“And they all lived Happily Ever After” Lacey Nickelson said softly, the twelve children she had been reading too had fell asleep long before the end of her story. For a moment she was quiet, closing the leather bound notebook, which she had scribbled the story down in a few weeks ago, and returning it to her satchel.
They had moved the tables in the open area to the side so they could all sit on pillows and in the Children’s case - nap. “Don’t worry, your stories aren’t boring. Three year olds get worn out pretty easy” One of the Teachers said, Lacey laughed and stood up and threw the pillow she had sat on into the basket where she had retrieved it.
“If you’re going to college you should sign up for a creative writing course, you have some real talent - that’s why Taylor asked you to come in” The same teacher said as the two gentally woke up the children and collected their pillows.
Taylor was Lacey’s childhood best friend, he had been there when her obsession with writing stories had begun, each week she had been visiting the nursery he worked at and reading the children stories that she had written whenever she couldn’t sleep or in spare time, which she had a lot of, since until today....she didn’t go to college.
The conversation had been brought up between Lacey and her father two weeks ago, actually - it was more of a shouting match. He’d been slack with her, he had claimed. It was time for her to grow up, he yelled in her face. She had planned to go to college, just not at nineteen; obviously most kids go to college when they leave school at eighteen but she wanted to wait until she had turned twenty-one. She was a hard worker, she knew once she’d get in college she would have no time for herself then most likely be tied down in a dead-end job and she wanted to avoid that for as long as she could.
She just smiled at the compliment and told young teacher goodbye, leaving out the main door sighing to herelf, not changing her expression when she spotted the silver Fiat her and her father shared and walked over.
David Nickelson tapped his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently, Lacey didn’t greet him as she climbed into the small car as gracefully as she could - she didn’t say anything, they weren’t on speaking terms. He rolled his eyes at his daughters stubbornes and started the engine up, pulling out of the parking spot.
“If you choose something stupid I won’t be happy,” he told her as they drove to Augusta's local college. Lacey bit her lip, resisting the urge to order him to pull over so she could walk home - she only replied when they were pulling up outside the local community college that she was being forced to enrol in.
“When are you ever happy?” She asked him. “And I don’t see how any college course can be stupid” Her voice was bitter, she opened the car door but before she could climb out he grabbed her arm.
“I’ll be happy when my daughter is happy she chose something sensible to study what is going to land her a good job” Lacey looked at him in disbelief, narrowing her eyes.
“You think this is going to make me happy?” She asked him, raising an eyebrow.
“In the long run, yes” She scoffed, and shook his grip off, climbing out of the car and taking a deep breath. She leaned down and looked at her father.
“Bullshit” She turned and walked away before she could see his reaction.
The college was full of teenagers, most of them a year younger than her - fresh out of senior year. She was confused about the excitement about being stuck in a place that was just like High School all over again, no doubt the majority of people she was surrounded by hated school just as much as she had.
Picking up the first leaflet she saw, she flipped it open and grimaced.
“I doubt you’d enjoy Science courses if you don’t want to be here in the first place” Someone said right behind her, she expected it to be someone from School but as she turned round she came face to face with a brown haired boy who she had never seen before. “Probably wouldn’t wonder into Maths either” He smirked.
She didn’t know what to say but decided toput the leaflet down and pick up another. “Why do you know I don’t want to be here?” She asked, looking down at the courses, which looked just as bad as the Science and Maths.
“Heard you arguing with your Daddy!” He said, looking over her shoulder. “Psychology? Really?” She rolled her eyes as the boy snatched the leaflet out her hands. She could attempt to turn back around and snatch the leaflet out his hands, but he was at least 5’9, inferior to her 5’4 frame. She ignored him but for some reason wanted him to carry on, she picked up some booklet and finally spotted the sign for the library in the distance, she followed it’s directions and found some tables where she could sit down and have a proper look at the booklets.
It was only when she sat down and the boy sat across from her that she realised he had been following her. “What’s your name?” She asked him curiously.
“Jackson, you?”
“Lacey” She desperately tried to hide the flirtatious tone from her voice, noticing how good looking he was. Any type of flirting would lead to stuttering, which would lead to total and utter embarrassment. “You sound like you don’t want to be here either, if I’m honest,” She observed, as if it wasn’t completely obvious anyway.
“I came, I tried, I failed…like last year, I just can’t find anything interesting” He said, sighing a little. “And you?”
“It’s time to grow up” She told him, looking down at the booklet. Jackson narrowed his eyes at Lacey.
“You’re nineteen, right?” He asked, she looked up and nodded. “Why grow up at nineteen? I’m nineteen, I haven’t grown up”
“I can tell” She joked, he laughed a little and then went all serious again; he reached forwards
and took away the booklets and moved them onto the next table.
