Where is ‘the middle’ exactly? I’m starting to rework this with all the comments I’ve received. My initial reaction is the explosion of background at the beginning should be dispersed a bit better, but any insight you have would be most appreciated!
Novel Treatments / Seeking Saturn (Analysis)
My sex life was just about dead…dead before it even had a chance to properly begin. There was still a pulse, last I checked, but I knew that the crows were beginning to circle, hovering patiently over the flailing hormonal urges, waiting for them to croak and be done with it so that the carrion feasting could begin. It was like menopause was a mere breath away, that point in any woman’s life where one inconvenience is replaced by another, and the reviews were mixed as to which option was better. The first option: about four painful, agonizing, raging days that struck every month like clockwork. The second option: hot flashes and absolute indifference that had no foreseeable ending. Was that Hugh Jackman that just walked by? Doesn’t matter. Either you’re hating him right now because he’s a man, or you’re more amused by the slew of evening game shows.
At least, with menopause, there was a definitive sort of satiety, that absence of ambitious behavior, a supreme lack in the urge to dig out that lace teddy you hid away for special occasions. Granted, this is assuming that you A) have such a thing as a lace teddy, B) can get away with wearing one to such a point that it’s useful, and C) have someone to subject to it in that very particular way where it earns you the night of your life or at least a boost to the ego.
I had no such thing as a lace teddy. I didn’t even have anything that fit into the ‘camisole’ category. My figure was mediochre, at best, not terrible but nothing that really drew the eye. And I certainly didn’t have anyone to impress with such things as frilly minimalism.
In fact, the closest I’d ever been to even having sex was page 147 of a romance novel. Fantasies would subsequently flit through my head, and I generally tried to count that for something. And when my peers went on and on about their nightly exploits during study group, I realized that I’d managed to adopt a believable blasé expression and series of nods and shrugs that seemed to display to them that I’d had more than a fair share of my own.
At the very least, I had a First Kiss to tuck under my belt, an episode of puppy love that lasted a grand total of three weeks but at least bore some semblance of fruit. It was two years ago during my senior year of high school, and he, the absolutely gorgeous Michael Prichard, had been an object of much daydreaming since I first started caring that boys even existed. It was shocking enough when he started to return the attention, but the invitation to Homecoming nearly induced a heart attack. For thirteen and three-quarters school days, you would think we were joined at the hip (though the elbow was a much less inconvenient location). He’d walk me to class, meet me for lunch, and, in general, indulge in all the traditional aspects of high school chivalry.
Homecoming night, he picks me up in the old Ford Tempo that he inherited from his parents, and showers me with compliments about how well the aquamarine gown I picked out compliments the copper skin and black hair of my Hispanic roots, how my eyes outshone my crystal earrings. At the dance, in my explosion of confidence, I taught him how to salsa and showed off some flamenco steps my mother taught me. He kissed me when he took me home, traditional but far from unappealing. His lips were soft. My body felt like I’d been administered an adrenaline shot. I didn’t even want to think of anything else, particularly that my mother might be watching and would subsequently give me some heated speech in Spanish about how shameless I was.
Inevitably, the fairy tale came full circle. It was just like the original stories before they were adjusted for a modern audience where no one ever tells you that the Prince’s mother was really an ogre, that the Princess was raped multiple times, that her children were subsequently eaten by the jealous Queen, and that the Prince was, in actuality, one of the biggest prudes in Fairy Land. It makes the “happily ever after” translate to, “Well…at least someone survived.” Michael was as distant as he had ever been the Monday after the dance, and one excuse followed another. For a few days, I treated it like he was moody, as Ma told me boys could be, just like my father was before he decided he was better off on his own in California. When things didn’t improve after a week, I started to fret, trying to refrain from bursting into tears every time he shrugged off my usual, “Good morning!” After a month of being forced back into the woodwork, I realized that I was just going to have to cope with the empty rejection. It didn’t erase my daydreams, and I still indulged in them, wondering how things would be if Michael ever realized what a horrible mistake he made in inexplicably dumping me. He’d pull up to my house in that old Ford and demand my mother’s forgiveness, then mine, then steal me away to elope and….
