Reviews for Embrace the Music
Highway Unicorn chapter 1 . 7/29/2012
Hi, I'm from the roadhouse forum, and this is going to be the first review I ever give, so I hope it's helpful.

I like the plot/idea of it all. A rock band in high school is bond to stir up some drama, and maybe even some fights.

Daniel looks like a great character, but I felt you could have described him better. For instance, you pretty much summed him up rather quickly in the first paragraph. I think it would have been nice of you were more descriptive when writing about him. You could have weaved his title/clique/ hobbies throughout the chapter instead of listing them all at once.

The dialogue also seems a little robotic/monotone. There should be a bit more emotion behind it, as well as more dialouge throughout the chapter. And when you do have dialogue it would be nice to know what the characters are doing while speaking. For example,

"English with Ms. Williams. Why?" Kayla questioned, eyes wide with curiosity.

"Homeroom," he quickly countered with an arch of his brow.

"Awesome,let's go!" he exclaimed, eyes burning with excitement as he tugged her towards the classroom.

Something like that, just to make it seem less robotic and simple.

I like the character personalities. Daniel has a sarcastic side and Kayla seems to hold grudges for certain people, which isn't bad at all. It shows a side of her that won't take crap from condescending people.

Overall, I enjoyed the plot of this chapter, and my only suggestion is to liven up the dialogue. I hope I didn't come off as mean, because thats not at all what I intended. I hope this review was helpful! :)
Baird chapter 1 . 7/20/2012
hmm, it's a strange set up, you don't tend to have stories separated by times. I might suggest you look at your sentences and see if you could make them flow a little better, maybe by using commas instead of some of the full stops, and you should edit the passage so that the spaces between some lines are just the line below (ShiftEnter).

Generally the story seems a little interesting, probably a bit too vain for your characters and has a lot of simple description. For a start it's not bad, but I think you should try to use a little more description and try not to use single word descriptions, for instance:

"Kayla was extremely hot, and she knew it." to maybe something like "Kayla was known to be the beauty of the whole school, in fact all the boys would often whistle at her in the corridor. It was said that of all the people in the school, no one was aware of her beauty more than Kayla herself, her vanity on a scale unbeaten by any other narcissist."

Well, it might just be your style, so you can ignore the suggestion if you wish. But I have one big niggle with your first chapter.

"a British accent"

May I be the first to point out to you that contrary to popular belief there is no such thing as a "British" accent. Firstly Britain includes both Scotland and Wales, but secondly England has such a wide variety of accents that even non-native speakers are able to tell the difference. As reference you might want to listen to the Devonian accent (County of Devon in England), London accent and the Liverpool accent.

Well, I didn't mean to complain, it's just I hate people asking me if I have a British accent, and every time I hear or read someone saying "British accent" it always irritates me.

Well anyway, I wish you luck with the book and you enjoy writing it just as much as I enjoy writing mine. .
Vivace.Assai chapter 1 . 7/5/2012
So I decided to review this story rather than The World Ends Here since you are in the need of reviews here. Plus, looking at the A/N, you seem to allude that this story will be character focused and I always enjoy character development. :)

So from this first chapter alone, my largest critique is that you tend to err towards info-dumping. From the very first paragraph, you give me every basic information about Daniel. This is a standard introduction to a character and not as exciting as it could be. I would suggest starting with Daniel reflecting on his new day at school or something more interesting than a profile on him. It's the first paragraph. You want to hook the readers into the story so info dump makes it not as compelling to read. The information about Daniel's popularity would better be integrated through how people act around him. But that's just a suggestion.

I did think you did well in introducing the characters. You've given a good basis of what the characters are like and their relationships to one another. You've also given readers a good idea of the high school setting - it is the stereotypical setting equipped with cliques and the populars. Though admittedly, my time in high school is nothing like this. My school is too big for cliques, but you've nailed in showing something that everybody understands and can identify with immediately. I also like how Daniel is a normal kid. Most stories focus on the too popular or the social outcast. But Daniel is different. He is well liked but not at all defining in popularity. This is a refreshing character to see so I'm excited to see how you will expand this.

Beyond that, it's too early to make any other comments. Interested to see what you'll do next.

Signing off...

P.S.: Thanks for your review for Ritual Repetition. :D
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