Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and mature content.
I felt my shoulders relax as I walked through the door at Paddy’s. This was my ‘safe place’, as much as a pub can be safe anyhow. The cigarette smoke and the strong stench of whiskey made it easier for me to breath. I walked across the dirty wood floors to my bar stool - yes, it was mine. The bar keep, Ken, kept it open for me - I mean hell, I was responsible for keeping this place on its feet most of the time. Ken was laughing at me as I sat down. “What in Hell’s name are you wearing, TJ?” he asked me, still laughing so hard at this point that he could barely speak.
“Listen, shithead, there was no way I was even changing today…” I told him, tapping my fingers on the bar as I threw my jacket over the back of the stool. I knew why he was poking fun. Ken or anyone else in this place had never seen me in such a getup. I was dressed to the nines because I had come here straight after an important job interview slash dinner event. So instead of my normal - denim jeans, Chuck Taylor sneakers I had worn for about 5 years, and a men’s t-shirt - I actually looked like a female for once. Heels and all, unfortunately. I sighed as Ken sat down my ‘usual’ in front of me. Buffalo Trace bourbon, neat. I took a swig & immediately felt the warmth spread through my body. “I had that fancy dinner thing today, remember?” I told him. It may be kind of sad, but honestly Ken was one of the best friends I had made since moving to Chicago about 4 years ago.
“Ah, yea…” he grumbled, wiping some glasses as he talked, “how’d it go?”
I shook my head, grinning as I took another swig, “Well, besides the fact that all the women gave me ‘the look’ when I ordered the steak instead of the chicken,” Ken knew the look I was talking about because I bitched about it all the time. I had never been one of those girls who ate salads or drank mimosas or whatever the hell it is. I had always just been one of the guys, which I guess is how I ended up where I was in life right now, “It went damn good.”
“Hell yea, girl, I knew it would!” he said and slapped a hand on my shoulder. Ken wasn’t all that much older than me, but he was sort of like a father figure. Besides the fact that he served me bourbon daily and we laughed about dirty jokes together. “You guys hear that?” he yelled out to the bar, “Our girl here is moving on up!” all the regulars clapped and yelled their congratulations. Even though none of them had a clue why.
I blushed a little, I hated attention like that. Birthdays were the worst for me as a kid. All those people just staring, it was awful. I took another big swig of liquid warmth and mumbled, “Thanks y’all.” They still got a kick out of my southern diction even though a lot of it had faded away since living in the city. It was almost eight by now so the place was starting to fill up more. Paddy’s had live music every night of the week so aside from regulars, there was always the crowd that was following that night’s act. I turned around a little on my stool, watching the people as they came in. It was a hobby of mine, people watching, and it made me very good at my job too.
I turned back toward the bar to motion to Ken that I was ready for another drink, smiling to myself as I heard some quiet cheering for whoever it was taking the little make shift stage. “Hey, y’all…” came across the microphone, “I’m Beau, and uh, I’m gonna play y’all some music tonight…” everyone clapped for him as he started strumming on his guitar.
This has got to be a coincidence, I thought, there’s no way it’s him. I closed my eyes tight before turning around on my stool. As I slowly opened my eyes again, I was hoping with everything in me that I was right. Then, my heart stopped, it was like I was looking at a ghost. What was he doing here, in Chicago, in my bar? I was gonna need another drink or ten to deal with this. I swallowed my bourbon in one big gulp. “Keep ‘em coming.” I told Ken. This was gonna be a long night.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,008 Literary Works • 672,814 Reviews
Hiya!
So, this is probably going to be quite a short review, simply because I love it so far, so I don't have all that much to say.
I love how quickly you've developed TJ's character, I already think she's great! I like that she isn't the typical girly girl and I think that just makes her even more likeable. I'm so curious about where this is going to go next, I'm literally going to read it once I've finished with this review. Because I want to know who Beau is, I want to know more about her past. You've raised so many questions that I have no choice but to read on. It's great.
The only thing that I picked up on when I was reading this is,
I think here it should maybe be breathe rather than breath.
But that is it, one minor thing in this whole piece. I love it.
Can't wait to read more!
Hey, janarose. Meerkat here to review.
While I usually begin with grammar and punctuation, I believe TriSARAHtops pretty much covered the main issue: unnecessary commas and rambling sentences that need to be shortened or broken up. Fixing this will help the flow of your story a lot, and make it more succinct.
Now, let's talk plot.
As the first chapter to a novel, you did a great job of setting the scene and establishing a firm start from which your story will progress. You get right into the main storyline (I assume it is, anyway) with a woman stopping by a bar and recognizing (once again, I assume) someone from her past. The ending was a good hook, giving just enough reason for readers to be curious without leaving too much unexplained.
