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Canary word: Present
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139,742 Literary Works • 672,674 Reviews
Well, seeing as cottonrulz picked up on most of the nitpicks, there's not a lot here for me to do. I'll say first that I liked the style of this, and it was interesting to see something written in present tense.
You need to drop the second 'that'. Also, the end of the sentence seems a little awkward - try just, 'My squeaky bed' or, 'that squeaky bed of mine'.
I know the thing with using 'I' to start every sentence in the first paragraph has already been brought up, but I'd like to point out that you need to be careful about that. Writing in first person has that trap - you can end up starting every sentence with 'I'. That said, it does work well, just try to avoid going overboard with it later in the story.
Firstly, it seems a little odd that a guy and a girl are down the hall from each other in the dorms, I thought guys and girls dorms were usually split up. Also, I think you mean 'stalker', not 'stocker'.
Other than that, cottonrulz seems to have found everything. If you write any more for this, let me know, I'd like to find out what she's doing with a gun and an FBI badge, and what the ARC is.
Hi! I see someone's already gone over the nitpicks with you so I'll simply comment on my opinion. I liked it. It was crisp, clear, and to the point. It pulled us out of bed, gave us a scene, then tucked us in; end of story. It had a nice style to it as well, though the tense was off in a couple places if I recall correctly. Keep up the good work and don't forget: Review to post ratio is 2:1. Good Luck!
~Dakota
Hello! First of all, welcome to YWS! You only joined this morning, by the looks of it, so I'm sure you're pretty excited about all of this - it was a little overwhelming when I first joined, too, but you get used to it pretty quickly.
Secondly, I think you should know about the 2-1 ratio thing that goes on here, since I noticed you've posted two stories in this Action/Adventure section already. Before you post a story, you should review 2 others, to make sure that everybody gets reviewed and helped. So please go and review some pieces of work before you post anything else. Thanks!
Now, to your piece. It was quite short, but interesting. A nice little introduction to your story - not too long, so it doesn't put people off. Nicely done! I liked your first paragraph a lot. At first, I thought that starting every sentence with "I" seemed a bit odd, and that you should probably change that, but because this is a constant throughout the paragraph I think it works. You might want to consider using some more commas, like instead of:
maybe consider: "I grab the holster, strap it to the right side of my belt and slide the gun into it."
Also here, I don't think the semi-colon is necessary - just a plain ol' comma will do.
Maybe think about breaking this up? Like, "Shit! Someone's really in the dorms!"
OK, you've done this a few times so I think I'll explain what you're doing wrong so that you know in the future. I've had some troubles with punctuation and speech marks myself, so I've made sure that it's now ingrained in my mind forever.
In the first quote, "He stares at me, "Do I know you?"" your comma should be a full stop, because the two phrases are separate sentences. It would be a comma if it was like this: "He stares at me, and says, "Do I know you?"". In that situation, think of the comma as saying "and this is what he says". That helps, I've found.
In the second, you need a comma after "mine", like this: "...down the hall from mine," I state, hoping that..."
Now the only other things I've noticed are basically repetitions of what I've said above, so I'm going to copy what you wrote and my corrections/suggestions are in bold.
“I’m Shanae McHenry. Uh, we don’t have any classes together, cause I’m majoring in writing and you’re majoring in jazz vocal music, but your dorm room is down the hall from mine,” I state, hoping that I’m not sounding too much like a stocker.
“Oh! I remember you now! You’re the girl with the glasses!” he says.
'Ouch,'{I tend to use different 'speech marks' when dealing with thoughts and direct speech - it makes it clear which is which to the reader. I also use italics as thoughts sometimes} I think. I laugh. “Yeah, people tend to look different when they do and don’t wear glasses and are in the dark.” Glancing down at my watch, I add, “By the way, what are you doing down here at 2:30 in the morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk - but afterwards I didn’t feel like going to my room,” James says.
“Oh.”
An awkward silence falls over us.
“So…uh…night,” I say stalking up the stairs.
“Night,” he replies.
When I return to my room I notice I have a text.
Tomorrow morning 9:30 ISS room 2
-Lester
“Guess I got a job tomorrow…about time ARC got a chance to show its skills,” I say, as I slide into bed.
Hope I've been some help, and have fun exploring YWS!
~*cottonrulz*~