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Question: What do you think of the first two chapters!?
CHAPTER ONE
I stared ahead as the cab inched further into the darkness of a tunnel!. I hated moving, I've always had!.!. We lived in Phoenix, Arizona all my life which was about fifteen and a half years!.!. Man how I'm going to miss the city! Me and my dad were moving out to Gilbert, Arizona!.!. Hey at least I'm still in Arizona right!? Well I knew it wasn't going to be the same!.!. And I would sure as hell miss my friends back in Phoenix!.!. See my mom and dad got in a divorce about four years ago, I remember it like someone would remember their birthday or a death of a close friend!. My mom and dad were two total opposites, and well my mom she was well!.!. a drunk!.!. and my dad was the kind of guy that worked his butt off to make ends meat!. My mom was not too tall and not too short as my dad says!.!. And she had long black hair as dark as the nights sky!.!. I don't think of her or talk about her much!.!. I just tried to erase that part of my life!.!. As for my dad!.!. he says he'll always be there for her and he'll always forgive her no matter what!.!. I always tell him he has a heart of gold, and he always says that a person should forgive no matter how bad another has done!.!. If you haven't already guessed by now my dad is a police officer!. And the reason I'm here in this rotten cab alone is because my dad had to go in early this morning and told me he would see me after he got off!.!. I was usually raising myself at home!. But now it felt different like I'd just entered a third dimension!.!. I felt unwelcome and I just had an uneasy feeling about moving into a new house without dad there!. I was getting sleepy now and without realizing, I drifted off to sleep!.!.
CHAPTER TWO
"Hey kid, isn't this your stop!?" I woke up suddenly and I was still drowsy!.!. "Uh, yeah thanks!." I payed the cab driver and stumbled out of the cab!.!. The cab driver went to the back of the car and unloaded my luggage!. I picked my things up and walked down the path, up the steps, and opened the front door of my new home! W-o-w, I worded!.!. It was just like any other new home, it even had that musky smell!. The place was empty!.!. "The movers must have not got our stuff here yet"!.!. I grumbled as I walked up the stairs to my new room!. I opened the door and just like the rest of the house it was empty, and smelled of year old oatmeal!.!. I was usually in a very pleasant mood, but I was very grumpy seeing that I had nowhere to sit, or lay down and my cell-phone was dead!.!. So I decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood!.!. "Yeah", I thought "this should be fun!" I stepped outside and walked down the path which I had just stepped a few moments ago!. I saw a playground on my left in the distance and a school to my right in the distance!.!. Well seeing that I get to be out of school today I guess I should go check out the park!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Oh my goodness! You have a lot of problems!.
You need to hone up on your spelling skills!.
"make ends meat" !?
And grammar!.
"Me and my dad" !?
Punctuation needs to be worked on!. You are missing a lot of commas!.
You also need to make sense!.
First you say you hated moving, always had!. This sounds like you have constantly moved!.
Then you say you lived in Phoenix all your life!.
Which is it!?
Lastly, your story goes nowhere!. Nothing in the first few sentences is compelling enough to make me want to keep reading!. I read through the entire thing just to see if anything interesting was going to happen, but it never did!.
It needs a lot of editing!. Keep trying!. You will get better!.
Www@QuestionHome@Com
its okWww@QuestionHome@Com
that's!.!.!. really good!.
I wanna read the rest!!!
Wait!.!.!. is this a guy or a girl!?
Name!?
Anyways realyyyyy good!Www@QuestionHome@Com
You've never met the enter key, have you!? Paragraph, it'll make it far more readable! As mentioned, there are tons of grammarical errors in this story too!. also, your chapters are insanely short!. A chapter should be around five to ten pages in Word, in my opinion!.
The story doesn't really go anywhere, it's a rambling train of thought, which makes it difficult to read and doesn't really hook me as a reader!. If it was printed, I wouldn't take it out of a library!. Fortunately, you're looking for critique, I think! Let's start from the top!
1) Paragraph! It makes it way easier to read online!
2) Show, don't tell! Get into your character's head, it's not his memories, don't dump it all on your readers at once!. We don't really care about his mom and dad yet--show us his mom and dad, don't tell us that she's a drunk and he works his butt off to make ends meet!. Show us that!. Show us his mom passed out on the floor!. Show his dad coming back from work, exhausted!.
3) Why all the 'two periods'!? That's not proper!. One period at a time!.
4) "Dialogue should look like this," T pointed out!. "It should begin and end with a quotation mark, the ending period inside of the quote marks!. All new sentences should always be capitalized!."
5) This could all be one chapter!. It doesn't feel like they're particularly seperate!. It sounds like someone rambling and talking!. Work on the voice!. A narrator shouldn't be going "well, anyway, so I went and did this and that!." Show it!.
And use more creative, vivid language!. Here, I rewrote a section for you!. You had the following paragraph!.
"I opened the door and just like the rest of the house it was empty, and smelled of year old oatmeal!.!. I was usually in a very pleasant mood, but I was very grumpy seeing that I had nowhere to sit, or lay down and my cell-phone was dead!.!. So I decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood!.!. "Yeah", I thought "this should be fun!" I stepped outside and walked down the path which I had just stepped a few moments ago!. I saw a playground on my left in the distance and a school to my right in the distance!.!. Well seeing that I get to be out of school today I guess I should go check out the park!."
So I decided to elaborate on it in my own writing voice, to try show you what I'd like to see!. You could make it much more interesting, make your character 'talk' more with creative use of adjectives and descriptions and everything!.
"I opened the door!. Like the rest of the house, it was empty, and smelt like year old oatmeal!. I was already ticked off, because I had nowhere to go, nowhere to sit or lay down, and to top it off, my cell phone was dead!. Of course!. I was usually an easy-going person, but this was the last straw!. I kicked the door as I stalked out into the neighborhood!. Maybe I'd find something fun out here!.
_Yeah,_ I thought!. _This should be fun!._ I stalked down the path I'd just walked up a moment ago, glancing around for somewhere, anywhere but here--anything would be more interesting than this musty, ancient house that smelled of oatmeal!.
I looked down the road--to the south there was a school, and north there was a playground!. School wasn't particularly fun, and anyway, I had today off school, so I headed off to the park!.!.!."
Elaborate on sights, sounds, smells, feels, and emotions in first person!. You can still tell the reader things about the character, but it should be more of a 'show', not a tell!. Make them feel what he's feeling!. He's grumpy, so make us feel that instead of just telling us that!.
You have a start, now build on it! Hook us and make us feel your character's frustration and emotions!. Good luck!Www@QuestionHome@Com