One thing I did wonder about was why you tagged this story as a romance. This isn't a problem, as I'm guessing your main character and "Beau" were or become romantically involved somehow. I might even suggest tagging this as "Humor" as well; I can definitely see how this contains a comedic aspect. You've got funny lines like "I was gonna need another drink or ten to deal with this," and a sarcastic protagonist who could be hilarious in the right situations.
And this leads me to characters: You've got two so far (main ones, at any rate). Ken and TJ seem to have a well-developed relationship, and their banter made their interaction more natural. You're very good at writing voice, and the reader can tell a lot about TJ just through her dialogue. You've also done well as establishing her tough nature and crude sense of humor. While Ken got less characterization, one can see that he has much the same type of crass, good-natured personality. As your main character, TJ is a nice focus for the story with a lot about her to explore and develop.
In summary, you've set a great tone, established a strong main character, and left a few questions unanswered so the reader will want to know more. With some editing regarding grammar and punctuation, this could turn out to be an awesome novel. Have a great day, and keep writing!
Thank you so much for this review! I really appreciate it and I'm glad to hear it wasn't quiet as bad as I had thought. I've read and re-read it, but it's always nice to have other opinions! I'm going to be editing the first four chapters I've posted soon. Thank you again for taking time to read this!
Sure thing. If you'd like me to read more chapters after you've edited them, just let me know!
Hey there janarose! Welcome to YWS! Just thought I'd drop by with a review. I'm a little rusty with reviewing, so if I start rambling or something at some point please bear with me!
I think you're off to a pretty good start in this first chapter. We're already getting a clear sense of characterisation, and the relationship between Ken and your protagonist, which exactly the kind of thing you're wanting to set up in a first chapter.
I think you're on the way to having a strong narrative voice as well, which is a good sign. I did feel like your sentence structure was at times a little bit strange, however, but this seemed to be result of having a comma instead of a full stop. This problem seemed to appear quite a few times throughout the chapter, but I think taking a look at the first paragraph will illustrate what I'm talking about.
I've colour-coded the different sentences I want to talk about, so it's a bit clearer (hopefully!).
Green: This sentence should probably be two, with a full stop after "Paddy's". If you read it aloud (which can be super helpful for working out if you've got any problems with voice and sentence structure, and I'd really recommend you give it a shot if you haven't already), you should notice that there's more of a pause between "Paddy's" and "this" than you would generally have for a comma. You've also got separate ideas - the first part of the sentence (as it is at the moment) is about your main character walking, the second part is a new idea - that Paddy's is her safe place, as you put it. So grammatically, it ought to be two sentences.
Blue: You use commas quite a bit, which isn't inherently a bad thing, but I think that in the case of this sentence, it might be worth considering using a dash - namely between "stool" and "yes". To the best of my knowledge, the way you have that sentence written at the moment is not incorrect, but by adding a dash it creates more of a distinction between the narration of what the character is doing (walking towards the stool) and where she is talking to the reader. If that makes sense, and I've explained it in a somewhat understandable way. The second purple sentence had the same issue as the green sentence I highlighted, where it should be two sentences with a full stop after "me" and before "I mean".
Purple: It was dialogue punctuation that I wanted to talk about in relation to this sentence. Because "Ken was laughing" is not a dialogue tag (e.g. said, asked, replied, yelled, etc, etc), it should be followed by a full stop, rather than a comma before the dialogue. Dialogue Punctuation is an article here on YWS that explains that in a bit more detail. I think this was a problem elsewhere in the chapter as well.
I didn't want to do a full-on nitpicky review where I pointed out every instance of an oddly structured sentence, so I'd suggest going through it yourself, preferably reading aloud (which could just be mouthing the words to yourself, as it would have the same result. It's more about taking notice of where the breaths and pauses are and "getting out of your head", in way), as I think that would be the most effective.
You had some good description in this chapter, which did a lot to set the scene. I would like to see a little bit more, and to see you weave it in between the action and dialogue a bit more, so it doesn't feel like you're "telling us" about the setting or the characters.There's a bit of a divide between action and exposition at the moment, so if you could blend the detail into what's going on in the scene that would be fab.
That's about all I have to say for this chapter. This review's been mostly technical stuff so far, so I might look a bit more at characterisation and so forth in my review of your second chapter.
Any questions, feel free to let me know~
Thank you so much for this review! It is seriously very helpful & I will definitely be going through and working on the things you've pointed out. Sentence structure has always been one of my weak points, and I definitely understand what you're saying about the commas and stuff. I love the idea for the dashes! I was just a little unsure of the grammatical rules, so I opted for commas instead. Also, thanks for the link to that article. I feel it will definitely be helpful as I continue writing. Thanks again for the review!
No worries! Happy to help
This is super good. I love to people watch to so I can relate to t.j. I love how you put the detail of how she moved to the city from the country.I used to live in the country then just moved to the big apple a few months ago and still got my the southern dra. I love the characters already so , especially ken, so can't wait to red more. I was a little confused when you put Beau in it, but overall great story
Keep on writing cant wait to here more.