Sinead waves me over, moving her bright, flowery handbag from the seat to the ground.
I half run, half walk over and dump my badge covered Converse bag by the table.
"Well," I greet smiling, "much going on in town?" I wedge into my seat and order a mocha while the waiter, no - Paul, is around us. I can't and won't get used to calling him a waiter, its too comical. He's big, blonde, curly head Paul and he always will be. Untill he loses all his hair.
"Yes, there was drag-racing, a bank robbery and a hit and run in the last twenty minutes since school ended." Bernie replies with a sarcastic sigh. Wow, bordeom must have hit her hard today.
"Good point." I laugh, looking around to see who's at the nearby tables on this lovely summery evening. Rory and his clann are throwing packets of sugar at eachother, accompanied by a big, dirty black cloud in the distance which I've only spotted now.
Paul drops out my coffee and Rory gets up and walks towards the doors inside the pub.
"Well, Rachel." He smiles, quite vibrantly too. I hear a few wolf whistles coming from the pack of dogs at their table.
"Hey, Rory." I laugh at his friends' reaction to a simple hello.
Rory dissappears inside and the moment he does Bernie is wearing a smug look.
"What?" I ask, more rhetorically than anything.
"Nothing." The girls smirk and I throw a packet of sugar in their hair, I guess those lads have a contagious immaturity and I'm unlucky enough to have picked it up.
"So I have to play music in class tomorrow."
"Is that a bad thing?" Sinead asks, braiding her bright red hair with a black-lace scrunchie that looks like something from a Halloween costume shop.
"It's tragic, that's what it is." I stirr the chocolate at the bottom of my glass, staring at it with my best 'this is doom' face. Dramatic effect and all that.
"Why?" Bernie stops flicking through the latest isssue of Kiss magazine. "You're as good as the rest of them, sure."
"Puh-lease. They're major talent junkies." It was true, facing the facts here.
"HA and you're not? Mrs. Always Right?" They laugh like they made the world's best joke and I'm the punchline. But good point.
"Touché. But you know how it is, judgemental." Which is pretty much my biggest fear. Having anyone judge my music is like death to me. It's such a personal part of me that I'd be worried if anyone hated it, because that would mean they would partially hate me.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Hehe you review mine, I review yours.
People have done all the nit-picking, I'll just tell you what I think. I like it.
I really, really don't trust Jack though.
Oh My Gosh. I LOVE your story!!! when are you going to update it?? message me back. I Love it!1 and wanna figure out what happends at the park!!
Hello, darling! Music here.
Grammar & Line-by-line Comments:
Language Usage & Writing Style: Alright, Sakura. I thought that this one was okay. One thing that constantly irked me and made me lose my focus was that you changed tenses over and over again. Keep it in the past tense, okay?
Also, I thought that your tone here could use some improving in the later parts. Your MC and Jack are talking about some very serious, deep stuff, but I don't feel like it when I'm reading it. You need to create the proper mood for what you're writing.
Imagery & Emotion: Okay, so adding more of this would help your tone. I thought you did pretty well with imagery in the first half of the story, but when Callie and Jack leave the building, where are they? You lost the reader there.
I didn't see too much emotion this time. While your MC was crying, I didn't really feel anything, you know? Make sure you add in emotion in your MC's thoughts, your characters' dialogue, and your characters' body language- which helps imagery, too.
Characters: So, did the kiss never happen now? If not, I think this is a better way to develop MC and Jack's relationship. I thought that the dialogue between Callie and Jane could be just a bit more realistic, and maybe make one of them shy about talking to the other.
Your characters are just a bit flat for me, darling. Relationships, realistic dialogue, emotion, and proper imagery will help to round them out into real things.
Plot/Storyline: As I mentioned, I thought that adding in a deeper conversation with Callie and Jack was nice. Make sure you keep this rising action going smoothly and reasonably, and keep your reader waiting and anticipating a climax.
Overall, I thought it was pretty good! Revise a bit, fix up that grammar, add in some description, make it a bit more realistic, and you've got a great piece in your hands!
Love,
Music
Hi again!
I like how you have continued and the introduction of a new character, things are getting interesting!
This doesn't make sense really, do you mean 'second to last day at school'?
