Daily Archives: March 3, 2012

Your Questions About Pressing Roses In A Book

Charles asks…

Is the first page of my book Ok? tell me if have any idea’s on how to improve it?

In the middle of the night, The village woke to the sound of metal clanging against metal, accompanied by a woman’s cries of pain.
As the people of the village stepped out of their houses curious, The trees nearest the village burst into flames. people walked out into the streets staring at the flames. But as quickly as the mysterious fire came they disappeared, it was replaced with a beautiful blue light, followed by an explosion that shattered windows and blew debris throughout the town.

The next morning when some of the villagers came to investigate they found no scorch makes from the fire on any of the trees.
Later that day, A few Kid’s were playing in the woods. trying to convince a little boy with dark brown hair that it’s haunted,
they went deeper in. “What was that?” Said a red headed girl stopping so fast that a tall blonde boy walking behind her ran into her knocking him to the ground. “What‘d you do that for?” Said the boy that ran into her, wiping dirt off of his pants. “I heard something.” The girl Said, agitated. “W-well I didn’t” said the boy with dark brown hair, his face turning white. They continued to walk, the boy with dark brown hair was now making his way to the back of the line.
“Oh stop being so dumb.” Said the little boys brother Jeremy. “She’s just making it all up, there’s no such thing as ghosts!” Jeremy grabbed his Brothers hand and started to walk back to the main trail. “Oh how manly of you. “ Said the red headed girl. “Do you always ran away when things get too scary?“ Halfway to the trail he stopped. “Yeah I hit nerve didn’t I” “AHHHHH!” The boy with sandy blonde hair screamed and started running back. The others Ran to Jeremy’s side who was frozen to the spot. “Oh my God” Said the red headed girl. There was a woman with blue skin lying on the ground, she was holding tight to a bundle of blankets. “Is she. . . Dead?”
“No, I don’t think so” said Jeremy. He walked up to her and bent down pressing his ear against her mouth. “What are you doing?” Said the red headed girl. “I’m trying to find out if she’s breathing!” Jeremy replied. “Why don’t we go for help?” Said the tall blonde boy. “Look at her she’s obviously dead. . . She’s got blue skin for crying out loud.”
“Hey guys, I think she’s alive” Said Jeremy in a nervous voice.
“AHHH!” The Red headed girl screamed. The thought to be dead woman grabbed a hold of Jeremy’s shirt and rose up.
“Neax nim tofet” Said the Woman. Her voice seemed to echo through the forest, yet was soft and soothing at the same time. “What?” Said Jeremy. She still held on to him by his shirt.
“I said which one of you is Elizabeth” Said the woman. This time her voice didn’t echo through the forest and it was not soft at all. “What do you want with Elizabeth?” asked the tall blonde boy, know standing by a tree just to the right of the woman. From were the tall blonde boy was standing he could just see pointed blue ears under the woman’s long brown hair. “I was charged to take her to Alfheim the land were I live.”
“What do you mean you’ve been charged to take her to. . . Alftime?” said Jeremy, now trying to push the woman away but failing terribly. The woman tightened her grip, looked straight into Jeremy’s eye’s and said “Never insult Alfheim! Alfheim is the Proud Kingdom of the Elves.”
“Elves?” said the Blonde boy by the tree. “is that why your skin is blue? You think you’re an elf?”
“No, I’m not Elf, I’m a guardian. My skin is blue because I’m the Undine, the Guardian of the West gates of Atlantis. And King Frey has charged me with the duty of returning our Savior Elizabeth Hoveh.”
“Well sorry to break it to ya crazy lady but there is no Elizabeth Hoveh in this town.” Said the red headed girl. The woman let go of Jeremy and walked slowly to the red headed girl, cocking her head to the side she said “I can sense great power in you. You’re a priestess.” The woman got onto the ground and bowed chanting something under her breath. “I think we should leave now before this freak pulls a knife out of her cape.” Said Jeremy.

Amelia Tompkins answers:

First of all I’ll tell you some general things which need fixing. The biggest one is your description (Or lack of). You jump around so much in your story without actually describing much at all, and we don’t even know who the main character is properly. Make sure you take the time to actually describe things so we can visualise your character’s world and see the world they live in, otherwise it’s just a load of meaningless words and a boring story.

More specific things are, to start with, your punctuation. You seem a little confused about where it is needed and where it isn’t. The words after commas and ending quotation marks do not need a capital letter whereas days of the week, months, character names, place names, titles and so on do need a capital. Do not put them anywhere else.

Next is your paragraphing, and you’ve done the one thing that annoys me the most – No entire conversation should ever be in the same paragraph! So make a new line when you intend for a character to speak, and then when the other replies make sure you press “Enter” and start it on a new line every time. I’ve noticed that you have done that once or twice, but after that you seemed to get bored and stick them all in the same paragraph.

