Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language.
The birds sing, and I slowly wake up, 7 a.m on the dot, just as always. It’s Saturday, and the weekends I have absolutely nothing to do. Homework should be one of my main goals, but of course like the good student I am, I push that aside. Today I decide I am going to chill with my homeboys Chad and Moses. I take a shower, get dressed and head downstairs to see what I could find. I of course forget I’m poor as shit and open my fridge to nothing, nothing at all.
“God damn, it’s a struggle being broke, Chad might have something,” I say to myself as I rush towards the door, deciding Chad’s house is where I will go.
“Xez baby, where are you going?” I actually forgot my mom was off on the weekends, she usually works her butt off, picking up shifts even when she is off.
“Oh wow, good-morning mom, I’m heading off to Chad’s place for a while, we got plans today.”
“Alright baby be safe, don’t do anything stupid and don’t stay out too late.”
“I won’t mom, you know I stay careful in these streets.” I then opened my door only to be called back by my mom.
“Xez babe, come quick, you shouldn’t go outside without any emergency money.” My mom was really considerate and kind, but I knew money was hard for us to come across and was a bit hesitant to accept.
“Uh, why not,” I said as I ran upstairs. I entered her room and she handed me a twenty dollar bill.
“Use this to eat or order a cab if it gets too late if you must.” I took the money and smiled. Yeah I smiled for freaking twenty dollars, that’s how poor I am, I felt rich with that bill in my hand. In my mind I jumped and danced all about, the money dance, that twenty dollars really made my day.
“Thanks mom.” I quickly kissed my mother and ran downstairs, but before I could leave I stuffed the twenty in my shoes, people always get robbed around me.
Outside was kind of chilly due to the wind but wasn’t bad, 67 degrees. It also helped I had an afro, whenever I had a more bald haircut I would feel the wind and absolutely hate it. My friends always said I was a weird breed, I appeared to be mixed actually, I was light skin, had nappy hair and my eyes changed colors each season, going from hazel to green or even a mix. My father must have been a mixing pot or mutt because I ended up pretty weird looking. I wasn’t complaining though, the ladies loved my eyes, gave me a chance because my other features and lack of intelligence weren’t doing it for me.
As I approached Chad’s house, I saw two interesting things. One, there was a huge group of young males, around my age of different color and race, mostly black and white. They traveled deep, like about eight of them, and I tensed up because I have seen too many people get jumped and robbed. Interesting enough, it never happened to me, I always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, though once I was threatened, but that isn’t the point. I kid you not, my legs began to shake and I began to sweat as I approached them. As they began to pass me I looked straight, avoiding eye contact. Now I know what you’re thinking, I’m a coward, but if I’m alone hell yeah. Only when I was with my boys did I have the confidence to talk back or walk like I was the man. If a fight broke out though, you bet I was the first one to run, with my impressive twenty seconds in the 200 meter race.
I was safe when the group of boys passed and let out a sigh of relief. What happened next though peaked my interest. I saw Chad approach a man in a car and gave him a handshake, in what seemed to be a drug deal. Chad then looked my way and saw me, only to smile and scream out my name.
“Hey Xez, come here bro, this is the guy I want you to meet.” Like a dumb ass he shouted me out, as if I wanted to be associated with those he deals illegal drugs to.
“Who is it bro?” I began to fear it was the mysterious Asag guy he was talking about.
“The man I was talking to you about, Asag, my number one customer.” Of course it was just my luck to be introduced to this guy. As I approached Chad he pulled me closer, gave me a bro hug and put me right in front of the car. The car was black and the windows were so tinted, I couldn’t see shit from the back.
“Hello there Xez, I heard a lot about you,” the mysterious Asag said.
“You did huh, nice to meet you I guess.” I shook his hand and took a good look at his face. To be honest, he was the ugliest bastard I had ever seen. He had a huge scar down his face, exactly vertically down his face and he had wrinkles on top of wrinkles. I shit you not, this guy looked like he did every drug in the book.
“We should all chill one day, get to know each other,” Chad said like the dummy he is.
Asag smirked and then replied. “Definitely, you two are some cool dudes, I could definitely take yall around, have some fun and stuff.” Asag must have noticed how hard I was staring at his hideous face because soon after he quickly rolled up the window. As it was rolling up he continued talking. “I’ll be back sometime next week Chad, and Xez, it was nice to finally meet you, and it won’t be the last either.” He then smiled right before his face was unable to be seen due to his tinted windows. I actually couldn’t even get a good look inside his car because I was a bit distracted by his face. It was clear however that this guy was strange and I wanted no part of it. As he drove off Chad smiled at me as if everything was cool.
“Cool guy huh,” Chad said as he tapped my shoulder.
“Dude he’s a creep, what the hell you’re doing selling to this guy, and he knows where you live, you gotta be kidding me Chad.”