I think it might be good to join these two sentences with a dash
Sorry but I'm not that keen on these few sentences
'After breakfast and a shower, I leave to drag myself to the torture chamber in which ninety nine percent of the students are on below average grades. The other one percent are the outsiders who actually work. Jack belongs in the majority group.'
I think you could say something better than walk here to describe how she enters- something that shows once more how much she detests school would be good
I'm not sure about the last sentence here, Ii think it would sound better without it or phrasing it a bit differently like 'seeming more at ease'. You could always describe how she seems so- perhaps her smile is warmer and more genuine or she visible relaxes, something to create a better image
You switch to past tense here, all 'was' should be 'is' and corrections like that. I think you could say something better than 'put back'- maybe 'tied back' or 'clipped back', when you say parts maybe 'locks' 'chunks' or 'strands' would fit better as 'parts' doesn’t really sound like hair.
I'd either describe how she seemed like this or leave it out as you can kind of tell from the conversation.
I don't think you need this, the reader will already know so there isn't much point to mentioning it.
I don’t think you need this, you can already tell from their conversation that she likes her. If you do keep it I think you could make it more of an interesting observation, for instance ‘I feel myself warming to Jane already, she seems like such a genuine person I can’t help but want to be her friend.’ That way it seems more personal and also adds a little bit of suspicion as to whether she really is genuine
You have already said that they say bye so I wouldn’t repeat it saying ‘we both say goodbye’ afterwards. Perhaps instead you could talk about them walking off in opposite directions to their own lesson? I don’t really like the use of ‘went’, its reverting back to the past tense again too so maybe ‘leave to go to class’ or something like that.
Does the guy with a hangover vomit in the two lessons afterwards as well? Or are you referring to nothing interesting happening? If you are talking about just nothing happening, maybe you could put a full stop after ‘counts’ and say something about the boredom being the same for the two classes afterwards
‘be’ I think should be ‘me’ and I’d maybe have ‘on the ground’ as ‘to the ground’. I’m not sure about ‘get rid of my books’ as it didn’t sound right to me, maybe just ’deposit’ or something like that.
‘get’ should be ‘gets’ I think
I don’t think you should say what she did before she did it, I’d maybe just have something about her not caring and picking up the necklace then have what she says.
Instead of ‘the rest’ maybe ‘the others’ would read better? Or you could be more specific and say who it is as ‘the rest’ doesn’t sound to me like you are referring to people.
I wouldn’t have ‘pathetically’ here as it is the main characters perspective but sounds as if you are describing the way she talks. Instead maybe a word that shows how she is saying what she did would be better or just leaving it as ‘she reminds him.’ I don’t think you need ‘She finishes at that’ on the end, I’d either change it a it to show how she finishes- giving new information, or just take it out. So you could say something about finishing with a smirk so that it gives more of an image or something like that.
‘smothered in tears’ sounded out of place to me here, maybe ‘choked with tears’?
Tears aren’t really sweet, they’re more salty
I don’t think you need ‘I spoke’ here- I think the sentence may sound better without it.
I’d add ‘car’ before crash, just to specify.
I didn’t really understand ‘People like us for you ay?’, I don’t know if that’s just me though. Instead of talking about something they have in common as you have just mentioned the chemistry maybe ’There is something between us’ would fit in more.
You switch to past tense again here, by changing ‘ended’ to ‘end’ and ‘headed’ to ‘head’ you can move it back to the present though.
Overall: I'm still really enjoying this, it's not like ordinary romantic story and I like how you are putting off the kissing
I noticed that you repeated a few actions a bit, like laughing which comes up quite a lot. I'd try to vary that a bit more
I think you could extend more on her actions, like when she leaves the school talking about how she runs and how she feels. A bit of description on Hayley might help too- she seems like a really horrible person! I think the events that happen are good but maybe by extending them more they would better, when she is in the argument I think it would be good for her to try to argue back as before she seemed like someone who was pretty confident and sure of herself.
I like how things are carrying on and I hope you continue!
Heyy
Thought I'd just leave my opinion.
.
Thought I'd point it out.
All in all I thought this story was interesting, I'm looking forward to reading what happens at the park so good work
The line "Time for my second last day of school" doesn't fit in right, but that could just be me.
But great story, keep going.
Can't wait to read the next bit.