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She was leaving. She had packed her bags, and she would be gone in a couple of hours.
But first Joan would need to say her goodbyes. To her friends, just to tell them not to follow, not to worry.
So she snuck into each friends house, in the dead of night.
The first house she goes to, she plans to sneak in through a second story window overlooking a small backyard with one apple tree growing in the middle.
She uses this tree to get up to the level of the window, and as she climbs the tree she remembers all the childhood memories spent in this tree with her friend Catherine, the occupant of this particular house.
Joan remembers all the times when the tree had been more than just a tree, it had been a pirate ship, a whole jungle, a base of operations for their own little empire, where they’d plan wars and ally with neighbouring kids. Good times.
As she draws level with the window opens it with ease, the city was generally a safe place, so windows higher than the ground level usually had no lock. Stepping into the dark room, she tries to be as silent as possible, but ultimately fails. Joan knocks a leather ball to the floor, Thud! She freezes, and the sleeping form of her friend squirms a little but stops.
Without realising it, Joan has been holding her breath, she releases it now as a sigh of relief.
Joan carefully creeps across the room. An old floorboard creeks as she steps on it. Catherine wriggles, but does not stop. She rises and, confused as to why she has awoken, gets out of bed. In the dim light she cannot see any intruder in her room, and Joan can do nothing but hold her breath and stay perfectly still.
Satisfied, Catherine slips under the covers again and slowly drifts back to sleep.
Joan relaxes.
She quickly undertakes the rest of her journey to the nightstand and gently places the note written for Catherine.
It read;
Catherine,
This isn’t my home anymore. I will miss you, but please don’t follow me. This is something I need to do. Perhaps I will find myself out there, I know I won’t find it here.
Joan.
She left quickly, climbing back out the window.
She did this for every one of her friends, leaving each a similar note.
Lastly, she leaves a note for her best friend, Will.
His read;
Will,
I wish you could come with me, You’re my best friend. But you still have your family, If you go it would destroy them. I don’t have any reason to stay.
I love you,
J.
She used the nickname affectionately given to her by Will.
Joan hovers in Will’s room for a moment, still debating on whether she should wake him or not.
She decides not to, so she left him be and snuck back out with a tear in her eye.
With the last note placed, she sneaks up to the wall. Careful not to be seen, she climbs to the top, where she stays. A platform runs around the inside of the wall, where sentries would keep watch, she ducks behind some planks of wood, ready to replace old ones in the wall, as a sentry passes.
She waits until he is gone before vaulting over the side and dropping to the ground.
In the dim light she fails to see a small rock on the ground underneath her, and as she lands her foot rolls, spraining her ankle painfully.
She gasps in pain, before clamping her hand over her mouth. She presses herself against the wall as the sentry leans over, in the dim light he can’t see anything. He goes back to walking back and forth along the wall.
Joan limps painfully away, leaving behind her old life. Reaching a rocky outcrop, she hides behind it and binds her ankle.
Feeling that her ankle has been properly attended to, she continues on, Hoping to find a new life. Perhaps to follow in the footsteps of her father.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,012 Literary Works • 672,842 Reviews
Hi! Cricket here for a review!
The first thing that I noticed about this is that there is quite a bit of telling and not enough showing. A good example would be how you told us how Catherine wriggles, and you tell us that she is confused. That is not the best way to get your readers to understand why your characters are feeling that way. You want to get a reaction out of your readers, right? The way to do that is to show and to not tell. Telling is just plain out saying that somebody is confused, or excited, but with no explanation on it. But if you are showing then you would be describing their facial expressions and also their actions. Here's a great link that should help you out in this. That link was written extremely well on this sort of thing and should help you out in this. Just remember that you want to get a reaction out of the reader, and you want them to feel what the character is feeling. If you go for that, then you'll do good with this. If this doesn't make sense, then feel free to tell me and I'll explain it further.
Next, I would like to talk about paragraphing. Now, looking at this here I could see that each paragraph is its own idea. But these ideas are too short. You need to expand on them a bit more. Each idea should be on average about three to five sentences, in order to present them well. They can, of course, be presented in longer or shorter paragraphs, depending on the idea. See, it's the idea that matters. But it also matters how you present that idea. And if you don't go into it enough, then the entire gist of that idea wouldn't be gotten across to the best that you can. Make sense?
This is something that is pretty hard to avoid, but if you concentrate on it enough, you will get it after a while. Try to avoid using the same word in the same sentence. There are two "she's" in this sentence, and it's a bit redundant. The way to best avoid that is to read it aloud to yourself, and the redundant parts will stick out to you. Try that out, and it will help you. Honest.
I loved this. It showed me her connection with these friends, and that was really helpful. Thanks for doing it this way.
Alright, I think that's all for nitpicks really.
The main thing that needs to be worked is the show and don't tell thingy. You have to make sure that you do this, as that is one of the most important aspects of writing here. Focus on getting a good reaction out of your readers and you will get it right. Try to expand on the actions of the characters, and using showing, you need to paint big pictures. I couldn't really get a good image of the rooms or any of her surroundings, because it was mainly just telling. Okay? Just focus on that for now, (your decision, of course) and you'll get everything right.
Keep writing!
~Cricket
"A fast paced adventure that got me hooked from the word go!"
I read your first chapter and loved the cliffhanger. There are occasional speed-bumps but your writing resembles mine and I read it really very fast.
Okay, so the prologue was attention grabbing and the zombies made me really curious to see what happens next. And I got badly trolled because of the flashback! -_-
Yeah, I expected something as swift as fast as the first chapter but this was quite a slow one compared to first. Having said that, I completely agree with the previous reviewer. You can't always maintain sturdy pace and at times it is in fact recommended to apply brakes.