“Dude it’s all good, he’s a cool cat, and he gave me like fifty extra dollars just for a nickel, so you know what that means bro, pizza and pay per view time!” That honestly was the only good thing that came out of that whole situation. As we were about to enter Chad’s house, I quickly remembered our other friend Moses.
“Oh snap bro hold up, we gotta get Moses, he said he has been wanting to chill with us and everything.”
“Oh yeah, lets go get him then, I’ll grab my dad’s car now.”
When Chad said that my eyes grew two times bigger and a smile came across my face. “No way Chad, you seriously gonna get the keys to the car?” Chad smiled and nodded. Now I know what you are wondering, what’s so special about the car, well, it’s a damn 2009 edition Bentley. You have no idea how much drugs Chad’s father had to sell for that, and I wasn’t about to skip on this great opportunity. Chad quickly came out the house and threw the keys at me.
“Wanna drive bro?”
“Nah man, you know I don’t even have a permit, I would get us killed”
“Ah calm down man, it ain’t hard to drive, you do better than me at driving in Grand Theft Auto.”
I quickly threw the keys back at Chad. “Comeon Chad, you know I ain’t that reckless, plus, Grand Theft Auto is a game you butt.” Chad smiled and then opened the car, I swear he smiles for anything and everything, must be a stoner thing. As we got in, he quickly started the car, only to be bombarded with loud music.
“I sell dope, dope, dope, dope, and you know I don’t smoke my products, I chop ya head…” the song said.
“Ha, this shit dope or nah,” Chad said as he rolled down the windows and started jumping.
“It’s pretty dope dude, man, I swear I love you bro.”
“Love you too bro, now lets get this guy Moses.”
As we began to drive off I looked into the mirror, only to see a black car down the street. I wondered if it was Asag, but I couldn’t really tell.
“Yo Chad, ain’t that that guy’s car, you know the creepy one.”
“Huh, I don’t see anything,” Chad said as he looked back through his window.
I quickly looked back as well only to see no black car.
“Wow, I’m bugging out, forget it then.” I honestly thought I saw a black car, and I began to freak out. The only thing helping was the music and the fact I was riding in a real expensive car. “I really gotta stop watching those horror movies like my mom says. I’m tripping.”
Chad did his signature little laugh and then said, “It’s all good bro, as long as I’m here you safe.”
I really felt that way, with Chad for the most part I felt safe, even if he was the dumbest and riskiest guy I knew. The drive was wonderful, we sped up, music blasting and everything. Cars would constantly beep us and when Chad saw a group of girls he would yell or put up the music and show off. Along the way we saw the baddest chick ever, brown skin with nice long curly hair. She also had a cute friend, a nice blonde.
“Bro, lets get that.” Chad quickly pulled over and smiled at the two ladies. “Hey ladies.”
The girls smiled, bent down and looked into the car, it surprised me how willing they were to approach us, must have been some gold diggers I thought. “Hey guys, what you two doing with that car, you stole it or something,” the curly hair girl said.
“Naw, what you mean, it’s mine, I’m a big time drug dealer, but we could discuss that another time. Me and my boy Xez here thought you were cute and wanted to know if yall would be down to chill sometime.”
The blonde girl replied. “Xez huh, that’s such an interesting name, I would totally be down to chill, wouldn’t you Eresh.”
Eresh replied, “Yeah Midday, give them our numbers.”
I thought many things that moment. For one, it seemed almost too good to be true. I now wanted to be like Chad so bad. I also thought how it could be this easy to get girls if you had expensive things, it now made selling drugs more appealing though I still wouldn’t do it. Third and lastly, what the hell was up with those girls’ names, their parents must have been high when naming them, like seriously, their names were just as weird as mine. When they left, Chad turned to me and gave me the blonde’s number.
“Bro, this car is a pussy magnet ain’t it,” Chad said as he had the hugest grin.
“Yeah I guess, I’m just glad I got the number bro.” It felt weird though, it felt too good to be true, like a movie script, and I just couldn’t take in the whole thing, the day had really begun to get weird.
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125,013 Literary Works • 672,842 Reviews
Hey Sia, Flite here for a review. This review is going to be short and straight to the point. I'm not going to bother with small technical details as there are bigger things that concerns me. Let's start with your opening paragraph. It starts with very mundane things that almost everyone one of us do everything. Those things aren't necessary to the story as they tell nothing about the characters nor the plot, they're just fillers that are redundant. You're here to tell us a story, not here to tell us what you ate breakfast and what type the juice was. The beginning also put me off greatly as you basically told the readers everything. Today, I'm going to do so and so. And damn, it sucks to be so and so. Telling us those facts does nothing to convey them across, it just sounds like a teacher droning on about something in a monotone. I cannot stress how about it is for you to show us things instead of just reciting off like facts. You can show us that he's poor by describing his clothing, or the interior decorations of his house. Things like that.
