Okay, so I'm trying a new angle at writing the beginning of my novel. I started this off with dialogue, it is nowhere near done but I just want to know what people think. If you can think of any other way that I could start this off, it would really help. Thank you!
Chapter One:
"Thank god that's over. I couldn't stand another minute of Anthony’s lame attempts to get with me. How can you even hang out with them? Their so...
"Bridget Granger, you naughty girl." Justin scolded in a fake British accent, cutting Bridget off from going into a rage.
Justin wagged his finger at Bridget who slapped his stomach with the back of her hand.
“Ouch!” Just cried grabbing his stomach in fake pain, playing along with Bridget. A grin began to grow across Bridget’s face as she made her way into Justin’s pizza box filled kitchen.
“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad.” Justin protested as he walked into his kitchen, hoping to find some leftover pizza.
“You weren’t the only girl there, and Anthony wasn’t trying to get with you every time he wasn’t playing Wii.” Bridget said looking around in the fridge to see if there was anything that wasn’t two weeks old.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,815 Reviews
This was funny and charming, very pleasant to read. You have a great way with dialogue! Keep it up! I'd like to read more!
Honestly, I have no clue
It just kind of came to me, i think about these characters a lot, so it was easy.
I love the idea you had for the beginning, how did you think of it?
This prologue needs action and description. You need to hit the ground running to draw the reader in. At the moment, it feels like padding. Make the characters do things that are relevant to the story. Let them speak when they have to, to bring out a key moment.
When writing dialogue, try not to put a tagline after each chunk of conversation or this will ruin the flow of your writing. Only show what needs to be shown. Also, repeating the characters' names in taglines feels redundant. Use "he," but make sure it is clear to the reader (and you) that it is obvious who "he" is. Confusion irritates the reader, as I found to my cost!
It would also help if you double-spaced between each speaker to make it easier on the eye:
"Ouch!"
"Sorry." He held his hands up.
4/10 (It's only such a low score because you started with dialogue. Description is much better in an opening. Okay?)
Okay, so you went from one end of the spectrum to the other, yes?
There is no action. Hardly any, at the very least. Not to mention it is extremely, extremely short. It has no reason being this short. Write more before you post something, okay? Makes it easier for critiquers.
As I was saying, you have dialogue. Lots of it. But most of it feels unnatural, and there's no narration, no action, no reason for me to care for these people. Narration is just as necessary as dialogue to move the story along. It helps me identify with your characters, helps me to see setting, etc. Dialogue, by the way, does nothing for setting. And let's face it -- narrate your own life for a while. Is it all talking or are there some moments where nobody's saying anything?
On the positive side, this is much better than your previous attempt. You've learned not to be condescending to your reader -- that's good! Don't talk down to your readers. Ever.
But there is always room for improvement, no?
Keep at it!
-Saint Razorblade
THe Official YWS Pirate
P.S. Sweetheart, you need to do more critiques. Remember, 2:1 ratio of critiques : your own work.
I definitely agree with leaving the first mentions of their names in so we at least know who they are, then continuing on with the pronouns. Still, take care not to confuse he's and she's when there's multiple characters--in that case it's okay to sneak in a name or even refer to a character by a description like, "the red-haired girl said, 'blah blah blah'."
I'm glad I could've been of service.
Should be, "They're so"
pizza box-filled kitchen.
As far as composition errors went, that wasn't too bad.
It was pretty short, though. It's hard to get a feel for someone's writing when there's only a little snippet like this to read from.
Of course, don't pull one of my moves and throw in a twelve-pager, but it would be nice if this was a little longer.
Keep up the good work,
Scotty.
Hey,
I think the part where Justin scolded Bridget I might leave in his name because if I don't I have a feeling that a lot of people will not know who the "he" is, if you could help me with this, or tell me your views on it, it would be great. Thanks again for all your help!
Thank-you so much for your pointers, I have already fixed them
The overall tone and mood of this little tidbit comes off to me as being very cute and sort of heart-warming in the teen-sense--in short, This specific mood brings a smile to my face, especially when you throw in little quirky details like:
Here are some grammar fixes:
"God" should be capitalized.
Replace with "They're". These words get the best of us xD.
Whenever you have someone saying something you should always put a comma inside the quotes instead of a period. So, the sentence should read:
Also, in the sentence after that, you begin with "Justin" again which is a bit redundant. Consider using a pronoun like "he." Before the pronoun itself, you could also consider putting in a trasition phrase such as "Afterwards, he...," but but that's not absolutely necessary I don't think.
I'm pretty sure there needs to be a comma after cried to separate the two actions.
Overall, avoid repeating their names so much and get in the habit of using pronouns like "he" or "she" to avoid repetition.
Thank you for posting this though!
Good luck and take care! I wish you the best of fortune with this!