I liked the characterization of Joan, who is slowly growing on readers. But this chapter is incomplete without zombies. You should have tried to gel them in here. The transition from chapter 1 to 2 also felt uncomfortable but because this is relatively much smaller than the first, it still managed to keep me hooked.
There are no dialogues here and I'm a big fan of dialogue driven novels. So I missed some action there.
I'm eager to see how Joah is going to save the world from zombies. This is perhaps the first time I got so excited about adventure novel. Though your basic premise is quite over-the-top (For someone who generally reads realistic satire) but your command over the material is really commendable. There are some technical nitpicks which didn't really do much harm in breaking the flow. Other than that, this is a very engaging story so far which makes me curious to see what happens next.
Hoping to see more of your work. This is smartly paced adventure so far. Great Job! Keep up the good work!
Hey there. So this is the second chapter. I haven't read the first, so I can only assume something happened that made her want to leave, or she'd been thinking about this for awhile. Overall, this chapter progresses nicely. However, I can't help but feel like she's leaving a little too early in the story. I can't say this for sure until I've read the previous chapter, which I will do, so ignore this for now.
You say this twice, and for both times it should be, "It reads"Anyway, the first thing I noticed was your tense issues. You're writing in present tense, but you slip back into the past on occasion. As somehow who wrote a 100,000 word novel in present tense, I know it can be tricky. However, I found that the only time I should use past tense is in a flashback or if I'm referring to an event that happened in the past, which isn't happening here. It may feel weird, but you should put that opening into present tense. Then it would read: "She is leaving. She has packed her bags, and will be gone in a couple of hours." The next two lines should be in present tense as well.
Here are few other times you slip into past tense.
Left should be leaves.
Other than that you, you did a pretty good job.
I have just a few other nitpicks:
The period feels weird here. I think it would read better if you deleted the period and made that all one sentence.
The comma isn't strong enough here. You need either a semi-colon or a period. I'd pick semi-colon, but it be fine either way.
This is a little thing that doesn't really matter, and is more a personal pet peeve of mine than anything else, but I think you should change, "Feeling that" to "Now that". I just don't like starting the sentence with feeling.
One last thing is thought verbs. M Some examples of thought verbs are, well, thought, know, remembered, realized, imagined etc... The problem with these is first that they are very tell-y rather than show-y, and the second is that they pull the reader out of the story because they refer to you, the writer.
There are times when you'll need to use them to clarity, brevity, or stylstic reasons, but keep that to a minimum.
For example, instead of telling us she remembered things about the tree, just describe those memories, will understand that she's remembering them.
Also, I could use a tad pit more description of what things look like. Not too much, just a little mention here or there of what she's seeing, hearing, physically feeling/touching, smelling, and even tasting.(With this one, try mentioning what the air "tastes" like, or that there was certain feel in the air. Maybe after she foes over the wall and hurts her ankle, she bites her tongue or lip and tastes blood.)
And that's all I got. I love your voice here. It was clear, but it also had a beautiful quality about it. I could feel her remorse at leaving her friends, but also her determination to leave.
Thanks for sharing!
-Art
I loved the way you leapt from the terrifying cliffhanger of the first chapter to a flashback, dramatically delaying the action. Of course, it might frustrate the reader somewhat, but it’s not a particularly long chapter…
The one thing I’ve noticed about your writing is the tendency to leap from tense to tense (it’s an easy mistake to make, particularly when writing in present tense, so don’t worry about it) For example, “she WAS leaving” and “she USES this tree” make it look somewhat inconsistent.
Within a story, the tense needs to be consistent, except for possibly flashbacks, otherwise it makes it hard to read and confuses the reader. You’ve been writing in the present tense so far, which is really good for the action scenes, and the flashbacks (which this chapter is) could feasibly be either. However, you need to choose one tense for this chapter (and all future flashbacks) and stick to it.
A few other very minor points:
“It read;” should probably be “It read:” (a colon rather than a semi-colon)
“second story window” – it should be spelt “storey” as you’re using non-American spellings of other words (I have nothing against American English, but I’d suggest you change it for consistency reasons) “Story” is the American English way of spelling it – in the UK, Australia and most other English-speaking countries, it would be “second story window.”
In a few places you use capital letters after commas, for example “But you still have your family, If you go it would destroy them.” It should be “if” rather than “If.” Similarly “she continues on, Hoping to find a new life.” It should be “hoping.”
(Sorry, I’m quite picky when it comes to spelling and grammar and stuff. I’ll move on to the actual story now)
The story itself I thought was good, as it helped to create a more detailed picture of Joan’s past and added a bit of world-building, particularly with regards to this walled city for the humans to defend themselves against the zombies / monsters / bandits out in the wastelands. I was however slightly confused by the fact there was no mention of zombies – is it widely known there are zombies? Perhaps you could briefly mention them (maybe when referring to the sentries?) then it’ll remind the reader of the dramatic ending to the previous chapter.
I got a much stronger sense of Joan’s character here, and the personality is really building up. I don’t know if she’s the only real character or if there’ll be others, but I’d be interested to see how she interacts with people. She comes across as a strong heroine, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what she does next. Thanks for uploading – you have a wonderful style, and you’ve managed to take something familiar (zombies and the apocalypse) and turn it to something fresh and really interesting. I’ll be sure to read and review the next chapter (although I might not be online for a few days over the festive period)
Merry Christmas!