Hey, I started this story a little while ago, and I posted it on another site. However, I've edited it some more after I received a review with a few suggestions. I think I'll just post the whole thing under this topic so it doesn't get too confusing. Well, without further ado, here is the prologue:
Prologue
My first day of kindergarten, a kid with the toothiest smile I had ever seen in my life introduced himself to me. After all these years, I made myself forget his name, but I’ll never forget the way his green eyes shone as he shook my hand. He had a bright yellow Power Rangers lunch box. It was obvious his mother had made him wear the khaki pants with a brown belt and a blue and white striped shirt tucked in. His black hair was greased back on top of his head. The first word that came to my mind was the word I had heard my brother call his friend the day before: dork.
When I got home I told my dad all about it immediately. I told him I had met the dorkiest kid in the history of kindergarten. After yelling at my older brother for teaching me that word, he taught me that I should never judge a book by its cover. Ha.
But I listened. And the next day of school, I played with the boy on the playground, and he even shared his skittles with me. He was officially my new best friend. He was a dork, but he was my dork, and that was all that mattered back then.
We went to each other’s houses almost every day – play dates as our mothers would call it. He was there from my first huge knee scrape till the time I got my first kiss in sixth grade, when we played spin-the-bottle at our first boy-girl party. But later that year, his dad got a call from the army. He was going to be transferred all the way back to Spain at the end of our sixth grade year.
When he told me, I freaked out. After all the problems I’d been having with my dad, I couldn’t even imagine a world without my best friend. I yelled at him that night for leaving me and kicked him out of my room. And then I met, Isabella. She loved dance almost as much as I did and it was her first year at our school. She was incredibly girly and super obsessed with her popularity, but that didn’t matter. She was a replacement for the boy and that was all that I cared about. She became my best friend, replacing the boy.
And that summer, before seventh grade, he left without even saying goodbye.
So maybe what I’m saying is that you can sometimes judge a book by its cover. Back then, Isabella seemed like a completely girly girl who cared too much about what people thought about her. And to this day, she hasn’t changed out bit, give or take becoming a few inches taller.
But that boy, he was different. He did what he wanted, acting as if the whole world was completely invisible. And looking back, I wish that I hadn’t kicked him out of my room. For nothing at all, I had lost a real friend.
But in the case of my life, you could judge my cover completely wrong. Because one glance at me, probably won’t tell you anything that’s going on inside of my head. One glance at my home, won’t tell you what goes on inside.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
No need for 'on top of his head', where else would his hair be?
Love this line!
I don't think you need 'in sixth grade', as you don't have dates for anything else in the list, and the word 'till' is informal, and not actually real, it should be until.
I think the phrase 'freaked out' is a little dated and detracts from the piece, but that could be because I'm from england and we don't use that phrasing.
I think the last sentence 'She became my best friend, replacing the boy.' ruins the sentence, so you should either get rid of it, or change it round to something like "She became my best friend, replacing the boy, and that was all that I cared about."
All in all I thought this was a very good story, well done, I really enjoyed it!
well, all the grammar and style things have been pointed out, but here:
I don't think the comma after "years" is necessary.
I had a bright red one!! Sorry,
Why "ha"? What's going through the kid's head that makes him think that? Try explaining that.
I'm sure you didn't mean that comma. And I think you should start a new paragraph here.
I love, love the ending. That is so true, I praise you for writing that!
And they're best friends because... I never really get a good, clear picture of why the main character and the dork are such good friends. Why she freaks out when she hears he's leaving. Why was he so important to her? What did they do as friends? What did he mean to her as a friend? Describe that some more, and then I give this piece two thumbs up!
Er, that sentence is just a tad bit awkward. The word "toothiest" is just so... argh. Try something like, "On my first day of kindergarten, a kid introduced himself to me while wearing the largest smile I've ever seen in my life." Not much better, but you get the picture.
Two words: Info-dump. I can see that we need to know all this detail to have the dork picture in our minds, but attempt to fit it in more casually. Have her recall how she observed how greasy and icky his hair was, or how stupid power rangers seemed to her at the time. "His black hair was greased back on the top of his head." That's a model example of a boring, uninteresting sentence. Spice up your descriptions a little!
BEST LINE EVER.
Go with TL G-Wooster on this. Kill Immediately and change "taught" to "told."
No! Why? Sure, starting a sentence with but is fine, but don't start a sentence with "and" RIGHT after it! Are you trying to kill me? People often break the preposition rule, and I'm no exception, but it just sounds... weird. Instead of a period, substitute it with a semi-colon. "But I listened; and the next day (at, you should change it to at) of school, I played..."
Ew, I hate that comma.
Here's where you put a comma.
Put a hyphen between super and obsessed. And did you just NOT say that Isabella replaced the boy? Why are you repeating it?
How about, "cared to much about what people thought OF her?" Less repetitive.
I hope that comma in the first sentence dies - if you read that sentence aloud, you'll realize that you don't pause naturally there. It doesn't sound right. And the second-sentence-comma should die too, along with an, "And," in front of, "One." Remember what I said about the prepositions? Try a comma where the period is.
The sentence should look like this:
"Because one glance at me probably won't tell you anything that's going on inside my head, and one glance at my home won't tell you what goes on inside."
~~~
All in all, the moral was adorable. I like this little story, just a little grammer stuff here and there. Edit it a little, and it'll be great.
By the way, Welcome to YWS!
~*Sara*~
[quote]When I got home I told my dad all about it immediately[/quote]
This is a little redundant. Maybe you could reword it.
[quote]After all the problems I’d been having with my dad,[/quote]
You have to tell us a little about what her dad is doing.
[quote]She was a replacement for the boy and that was all that I cared about. She became my best friend, replacing the boy[/quote]
The "replacement for the boy" then "replacing the boy" is a bit redundant. Take one out.
All in all this is good.
The rest should be interesting.
Coo - interesting.
It was very enjoyable and easy to read, and your style was fine, with just a few tweakings needed.
On my first day in kindergarten... would go better. The way you have it here is like in speech. It works fine in dialogue, but you need to make distingyishable sense in narrative.
Shaking hands in kindergarten?
This doesn't exactly flow right. I think what the problem is that there's too much detail about his clothes. Perhaps reword it as something like, It was obvious that his mother had made him wear his outfit -- brown belted khaki pants with a blue and white striped shirt tucked neatly in. and that still doesn't feel right. Do you need all that detail?
You don't need that word, it bogs the sentence down.
Told would be better than taught.
Starting a sentence with and or but is bad, and here you have two right next to each other. You could make these into one sentence, and it would work just as well.
That night kind of clutters the sentence up, so take it out.
Cool ending...
I noticed you started heaps and heaps of sentences with "and" and "but". Try to cut down and only use them when the sentence would be awful without them, sa?
When I started reading the prologue, it sounded like the rest of the story would be about this boy that the narrator met in kindergarten, but the last lines seem to say that this was just an example to make a point, and the story is really about something else. While there's nothing actually wrong with this, you spent time making me feel for the boy, and when he went it was actually quite sad. Points for doing that with such a short piece of writing, but perhaps you should stay a little more detatched, if he's not coming back.
Good beginning, and it works very well as a prologue.