The faint, calming sound of birds chirping nearby soothed my ears. The warmth of probable sunlight embracing my face gave me a wonderful feeling like I've been whisked off to a wonderland or something.
But the smell, something felt wrong as I took in a deep breath of air.
I expected the smell of fresh flowers and grass, but instead, the strong smell of antiseptics invaded my nose. My lungs started to burn as if someone was pouring lava into it. I exhaled the air through my mouth quickly, hoping the pain would go away.
My eyes opened to a white ceiling.
I stared at it blankly, wondering why my eyes didn't get blinded by the sun shining up in the sky.
I tried to turn my neck, but it had gone stiff. Even the slightest movement caused tremendous pain.
My limbs felt the same, promising me that I won't be able to get up anytime soon.
I lay there, staring blankly at a ceiling as the faint chirps and the warmth I felt earlier die down, leaving me in complete silence and solitude.
What happened to me? What am I doing here?
Okay, first try to remember the basics, I told myself.
I tried to make a mind map, hoping to fill up the gaps in my memories later, but to my shock, I didn't have any memories of myself at all.
Everything was just a big blur, just like my deteriorating vision.
I could feel beads of sweat pouring down my face, my lips quiver as I take in short breaths, trying not to hurt my lungs.
"Oh, you're awake! " A female voice broke into my thoughts.
I tried to turn my head towards the owner of the voice, but my neck gave a painful 'crack' refusing to obey my command.
"Whoa, you'd better stay still," The person replied with a giggle. "The nurse will be furious if you broke another bone."
Another? Why did she say another? How many have I broken already?
I opened my mouth to speak. But nothing came out because it was drier than a desert and I felt lumps stuck in my throat. The only thing which did come out was a painful cough. It burned my lungs, making my eyes go teary with pain.
"Easy there tiger," I felt a hand on my forehead, brushing away strands of hair that had fallen over my eyes.
A face, presumably that of a girl in her mid-teens entered into my field of vision. She had dazzling curly brown hair with orange highlights, giving it a fiery appearance.
I couldn't focus my eyes on her face well because my vision was getting more and more blurry each second. But I did notice her big seaweed green eyes looking down with mine.
I stared at them, unable to utter a single word.
"When you are feeling better can you tell me your name?" She asked in a bubbly voice, her eyes still locked with mine.
Anger rushed through my veins. I was dying here and she seems so happy about it. What's her problem?
I opened my mouth to shout, only to flinch as every single muscle in my face throbbed with pain.
The strange twinge on my right arm made my whole body tingle.
I heard footsteps rushing in my way. With one more glance at the girl with fiery hair, I blacked out.
End of chapter
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140,078 Literary Works • 673,000 Reviews
Hey Kitty,
It didn’t really click with me how her ears speficially are soothed? Like, if she herself as a whole was being soothed by the birds then I would totally understand, but the way this is phrased makes it seem as if she had an earache or she was previously listening to something loud and obnoxious, and now her ears feel soothed.
Why “probable” sunlight? It’s either sunlight or it isn’t? The vagueness here confused me.
Ooh I like this line. Intense.
Ah okay I understand the “probable” now.
If they are in a hospital and their neck/spine is this badly damaged, to the point where moving slightly causes extreme pain, surely they would be restrained in some way to prevent her from rolling around etc?
***
Overall comments:
I see you’re working with an amnesiac protagonist. I currently have a novel project on hold which starts in a similar way, with an amnesiac waking up. I didn’t realise when I started writing it that this is actually a very common set up for fantasy stories, and is currently regarded as somewhat of a trope. Obviously, it depends on how you deal with it personally, just making you aware if you aren’t already. I personally don’t mind this trope because it's fun starting off with a blank slate character, because you don’t have to worry about bogging the story down with backstory, and your characterisation will come naturally as your protagonist discovers who they are at the same pace we do.
As for whether I think this works as your “chapter 1”, I’m not so convinced. You’ve set up a premise, which is good, however as I said, this has been done quite a bit already so as a reader I would want to find something in your first chapter that brings this story away from novels I’ve already read (and started writing myself!”). I get that we’re starting off at a point where it’s hard to have a lot going on, but you can still drop an interesting tone or setting or something that will better hook the readers beyond this initial premise. I think you can easily make this chapter a little longer to help with that, because hardly anything has even happened to justify starting a new chapter.
