Sample Of My Writing, Feedback Needed
 

My name is Beedabeet and I'm new to Menewsha, and I've tried to get feedback on my stories before but I haven't had much luck, because people usually say things like, "Good," or "Bad," and that doesn't give me very good writing advice.:sweat: I'm currently writing three books on the same person, one is a sequel and the next one is the third one. The first book is called "Kira is DEAD: Path of Dante'". Here are the first two chapters.



A shiver slithered its way up Kira's spine. This was her only sign that some life was left in her. Staring at the gray clouds always caused her mind to wander, but the line between dream and reality was beginning to fade. Kira pinched her leg gently to make sure she wasn't dreaming. After feeling a twinge of pain fly to her fingers, she was satisfied. Her satisfaction quickly turned to embarrassment, then anger, as she remembered where she had woken up just moments before. This was the third time this week that Kira woke up next to a garbage can.
The first time, she had simply fallen out of her bed. She awoke with a groan, ans walked to the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face. She didn't think much of how strange she felt--there was always something off about Kira.
The second time, she had gotten a bit further. She woke up with her head leaning against one of the floor cupboards. She held a note book in her right hand and a fountain pen in her left. She cursed herself for using the ink she used for her art to write in large letters, "6780 Arseny Lane." Kira blinked hard and threw the peper into her empty, butgundy art bag. She threw the bag on the stairs and went back into her room to get some sleep.
But this time was the strangest. Kira awoke next to a dumpster, nearly three miles away from her home. As soon as she woke, she examined herself. She was dressed in a black long-sleeved shirt, with an army-green cape over it. Sh sighed in reflief to know that her top half was covered. She lookd down again to see a short brown skirt over her skinny pale legs, and some striped socks and black boots. A wave of relief washed over Kira as she began walking toward the address scribbled down in her note book.
On the street of Arseny Lane there were a number of strange stores--acupuncture, psychics, gothic accessory stores--not to mention Arseny tower. The tower was over two hundred fifty-six stories high, and hadn't been entered by the public in over two hundred years. Kira was always in the Arseny Tower library. It was the only place she could escape from the idiots at her school.
Everybody only stayed away from Arseny Tower because it had a thirteenth floor. Kira ignored the foolish superstitions, and simply climbed the creaky stairs to the library, which was located on the thirteenth floor. Kira would stay at the library for hours on end and be engulfed in her studies of what she didn't know.
But the thing that brought Kira wasn't this tower. It was the building next to it. It was a small appartment building next to the tower. Kira sighed and put her right hand over her heart. She stood there in remorse for a moment before lowering her right hand. She lifter her left hand into the air.
"One hundred," Kira whispered with her raspy voice, before waving her left hand to her side.
The building began to shrink as many pople were jumping out of the windows to save their lives. The foundation of the building was nothing but dust now, and there was no way these people could be saved.
Kira stpped back carefully, letting the blood pour onto the street. It threatened to touch her boots, but she shrank away. The blood began to dissolve the street much like the foundation of the building had dissolved.
"An infection?" she asked herself. A cold, dead body fell to the ground. It's eyes were yellow and the mouth was wide open. Kira bent down and looked in horror at what was in the dead man's mouth. Fangs.
"A half-breed...infection?" Kira gasped in curiousity. A loud siren wailed and Kira quickly ran away, leaving bloody footprints. But it didn't matter. The shape of the footprints had already changed and so had the DNA of the hair Kira left behind before she was even gone.


Chapter 2
Kira was enjoying her sleep, when something gently tickled her chee.
"Cut it out, that tickles," she calmly whined.
"Kira..."
"Mom?" Kira asked, alarmed. She sprang out of bed and looked up to see the crystal blue eyes of her mother in front of her. Kira blinked hard in disbelief.
"But you're--"
"There's no time to explain," Lillith, Kira's mother sternly whispered. Lillith ran to Kira's bedroom door, closing it tight behind her. Kira jumped out of bed and ran to the door, desparately tryihg to get it open. She tried aging the door hinges a few thousand years, but they stayed a new, shiny gold.
"Wait, mom!" Kira cried, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. "Please, don't leave me here!"

