I know the Basic profile doesn't give you a lot to work with. But you do have the ability to make ten static items, which is why I suggest you separate this to make it easier for people to read and critique. That said, I am going to just jump right into the story.
I will point out any major Grammar Glitches that jump out at me. But you will have to do your own proofreading and editing to get the minor ones that I have not taken the time to point out.
Chapter One
This chapter falls into the category of info dumping. It's when you spend a lot of time telling us all of the information about the characters, their background, their lives, etc in one big paragraph. If you want to bore your readers as quickly as possible and keep them from reading the next chapter, this is a great way to do it.
It really helps to read the work of other successful authors and look at how they do things. Michael Crichton immediately comes to mind, because I have never read a book of his that started off boring. (Unless, of course, you read the forwards which explain the science and the concept the story is based around, but I never do) And you know Michael Crichton is good at what he does, because he's been dead four years and he's still publishing.
Look at how Jurassic Park opens. It doesn't begin “The theme park with genetically engineered dinosaurs was under attack by several groups of legal experts because of worker deaths and complaints of the Costa Rican Government. So they called Alan Grant to give an expert testimony. He studied paleontology and was known the world over for his revolutionary theories on velociraptors and-blah, blah.”
No. That book begins with a guy getting rushed to a clinic. The doctors are baffled by the nature of the nasty injury, and it's only because the guy keeps muttering “raptor” that they're not convinced when the people who brought him in tells them it was a standard industrial accident. In that few pages at the beginning of that one book, that went on to spawn a major film franchise, toy line, and comic book series, the reader. Is. Hooked.
Even mainstream fiction, that takes place in the real world, like the works of James Patterson, Jodi Piccoult, and other authors, if you don't grab the reader's attention you don't have a reader. Plain and simple.
So look over this chapter and become familiar with a concept known as “showing” not “telling”. Show JD waking up one morning after a particularly wild weekend. After he is dressed and ready for work, describe the state of the house as he finds his roommate Jay making breakfast, and we see Mark looking for some aspirin to tackle the hangover.
What happens in that few hours in the morning before work can be very interesting to read about, and seeing a newspaper article or hearing something on the radio could be a clue as to what's going to happen later.
You should break the paragraphs up. A paragraph needs to cover one subject. When a new subject is introduced you begin a new one.
One thing that jumped out at me in this first chapter,
We always joked with him that he was the token black guy of the house but he was actually half German as well.
Your skin color has nothing to do with your nationality.
Grammar Glitches:
When jay had gotten the house,
You forgot to capitalize Jay.
Chapter Two
More info dumping. In fact, there's nothing even new to learn in this chapter because you're still talking about the same characters. The only difference is that now they have girlfriends and you're telling us about those characters as well.
You've told us the Mark can't hold onto a girl. You've told us that Alison and Katie don't like Mark's new girl because she is fake. You're telling us that a three-day birthday party is underway, when you've all ready told us in the first chapter that there isn't a heck of a lot of difference between this seventy-two hours and the other party weekends.
Oh, and then you sandwiched in explanation of Day One of the party, which you must believe is sufficient “action” to advance the plot. But once again, with all of this telling and none of this showing, you've basically just given your reader another wall of expository text.
Grammar Glitches:
Katie and I had been together for about a year, we met through a mutual friend at a party.
Pretty much every other sentence in the story is like this. You connect two completely different sentences together with a comma.
Katie and I had been together for about a year. End of first sentence. New sentence. We met through a mutual friend at a party.
An appropriate sentence to use a comma for would be something like this one:
Allison was very pretty, but in a down to earth sort of way.
First subject: Alison was pretty. Next subject: How she was pretty. Both subjects are about Alison and belong in the same sentence. Whereas the first example talks about how long JD and Kate have been together, followed by the completely different subject of where they met.
A less forced way to write that sentence might be:
Katie and I met about a year ago, at the birthday party of a mutual friend.
Chapter Three
Around 5:30 my sister Sarah arrived, she was two years younger than I was and she still lived with our parents.
The rest of the guests started trickling in around 6:30.
This “book” is starting to feel more like the minutes of a rotary club meeting. You've promised me a story about the end of the world and after three chapters, you're still on the subject of the birthday party, and describing all of the characters.
Then you told us how much of a success the party was, without showing us.
Have you ever had a friend, or someone you know, describe a movie you hadn't seen yet? A lot of times in my life, someone would do a terrible job of describing what happened in that movie, and based of their opinion, I might decide to see or not to see it. In some cases they were dead on, but most of the time, I felt really cheated when I finally saw the movie and found that it was nothing like what I was told it would be. That is what this book is shaping up to be. Chapter after chapter of you telling me that interesting things are happening, or going to happen, but not delivering on them.
She was 5’9” and had red hair like I did but it looked much better on her and she kept hers fairly long. You can put two and two together I’m sure. Needless to say I got into my share of fights throughout high school, not that she needed me too because she was definitely tougher than she looked.
This paragraph is confusing. Are you trying to imply that being red heads, you got into a lot of fights? Because “You can put two and two together” doesn't make sense as it stands.
