*Thunder and lighting*
Raindrops drizzled slowly down the window.. slashing thunder struck the school.. flashing lights surrounded Ela... She fell to the ground a screeching noise in her head, weakness filled her heart and veins.. A shadow figure stood before her striking her with his evil pure darkness powers. Carving into her flesh, blood draining from her arm like a river of dead humans rotting flesh and blood. Her life flashed before her eyes there was nothing but pitch blackness. She felt cold hands lift her, sending a shiver down her spine. Looming fear surrounded her, her eyed slowly opened to find before her a handsome boy with emerald eyes and ruby red lips carrying her tired soul. She could feel the presence of the spiteful shadow figure near. Elas eyes closed and stood a few steps away was the figure looming around with no eyes but wearing an evil grin. A strike of black fireball headed their way...
"NOOOO......"...
The end of Chapter 1 !
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,008 Literary Works • 672,830 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Well...this is a pretty short little scene to be an entire chapter here...cause this is essentially just one little paragraph here...and that's not typically going to quite fit as a first chapter...maybe as some sort of prologue perhaps....but as a first chapter, this is a bit too short here.
ANyway, skipping right past that and into the story itself, this sounds like a pretty cool premise here, certainly a lot of fun stuff happens in this paragraph, with all sorts of very interesting creatures present and some pretty intense things happening. It appears this girl gets exposed to some pretty crazy things here as all sorts of supernatural attacks seem to be happening all around here. I love the action there for the most part except for that one bit when you describe those powers as "evil pure darkness powers" that just reads very awkwardly there, a few adjectives need to be removed there.
Soo...for the most part, this is a pretty decent scene to start off with, its certainly very interesting, and makes you wanna turn those pages and find out what comes next...but there is still that slight issue of things being really small here. If this scene was expanded a bit perhaps with something like a description of the setting, it could really add a lot to things here and make this carry a bit more weight as a first chapter. At any rate, this does seem like it got quite a cool story behind it....and one that I would read.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hi and welcome to YWS!
so keep it up! I'd like to read more from you so keep writing!
Overall, I think you did pretty well. You did good at describing the setting so far. But I think you need to work on not switching between past and present tense (but it's okay I do it too) and sticking to one. Just like what Moo said I also think that this sounds like more like a prologue since first chapters are when the main character and setting is introduced.
Just like what Aly said, I also think that instead of stating "thunder and lightning" you could describe it: "There was a flash of light in the stormy sky followed by a booming clap of thunder" or something like that. Anyways, "show not tell"
"Her life flashed before her eyes there was nothing but pitch blackness."
Some advice here is to try to avoid cliche lines. This line seems too overused, but that's just my opinion.
I guess this is about it since the other reviewers covered most of it. You're doing good so far
Hello,
(Before I endeavor to cause you misery, I would like to ask for patience. This is my first review, not just on this site, but in my short lifetime. Therefore, if it is disoriented, forgive me. Now, on with the critique!)
General Advice:
There is an opportunity in the beginning for you to display your talent. Where you've written *thunder and lightning*, you could describe the thunder and lighting going on. In the following paragraph, you've proven yourself as an excellent descriptor. Why not showcase this ability as soon as your story begins?
The following paragraph is also suffering from lack of description, of sorts. While a fraction of your ability is on display, I'm sure you are capable of better phrasing. Choosing stronger adjectives, and choosing a specific POV (Is Ela the main character, or the protagonist?) will improve your first chapter.
Also, check this paragraph again for grammatical and spelling errors. I will go over them in detail below.
----------------------------
Technical Errors:
(My attempt to be a copy-editor)
There. Now, I finished. Please be advised that I'm not a professional, and therefore, this review is only my opinion.
Respectfully,
MissAly
Hello,
What a suspenseful opener you have here! You use an active vocabulary, and you set the reader up to believe that something godawful is going on here because of the detailed scene you paint for him/her. I praise those qualities in writers, especially in their openers.
I like the ellipses you place between the phrases. It makes a lot of sense to do that in suspense stories.
Technical Stuff:
I emboldened the parts which needed fixing. Also, as a general rule, ellipses come in threes --> ...
As a general writers rule, capitalization to emphasize a thought or sound should not be used. That also goes for prolonging the word than it should be, or using excessive ellipses and/or exclamation points. It's better to just write the word normally.
With all that said, I believe that this opener works best as a prologue, rather than a chapter. From what I read in chapters, they give all the information and details of who's who and what's what, whereas prologues mimic what you have here: the attention grabber, the hook. If this were to be a chapter (by my standards), then we'd have information as to who Ela is and more details about where her school is and whether or not anyone saw this event happening, or whether this event was even real! I'd say that you may want to take the route of establishing this as a prologue, but of course all that advice be useless if this were how you planned to write the entire novel!
But in all honesty, this is your writing, feel free to do as you please with it. We learn to be better writers by puking our hearts out, and then editing, and editing some more. The most important message to keep in mind when writing is to have fun. It should be similar in editing too.
And I am looking forward to reading more of this, this dude sounds scary.