Rebecca:
I woke up. Next to me, my alarm clock marked 7:00 A.M. I quickly took of my pajamas, and grabbed some shorts and a Tshirt. I threw my homework into my backpack, and ran downstairs. I said goodbye to my parents, grabbed an apple, and started to run. I couldn't be late on my last day of school, could I? Sadly, I was.
Just when I was only a few houses away, I noticed a shadow. I looked around, but I could not find anyone, so I decided to take a detour just for safety. I turned in a back lane next to the school and started running. Then, I heard footsteps behind me.
When I turned, I expected to see a criminal of some kind, or a kidnapper, but instead, I saw a girl about 9 accompanied by a tall boy.
The boy spoke first," Are you sure it's her, Trisha?". Trisha? My name isn't Trisha, I thought. Then it hit me, Trisha must be the little girl! Why was I acting so stupid?
" Can I see your necklace?", asked the girl. My hand cluched my necklace. Why should I show this to some kids I don't know? I shook my head.
She spoke again," Please,miss. We won't hurt you." I shook my head again.
"Then,"said the boy," we'll have to prove you the hard way." Trisha looked at him with a worried look. The boy nodded.
What he did next, stunned me. He grabbed a necklace hanging in his neck, he closed his eyes, and that's when it happened. I tried to move but I couldn't. I looked down and roots were growing on my feet. I had to do something. I could try and do something on the boy, but how? I could try to do the same thing as the boy, but that was crazy. The roots started going higher and higher. I had to do it! Next thing I knew, my hand was clutching my necklace and I was closing my eyes. I don't know what you can do, I thought. Just do something. Just do something! Fire shot from my necklace. It hit one of the roots growing on my feet and started to burn. The boy and the girl looked at me in amazement.
Once the roots were burned, the boy spoke," I am really sorry for what happened. We were in need of one of us, and I was dessperate. I am Christopher, but almost everyone I know calls me Chris."
I spoke to them for the first time, " My name is Rebecca Chase. I forgive you, but you are lucky I didn't burn you instead of the roots."Chris smiled. Trisha smiled too.
" We should go see Alex!", she cheered.
"Ok Trisha, just one more thing," he turned to me," Do you trust us?"
There was only one thing I could say," Yes, I do."
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Good story so far, but starting with the character is a bit cliched, no offence. Maybe you could start with her walking to school after she'd seen the shadow? For example:
[i] "Bye, Mom!" I shouted as I shut the door. I hurried down the road, knowing that once again, I would be late.
The school was only a few houses away when I saw it.
The shadow.
I frowned as it quickly moved out of view, and turned into the back lane, just in case.
I was wondering what it could have been when I stopped in my tracks and looked behind me
It was the shadow.
Standing in front of me was a tall boy, accompanied by a small girl, about 9 [i/]
Is that okay? I was just going to give it a different start, but oh well:)
Another thing: Everyones said this, but I dont think she should have agreed to go with him. A strange boy follows her and ties her feet to the ground with tree roots, and then she goes off with him immediatwly? Have a bit of a chase going on, with him tryig to apologize or something.
Okay, my final point is that you dont need a space between the speech mark and the first letter when speaking, eg. "I like ducks." NOT " I like ducks."
Other than that, great story i'd love to read more!
It isn't bad so far. But, to improve it, you shouldn't make your main character agree to go with them right away. She should be more shocked and looking for explanations to the unexplainable event that just occurred. But, in your story, she didn't seem very surprised and trusted them right away. If I was Rebecca, I would have been scared and running away from them, ripping the necklace off, etc. So, I would go into more detail and build more suspense that way.
Very Good. One question:
If this happened to you,
To summarize: Wake up, start walking to school, random people come up to you, the boy grows roots around your feet, your necklace shoots fire, and the boy asks you if you trust him;
Would you say yes? If the story said:
"I thought about it. I was a little uncertain, but finally agreed, "Yes, I do.""
Also, you have spaces between the quotations and the first letter of the dialogue, such as:
and
Hello, Em here as requested! XD
If you have any questions regarding the or other things just PM me or reply to this comment, and thank you so much for asking me to review. It’s my pleasure.
