"Fay get up now!"
Oh great the lovely voice of my mother, sheesh who need an alarm clock. Today is Saturday, why the hell am I waking up at 8 am? Oh yeah mom's cooking a dinner for the neighbor's, since their son is returning. Huh I went to summer camp for 2 months I didn't get no dinner, only thing I got was my mother telling me I finally looked presentable. I went to fat camp by the way I lost major weight , but yeah that's a story for another time. So 8 am for a dinner? Yeah I wonder if my mother is sane.
As I descended from the stairs in my spongebob pj's I see my folks everywhere all over the place. There is only 3 people coming so why are they fixing the place up so much? Beats me. All this just 'cause the neighbor's son is coming? What did he fin the cure for cancer? So he's returning big woop! I went straight for the couch and decided to watch some television to kill time.
~`:~:Time Skip:~;'~
It's 7:30pm he's arriving at 8pm , oh joy note my sarcasm.
My mom made me wear a stupid summer dress she got me two summers ago! Wouldn't have worn it had it not been for the fat camp, moving on.
"Fay quit slouching and put a smile on that face , I expect you to be on your best behavior,"
my mother tells me. Yeah sure mom , I tell myself when is she gonna stop treating me like a child?
I'm 19 years old for crying out loud an adult! Oh wow you hardly know anything about me! Well I'm an average joe nothing special here, I'm 5 feet 3 inches yes I know I'm pretty damn short , I have plain brown eyes , wavy brown hair , straight nose , heart shaped lips , and lightly tanned skin. Yup I'm the crème of the crop…not.
"Oh Fay you look absolutely gorgeous, I can't wait for you to meet my James, I hope the two of you to be great friends."
"Why thank you Mrs. Alden and I hope us to be friends as well." I say with my cheekiest grin.
Yeah sure Mrs. Alden it's your stupid James fault I'm wearing this stupid dress at this stupid dinner, oh I hope us to be bff's…not.
The clock strikes 8 pm, I see lights from outside wow talk about punctual.
"Straighten up Fay and smile I want you to be nice to this boy," my mother commands in her Hitler voice, yeah you see in my house it's a dictatorship and my mother is Hitler.
"Yes mother," I respond flatly.
For some reason my heart began to speed up a little.
The door opens and in walks Mr. Alden, and that's when I saw him.
Him, James, their son, the reason I was forced to wear a ridiculous dress! He was….the biggest …looking Dork ever!!
As I got a better look of him when he stepped in he was wearing a blue Polo shirt and some dark wash jeans with some biker boots on.
Interesting style he was probably 6 feet 2 inches pretty tall, at first glance he looked pretty lanky but I could see some biceps peeking out from under his shirt so he was toned. What added to his nerd image were the pretty thick glasses on his face.
"Ah you must be James! I'm Mrs. Winters so nice to meet you," my mother cheered.
"Why hello there Mrs. Winters, yes I am James Alden a pleasure to meet you," he says while taking her hand and kissing it lightly. Oooh what a gentlemen …not.
"Such a gentlemen, what a handsome young man you are." Ok don't forget your married mom, wow one kiss on her hand and she's already swooning.
"Oh and this is my daughter Fayne." Cringe! I hate my full name! as I reach my hand I say
"Please call me Fay."
He grabs my hand oh god please don't kiss it!
"Fay it is," he say while indeed kissing my hand gently. That moment he looked up from kissing my hand he looked up our eyes met , and behind those mildly thick glasses were the kindest most gentle looking hazel eyes. As I got a closer look at his face he wasn't all that bad looking, he's kind of cute and muscely….No bad Fay don't think like that. I snap out of my reverie and say
"Yeah thanks." Yup I'm a woman of few words.
We sat ourselves at the dinner table my mother made her famous lasagna. So the adults were chatting away I was minding my own business when boom! "OOOOH!" I howl, everyone stops to look at me. So I quickly try to cover up by saying "OOOH yeah this lasagna is good!" My mother gives me a look as if saying behave. While my father ignored me and the Alden's just quickly looked away.
