Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression: Okayy...well as far as chapter one's go, this one needs a bit of work here. Its not bad, there's a lot of potential hidden within it, but as it stands at the moment, its got a few issues.
Anyway let's get right to it,
I sigh and walk down the stairs. Today we're saying goodbye toour house in Sunny Falls,California and moving to Metalbrook Washington. I meet up with my dark haired, light-eyed brother. He's 18 and plans to move to his own apartment in Metalbrook, or MB, for short. He offered tostay backsoinstead ofourmother, and I was unwittingily volenteered by my father to help Mark clean. Mark and I look completely different, of which is good for me. He has black hair, blue eyes and medium-pale skin. I have light blonde hair, dark hazel eyes andveryfair skin. He's built and tall, I'm short and mainly fit.I coulduse a little exersize. But, hey, what American couldn't?
Right away, we have ourselves a very clunky start here, you're diving far too quickly into the descriptions going on and sort of just listing out the features of the main characters there. It just makes for a bit of a hard to get through opening there. There's nothing to properly set a scene or establish anything, it just goes off on a couple of character descriptions of sorts, and that's not the best way to start a first chapter.
I get into his old 1999 pick-up and tell him to get his lady-butt into the truck. He sighs, then tells meI have to wait, then he goes back into the house.Slouching a little,I pick upone of my notebooks that I write in and begin writing. Soon, I'm in my own world offairies and dragons and soldiers fending off the dragons and the like. I get so into it I don't even notice Mark enter the truck and tell me I shouldn't write because I get motion sick. Till we have to stop because I get sick.
Yeah, this is leaning very heavily into the not showing, but telling us everything category. That's not very good to see, you've really gotta take a second look at how you bring across these details, cause these are all the type of thing we want to have shown to us through what the characters do, not stated like this.
We drive for a while, and I watch the scenary go. We drive through a lot of cities. Some with hills, some completely flat, some with giant monster-like mountains.
As we drive, Marktries to start conversations. Buthis attempts fail, as I don't do conversations well. Finally, he just turns on the music to some heavy metal station, and sings along in his amazing voice. I sat, mouthing along a little, as I thought of mystories.
Mark stops at a rest stop and tells me he'll get me a drink. I nod and start reading mystory. I get completely enthralled, and we do anothersick stop, only this time, I just sit, clutching my stomach.
Hmm, finally this part seems to kick off the actual story there. I felt like all the earlier bits were listing and describing things in a bit of a random way, but finally here we get to see the characters actually do stuff, so that's a good start, this bit is a lot better than the opening to the chapter was.
When I wake up, we're in a hotel. I wonder how long I've been asleep, but I say nothing. Instead I stretch and check out the news paper. We're only three citiesfrom where my parents are. Why are we here, in Northwood?
"Hey sleeping ugly." Mark says.
"Shut up Leslea." I snap.
"Don't use that tone. I'm still in charge."
"You're pompous."
"I know. Don't you love me?"
"Am I require do?"
Hmm...I don't like the sudden jump in time there. That ends up making the pace sound far more rushed than it really needs to be. On the other hand though, this bit of banter between the two characters is my favorite part of this chapter. That really makes me believe this has potential, cause moments like that really make you want to read more of this piece. You get a much better sense of these characters that way. That bit was quite well done.
He sighs and laughs. Leslea is his middle name, so when he is being atotal idiot, I call him Leasly. Well, his name isn't as bad as me. My middle name is Demetri. What kind of middle name is Demetri? Oh well.
"Hey, we'll leave tomorrow at around 8tomorrow morning, okay? You need to rest, you got really sick." He says, maturing up.
"Okay, Mark." I nod.
Soon, I go back to sleep.
And the ending goes back to that much more stilted sounding approach there. This dialogue comes out sounding a lot more stiff than the previous bits, mostly because of the random bits of information thrown at us there. You've really gotta work on either cutting those out or including them more seamlessly here.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall, this has a lot of potential, I'm liking the dynamic between these two somewhat, I can't really tell plotwise if anything happens, there's no real hook here if you get what I mean, cause it seems like a random scene, but yet, the characters are interesting. So yeah, there's a few things that need work here and you might have make things a bit more catchy and give us more of a reason to read on.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Points: 257336
Reviews: 4115
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