Who was I kidding?
I was going to die a nun.
Quasar, whether she knew it or not, would constantly rub it in. The television was always set to whatever station played 24 hours of ‘Reality’ shows, usually attention-deprived college socialites going on blind dates that were absolutely doomed to failure before the idea to subject themselves to such public embarrassment was conceived. Despite such torture, such ridiculous behavior in the eyes of the world-wide viewing audience, they still got more action than either myself or my bright-eyed, in-her-own-dreamworld roommate.
Sarah Wightman, aged 20, majoring in astronomy and physics, had far too much Right Brain for her own good. She should have been an English major, a drama junkie, something other than a master of Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. I met her in Dr. Paulson’s Introduction to the Physical Sciences our freshman year, and I could have sworn that she was just taking the class for the credits. She came up to me, all smiles, her shirt an ostentatious Hawaiian baby tee and her jeans stonewashed from the 80s. Her hair was three colors, and none of them were particularly natural. The bleached blonde was pushing it. The green and purple were definitely out.
“Hi!” she tells me, holding out her hand, her arm stiff as a tree branch. “I’m Sarah! I’m majoring in astronomy, and I’m bi-polar.”
Great. Glad to get that out of the way. Glad, too, that you’re that comfortable with yourself. Or was that meant to be a joke?
It was the start of a beautiful relationship that consisted of too much hot chocolate, long rants about professors that should have been mercifully shot when they hit the age appropriate for retirement, and a particular over-exposure to cable television. She was quite bright, really, her mind working in all sorts of abstract ways that most people couldn’t keep up with. I called her Quasar because she should have been born some extragalactic energy body rather than a human being with limited restrictions on physical prowess. The girl was a mutant squirrel who was constantly fed chocolate-covered espresso beans.
Currently, while I was bemoaning my premature induction into a penguin suit, Quasar was lying on the floor, as upside-down as possible, in front of the television. Her legs were thrown onto the seat of a mushroom chair while her head rested, unbelievably comfortably, on a small pillow that looked like it came from an old couch from the 70s. Floral. Orange and avocado. Hard as a rock. Her eyes were closed, but I knew better than to think she was sleeping. A coursebook lay open but facedown across her stomach, her hands resting on it. The television was blaring what passed for a music video these days in some genre that I couldn’t even place.
“Brahman isn’t going to pass your midterms for you,” I said simply.
“The ceiling won’t give you any revelations for yours,” she replied back. “Plaster is a man-made substance that lacks intellectual depth. You really should try meditating, Corsica. In for six…out for six.” She breathed slowly, her eyes still closed, her hands following the invisible flow of air. “See? Just like this.” She did it again.
I shook my head and returned to my ceiling, staring up at the stubbly swirls of bland paste white. No, there wasn’t anything there that would clear my head, but it was a blank surface to focus my blank thoughts. Like…should I be Carmelite or Augustinian? Should I totally cloister myself or still remain out among the people? Should I toss my worldly possessions out the window or rely on a second-hand store for distribution? Such critical matters required deep contemplation, and the ignorant plaster was a perfect echoing ground.
I would be Sister Mary Beatrice, that one in the corner that never speaks, merely bobs her head whether she means to say yes or no. I would have Coke Bottle glasses and that particular beatific expression where my eyes are always upturned to the heavens, as if I’m in constant contact with God. I would never leave the convent gardens and insist on eating onions like apples. When I died, the Pope himself would give my eulogy, detailing my cloistered existence as the tragedy that befalls all virgin women who fail to find a man—any man—before menopause.
This wasn’t helping.
