My Life in a Bizarre Town: Prologue

Hey Kman,
Myjaspercat here to give you a review

So, actually I saw your second chapter to this opended it up and read a few lines then thought 'why start here, there's got to be a beginning somewhere'. Here I am, at the beginning and I am looking forward to embarking on the journey of reviewing your story (or at least what you have posted). Onwards...

I can remember it all; I was 6-years-old when I came to this town, all those years ago; when I came to “Archangel”, North Carolina. The house me and my parents had lived in was a two-story-tall, rural-style home with white walls and black tiled roofs, having, at least, two windows on each side, on both stories.I think stories is wrong here if you look at the context You see, I moved into here because my mother and father had transferred from their jobs in Japan to America, and I didn’t like it because I didn’t no anyone here and I was unable to make new friends; however, that all changed when I met her. how come your narrator wasn't able to make friends?

Sitting outside of the house, I stared at the pond that was in my backyard. I felt depressed, why does your character feel depressed? What does he look like to show he is depressed? letting out a huge sigh as I threw a stone into the pond.

“What are you doing?” eyes-widened, I heard a soft, beautiful voice speaking to me; turning around to my left, I saw her standing before me; a young if she is about your age then why call her young girl who looked to be about my age, with pale skin, long black hair, and red eyes. She was wearing a short, yellow sundress with red spots, a pair of sandals, and a large, straw sunhat that shielded her from the suns rays. First major issue here, one you need to start a new paragraph when you add dialogue (I'm just going to do that for you). Second, this is pretty much one sentence, infact it is one sentence. I get that you want to add detail and explain the girl but don't just throw it all at the reader in one pitch and add full stops, give your reader a moment to actually breathe. I went through and edited it a bit and broke it up into I think two sentences for you. You may still want to go throw it and lean it down some more.

“Oh, N-nothing, I was just throwing rocks in the pond,” You have already told us that the narrator was throwing rocks in the pond so there is no need to now tell the reader. I answered, stuttering bit. As you could tell, I was a pretty shy little boy back then and I was really nervous around the girl. Um no, actually I couldn't tell that your character was a shy person. I just thought he was some forigen kid who had trouble making friends.

“W-what about you? Why are you here?” I also want to know why this girl is there as well. Isn't the pond in the boy's backyard? You make it sound like the girl is right in front of the boy and it seems weird that someone just happens to be walking into your character's backyard.

She looked at me with a blank expression and replied, “I was curious of why there was splashing sounds coming from over here; so, I went to check it out. I just didn’t know we had new neighbors.” if she is curious then why would her expression be blankShe smiled at the end of that sentence. “I’m Elizabeth, by the way, Elizabeth Youngblood; what is your name, good sir?” her voice sounded more British than before. the whole 'good sir' thing just doesn't work. As well yousay she sounds more british then before but you gave your reader no clue that she sounded british at all.

“M-my name is Haru Takishima; I just moved here with my mom and dad,” I stated; somehow, I started getting some confidence to look at her properly.

Even though this was my first time meeting Elizabeth, she and I got along pretty well, even when she said, “Hey, there’s a river in a forest, outside of town; you wanna go hang out there?” after hearing that, I paused for a few seconds to think, which then I finally replied to her, “Okay.”

Elizabeth showed me the way to the river; I didn’t tell my mother because I didn’t want to worry her and I didn’t tell my dad because he was at work. 3-minutes-later, we arrived at the river, which was more like a small stream to me. ugh, ok. The plot is just speading up so fast. You really need to slow down. Give us more (necessary) detail.

In the river, well no duh the water is going to be in the river the water was shallow, meaning it wasn’t strong enough to pull us away. We played, splashing water Ok, what else would you be splashing at each other, sand? at one another, picking up beautiful rocks, and trying to tag eachone other.

“See, isn’t this fun?!” she remarked, smiling and having both hand on her back. why with both the question mark and the exclamation point?

Looking at her, I giggled and replied, “Yeah, it is; thanks for taking me here!” I had same expression as Elizabeth. what expression are you talking about?

30-minutes-later… come one try to be more original, use a different transition then '...minutes later'. Make it creative

We were sitting aton the sides of the stream, staring at it and watching as the water moved down. down where? While we stared, Elizabeth and I began talking.

“So, how do you like ‘Archangel’, so far?” she inquired. your narrator seems young to me however he is using some large vocabulary. Maybe I'm overthing but still...

“It’s okay, I guess.I just wish my friends were here with me,as well,” I pointed out, letting out a sigh of distress. Elizabeth’s expression faded, what expression? becoming a frown just like mine.

“You know, I don’t have any friends, either,” Elizabeth admitted; this took me aback because, for the short time I got to know her, I would think she would have tons of friends. “My parents, rarely, let me leave the house, or let me attend school, always, having hired tutors to give me an education; so, I was never able to make any friends of my own, except now I have you.” Smiling, I was glad that she called me her friend.

“Does that mean we’ll be friends forever?” I asked, wide eyed.

“Of course, you’re my first friend, we’ll always be together!” once that was establish, we made sure to keep that promise as we wrapped our pinkies together; unfortunately, that promise could never be kept.