Make sure you know about apostrophe use too. Apostrophes are only needed to show possession for example “Bob’s cat”, or to show a contraction in a word like “you’re, it’s, they’re, they’ve, you’ve, I’m” etc.

Finally, make it clear who is saying what and what each character is doing, and actually describing what each character looks like will be a good idea too.

Maria asks…

are these ideas a good enough to turn into a book?

please give your honest opinion on this. BTW these ideas came from dreams.

1st idea: a man with longish, white hair comes to my school.(i’m in 8th grade, but he treated us like 3rd graders at first) He had this biggish looking book. he started to read from it (idk WHAT he said) and then my friends started going kinda crazyish, but at the same time emotionless. The man set his book down, reached into his pocket, pulled out a small bag, and then sucked my strange acting friends into the bag. He grabbed the book, and ran out of the classroom, and closed the door. I had forgotten how to use the door handle (idk why) so i kicked the door in and ran after him, followed by three of my closest friends (they were my only friends that hadn’t been phased by his book) we followed after him, and we jumped the fence, and somehow a forest materialized in the street. he ran into it, and right when the forest started fading away, me and all my friends got into it. we all ran after him, but then i fell on my face, and when i got up, here was a small fire red crystal in my pocket. I automatically knew that I was supposed to press my necklace (it had a matching red crystal in the center) to it and make the crystal explode with my mind. I kept it close, made sure my friends were okay, and continued to pursue the man who had my friends. we soon got into a clearing, where this man was emptying my friends inside the bag into this bottomless pit (like from 300 x3 ) when i made the crystal explode. he threw the rest of my friends down the pit, and whirled around towards us. then the scenery changed, and we were at another, darker part of the forest. In this part, he was faster than anything i had ever seen, so he had my friends in a choke hold. I then fell to my knees, and begged him to let my friends go. He laughed (like a maniac O.o) and let my friends go. but then he grabbed me by my neck and said that I had to go with him. I agreed, as long as he would let my friends go. He let them go, but my friends decided to come with me.I started crying, but my friend amy slapped me (x3) so i stopped. We started walking into darker and darker parts of the forest, when my friend kimmi started singing a song that I didn’t know. But in my dream, the words materialized in my head, so I sang along with her. within 5 minutes, all of my friends and I were singing this song, which completely unfazed our captor. while i was singing this song, I was dreading where we were going to go. I knew in my heart that we were heading for a land of pain. All of a sudden, my friend Katelyn screamed and threw this dark, dark green (my favorite color x3) crystal at the man, who caught it, and then exploded. end of this idea. i’ll add more to it if it is a good idea.

2nd idea: I don’t remember much from this dream, but ill put what i remember. So I was part demon, so the police was after me. I was caught, and taken onto a boat, where I had friends (not real, made up in my dream) one was Luke, who has dark green eyes and black hair, and Alyss, a short girl (like me x3) who had blue eyes, short, very bouncy curly white blonde hair. We were taken into this room where a woman had this electrified stick which with she poked us all with (lol). it knocked Luke and Alyss out, and almost knocked me out, but i fought it, but pretended that it worked. I don’t remember what happened after that, but Luke, Alyss and i escaped the boat, but fell into the water. I was able to breath underwater. Then the scene kinda shifted, and we were hiding at my house, were we were planning to run from. I sent Alyss and Luke to hide in the tree, while I gathered the supplies for the getaway. Right when I opened the front door to run out and leave with Luke and Alyss, the police showed up again. It was night time, but when they showed up it turned to day time. A woman asked me about a demon named “Asoka-Rose” (O.o that was my name in the dream >.<) I played dumb saying that I had no clue what she was talking about. She wanted proof that it wasn't me. I panicked, started screaming, and claw marks started appearing on my arms. I decided that i was just going to go along with it, so I said that "ASOKA-ROSE IS HERE! SHE'S HERE! YOU JUST CAN'T SEE HER! SHE'S ATTACKING ME!" so then she left, and so did all the police, so me, Luke, and Alyss were able to leave.

Please give me your honest opinions. even if they are negative, I will take them like all authors take them. thank you! :)
I don't know how the heck I dreamt these x3 the second idea was a dream i had last night x3 yet I can remember the first one better x3 (dreamt that one two weeks ago O.o) I have other dreams that I wish I could turn into a book, but they’re based off of two of my favorite anime shows so I’d get sued for plagarism -.-

Amelia Tompkins answers:

WOAH WAT GOES ON IN UR HEAD GIRL?! YES I THINK THAY WOULD MAKE GOOD BOOKS THAT I WOULD READ :)

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