* * *

Kira awoke with a jolt, sending the sleeping white pile of fur asleep on her belly to her feet. She was sweating bullets, and was trying to catch her breath. Kira began to wonder why she even bothered to try sleeping; all she ever had was nightmares. Kira wiped her forehead and pushed her jet-black bangs out of her eyes.
"Sorry, Grigori," she sweetly cooed, petting her tiny white Albino German Shepherd. He growled in forgiveness and continued to sleep.
"Lucky," Kira pouted, walking over to her closet to pick out something to wear to school.
She settled on a black dress, that hung slughtly off her slender, pale shoulders. It was high on her thighs, so Kira decided to wear some snow-white thigh-high ocks with black flat shoes.
Kira walked over to the mirror that hung above her dresser. She slowly looked up at her reflection.
"Oh, God!" she gasped, frightened. "I look like roadkill."
Kira brushed through her knee-length black hair ang put it in a loose ponytail. She was looking for her face veil when her cell phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Kira!" Eddie yelled into the phone.
"Ugh, Eddie, it's too early."
"Oh whatever. Have you eaten yet?"
"Define 'eat'," Kira replied smugly to her best friend.
Eddie raised her already high voice another octave. "Not human food," she nervously said.
"No, not yet. But thanks for reminding me."
"Start your day off well with a nice cup of 'strawberry syrup'!" Eddie squealed.
"No, Eddie, you mean a nice full gass of delicious, tangy, O-positive bl--"
"Kira, I will not be made sick again by your lovely diet. I can't afford to miss anymore school!" Eddie exclaimed.
Kira giggled. "Okay, Eddie, See you at school." The phone click as Kira began looking for her veil.
Eddie and Kira had been friends since Kindergarden. Eddie had accepted Kira even though she was an outcast ad Eddie was insanely popular. Eddie even adopted Kira's love of darkness and wore something black every day to show how she cared. Kira was thankful to have someone to share her secrets with.
Kira found her veil under a magazine, and tied it carefully around the lower half of her face. She watched as her eyes turned to normal. Kira's glacier blue eyes usually stood out, due to the fact that the whites of her eyes had been black since she was born. If her mouth was covered, her eyes would change into the 'human normal'. If her eyes were covered, Kira's white fangs shrank back into her gums.
Kira wasn't a big fan of the "Let's-cover-our-eyes" thing. The first and last time she tried that, she hit a wall, because the cloth around her eyes was too dark.






That's all I've got written so far, so please give feedback. Thank you

Well, I'm a bit confused. What is Kira? What is a half-blood? And how can she age stuff and why does she have to drink blood?

But besides that, I believe its a good story. The only thing is, I would just use some more pronouns instead of names.

Hope some more people comment :3

Haha, I guess I should have put more information in what I wrote. Kira is a pure-blood vampire, which is a vampire with no human lines in the family whatsoever. Half-breeds are half vampires, which are people who are made into vampires, or people with a human parent and a vampire parent. Half-breeds tuen into hideous monsters, and they contaminate everything they touch. Later in the story, Kira finds out that a half-breed broke the pipe in the apartment building and the water was contaminated, and someone fixed the pipe without knowing that.

Hi beedabeet! I hope you're still checking here every now and again!

My first impression is that you need to space things out more when posting on the internet. When it's on Word, or in a book, things don't need to be spaced out as much. But on the internet reading something so clustered together will keep people from reading it.

I see where you're going with this sentence, but I'm not sure I would phrase it this way. It immediately makes me think that she just got beat up, or was otherwise physically hurt to the point of near-death. Loosing contact with the physical world is one thing, and I like the idea, but saying that it was her only sign of life sounds to me like this is closer to dying than unconsciousness.

I believe you mean 'and', right? Just a tiny typo.

I felt this was kind of jarring. It goes from being very close to the character, to being very far away. I mean: you've been telling us the story thus far in third-person limited and this sentence is suddenly in third-person omniscient. Does she know she's odd? If so, state that instead of simply telling us she is.

While this isn't incorrect, notebook is typically one word.