3-weeks-later… again, better transitions are needed

My father had gotten a call from work, transferring him back home to Japan. Everything was packed in our SUV and we started driving away, heading towards the entrance.what entrance Looking out the window, I was depressed; the first friend I had ever made in this town and I was leaving her. stop saying you were depressed. It gets annoying when you have to read the same thing over and over again.

“Haru!” surprised; I looked out and saw Elizabeth,herself, chasing after the car as fast as she could, holding her sun hat to keep it from flying off;seeing me go, her eyes watered, crying while waving her hand towards me.

“Elizabeth!” I shouted out at her.[s] back

“Please, don’t go; you promised that we would be together!” she exclaimed, [s]sobbing as she ran.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come back and we can be friends, again!” I stated; there was no guarantee that I’ll return, but it was the only way to keep her happy.

I could see her smiling a little; once we drove, I could barely hear what she was saying afterwards, shouting: “When you come back, I promise to be your…” and that was it,I couldn’t hear the rest.

10-years-later… don't think I need to say anything

Walking up, I stood before the same house from years ago; I couldn’t believeit, I finally kept my promise and I have returned; attending high school for the first time, I decided to move back to my old home, hoping to see “her” again while my parents are overseas;don’t worry, I’ll be okay, my parents will wire me money for once a moth, but to not be so dependent on them, I decided to take a part-time job to help with some of the expenses; so, now, I have to wait until the movers come to bring my stuff and, while I’m waiting, I decided to hang out in the back yard.

Ok, wow, that was so much longer to review then I thought it would be. Um where to start... I honestly have no clue because this needs more work then I thought and this review is getting pretty lengthy. I'll pull out the top needs.

1.) Transitions!!!
You litterally have like no to very little transitions and the ones you do have are so odd and underdeveloped that it became very confusing to read. Your story is going by so fast and you don't stop to breath, or even describe things to us in more detail. Which leads me to...

2.) Show don't Tell!!!
There is so much telling in this chapter that it really bogged down the plot and just made it sore to read. Telling is ok in some parts but if you use it for the entire piece then, just don't. Really quick, incase you didn't know: Showing is the use of varied, descriptive language that lets your reader invision what is going on and it should paint a picture in thier mind while Telling is the complete opposite by doing exactly what is sounds like, telling. Telling is for moments when you need to speed up a part or give your reader much needed information. Ok, now that you know the difference (in case you hadn't already known) you should go back and look at how much telling you used and then decided were you want to show to your readers.

3.) Detail you all ready have:
What you have is so boring and you just repeat it over and over.

4.)This is my last thing: Punctuation!!!
You really like semi-colons don't you. Well believe it or not but they can become very reptative and annoying themselves. There are times when you want to use a semi-colon and times when you just shouldn't (you had a lot of times from the later). Your sentences are weak and lack little to any structure or development.

Alright now that the nasty is over (and seeing how much their is I feel like a [insert bad word here] but what could I say, I'm only here to help). Let's get on with what I did like.

I like the idea behind this. I feel like this could potentially become something great. The storyline is interesting and the characters seem like they could become some sweet cliche couple.

I think that's all. Sorry that there was more bad then good. I hope I didn't offened you or be to harsh. Have any questions, feel free to ask. Good luck and continue writing.

Hey, Kman!

I saw that this was a supernatural piece so I thought I'd give it a shot. My first impression of this was that it was good, but there were some issues that caused my reading experience to go a bit down.

First up would be the major thing: all the time jumps. You jump from 30 minutes to 3 weeks to 10 years all in the span of a few paragraphs, which made things really rushed for me. You didn't give me enough time to invest in these characters and get to know them, so all throughout I was watching their hardships of having no friends and moving away without a lick of emotion in me. I know this is a prologue, but there is a way you could remove this entirely and weave this information in the first chapter instead. Maybe in the first chapter, it opens up with Haru coming back to the town. He passes by the forest and remembers the friend he used to know, and deep down readers can tell he wants to see her again. See, with this, you won't need to jump around so much and we'd also get a better sense of who Haru is as a character. So in my opinion, this prologue isn't really needed.

Next up would be some grammar errors that hindered the overall readability a bit. I saw that you used a lot of semi-colons throughout the piece. There are only a few instances where semi-colons are absolutely needed, and I saw a lot that you used could be exchanged for other punctuation marks. Here's an example:

I can remember it all; I was 6-years-old when I came to this town, all those years ago; when I came to “Archangel”, North Carolina

The first part (I can remember it all), is fine with the semi-colon, but the second one isn't needed. You could easily take out the semi-colon and switch it for something else. Here's an example:

I can remember it all; I was six years old when I came to this town all those years ago. Archangel, North Carolina.

(Archangel also doesn't need quotes).

There were also other punctuation errors that can be easily fixed if you read the piece out loud to yourself. If something sounds off, then most likely there's something that needs to be changed.

Last thing is just something you should consider. You wrote:

As you could tell, I was a pretty shy little boy back then and I was really nervous around the girl.

But you already showed me this with the stuttering, you know? So you telling me that you were nervous makes it redundant since I already know. Just something to keep in mind when writing other chapters. c:

I really hope I didn't come across as annoying or anything; I just feel like if I say something's wrong but don't give any context as to what, you won't know what to improve on for the next chapters. I hope what I've said made sense, and if you have any questions or would like for me to clarify anything, please let me know. Have a great day/night!