Ring ring. “Hello?” what time was it and who was calling? “Hey,” someone answered it sounded like a boy. He better be cute if he’s interfering with my sleep, and my phone battery.
“Who is this and why are you calling me at 1 am?” I asked sleepily rolling over in my bed.
“It's… someone you don't know you're dreaming,” “If it was a dream you'd be trying to convince me I wasn't,” I said laughing in a way.
“Maybe your dreams are getting smarter,” he said.
“Maybe,” I muttered “so are you supposed to be the boy of my dreams,” I said, you could hear the smile in my voice. He laughed.
“Yeah,”
“So what's your name dream boy?” I said. "Even dream characters have names." I rolled over.
“Jonathan,” he said, “I already know your name.”
“Oh you do, do you, then what is it dream boy?” I said that would now be his nickname.
“Jessica,” he said. I wasn't as creeped out as should have been. Dude whoever this kid was, was freaking adorable at the moment, at least personality wise.
“So dream boy you just called me at 1 am to tell me I'm dreaming?” I asked.
“Sorta,” he said, “you should look for me in your math class.”
“Oh so you are real I'm not having 1 am delusions,” I said I was hanging off the bed now, not really sure why. “your name was Jonathan dream boy?” I said dreamily, mostly because I was half asleep.
“Yeah,” he said silence. I smiled I loved my life it wasn’t perfect but I loved it. That was random brain. “How's your boyfriend?” he asked interrupting my thoughts.
“Boyfriend?” I said quizzically. “I don't have a boyfriend?”
“What about that boy, that your friends with?” He said. "That was well worded."
“Nathan?”
“Yeah.”
“He's just a friend,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I said burrowing into my blankets. He muttered something like poor guy. I didn’t really care to listen.
"So dream boy how'd you acquire my number?"
"Last year you signed everyone yearbooks with ‘here's my number, don't call me, hags’ and if they didn't have yearbook you signed their arm,"
"Oh yeah," I laughed "I didn't even know like 70% of the people whose yearbook I signed or well, signed them."
“Well we got a math test tomorrow get some sleep, goodnight,” he hung up. That was odd, note to self look for what was it? Jonathan, yeah Jonathan look for... I fell asleep phone in hand.
Beep beep beep, I crawled out of bed, where was my phone? So I didn't dream it. Ug Jonathan better be super good looking and madly in love with me if he's going to- I fell off the bed, my phone was on the ground next to me. Keep draining my phone battery.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,805 Reviews
First of all I want to say that you shouldn't change your writing just because some of your readers don't like a chapter, a poem or a book. So going right into the review.... Your paragraphs had a sort of choppy feeling and some of your grammar is wrong. I would also like it if in the next chapter you add more mystery to Jonathan and Jessica. For some weird reason Jonathan kind of reminds me of Edward from twilight so good job with that part. Overall I would give this chapter a 7 out of 10 because it's about love, and I'm all about the love. Just keep up the good work and work on those grammatical errors.
Thanks for sharing this introduction to a Novel. I liked the way that mystery and suspense are created by having the MC being awakened in mid sleep. Also how the identity of the fellow at the other end is kept secret. For a while we don’t know whether he is real or not and that kept me interested.
I also liked how the girl’s feminine qualities are conveyed as she reacts to his words, wonders who he is, dreams about his being her dream boy ad even teasingly flirtingly call him that.
I was a bit disappointed when the character on the phone was so quickly revealed to be just someone she had met but couldn’t remember meeting briefly. I was expecting the mystery to deepen further ad perhaps being the focus of the story for several more pages or even chapters. At least that’s what the story seemed to be promising.
The advantage of a slower pace would have provided the opportunity to deeply familiarize the reader with the main character or protagonist which in a novel is a very important thing. The beauty of a novel is that we have plenty of time to do this as opposed to flash fiction or short stories where we are limited and sometimes must sacrifice depth of personality for other things such as action and scene description.
In short, I would slow down the pace. Keep the boy a mystery for a few more pages as you tell us the way she thinks, Describe her surroundings. Where is she on the globe? How does she look? Is she African American? Is she a Nordic blond? Is she in Alaska? How tall is she? Is she obese? Gaunt? How does her room look? Does she live in a house or apartment? Does she still live with her parents or with a relative? Is she an only child? The Intro and early chapters will lay the foundation and make the character a three-dimensional person. But if we rush through it, then we deprive ourselves of that opportunity.
Suggestions
Many of the tags such as “he said” and “I said” are unnecessary since the reader can easily see that without them. The tags, in such cases, merely make the reading clunky and are annoying.
[W]hat time was it....
[S]omeone answered[.]
“....me at 1 [a.m.]?”
[So]are you supposed....
....that [you’re] friends
I said[.] I was hanging....
well[-]worded.
Dude[,] whoever....
So dream[-]boy[,] how'd....
Thanks for the advice will use it!
Nice! Incredibly intriguing, this pulled me in from the first line. I really want to see what happens next.
There were a few formatting and spelling errors, though.
A) When someone starts talking, that should be a new line.
B) PARAGRAPH BREAKS! A large block of text without any line breaks looks awkward/intimidating, especially if it's the beginning of a new story and someone isn't sure if they really want to read it.
C) It took me a few seconds to realize that by "dilutions" you meant <i>delusions</i>. If you aren't 100% sure how to spell something, it takes two seconds to Google it.
D) People tend to mix up your/you're and their/they're/there. Take a few minutes to brush up on those.
E) Commas are magic- use more of them.
But I really like this and can't wait to read more!
Oh my gosh sorry about none of the paragraph breaks I just copied and pasted this (I originally wrote it on a google doc) thanks for the advice will do.
Yeah, Docs and YWS use different formatting, so you've always got to double check.