So, on to the review:
I noticed some spelling mistakes, not too many so well done with that.
Spelling: Tshirt should be T-shirt or just shirt.
Pajamas should be pyjamas.
Dessperate should be desperate.
That’s all that seems to be spelt incorrectly.
Try not to add spaces where they are not needed; ‘" Can I see your necklace?", asked the girl.’ There should be no space in-between the quotations and ‘can.’ You also have a random comma after the second quotation mark.
‘She spoke again," Please,miss.’ There should be no space in-between the quotation mark and ‘please’ but there should be one in-between the comma and quotation mark.
It makes it a little easier for readers to know when the sentence is the characters thoughts by putting them between these quotation marks ‘ ’ or making them italic, but of course you don’t need to do this.
In the first paragraph, you tend to say ‘I’ at the beginning of each sentence a bit too much. This can become a little repetitive. This can easily be fixed however; instead of saying ‘I quickly took off my pyjamas,’ you could say, ‘quickly, I took off my pyjamas,’ or you could add, ‘then,’ or, ‘Next,’ and so on. My example probably isn’t the best.
You might need a bit more description. So far, we don’t know what any of the characters look like. I don’t know whether you’ve described your main character elsewhere, and I’m assuming you haven’t described the boy and girl elsewhere either, so you might need to add some description of them. There are clever ways you can do this. For example, ‘After I was dressed I frantically brushed my long brown hair.’ Of course I am only assuming she has brown hair and am probably incorrect. Just remember, it’s hard for the readers to get an idea of what the characters look like, and even harder to correct those thoughts if they find out later that they look entirely different to what they originally had in mind.
Description is really fun too. You get to use unique words, and it’s like painting an amazing picture with the brush of amazingness. I know that sounded silly, but did I just draw an image in your head? How clear was that image? Through description you can make your story longer and still keep it interesting, but don’t make so much description that it gets boring.
Expanding your vocabulary is pretty easy and good for your description, I like to read a lot, and look up the words I don’t understand. If you type in a word into google, and then type in description, google will come up with that word, meaning and some synonyms. Or you can download word web, a dictionary that doesn’t need internet at all.
Getting off of track there.
When I’m writing, I like to ask myself a few questions; ‘they’ being the people or things in the scene I’m writing.
What can they smell?
What can they hear?
What can they see?
What/how do they feel?
What can they taste?
Of course some of these may be hard to include in some scenes, but think deep; maybe they can smell the fresh air or taste blood or dirt and so on. It’s important to include how your characters are feeling, but don’t tell the reader, show the reader. ‘A shiver ran down her spine,’ through this, we know ‘her’ is scared.
If this is the very beginning of your book, then the first sentence is very important. ‘I woke up,’ is ok, but will it keep the reader reading? Maybe starting with something like, ‘As my vision became clear, and my body recovered from my slumber, not once did I think that today was going to be the biggest day of my life.’ And then you can continue, ‘All I was worried about was that the clock was mockingly flashing 7:00 AM, and that I just so happened to be late for my last day of school,’ once again, probably not the best example.
You have created a mystery, which is very good; who are these strange children? The reader will want to answer these questions and thus keep reading your book.
Not so good; when your main character suddenly knows how to use her necklace, it’s a little unbelievable. However, if you add more description of her panic and perhaps show us that she abruptly understood the power of the necklace somehow, it will become believable. The lack of description makes it a little confusing, easily fixed though.
Good; For a writer of your age, this is really good. Your dialogue is somewhat surprising because it’s very formal, and believable. It’s like these kids are speaking as if they were adults, I like that as it gives a sense of mystery and as I said before, mystery is good. Your plot line or general idea, although unclear, it appears very good. A girl finding out she has hidden powers in the necklace she possesses is always exiting. Not once did you switch tenses, I applaud that.
For your age, I think that this story is excellent. You have great potential, awesome ideas, nice structure. I liked your characters. I like how little kids are all bad ass and inscrutable, it’s pretty cool.
Description is probably your only main problem; otherwise I very much like your piece.
So keep writing! I’d love to read more and review any more stuff you would like me review. I also apologize for the length. I guess I got a bit carried away there.
From Em XD
Thank you guys so much!!!