Something I noticed that you tend to do is successively start new paragraphs after just one or two sentences. This is troublesome because it makes your story lack pace. Long paragraphs help indicate time passing whilst short paragraphs help quicken your pace and increase tension. Varying between the two will help create rhythm, slowing down the story when you need it and vice versa. Sticking to one length will create an absence of pace, and while the story will still make sense, might struggle to draw the reader in. Generally, you only need to start a new paragraph if a new person speaks or acts, or if you are starting a new topic or subject matter. If you go back, you might be surprised by how many of these paragraphs you could join together.
I also agree with FCD about the character noting the seaweed green eyes. This description does indeed seem too casual and lacks the sense of urgency this chapter needs. Your character would likely instead notice something else about the girl, something about her face to suggest if they are in good hands or not. If you wake up without memory, in such a dire situation, you would notice details that relate to this issue.
With all of that said, your writing was clean and understandable, and I didn't notice any glaring issues that would deter me from reading on, which is great.
Tag me if you continue please.
-Zoom
Thank you so much for the review. It was super helpful and pointed out a lot of issues about my writing. ^-^ I'm going to try my best to fix those errors and make this story better!
(^^ I'll be sure to tag you when the next chapter is out)
Wow Kitty this is really good. I loved reading this! I hope you post the next chapter soon!
^-^ Thank you so much, i'm so glad you like it!
Your welcome. If you don't mind do you think you can tag me when the next chapter is out?
^-^ Of course!!
Thanks!
Sup
This extract really entertained me. The scenario of waking up in a foreign place is really intriguing. I like the way that you withhold information from the reader allowing them to use their imagination to interpret what is going on, and therefore allowing each reader to potentially get something different out of the piece.
Personally, I would have done several things differently though.
When you open the chapter you introduce us to a character who has woken up in an unfamiliar situation. I think you capture the characters shock well. However I would have made the character more disorientated. For instance, I would not have used the line " a strong smell of antiseptics invaded my mind." Considering that the character has just woken up, it's unlikely that they would be able to identify the smell of antiseptics. Also when the character refers to the eyes of the girl as seaweed green. It doesn't seem appropriate that the character would say that given her current crisis. One trick i like to use is to try and put myself in the characters shoes when I'm writing about something I have not personally experienced.
In general I think you did a pretty amazing job of engaging the readers imagination. Several questions came to mind when I finished reading the chapter, such as why the character expects to smell flowers upon waking up, and the identity of the teenage girl.
Hope the next chapter is appealing as this one was.
FCD
Hey there! This is Selina, from DoubleRiders! In case you didn’t know, there are two of us on this account - my little sister Honora and me! Hence, the name and introduction!
First of all I will say that this is only my second review in a few years so I am very rusty, my apologies!
So I will put my ideas for correction out first before I tell you my thoughts on the piece, this way we can get them out of the way...
My first idea for correction was this sentence: “But the smell, something felt wrong as I took in a deep breath of air.” And then you go on in the next paragraph to talking about the smell. In my opinion I felt like you were dragging it on, trying to get more words out of it, but when we write quality is always better than quantity. We want to strike the reader’s attention and keep it wanting to know more, not dragging our words out (because then it gets boring).
I would have written: “ I took a deep breath of air, expecting to experience the smell of fresh flowers etc... instead of fresh air, my nose was shocked with the smell of... something felt wrong.”
The next thing I noticed: “...promising me that I ‘won't’ be able to get up anytime soon.” I would changes that to ‘wouldn’t.’
#3: “I lay there, staring blankly at a ceiling” it would be “the” ceiling.
#4: “a ‘dreaded’ thought invaded my mind,“ wrong description word... you couldn’t have been dreading it because you didn’t know you had forgotten who you were, see what I mean? May try: “then fear seized me as I tried to think back on my memories and found none... who am I?” Or something like that; just a suggestion.
#5: “small round face and small pointy nose“ you used ‘small’ both times which makes sound a bit repetitive. Maybe try words like: ‘petite’ or something.
#6: the last two paragraphs you say the word ‘pain’ a lot. Try to be a little more creative in your words; that is one amazing thing about writing is the creativity!
That is all I have for ways to improve; I hope it was helpful! I really enjoyed reading your story. I liked how, although it was the same plot line as many others, it had a bit of a different twinge to it. Keep that up! Be creative! I hope you can use some of my thoughts & that you get many more reviews!
~ DoubleRiders
One helpful tip when writing is to have a thesaurus or something close by, it helps a lot!
^-^ Thank you so much for the awesome review!!
I'll fix those issues right away.