Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-44515304-20191126222400/@comment-28266772-20200102171517

It was in the middle of August when it was my first day of high school in Lincoln, Nebraska, where my family had just moved. My dad was a businessman, so we often had to move. People at my temporary school were treating me with respect since I was the new kid, so my school days were of to a pretty good start. The school is [was] hosting it's [its] 13th annual fall dance, so I wanted to go. My parents said that it depended on how they feel. Bummer. Why? Because my dad is [was] working extra hard so he could get enough money to take us to Disneyland. When it was time to go to 1st [first] period, I noticed something [someone] behind the trees. It was a girl that was 16 years old [how do you know she’s that old at first glance?]. She had pale skin, ginger hair that was straight and to her top back [do you mean shoulder length?], freckles, and brown eyes '[you don’t need this description. Most people won’t remember more than two items in a list. Instead of telling us exactly what she looks like, tell us about how she makes the narrator feel. Does she look sad? Wistful? Cheery? Are her cheeks rosy? Gaunt? Is her skin flushed or pallid?]'. The thing that concerned me about her was her body. It was thin as if she hadn't ate [eaten] anything. I decided to greet her with a warm and friendly,

"Hello." [when writing always put a new speaker on a new line, that way it breaks paragraphs up and helps your reader keep track of who’s talking]

She jumped up.

"Uh, hi.", she staggered [stammered].

"I'm new here. My name's Alissa. What's yours?", I questioned [asked].

"The name's Winona, but you can call me Winnie if you like.", she informed me [replied].

"I like your nails.", I commented.

"Thanks. They're bleach-blue.", Winona replied.

"What hall do you go to for 1st [first] period?", I asked.

"Oh. Let me see.", she added '[she didn’t add, by the way. She spoke. She would have ‘added’ if she’d been the one speaking last]' while she pulled out a sheet of paper from her binder. "I go to the south hall," she informed [this is where she actually ‘adds’].

"Oh well that's too bad because I go to east hall," I told her.

"We better go before we're marked tardy," Winona cautioned.

"Yeah, uh, catch you later. It was nice meeting you. Are we friends?" I asked in deep thought.

"Yes.", she answered with a smile. After that, we shook hands and went to class. Days past [passed] by as we had fun together, joked, had conversations, and made memories.

-

Hi Itsav.

Almost all your problems are mechanical (grammatical), so I’m going to run through as many of them as I can and try to explain why it’s important to get them right, and what to do in the future.

So I’ve already mentioned making sure each time a new person speaks, they start on a new line. This lets people follow conversations easily. But you should also know that punctuation in speech works the following way.

“Word word word comma,” dialogue tag full stop. “Next bit of speech full stop.”

“Can I ask you something?”, she asked, “Are we friends?” -> wrong. You never put punctuation immediately after speech marks, and you never end a dialogue tag with a comma. It needs to be:

“Can I ask you something?” she asked. “Are we friends?” -> right.

Next up, tense issues. Try to write in a consistent tense. I’ve discussed tense in the past here but it can be awfully complicated. The best thing to remember is that if you start a story talking like it’s in the past, it needs to stay consistent throughout the story. So…

It was (past) a long time ago I first met (past) the love of my life. I was (past) travelling to a new country when she sits (present) next to me on the train. She smiles (present) and reached (past) over to…

That example (made up by me) is all wrong. It’s constantly jumping back and forth between the past and the present. Keep to a consistent tense.

Oh and also, dialogue tags. First up you mix words up (Staggered/stammered) and you also use the wrong tags. There’s nothing wrong with asked/said/spoke/told/replied/answered/continued etc. Avoid overly informal terms like “informed” and “questioned” because they don’t really sound right in normal language. Police “question” suspects, and grieving family are “informed” about their loss. Those words don’t really work in day-to-day contexts.

Finally, I recommend you read my reply here because it deals with descriptive language and while you make some effort to describe things, you seem to just list items without really thinking about how words make people feel. Moving forward you’re going to want to get a good spellchecker and grammar checker (Grammarly.com I think is the popular one) and then focus on my advice in the posthere.