I rolled over and let my arm flop off the side of the bed. I had shoes down there somewhere. Feeling along the carpet, I tried to find the pair of sneakers that I had recently kicked off before my hormonal moping that was only due to continue if I didn’t at least stand up or go on a rampage for chocolate. Quasar tilted her head in my flailing and looked at me, her elbows suddenly propping her up so that she could see around the purple fuzz of her mushroom chair.
“What are you looking for?”
“My shoes. Need…something. I’m not sure what, yet.”
She swung her legs around and actually sat up, her hand sweeping her currently black and bright green hair away from her face.
“Your shoes are under your desk, I think.” She leaned over to look. “Yep. Right here.” And, very gracelessly as any best friend should, she tossed the off-white running shoes at me, not even bothering to look at where they were going. One made it the whole way over to where I could reach it from the bed, but the second tumbled awkwardly in that particular egg-like fashion before coming to an abrupt stop six feet away. Quasar then grinned at me. It was a quirky, impish thing that made me wonder if she was awaiting her Brownie Points for helping or if she had some particular idea in mind on what I could be doing.
Ladies and gentlemen, I pick Option Two!
“So…where exactly are you going at Midnight-Thirty AM?” She pulled her knees to her chest, her hands clamping around her toes like it was storytime in elementary school. Her smile didn’t change in the slightest.
“I…” I sat up to pull my shoes on, my face taking on that somewhat pouty expression that always turned up when I was in thought deeper than what it ought to have been. “I’m thinking…chocolate cake. Yes. Chocolate cake sounds like a really good idea.”
She lit up like a chain of Christmas lights, the kind that dangle like icicles and blink so fast they could induce epilepsy. She scooted across the floor to find her own shoes and had them on even before I could grab my second from where she’d thrown it, and plopped herself down on her bed to wait for me, excited, expectant, and pitifully sugar deprived. I should have run a constant charity, the Quasar Calorie Fund, just to keep my darling roommate functional. However, such a plan would milk our fellow students dry as Quasar didn’t operate on Calories. She measured her energy expenditures in megajoules. The chocolate cake, if we found any at this late hour, would last a grand total of three minutes. Then, the poor creature would be collapsing, faint with the exertion of taking three steps thanks to the curse of her monstrous metabolism, and I would be stared at, again, by every sorority girl on campus as I carried my friend to safety. They would look from us to their own PMS remedies of chocolaty goodness and subsequently grumble how they were gaining five pounds just by thinking about food while some psycho with black and green hair could eat like a mongoose.
I was taking too long. Quasar began to gnaw on her finger as she stared at my hands tying shoelaces. It was as if, through her very force of will, she could make things go faster. I didn’t have to be a mind reader. I knew what was flying through her head at the speed of rogue electrons.
ChocolatechocolatechocolatechocolatechocolatechocolateIwantityesterdayplease.
Finally, the shoes were on. She didn’t even wait for me to stand up before she was at the shared closet, pulling out our autumn-weight jackets and throwing mine at me. Her purse was thrown over her shoulder a second later with her keys in-hand. You’d think we’d just been told to evacuate the city because there was a disaster bound to strike. I grabbed up my own keys and wallet before pulling on my coat, following her out the door and down the hall of the dormitory.
Loud music carried through the dense wood of the door three down from ours. Harsh vocals, heart-thumping bass and percussion, screeching lead guitars. Kara was in, and I knew what the noise meant. Quasar did, too. Without even really thinking about it or giving each other that knowing look, we stopped, and Quasar pounded on the door. It was a fruitless endeavor, but it would be a shame to be anything but polite. She tried the knob and found it unlocked. Grinning, she poked her head inside and gave a shout.
“Oi!” she cried, aiming to be heard over what my brain translated as the Jackhammers of Death, Doom, and Destruction. “My eardrums crave life!”
The music immediately diminished in volume, and Kara pulled the door the rest of the way open. She was in her pajamas, but the nearly empty soda bottle that she tapped against her gray flannel-clad leg hinted that she was still a long way from sleep. Not like the music had anything to do with that assumption, either. Her dark red hair was pulled up in a clumsy ponytail, and her oversized black tee shirt looked as limp as her expression.
