A nice start for a love story, mostly because you give such interesting details about the main characters' back-stories.
To make this flow even better, you might want to consider using italics when the character's words are internal. Putting them in quotes is confusing, because it looks as if another person is speaking, but you forgot to start a new paragraph. Just remove the quotation marks and italicize the internal... Show more
A nice start for a love story, mostly because you give such interesting details about the main characters' back-stories.
To make this flow even better, you might want to consider using italics when the character's words are internal. Putting them in quotes is confusing, because it looks as if another person is speaking, but you forgot to start a new paragraph. Just remove the quotation marks and italicize the internal words.
When you want to change the story's point of view in a new chapter, you don't have to put the person's name in parenthesis after the chapter number. Just have the character introduce himself or herself in some way, maybe by having an internal conversation in which his or her name is used. For example, "Good one, Fred," I told myself in an angry mutter, feeling like an idiot. For a smart guy I could be such a jerk... Something like that right at the beginning of the chapter. Now we know whose POV it is.
There are also a few odd things - what mother brings her five-year-old into a bar even once, never mind on a regular basis? Also, when you get to Skylar's chapter, you have him discussing an altercation that took place in his high school cafeteria. I don't know where you live, but in America at least, drinking and smoking in high school are not only disallowed, its against the law because the students are minors. And I've never heard of a school where cops are hanging out in the cafeteria. If there were, however, they wouldn't have just broken up the fight - the kids involved would have been arrested and brought to juvenile detention. In other words, this scene is both unrealistic and not at all believable. Skylar can have a fight with those guys without the inclusion of alcohol or smoking - with their testosterone in high gear, teenage boys are capable of getting into fights with very little provocation, so the unrealistic details are unnecessary and detract from the credibility of your story.
Going back to the bar situation, even if for some reason the owner of the bar allowed her mother to bring her in there, Maliyah certainly would not have been allowed in as a minor after her mother's death. She claims she'd been going there for years - her mother died when she was seventeen, so even if she's now in her early twenties, she wouldn't have been allowed there to party until she was twenty-one. That means that she couldn't have been going there as a regular "for years."
This kind of thing is common for the newer writer - we see the story like a movie in our heads, and write down what we "see." What we don't always do, however, is check in with reality to make sure what we're seeing is even possible. It takes the fresh eyes of someone not close to the story to point these things out, which is why, like you, I always ask for people to read my work and make suggestions, knowing they'll catch all kinds of stuff I've missed.
A final note - be careful with your tenses. The story starts out in present tense, but soon switches to past, but then back to present, and then past...for the sake of consistency and flow, choose a tense and stick with it. Writing in present tense has become quite popular of late, yet it's the most difficult form of writing out there. I think it's so often used because of the television shows that have a narrative beginning, as in "My name is Katherine, and my life is a mess" kind of thing. Novel writing is nothing like screenwriting, so be sure you understand the difference.
That sounds like a lot, but honestly, it's completely normal and your overall writing is quite good. I think this can be a great story, so I hope you continue to add chapters. The basic idea has enough intrigue to make the reader want more - good job!
Thank you so much for all of your suggestions! I will make sure to make go back and edit some more, and hopefully the story would have made some improvements! I appreciate it!
The whole bar things, I was sort of picturing a restaurant/bar type of place, and I never saw it that... Show more
Thank you so much for all of your suggestions! I will make sure to make go back and edit some more, and hopefully the story would have made some improvements! I appreciate it!
The whole bar things, I was sort of picturing a restaurant/bar type of place, and I never saw it that way, but thank you. Sometimes I get too deep into my imagination that I forget others might see it differently.
You're welcome. And you're right - there are many bar/restaurant establishments, so you have to not only explain that this was such a place, but that there was a noticeable division between the dining area and the bar. That's the only way children accompanied by parents are... Show more
You're welcome. And you're right - there are many bar/restaurant establishments, so you have to not only explain that this was such a place, but that there was a noticeable division between the dining area and the bar. That's the only way children accompanied by parents are allowed to eat there. Teenagers, however, are usually only permitted up to a certain time. After about eight or nine o'clock in the evening, they have to leave.
I'm sure you're going to do a great job with the edits. Just remember it's a process; every book I have posted here I've edited a minimum of ten times, lol. The longer ones have been gone through major metamorphoses since their first posting. But as you know, we write because we love to write, so the editing and proof reading are kind of like raising kids. Things change, we learn more, and we pass it on to them, keep them fed, and help them improve their lives as they grow. ')