I looked to my left to look at the culprit who had kicked me quite harshly in my shin.
"Yes," I asked.
James looked beet red! He looked so I don't know embarrassed?
"Oh man I'm-I'm sorry! I-I uh didn't mean to kick you so roughly um, I just wanted to get your attention…." He explained while stuttering a couple of times. He looked kind of cute when he was all nervous like that.
"Yeah it's ok, just don't uh kick me, you could have tapped my shoulder or threw a piece of bread at me." I responded politely. He remained quiet for a few seconds and nodded then looked away.
"So what did you want?" I broke the silence.
"Oh um I just wanted to talk it was getting on my nerves that you were ignoring me." He said nonchalantly. Woah! Woah ! ignoring him? Who's ignoring?
"Uh James I wasn't ignoring you, I'm sorry if that's what you thought." I told him nicely. He surprised me with what he said next.
"Oh please, I know what you think of me , why even bother talking to the nerd dork with thick glasses , I'm probably into star wars and what not, but you know I'm a person just in case you forgot and I hate star wars."
After laying that on me he excused himself from dinner to supposedly finish unpacking. I just sat there dumbstruck , what a jerk!
I mean where does he get off telling me what I think?! He doesn't know me. Although that little speech he gave me makes me think maybe he feels stereotyped? Like people judge him too quicky? But he like judged me just now!
Ugh! I would be his friend but I mean come on, first he kicks me , then he goes off telling me saying I'm all thinking high and mighty of myself not his exact words but I read between the lines .Well that's all going to have to change.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,855 Reviews
*Moved to Romantic Novels*
Hiya,
I think that that your piece has a nice idea. I'm very curious to see where it leads! However, you've kept it from reaching its full potential. This is for two primary reasons; the sloppiness of the structure and grammar as well as the voice of the main character. Your plot could also use a bit of tweaking.
Sometimes you really to just slow day and reconsider what you're writing. In a piece, writing needs to be a fit more formal then what we would say in every day prose. For instance--"I didn't get no dinner" is irritating and makes your main character seem uncultured and uneducated. You also need to watch your punctuation. Punctuation can be the difference between an audible, well-written piece and sloppy fluff. You can see a few of these sentences in your first paragraph.
Note the highlighted portions. The first part could really be restructured as it is, as it's incredibly sloppy. The comma doesn't belong, and I suggest that you read this article for further details on that. The second sentence is missing punctuation and is also a run-on. Look here for details on that.
On the another note, I really dislike your main character and the general plot so far. I can't really sum it up in words, so I'm just going to do a line-by-line critique of the piece, okay?
It's kind of cliche to start off a story with the main character waking up. Sometimes it can be exciting--in one book I read with this beginning, the main character was having a dream about a sailboat, and her mother was a tidal wave. If you can't think of an interesting spin, it would be better to redo your ending and come up with something more original since this one has already been done time and time again.
I know already quoted this when talking about your grammar and sentence structure, but here I wanted to focus on the content. Firstly, from the way your main character reacts, it seems like she's been up for quite a while. We don't usually wake up instantly, or hear perfectly audible words when we do so. Also, when you mention the time, you never have her looking at any clock. Is your MC some magic wizard? Probably not, so those details would be good to present to us.
Second--slow down! You relay a lot of information in this paragraph without giving us time to really stomach it. She's been to a "fat camp"? What kind of place is that? Is it vile? You make it seem like it, since you mention that your MC "didn't get dinner". Whatever it is, you make it clear that this "fat camp" has been a big part of the MC's life, so try to give it the attention it deserves.
A few things. First--and reoccurs throughout your piece--try to spell out your numbers. So "19 > nineteen" and "3 > three". It makes everything seem neater and has all of your writing on the same page.