“Quasar, give me three good reasons why I shouldn’t rip your brain out through your nose,” she said, a glazed look to her eyes that hinted at mental strain and a very possible migraine. Her eyebrows perked, and she blinked slowly, an expression that translated to, “Now, or your brain won’t be all I rip out. I’m thinking your spleen looks nice, too. It’ll match my throw pillows.”
Kara Mathers, 19 going on 42, only looked like a metalhead drug addict on a bad day. On a good day, she had the common decency to at least add color to her wardrobe and shock us all with a pastel blue tee that said “God Sneezed…and You Were Born” worn overtop fishnet sleeves made from the notorious stockings. Or, she would wear all white just to see if we would go blind from the shock. It was how she hid in plain sight. The girl was beyond brilliant, valedictorian at her high school, and currently still sported a 4.0 QPA with her major in political science. She said posing in the underground kept the external stressors low, fending off the high expectations that she’d otherwise deal with from professors and peers. If she looked like she didn’t care and behaved enough the same way, she seriously thought academia would be so much easier to wade through.
In her well-thought-out equation, she had totally forgotten to include herself.
Kara was an absolute workaholic. She was almost always staying up until 3AM reading for This, That, or the Other, whether it was required for a course or not, and when she started work on an essay, she treated it like it was a PhD thesis. Everyone that actually knew her was glad that her brains earned her a full ride through undergrad. It was bad enough watching her go insane with just school work. If an actual job were added to the mix, we would have a mini-Chernobyl on a weekly (maybe daily) basis on the eighth floor of Madison Hall.
“Oh, I can easily give you three reasons,” Quasar spoke up. “One, you know you love me. Two, does ‘chocolate cake’ mean anything to you? Three, you really, really, really should emerge from the cave for some good oxygen.”
Kara heaved a slow sigh, her unimpressed look hardly changing as she shifted her attention to me.
“Did she talk you into something? Whose demise is she plotting, now?”
I shrugged. “I need to go on a chocolate run, and she wanted to come with. Given that you’re listening to death metal instead of hard rock implies that you could probably use some, too.”
“Two seconds.”
She closed the door, and Quasar and I waited while Kara threw on a different shirt and a pair of tennis shoes. She emerged a minute later in a crimson hoodie overtop her pajamas, locked her door behind her, and looked expectantly at us.
“Chocolate run…what’s the plan of attack?”
“We’re going in low,” Quasar replied, her tone completely serious despite what she was saying, “and aiming for the left flank. Corsica will dash ahead to perform the necessary reconnaissance, and you and I will hang back expectantly, yet patiently, for her report. Then—“
“I was thinking of hitting the grocery store for some chocolate cake,” I butted in. Quasar’s mouth still hung open, her arms frozen in wild gesticulation.
“So long as I get to be equipped with the bazooka this time, I’m all for it,” Kara replied, a smile relieving some of the strain on her weary face.
Now, before you get the impression that Kara was always sour, always in a bad mood, allow me to correct you. In all honesty, she was one of the most upbeat people I had ever met (Quasar is simply a given and far out of the range of being a worthy basis of comparison). On the days when she didn’t have anything else pending, which were rare but possible, Kara would often come visit our room down the hall for a marathon of bad movies, stand-up comedy acts, or simple girl talk. She had an incredible sense of humor that spanned potty jokes to dry wit to the more macabre, and she could even get total strangers to double over with laughter if she teamed up with Quasar on some random slapstick tirade. I had the feeling that this was starting to be one of those times.
“Meh,” Quasar huffed, tossing her hands and beginning to stalk the rest of the way down the hall to the elevators. “Bazookas are so overrated these days. You need a good concussion grenade, for starters, and some tear gas to draw them out of hiding. That’s when we come down from the left flank, freshly armed with toothpicks we snagged in the baking aisle—it is the baking aisle, right?—and make good use of those lessons in acupuncture we learned from Prof Reynolds.”