Next, let's talk about about your dialogue here. Your MC is in a drug gang, yes? I think you should make more of an effort to actually insert some personality into their speech. Because at the moment, the dialogue from every character sounds like an over generalization of gang speech. Doing that doesn't bring out the personality from any of your characters, I'm sure each one of them has a unique way of speaking.
Then there is the tone of your writing, which is also to be honest, utterly flat. I'm sorry if I'm being harsh but you really need to know this. This is absolutely no variation in the pattern of speech, your word usage, syntax what so ever. On top of that, there also seems to be a lot of filler dialogue. Before you get overtly defensive about this, let me show you what I mean.
Random snippet of dialogue:
Ok, two problems there. I will talk briefly about it, but there's a much better article [url=http://theeditorsblog.net/2011/11/03/bad-dialogue-bad-bad-dialogue/[/url]here. In the above dialogue between Chad and the MC I assume, you have repetition between the two. See the bolded parts, you also have no tagging to indicate who's talking. Actually, is fine sometimes to not have tagging. But you know what's good about tagging? Or more precisely, action tags I should say. Is that those tags really brings out the personality of your character, and it adds dimension to them. Without them, because your dialogue just seems like general gang speak and sounds the same. It falls flat.
Second problem is, almost all your dialogue, not just one. Are direct question and answer dialogues, see the two lines I italicized. They ask and answer in a straight-forward manner, I mean there is no fun in that. Sometimes is ok to do those types of dialogue because that might be the character's personality, but if you do that a lot. It doesn't amount to anything, there is no antagonism, no suspense, and most of all. No character development can be seen if the character just asks and answers like they're reading off some sheets.
There is an article [url=http://hollylisle.com/dialogue-examples/[/url] here telling you how to write better dialogue.
See the quoted paragraph? Epitome of telling and repeated usage of words. Your sentence length is medium and doesn't vary, you start almost every sentence with either 'I' or 'my'. You've basically told us what the weather was like, the MC's looks and what others think of him.
In other words, you really need to work on your description skills. Instead of pointing our the precise degree, you can describe how the chilly wind raises goosebumps on his arms on his face, despite the afro. While I'm on this, I will just also go into that paragraph is an info dump that was absolutely redundant. The whole point of this chapter is to show Xez's interaction with the mysterious guy. But that itself was short, but the entire chapter was filled with random pieces of dialogue and other characters. Did we really need to know his eyes changed colours with the season, or that he had a mixed heritage? As far as I can see, it doesn't affect anything. Instead of spending a paragraph on info-dumping us with his background information, wouldn't it be more efficient if say you give us the context of who the mysterious guy is and how Xez got involved in this entire drug business?
Last. You need to think about how realistic your characters are, Xez's mother sounds more like his girlfriend than his mum. If you had given the readers some information on their relationship maybe it might make more sense. But I don't think a son would call his mum 'babe'. And that situation there didn't make sense, this can't be the first time Xez's out. If so, then why is his mum so worried? Does he give him 20 dollars each time, I guess not considering they're broke.
Hope I wasn't too harsh, please enjoy your day.
-Flite
Hi there!
And you've done a good job in portraying the secondary characters too. I like Chad, even though he's a drug dealer. He seems to be really protective about Xez and he feels the same way. It's sweet.
I'm here to review your fantastic work!
This was an interesting read! I'm really starting to like Xez a lot
This chapter is a lot more descriptive than the previous one! Good job! However, I would really like to know what it is that the mother actually does because I feel that in most stories people give completely no regard for the parents. Like, where is his father? So I think you need to be clear on that.
Secondly, in the first part of the chapter, there is a constant reiteration about the fact that he's poor. We got that in the first chapter; there was no need to keep repeating it again and again.
Oooh I have to mention that this chapter made me laugh quite a bit at the beginning. You have some real good sense of humor, I must say.
The same thing I said in your first chapter applies to here too. Proof-read, grammar, etc.
Keep working on it!
That's all for my review!
Keep writing!
Thanks for the review, I really value your input. I will be sure to look over for grammar errors and stuff. Also, the father of Xez is unknown, he mentioned it in the first chapter, but I think I'll go deeper into that in later chapters. I also should focus on the mom more. Once again I appreciate your review.
Well done! Again, that realistic dialogue is present, making the story always more tangible. Furthermore, I liked how you had everything put together: each event flowed very naturally into the next; and the whole writing had good coherence in general. Things really escalated in this one. Didn't they? The story has gone from mere mention of dealing drugs and performing other misdeeds to the actual visualization of dealing drugs and so forth. The ending really had my mind in a whirl: here is Xez getting the number of some highly attractive girl and even considering what benefit one might gain from being a drug dealer. Whoa, scary! I think I know where this next part is going, and you have me in suspense, truly. I'm eager to read what you write after this. Once again, well done, Siageo; and I hope to read your next installment soon.
Thanks so much for the review!