Call me stupid for this, but even after I left her for 10 years, I still had feelings for her.
Even if she acted like she hated me, I loved how she was like that.
It's weird to say that I was eight when it happened, but I loved her.
You can call this weird too, but her disease made me interested in her.
I lost her once, when I had to move away.
Ten years later, I came back home and saw her again.
Then, I lost her again, but I wouldn't get her back for a third time.
----------
I looked out the backseat window of the car. My mom would occasionally look back at me from the review mirror. I never returned the look.
"Rex, sweetie... I know you're angry about moving, but this will be a great job opportunity for me. Besides, we're moving into a nice house. There's three stories of housing and 10 acres here. Think of everything you can do." My mom stared back into the mirror one last time, then sighed and turned her attention back to the road.
"Who said I was going to make new friends," I muttered. "I had only two back home, what makes you think I'll make some here?"
"Honey, you're eight. Stop being so negative."
"I can be if it's the truth, mom."
My mom sighed in anger but didn't say anything else after that. I've always had a negative personality, and I thought she was used to it by now. Normally, when I'm like this, she would cook me spaghetti, my favorite food. But, mom couldn't afford plane tickets, so we've been driving for two days from Atlanta to Madison. And that means... you guessed it, no spaghetti, obviously. I think going two days without it is driving me crazy.
I moved my eyes away from the window and turned my attention to my backpack. I picked it up and zipped it open. Action figures, games, books, and other things littered the bag inside, but I dug my hand inside for one thing. My Gameboy. After about five minutes of rummaging, I poured everything out on the seat beside me.
"Mom, where's my Gameboy?" I asked.
Mom looked back at me though the review mirror. "Oh that old thing? I threw it away."
"What! Mom, that was my favorite thing ever! Dad gave it to me!"
"Rex! Don't bring your father into this!"
"I can if I want to! Are you trying to make me forget he died?"
"Rex, I don't want any memory of him here, and besides, it was so old and broke and... I just, want to start over, you know?"
"Yep, sure, whatever." I shoved everything back into my backpack and tossed it down onto the floorboard.
Mom gave me one last look in the mirror, and although no words came out of her mouth, her eyes told me thousands of words, such as 'sorry' and 'I didn't mean it like that.' I ignored every single one of them.
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Canary word: Present
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125,004 Literary Works • 672,792 Reviews
I like how in the first part of the chapter you kind of foreshadow events in the future. It keeps the reader thinking as they read on from the beginning of the story.
I think it could still use some work. For an example,
"Then, I lost her again, but I wouldn't get her back for a third time."
I would remove this because this implies that she succumbed to her disease, no? I wouldn't want to spoil the ending unless your main focus is the experience of the love and such.
You can try rewording some of your sentences up there to keep it concise and short. The goal is to foreshadow, not spoil, and keep the reader thinking.
Also, I noticed at the end you did a great job of "show" instead of "tell". However, in the middle you say: "My mom sighed in anger but didn't say anything else after that."
Sighed in anger is a lot of tell. Instead, you could say something like: "My mom sighed in anger and shook her head. She didn't say anything after that."
Overall nice little introduce to the story.
Hello, gxldencrxwns! You requested a review from me and I completely forgot so forgive me for that!
I don't know what it is about this really short chapter but I like it and I don't really have advice for it except that it should be longer and more descriptive. Maybe describe what the boy sees when he looks out the window and how him and his mom feel some more. Also, this kind of story has been done a lot already so if I were you I'd think about how I could make this different to stand out from all the rest. Avoid clichés and the like and I feel like this could be a really good story. And I'd also lengthen this chapter like I already said or make it a part 1.
Anyways, good luck with your future chapters!
~Ruby
Hey there! Eli here with a lovely review!
We will go through the story little by little, one review is already done but I want to make it my way as well and give you my true opinion so you can hear one more person giving their thought about your work. First person works will always look less interesting for me because it makes me feel awkward to read but I will not mention this as a complain because this is a personal thing.
The work is in orange. The bold remarks are my edits in your work! Discussion down below and questions are welcome always. I am all ears.
Call me stupid for this, but even after I have left her for 10 years, I still had feelings for her.
Even if she acted like she hated me, I loved that she was like that.
The illness part is really confusing. It is not weird to have an illness as the previous reviewer said.
"Rex, sweetie... I know you're angry about moving out, but this will be a great job opportunity for me. Besides, we're moving into a nice house. There's three stories of housing and 10 acres here. Think of everything you can do." My mom stared back into the mirror one last time, then sighed and turned her attention back to the road.
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My mom sighed in anger but didn't say anything else after that. I've always had a negative personality, and I thought she was used to it by now. Normally, when I'm like this, she would cook me spaghetti, my favorite food. But, mom couldn't afford plane tickets, so we've been driving for two days from Atlanta to Madison. (And that means... you guessed it, no spaghetti, obviously. I think going two days without it is driving me crazy.)
The last sentence was pretty complex and rather useless. Maybe 'No spaghetti for me for these two days' or something of this sort would be better if you still want it in.
I did not add in the parts that needed no editing or my editing is already done by someone else and you have seen it and corrected it right. The story is basic to be honest but it can turn into something special. Like why the mother did not want the memories of her husband? Does she have negative feelings towards him?
Keep on writing!
Thanks for the review! I took a long break from writing and I'm still a bit rusty, so I'm not fully comfortable, but I do plan on going in depth on why the mother wants to forget her husband, I even showed this to people outside of YWS and they asked the same thing.
Great then! Excited for next parts!
Hey there gxldencrxwns,
Myjaspercat here to leave you a review.
Alright so before we go into the overall picture of the story I want to say good job. I like the ideas you have put into this so far and I feel like you have a good basis for a nice story. However like all works, there are things that need to be fixed a bit. Let's get to them.
1.) Story length. This isn't going to be much, I just have a few things to mention. Most of it has to do with the length of the chapter itself. As a full chapter this is to short, unless you're going to write a novella. I'm assuming though that you're going for a full on novel and therefore you would want your chapters to be around 2500 words a piece and this one is obviously not that long. Now I'm not saying you have to have them that long but it makes it a little easier to write. Especially if you have a guide line. You have to think about it like this, each chapter is like a mini story with a beginning, middle and end. If your chapter is too short your story isn't going to have much room to develop, hit a conflict and then resolve itself.
2.) Dialogue. Now I mentioned this a little bit in the line by line but I just wanted to touch up on it again for a quick second. Remember that when you're writing dialogue you're writing a conversation between two people. A verbal conversation, technically. That means that sometimes the way we say things sounds completely different to how it looks on paper. But beyond that, the way things look on paper sounds completely different out loud. When writing dialogue, I recommend saying as well. Yeah you might look a little weird but it helps.
3.) Plot. This kind of ties in with the length but I felt like I should mention it. Like I said earlier you have a decent idea here and it's slightly interesting however I'm confused by it. First of all, when someone dies most people don't just shut out all the memories of ever knowing them. Especially if they were loved. So the mother seemed odd in a way. It was her husband right, didn't she love him? What happened that made her so bent on erasing all the memories of him. I feel like this is something you should go into depth about, unless you already plan on doing so.
Overall I feel like that's all my main concerns with this work. Don't get discouraged, I liked it. You have potential and I'm excited to read more. Good luck and if you have any questions feel free to ask questions.