“An episode of Xena: Warrior Princess in Modern Myths is hardly a lesson in acupuncture,” Kara replied, already seeming less tense than when we knocked on her door.
“Speak for yourself! Anything you’ll ever need to know, you can learn from Lucy Lawless.”
“Fine, but how do the toothpicks aid our strategy?”
“They provide still another distraction while Corsica moves in for the kill. At this particular hour, the object of our invasion is a rare thing, indeed, the bakery usually being appropriately sneaky and hiding it in a rear refrigerator that mere peons such as ourselves can’t get to. If we can’t get anyone to admit to the location of our Plant, we’ll have to resort to more drastic measures so that Corsica doesn’t turn and kill us all.”
The ‘Plant’ was Jeff, one of the grocery stock boys that Quasar had flirted into submission. He almost always kept something in reserve for the group of us, these late night snatch-and-grabs not a terribly uncommon thing.
Kara gave me a sidelong glance, a thoughtful expression pursing her lips.
“Cannibalism,” she said, still looking at me but talking to Quasar. “My vote is with cannibalism. Neitzsche’s abyss is staring at me from the darkness of her eyes.”
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Jskins reviewed Version 1 -
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I have been on this site since it’s inception and this is one of the best pieces I have read. I usually stick to poetry as my concentration for reading is shorter than a penis dipped in Co2. I’m not easily impressed and I am incapable of being anything but sincere. That said, your writing ability is stellar! Highly intelligent…filled with passion and has a very appealing open vulnerability to it.
If you are not thinking about using your talent professionally, that to me would be a real waste.
Thanks so much for the inspiration!
J
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Hands_on_fire reviewed Version 1 -
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As a wip, its great. I love your characters and you captured images of college life perfectly. I enjoy your word choices and things flow nicely. Its a great funny half a chapter for building three characters, and I’d be curious to see where it went from here. I found myself asking “whats the point” and “what will go wrong?” As of now, even in their “quirky” interactions this is still very normal and its easy to relate. This makes it a great set up for the twist, or at least start playing with some more rising conflict so your reader doesn’t get bored with this cute cake run.
YolandaRenee reviewed Version 1 -
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I liked it, to a point. The descriptions were wonderful, Quasar a wonderful personality, but somehow I got bored in the middle. Was it too much, to drawn out? I’m not sure. Maybe a rewrite is in order. You’ve got talent, good luck!
00_Doughboy reviewed Version 1 -
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The warmth and comfort of friendship seeps through every sentence. It isn’t forced or fabricated; it is as genuine as if I had met these girls in my own dorm. That’s probably what I like most about this story- I have known a Quasar, a Kara and a Corsica (not their actual names of course, that would just be freaky) and to read this treatment was like stepping back in time to have a conversation I hadn’t remebered in years with people I hadn’t seen in almost as long. Your knack for storytelling and good-natured humor is obvious, and your talent is a pure joy to read along with.
I love Quasar. Her quirky-ecclectic personality (and how you described it; the “mutant squirrel” line actually made me snort!) is so dead on, so believable and real that I felt right at home in her silly little world. The narrator, our Corsica, is the perfect Straight Woman to Quasar’s Funny Woman. Corsica is the introvert, the shy one, the one who uses her friendship with Quasar to live outside herself and know what it’s like to have the type of outgoing personality that people are so naturally attracted to, living vicariously through her and feeding off that energy. It’s a beautifully and lovingly crafted friendship you’ve imagined here, and I (personally) imagine that there is far more truth in this tale than fiction.
I would love to get to know these characters more! What you have here is very vivid, very polished, and so damn charming that I really don’t know what else to tell you. It’s awesome. This story has heart, and I’d love to see more of it!
Curtastrophe reviewed Version 1 -
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Excellent opening paragraph! It starts off not subtly, but like a gunshot at the start of a race. Who hasn’t felt sexually frustrated at some point?