'peper' should be 'paper', yeah? And haha, I like the word 'butgundy', but I believe you meant 'burgundy', yeah?

I think you can replace 'the bag' with 'it'. Since you just stated the bag, a pronoun can help reduce the reuse of words.

Just some typos here. "She" and "relief".

You just used the word 'relief', so I'd find a synonym either here or for the previous 'relief'.

'looked'
I will catch all these typos, so you don't have to!

Whoa, why? I mean, I know that it's useful as far as the plot goes, but it doesn't seem very realistic. I don't know about you, but if I woke up next to a garbage can three miles away I'd be freaking out. Why doesn't she try to get home first? Or, at very least, try to get away from where she is out of sheer panic?

I don't really understand this sentence. Does she not know what she's studying? Does she not know why she's studying it? Or does she simply study things she doesn't know? I think it needs to be re-worded.

'apartment', one 'p'.

This whole paragraph confused me. I read the previous posts and know it's been brought to your attention that the vampires need some more explanation so we know what Kira is, but my question has more to do with the building itself. Why does she randomly kill everyone inside? This makes us (as readers) automatically either dislike Kira. (Or for the more sadistic reader, laugh manically. But I don't think that's what you were going for either.) It makes her seem like a bad person to kill without any reason, especially since we've been more or less introduced into her thoughts at the beginning.
('pople' should be 'people', yeah?)
I also didn't catch that the building aged. I thought she just dissolved it or some such. If it is aging, I'd write in a bit more to describe the aging of the building so it is clear to the reader just what she did to it. I know it says later (with the hinges), but I think it should be explained here. (I also think the potential for some beautiful imagery is in this scene.)

This goes back to my previous question. If she is even vaguely concerned about these people, why do it in the first place? And without telling them to get out at that.

'stepped'

'curiosity'

'knee' or 'chin', I'm not really sure.

Tiny typos. ‘desperately’ and 'trying'.

You have two options with the comma. Technically, it can either be "...on a black dress, which..." or "on a black dress that...". In this particular case, if you want to keep the comma you need 'which' and if you want to keep 'that' you need to drop the comma.
(Also: ‘slughtly’ should be ‘slightly’, yeah?)

'thigh-high socks'

Road-kill is very rarely one word. I'm not sure what the technicalities of it are, but I'd go with a hyphenated word.

'and'

'glass'

'Kindergarten' I always spell that wrong too. It has a 't' instead of a 'd' since the word is originally German.

I think 'cell phone' has a hypen in it: 'cell-phone'.
Also, just as a note, I find myself wondering where she goes to school. I've never been to one that allowed face veils. I only mention because it might be interesting to try and find something that would hide her mouth without it being quite so obvious.
Just a suggestion.

I don't usually suggest this, but I think this might be one of the few instances where I suggest not explaining what's going on. Especially since this is going to be a much longer story. By leaving out the explanation now, you can let us think she's a weird as everyone says she is (or let us blame it on her vampiric tendencies) and you can expand on it later. By spreading out the explanation it should give you time to show the us (as readers) rather than tell us. It'll make for some neat 'oh!' moments and imagery.
However, I understand that some of this explanation needs to be left in for the next sentence to work. My suggestion is to leave the first sentence there and replace the other two with something along the lines of:
"Her mouth or eyes needed to be covered. One way or the other, she'd pass as a human."
Or something to that effect. If you leave out the details now, you can come back to them later in the story and show us why that is.

I like that sentence/image. It made me giggle. =]

Overall, I think this has a lot of potential. Judging by what you explained to .Sapphire.Skulls. I think you have some very interesting ideas that, if elaborated on and played with throughout the entire book(s), this could be very, very, good.

lol I just read the post before mine. I agree that it was a little confusing, but when you wrote the part about the half-breed infection i got a llittle bit of what you were getting at. I think this story has real potential, you just have to explain things a little more without going overboard with the details.

Wow. Thank you SO much! This really helped. I'm already revising-editing the first two chapters and chapters three, four, and five are on their way to being better. You are a great critic. Thank you again!

I'm glad to be of service!