 Lorendiac 2009-07-29 . chapter 32I admit you surprised me. After I read the summary of your story, I wasn't expecting the first chapter to show a girl grieving after the death of her grandmother. Now I'll just have to read at least another chapter or two so I can see the stuff you hinted at in the summary -- how this girl first meets Terry, as Elena and/or as the newest Catwoman. (I'm assuming they will turn out to be the same person, but I've been wrong before!)
But before I read any more, I'll offer some spur-of-the-moment constructive criticism about a couple of things in this first chapter which could stand some improvement.
You wrote:
* A black dress girl kneels in front of a dark trunk. *
"A black dress girl" is an odd way of putting it. If you mean she's "a girl in a black dress," then you should probably rewrite it.
Also, it would help if you told the reader a bit more about the SETTING as this chapter begins. When I read that paragraph about the girl and the trunk and the recent funeral, I tried to visualize this girl kneeling in front of a trunk, and I realized I had no idea whether she was in a house, or in an airport, or outdoors and kneeling on the grass, or what!
* “Oh grandma. What will I do know that you are gone.” she says sniffing. *
The punctuation needs some work, and you used the word "know" when it should have been "now." I'd edit that line this way:
“Oh, grandma. What will I do now that you are gone?” she says, sniffing.
I changed the period after "you are gone" to a question mark, because it sure looked like a spoken question to me. But even if I hadn't done that, I still would have changed the period to a comma. The rule goes that when spoken dialogue is immediately followed by a "speech tag" telling us who is saying something -- the tag could be "he said" or "Bruce explained" or "Dick wondered" or "she says" (as in this case) -- then the spoken part and the tag are both treated as pieces of ONE longer sentence. In that situation, the last word inside quotation marks doesn't need a period, because it "isn't really" the last word of the entire sentence.
For instance, a bit later on you wrote:
* “Mom, dad. I miss you so much.” she says touching there picture. *
That should probably be:
“Mom, dad, I miss you so much,” she says, touching their picture.
(You might want to capitalize "Dad," but I think that's optional. However, the period after "much" really needed to be changed to a comma, for the reason I explained above.) |