The honest, confessional tone of the narrator makes the reader feel like they’re being drawn into an intimate world. Good job.
“The television was…” This is a very wordy sentence. I’d try to break it up.
Your description of Sarah is flawless. Kudos.
Even though the narration jumps around, I think the pacing of it is very good and haven’t found myself confused yet.
”...to look.” I’d switch this to, “to check.” Also, the preceding dialogue needs a comma instead of a period.
“Chocolatechocolatecho…” Good effect.
I would suggest breaks or (#) between the introductions of the characters. As with Quasar, Kara is described in glorious an entertaining detail.
”...she plotting, now?”” You could nix the comma.
The story gripped me from the beginning and never let go. Your writing is VERY solid. Nice balance of dialogue and description, good characterization, and an overall easy, enjoyable read. Thanks for sharing.
-Curt
Fallstar reviewed Version 1 -
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This is one of the better pieces of work I’ve seen on here for a while.
Your writing style is interesting, easy to read and drags you in well. It starts a bit slowly – a wise idea in writing is never start with a story-telling flashback. Action first, or you get bored.
Not to say it’s boring – this is definitely an interesting piece. There is definite character and a good story so far. I like Quasar, she reminds me of myself a fair bit. There is definitely a good description of the characters, and they come to life quite well.
A definite plus point here is dialogue. Alot of the writers I see on here have dialogue that is unrealistic, or boring, or just sounds wrong. You’ve really captured the dialogue well here – it flows well, it is realistic, and it sounds very much like it is being spoken out at you. Funnily enough, this is something youthful writers seem to find easy, so you have a benefit there.
Overall, definitely a good piece of work. Keep up the good writing – write more =] – and I’m sure you’ll go on to do well.
Starwise reviewed Version 1 -
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It’s interesting that you label this as a novel treatment, because it actually reads like a memoir. You have an authentic human voice, it being 1st person, but for the first few pages, I don’t see any dialogue and no scene establishment. It is simply a strong character development. Hence, a memoir, and a sharply written one at that. You have wit in your words. Several times I found myself chuckling inside as I read.
One suggestion I can give is to take another look at your paragraphs and really think about where you’re breaking them. In the flow of your narration, there are spots where it’s a definite that you should have a break and start a new paragraph. This is just one example:
page 3 – after “Well, at least someone survived.” End the paragraph there and start a new one with “Michael was as distant…”
Examine your thought processes and see where you stop to take a breath and then think of something new in your head, and that’s probably where a new paragraph should be.
I’m now noticing we’re into dialogue and an actual scene. That’s where the story starts, right there. That’s where it starts to move. What you can do there is right where you’ve established a scene and chalk up some dialogue between characters, you can either start a new chapter or break off with a space and maybe some typographics to let the reader know that you’re moving onto something else, moving forward into something else. It allows you to let us take a breath before getting into a new ‘scene’.
However, if you do want this to read more like a novel, what you probably should do is begin the piece right from where the dialogue starts. In fact, that first line of dialogue just bites on you perfectly. Reading that makes me blink and go, “huh…interesting, this is interesting,” especially the interior monologue that follows from the narrator. When you’ve established some kind of scene and some sort of characterization, THEN you can go back and fill in some backstory, giving us something to fall back on and absorb what we’ve just read about the characters. Dialogue and action is generally meant to draw us in good and fast. And the rest of it, the narration, the exposition (which you do splendidly) feeds us the fat portions we all dearly love.
You can generally start a new chapter right where you begin with “It was the start of a beautiful relationship that consisted of too much hot chocolate…”. It’s generally a funny line! It’s cute. But the important thing is you start a COMPLETELY new scene. It practically calls for a new chapter. And then you go from there. Generally, whenever you have a scene change, unless the new scene still revolves around a particular main premise within the chapter (not as common, but still can be done easily), you need a new chapter for that new scene. Almost always.