Secondly, this is example a of why I don't like your MC. She's nineteen but repeatedly whines and throws herself about like a twelve-year old. Whining because a neighbor's son is coming a ten year old would do since they had to do chores instead of watch TV. She doesn't give a good reason as to why she doesn't want him there. As a result, it's really annoying.
Call me a nitpicker, but this is really overblown. You don't see anything like this in books; A simple asterisk or bullet point could do.
Two things. At the end of your first paragraph, you mention--"dinner at 8 am?" At first I was a little confused. If your main character was being sarcastic, you should follow it up with why she's been woken up earlier then usual. That way you won't leave the reader to assume things, and that will make these two sentences connect a lot better. Also, the second part of your sentence falls into 'show, don't tell'. 'Note my sarcasm' seems like something a third grader would write to shove obvious ideals at us since they don't know how to formulate writing that speaks for itself. Leaving it at 'oh joy' would be good, but I really think that the phrase could b cut all together. You've established from the way your MC is acting that she doesn't want the son to come.
When she stops acting like one. Seriously, the introduction of her age is so jarring that my eyes got all wide. All your MC has done so far is whine; whine about getting up, whine about fat camp, whine about the son coming, whine that everything was being blown out of proportion with his arrival--seriously, the mother has every right to treat your MC the way she does.
Bold: Hey, I'm 5'0. My Grandma is 4'11. My Mother is 5'2, My Father 5'4, and a lot of my other friends are around that height as well. The line is pretty offensive to shorter people, if you ask me, just from the way it's worded. 'Damn short'? Now I think that your MC picked on tall kids to feel better about her own height when she was in school. You don't even need it--the fact that she's 5'3 should speak for itself.
The rest of the paragraph is a big info-dump. Shooting out all of the aspects of a character's appearance is a common mistake. Info-dump paragraphs are bad because they not only bore the reader, but also aren't very realistic. Your characters know everything about themselves, so why should they plainly recite the facts? Try to disperse these facts so that they feel even and in line with the story.
I'm not even going to comment on the rest because the same stuff keeps showing again and again. Everything feels so rushed and forced that it's hard to stomach. When you go back and revise, slow down and reconsider the aspects of your story--plot, character, etc. How is it going to rub off onto the reader? I'm curious to see where this leads. PM me for anything, okay?
-Elinor x
Hello there, Cindy!
Here to review.
First off, I'm not going to say that I didn't like this but not also going to say that I like the story (though don't worry, I was a bit entertained when I read this). Kind of realistic and part quite unrealistic. It's because I think your pacing's kind of a rush or something. I think you just intend it so the girl could meet the boy, right? And another thing is that, why would James' family visit Fayne's house on the day of his return? So, better say the relationship between the two households. But your spelling are good, so be happy for that.
Second, tenses. You need to work on it. Watch as I correct you because of your tenses, but really, I didn't know what tense you're into. So I say, you switched tenses which confused me and ruins the flow of the storyline.
Third, punctuations. I'm really going to be particular on your commas, I like how you use sarcasm as part of your MC's attitude but it weakens the plot when you lack commas. All you need is just practice and I really know that there are some good threads here in YWS, to help you on that. So, don't worry.
And I also noticed you have spaces between a comma, for example:
"Oh and by the way #FF0000 ">, did you forget about the assignment?" See? If you're aware of this mistake then you should probably proofread your story first.
Awkwardness:
I say you really need to rephrase some of your sentences 'cause a few sometimes is a bit awkward and doesn't make sense at all.
Overall: I ahve to say that this sotry has the potential to be good, so just edit things a bit and try making the pace slower this time. PM me for questions.
Keep writing!
Peace out!
~yuri
Reminder: If you don't review, you won't get any reviews.
At least try reviewing someone else's work as well, because it wouldn't look good that you have posted stories already but you have made no reviews yet. (So I think, that's why there are no reviews even though you've posted two stories here) only one review from me though. Just return the favor, you know.( but I'm not saying you should review my works, other pieces here, okay?)