...I am alone.. Nobody understands. I don't believe they ever will. All alone i stand. No one to see. My apartment dark, bedroom darker. A steady stream of my breath hitting the chilled air. The creaking of my door opening. I can hear people throughout the house, opening doors. Looking. Searching. Shot gun at my hip. Loaded, ready to fire. shadows appear under the door. A glimmer of light appears from the window to my right. Backing into the corner, I crouch, the window shatters, bullets rip thru the door like paper. Everything goes black in an instant. Quiet, not a sound. i'm paralyzed and can't move, I'm numb...
Sweating profusely, i am finally able to open my eyes after a few moments and see the ceiling.
I'm laying in bed. Alone. Not a noise to be heard. I'm slow to react. Still in a bit of shock, i slowly sit up. walk around my home. After going thru my normal morning routine, an average work day, a standard evening alone to be had. Or so i thought.
The phone rings in my coat pocket. Still crisp from the north Minnesota winter. A restricted number, on the screen. I answer the phone after a moment of hesitation. No one answers to my voice.
Another suspicious activity that has been following me around the last two weeks. Being followed from men, lurking in the wooded shadows outside my isolated apartment. Phone calls with no traceable number. And even better, Fresh tire tracks in my driveway and footprints around my windows, showing in the snow. I assume it's most likely my next door neighbors; abusive, snoopy, boyfriend, who comes and goes as he wishes. I only have 3 other people living in the same apartment building. Three single door garages internally connected, and across the driveway, from our separated living areas.
I sit down, starting not to care about this suspicious activities anymore, as it seem to be a prank call or pocket dial. I sit on my couch alone, till i slowly drift into sleep.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,815 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression: Well...this was a pretty exciting first chapter. Now the first nightmare sequence seems a little unrelated to the rest of the chapter as a whole...soo...well I hope it has some sort of significance cause otherwise I don't really see the point of having something like that there.
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okay...well judging by the italics I'm assuming this is either some sort of flashback to a terrible experience or its a nightmare of some sort, cause that was pretty intense visual there to start off with. It certainly gets you attention right off the bat. And well, it looks like the person there is not doing too well, cause they appear to have been shot and very much injured.
Hmm, well, I suppose my prediction of the whole thing being a dream is true after all, well, walking up all alone in a house can be slightly scary sometimes I suppose...but alright, this seems to just be quite typical, and I suppose it is supposed to be a fairly normal morning for the moment though I suppose that last line is meant to tell us that something out of the ordinary is about to happen here.
Okay....well...that doesn't sound like a very healthy neighborhood to be living in there...oh dear...most people would try and get very far away from a place like that one...but well, it looks like they've almost got used to situations like that one from the tone that this is written in. Also the little bit of description about the area and the suspect for doing all those creepy things is definitely a helpful addition her for us to try and get a sense of things here.
Yeah nope, one call is perhaps a prank call, but a lot of them at once, is a situation that you really need to take a second or third or perhaps even fourth look at before you dismiss it quite so casually, well things certainly did die down quite fast here to suddenly just being a nap on the couch....certainly a very intriguing point to end things here, cause I feel like that second chapter is going to have some crazy things happening here.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall, a pretty solid first chapter, and I certainly did like it. Besides the thing I mentioned earlier about the dream sequence, I don't think I can say much negative about this. If this was the first chapter of a story, I would certainly read on.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Greetings hbotz310! Holographic Ladybug here for a review! (I'm going to see if I can leave a longer one than the people below me!)
Just two consistant problems I found:
-You have forgotten to capitalize some of your I's. Make sure to not forget it. I's should always be capitalized when you're referring yo yourself. (Not to mention that that will be one of the first things people will mention to you on here
-Thru is a variation of through. Thru should not be used in actual writing. So, what I ask of you is to replace it with through
And here's one other nit-pick:
In writing, with most numbers (especially single-digit ones), they are written out in letter/word format. In your case, it's a 3 that should be a three.
The only thing I can really find that you need to work on is description. I feel like you could describe what your character's apartment looks like. You don't need to go into full detail with it. All you really need is to maybe describe a few things like the colour of the walls, the feeling of the bedsheets, what else is in the room, etc. Don't tell us every little bit, but adding way more description adds so much flair to your writing.
That said, your description for the first part was fine, it's just the second part that could use a little fixing.
It's a bit harder to do a review with a smaller work. Ha ha.
Overall, good job. Your writing style is nice and fluid like water. I can feel where you're going with this because of the way you set up your sentences and what you put after them. This helped me get your dream at the start more. Others may say that it's choppy, but I think that it's fine.
That's all from me! Looks like you've got an interesting story set up here. I'll make sure to read and review the next chapters, so this isn't the last from me! ^^
Never stop writing!
~Holographic Ladybug
This is amazing!
You managed to create suspense and the start was pretty good too.
And the plot worked pretty well too.
My suggestion is, try to make the sentences a bit long and full; don't make them too short. then the idea you're trying you convey becomes a little frustrating.
Your descriptions are pretty cool.
A minor spelling error that I noticed was not capitalizing 'I'. Try to work on that a bit.
Anyway this is a good chapter, and I think I'll read on to the next one.
Never stop writing!!!
Over all, the plot was enticing and suspenseful. The sentences were very short and made the piece sound choppy and scattered. There were a few capitalization errors as well as a lot of sentences started with " I ". This also made the flow of the chapter very stop and go if you know what I mean. Despite some minor things, I thought it was otherwise very exciting and a decent first chapter. Excited for more to come!
Over all, the plot was enticing and suspenseful. The sentences were very short and made the piece sound choppy and scattered. There were a few capitalization errors as well as a lot of sentences started with " I ". This also made the flow of the chapter very stop and go if you know what I mean. Despite some minor things, I thought it was otherwise very exciting and a decent first chapter. Excited for more to come!
Hi, here for a review! I noticed there are a lot of lower case words at the beginning of the sentences, please go over it. For example:
a steady stream of my breath hitting the chilled air.
i'm paralyzed and can't move, I'm numb...
Also, you have too many short sentences, and not a lot of detail. Especially for mystery/suspense genres, chapters need a lot more detail. So try to include longer sentences, and put more detail.
But I see that you have a clever plot in mind, and I am excited about the upcoming chapters.