As I’m reading more, I’m just falling in LOVE with your authentic voice. The narration is so fresh and natural. Love it. Can’t say much more than that. And your invention is novel and so imagistic. Like the huge running word about ‘chocolate’. It’s funny. A lot of fun to picture what goes on inside your head.
And again, when you introduce a new character, it is probably a good idea to break it off into a new chapter. I find it interesting that in your notes, you say that this is not even a complete chapter, where from my point of view of reading it, it looks like you have at least three different chapters here. And they all work well. We know what the story’s about. We know what the narrator’s about. So it’s perfect. We have a story. And it’s moving along. Some writers tend to have problems with getting a plot moving or even getting the story going. Their plot is moving fine, but there’s no story behind it. Others have a story, but there plotting is all over the place or has no clear structure. It looks like you’ve got your story down AND your plot down. All you need to do is organize them into chapters or scenes within your chapters to help the reader read. Your main goal is readability. No one’s going to read something that is super-hard to read.
This really is wonderful work, and you should really develop this more into something that agents could look at. Memoirs are pretty hot right now in the market, especially chick memoirs, chic lit and all that flowery stuff (don’t get me wrong, I love that kind of writing). Your challenge, I think, is to show an agent or publisher that you don’t just have the same ol’ run-of-the-mill memoir about the slice of life and hard times and boyfriends and love and sex and blah blah blah that every memoir has these days (Sophie Kinsella, Jen Lancaster, even the author who wrote “The Devil Wears Prada”—although not memoirs falls under the same topics that your ‘memoir’ focuses on).
Keep working on it. It looks great.
andersda reviewed Version 1 -
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These are great characters. I really enjoyed this piece to the point of laughing out loud. The only serious bit I found was the discussion of menopause. Like all middle-aged married men, I am afraid of menopausal women. My wife tells me that menopause is natures way of introducing rage into an otherwise docile demeanor. She seems to have a following in this opinion amongst her friends. The urge is not for sex, but to kill your husband of twenty odd years for very little cause and without a moments hessitation. You might rethink or modify your treatment of it in the very begining. .
“which option was better” delete option
“It was just like the original stories” this is a great bit.
“The girl was a mutant squirrel who was constantly fed chocolate-covered espresso beans.” you just made me fall in love with you.
“allow me to correct you.” This bit about correcting the reader adds nothing.
“They provide still another distraction” this bit was a little tough to follow. The “plant” bit with Jeff was perfect though.
The real question is where do you go plot-wise from here. Aside from developing the characters and their relationships there is a clear sense of where you’re going.
TnD reviewed Version 1 -
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(Page 6) ”...One made it the whole way over to…” – Perhaps change to ”...made it to the bed, but…” Including ‘whole way’ makes it sounds as though the shoe had to pass through a marathon to make it to you.
(Page 7) “Midnight-thirty AM” – Kind of redundant. Might want to use either ‘12:30AM’ or ‘half past midnight’ or some version thereof.
(Page 7) ”...had them on even before…” – Maybe ”...had them on before I could even finish tying the first one…” It just seems like a really long sentence to get the point across. Might want to try and shorten it some.
(Page 8) ”...carried through the dense wood of the door three down…” – ”...music carried through the dense wood of our neighbor’s three doors down…” or some variation there of. ‘Door three down’ seems like you’re trying to re-name the band.
(Page 9) – I want that t-shirt.
(Page 10) ”...whose demise…” – Who’s. Possessive, since she’s talking about a person.
(Page 11) – Talking to the reader personally is typically not a good idea. Perhaps change it to have the character thinking that out, rather than speaking to the writer directly.
Overall, I think you’ve got something good here. It delves into the mysterious world of college-age girls, which is right up there with Ted Bundy’s thought process and Canadian Parliament in terms of mysterious-ness. (Just kidding about the Canadian thing).
You’ve woven a good story here, with the few inductions of sarcasm. Something that’s not very easily done in a textual environment. Keep running with this, as I’d like to continue reading.
Thanks for sharing and I look forward to more.
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