Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language, violence, and mature content.
Chapter 3
The news on TV drowns out what I was about to say to Pike. “Immediate Report. Jamiel Block for Topeka News Channel 4. A hooded man has been spotted multiple times today and has been associated with Bayonet. We have caught footage of this man with Bayonet a multitude of times when he appears on live television.” The channel fuzzes in and out as she speaks. “Hmph, being hacked ALREADY?”
“Shut up, Pike, their radio waves. Remember? We used to use digital but we've gone back to the old school crap. This is cheaper. I can afford this.”
“Hmph, and i’m the older one! I thought I make the decisions around here…” A sly grin spreads like body language butter on his face. He stands up slowly and walks with long strides over to the phone. “Oh no you aren’t! I won’t let you change to HD!” A swift kick to behind the back of his right knee makes him keel over. He gets back up and runs over to the phone in the kitchen. “Get back here you Son of a…”
“The phone’s gone.” He’s right. Our mobiles are missing from their charging stand.
“Damn it…Pike, why are you fooling with me?”
“I’m not fooling with anybody. But where did you put them? ‘Cuz you knew I would switch back to HD?”
“Nope. You seriously didn’t do it?” After searching the house for an hour we give up.
“God, guess we have to go to shut them down.”
The TV slowly gets less and less fuzzy, then it completely looks fine.
“See, I told you! It’s perfectly fine.” Then it fuzzes out again. I facepalm and regret what I said.
“Dad would have switched to HD.”
“Shut up!” My anger jumps out out and starts an assault on Pike. Before my punch slams into Pike, the doorbell rings. Little did we know that our choice to open the door would impact our lives and others forever.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
This might seem odd. But I don't want to do reviews at the moment to publish more chapters. So if you want to read more of my book right now, you're going to have to let me share the book with you over Google Drive. Leave me an email with your email adress and I will share it.
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Hello.
The main thing that stood out here was the dialogue. You have a few typos here and there, but I'm not going to focus on them in favour of the mechanics of the work itself.
First off, you have quite a lot of talking heads in here. This makes it very difficult to actually tell what's going on around the characters, and it's also difficult to relate to the characters. Having extra description, emotions, character thoughts, and general stuff around the dialogue helps readers get a sense of who the characters are and what the setting is. This is important even at a chapter 3, because this is something you need to keep up constantly through the novel.
The other thing I noticed, on the dialogue itself, is it's very proper English. People do not speak this way. Dialogue should be messy and should reflect who the person is. When you're stringing words together and they're almost indistinguishable from the prose, you're not writing speech that sounds natural.
Which leads me to the words themselves. It feels like the characters are saying things because they have to say them, instead of you really establishing why they're saying what they are. People have a motive when they speak; they want to do something with their words. When you neglect to include that in, you really neglect your character development and lack realism. These two articles go into that topic more.
Overall, the dialogue here is really what threw me out of the piece. Polish that up to make your characters sound like people and you'll be well on your way to something amazing.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
~Rosey
Hello, steampowered here for a review!
Woah… formatting-wise, this was a vast improvement over the previous two chapters. Because it’s so much easier for me to read (as well as being a manageable length) I’ll try and focus in more on the actual content, rather than the nitpicks.
Firstly, I was just a little confused about the phones. Why did Pike go to the phone anyway? Was he going to make a phone call – to the TV provider, perhaps? (It took me about ten minutes of racking my brains to come up with this theory, so if this is the case then you need to make this much clearer) If not, it seems a little strange (as well as very convenient) that he runs over to the phone in the kitchen… Also, I found the following paragraph a little ambiguous:
Now, I assume that when Pike says this, he is referring to the landline, but then you start talking about their mobiles. Maybe you could add something in to make it clear he was only talking about one phone, such as:
Moving on:
Pike shouldn’t be speaking in the same paragraph as the newsreader – I got really confused, because I thought the newsreader said the last bit about being hacked. Then, when I got to the next paragraph, it confused me even more. So maybe you could put Pike’s bit in a new paragraph?
This makes it sound like Cliff is addressing the reader, as Pike would probably already know this. Maybe you could word it differently to make it sound more like natural speech, for example something like:
Or something like that… I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with something better.
The other thing I thought was a little unnecessary was this bit here:
Since you’re writing in the present tense (which gives an immediate sense of what is happening) this interjection doesn’t work because Cliff cannot know what is going to happen (and if he does know, he probably won’t open the door!) Also, the reader can already guess that things are not as they should be, and that something big is going to happen. I’d be tempted to remove this last bit.
Aside from that I thought it was really good, and I really want to find out what happens next. Feel free to let me know when the next chapter’s up, and I will read and review it!