“Five to ten years from now, we’re going to be expected to have a job, have our own house, maybe a partner, maybe even kids…that’s not that a lot of time. You can’t miss out and what you can only do before you actually have to actually be a mature, responsible adult”
“And what am I supposed to do, Jackson? I've tried! Maybe my Dad is right...” She used his name sharply, resting her head on her hands, looking at him, waiting for an answer.
Jackson bit his lip and looked around for any type of inspiration, Lacey pretended to look at an invisible watch before noticing his eye widening as he came up with an idea. “Give me a week. One week to show you that you don’t have to grow up - yet”
“One week of what?”
He rolled his eyes at her. “I don’t know yet, silly! Give me your phone number so I can call you when I think of something”
Lacey lifted her bag from under the chair, pulling out her notepad slightly and ripping the corner of an empty page out. She scribbled her number down and slid it across the table towards him - he picked it up and then folded it up before putting it in his denim shirt pocket.
Then he stood up. “I’ll call you,” He told her, smiling. She smiled back and shook her head in dismay as he walked off.
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139,616 Literary Works • 672,626 Reviews
Just as Adriana12Alexis says...
the story is good, but it leaves to many questions.
Why is she waiting 4 years?
Why is her dad pushing her to get to college?
Why does she give her number to a guy she just met.
Hey, I like the story. It could be a bit better though if you add more depth. The whole thing kind of seems too cardboard, too flat. You also have some grammatical errors. I suggest you go through the story and really read. Make sure all the dialogue has the correct punctuation and is realistic. You need to add more detail to your characters and the story in general. Nice idea, though, and pretty good writing.
Hi there!
So I think you might be able to flesh out more of this idea of her not wanting to attend college for four years - that seems like an interesting thing that should be talked about more and thoroughly explained. Why wait 'that' long instead of just a year or two? Why four exactly? Maybe that will help add some more depth to your character and make her a little bit more easy to understand for the readers. Try to connect your character to the reader so they'll understand her place and emotions a little more easily.
Additionally, I don't really like this male lead here. He's very...rude and demanding almost. I don't think I'd like someone who listened in on an argument with my father and then made it seem like a public announcement. I also wasn't a big fan of his lines, "Heard you arguing with your daddy!" was my least favorite. Not the best way to enter a relationship if he's going to be a love interest here. Also, your main character shouldn't have given her number away to him, he was pretty much a stranger and if she was smart, she'd make sure she knew him before giving out numbers and getting into that sort of thing and even you really want them to hit it off this way, then I suggest you put some more conflicting emotions and details into work here. Why did she give it to him? Why wouldn't she? What's keeping her from doing it and what isn't? Create an atmosphere.
As Ellie mentioned, your grammar and punctuation do need work. Thankfully, the internet is available for that and so is YWS. You can find a few forums here that help easily explain some simple things like comma placements and dialogue punctuation. I find that this is usually the area where newer writers struggle most. At one point, I was just like this -stumbling over commas and not knowing where I needed to put them or where I should end a sentence. Remember, practice makes perfect! (As perfect as we can get, anyway.)
Keep working on this and shaping it up as you go. Let me know if you have any questions and best of luck!
Regards,
Pink
I found this hard to get into. While you have a flicker of an idea here, I was distracted by two main setbacks.
The first is your grammar and spelling. It's all over the place. You have misspelled words, your capitalization are all over the place. Refer to what wonder said below about how to properly punctuate dialogue. Running a simple spell check should fix the spelling errors, and as for capitalization, the only things that should ever be capitalized are names, days/months, the first letter at the beginning of sentence, I, and key words in titles. I used to have difficulty with capitalization when I was younger, but when you just keep these rules in mind it will make things a lot easier.
The second is your main character. She's not terrible, but I really don't understand why anyone would want to wait four years to go to college. If I were her I'd want to get out of the house as soon as I could and spend some time away from my parents. Besides, she seems like a smart girl, so how is she going to retain what she learned in high school? What is she going to do with her life. I can understand taking a gap year to travel or something, but not four years.
Things are moving at such a brisk pace that as I try to imagine this story, it feels like a blur of characters and places, not a clear image of each scene. This is a novel, so you're going to have a great deal of time to get us settled in this world. Show us who these characters are and introduce the conflict before you move any further!
Best of luck to you!
Alright, so, wow.
there should be a comma before the speech tag, and gently, instead of gentally.Nit picky things first!
Of course, as usual, run a spelling/grammar check, for this like
Next, slow down! You’re rushing your writing, and you are truly letting the reader get a sense of either the settings or the characters. Go back, and describe. Describe the daycare, describe the car, describe what her father looks like. What about Lacey’s mom? Is she in the picture? Add backstories wherever possible, as well. This will work to flush out details and questions that the reader may have. Also, add emotion, like Lacey’s frustration and her fathers resignation. That will help give your characters personality and let your readers get to know your characters a little bit better.
Anyway, I thin you’ve explained this plot to me, but I’m intrigued. I like the way you write! It’s captivating.
Tell me when you write more!
~wonderland