Suggested: With a head of hair as red as mine, but shoulder length, most people would write my sister off as being the pretty one; until she loomed over them at nearly six feet tall, practically daring them to make a snide or lewd remark with her cake-eating grin.
Now this is still more “telling” than “showing”, but I've still managed to convey the same points you were trying to make with fewer words. That you both have red hair. She manages her looks and body well, but has a tough streak that she only reveals when someone steps over the line or underestimates her.
Grammar Glitches:
The Eagles and the Giants are proper nouns because they refer to the names of football teams. These are capitalized.
SpongeBob Squarepants is also the title of a show, as well as the name of a character, and that too is treated as a proper noun.
Chapter Four
Finally, something resembling character development takes place. The shower scene would be perfect if it hadn't come after three and a half pages of nothing info dumping and exposition. This line here is perfect.
I ran through it in my head one more time and decided for the thousandth time that I was ready, now I just had to hope she said yes.
I'd still probably rewrite it. But it's a great line that shows depth and feeling as opposed to your character saying something like, “I'm a great guy really, and Katie will be perfect for me.”
That line might even have more emotional impact if you included this scene sometime in the first chapter, as opposed to three chapters in when I'm very much bored to tears with hearing about every new character that walks into the house, as well as JD's birthday party. And what make it even weaker is that you follow it up with even more info dumping about how JD met Katie after breaking up with someone else, etc. etc.
Info dumping is not the same thing as storytelling. Storytelling is when a friend describes his vacation to you, and does it so well that you have to check your passport to be sure you weren't there with him the whole time. Info dumping is when a little old lady rambles on for about an hour whether you are physically in the room or not.
This is especially annoying when you consider that now, you've just teased your reader with a possible steamy shower scene, only to take it away from them and give them even more exposition.
We walked out of the bathroom about forty five minutes later and got dressed.
You don't have to be so specific with time frames. Your reader is not standing by with a stopwatch. Unless the amount of time spent in the bathroom is significant to the story then it's okay to skip it.
Now, describing everyone's reaction to the freak snow storm is showing a bit of growth on your part. This is involving the reader instead of merely telling us that a snow storm occurred. There's one more thing I want to say about this chapter.
“I have to get home today” said lisa looking towards mark “you have to drive me home now before it gets worse”
Waaaaaay back at the beginning of the story, you described Kate and Allison's feelings towards Lisa. That she was fake and whiny. The difference between that and this line is that is “showing” us Lisa's whiny and somewhat ditzy personality.
You've all ready stated that cars are half buried in snow. Since we just had a major blizzard in my area, I can easily visualize four feet of snow and cars that you would need an archeology grant from a major university to recover. So knowing that Lisa has all ready seen this herself and still has to say, “I need to go home before it gets worse” shows me, the reader, how much of an idiot she is.
Do you see how that is more effective than simply telling me what the characters think of her? What would be even more effective is describing the reactions of the other characters to her statement.
Grammar Glitches:
Dialogue should always begin on a new paragraph.
It wasn’t, when I pulled back the curtain I saw Katie standing in front of the shower wearing nothing but a bow, on the top of her head.
New Paragraph
“Happy birthday” she said giving me that evil little smile of hers.
This is especially true when you have more than one character speaking.
Chapter Five
This chapter is really where you should have started the story. There's a lot more going on, the tension has picked up, and you've introduced the “Big Bad”. There's booze, guns, people trapped in a house with no way out. This has all the makings of a great thriller. And if you cleaned it up a bit, the dialogue exchange between the characters would actually be useful in building up the tension.
After taking some time to find some decently warm clothing and the snow shovels, mark, jay Kenny and I, we only had four shovels so Justin decided to stay in with the girls, were outside starting towards my truck.
Suggested Change: We only had four shovels. Justin “volunteered” to stay behind and keep the girls company while Mark, Jay, Kenny, and I found some warm clothes.
Mrs. Martin was a lady in her fifties who lived at the end of the street and had taught both jay and I in high school.
Suggested Change: Mrs. Martin was our high school math teacher. Now in her late fifties, she lived alone in the house down the road.
Chapter Six
“If they try then we shoot them, but that’s not what killed Mrs. Martin, and I’d really not make noise and attract whatever that was by killing these things.”
This is actually very intelligent reasoning. It's also another example of good character development that shows us Jay's cool head in a crisis.
I was down the stairs, into the living room and had fired my gun three times before I had even had a chance to register what was happening.
And this was very stupid reasoning. But that's okay, because again, this shows how the tension of the situation is starting to effect people's judgment. JD is human, and people with guns tend to make mistakes that could turn deadly when they're not thinking properly, which you established by making him think of Katie.
So at this point there really isn't much more to say without me repeating myself. As I stated, this story could really use a lot of cleaning up and rewriting. My biggest criticism is to either condense or completely scrap the first three chapters altogether and begin, either with the birthday party itself or the day after wards when the Big Bad starts happening..
It does have it's strengths, which is why I think you should keep working on it. But my honest opinion is that you should work on rewriting this portion before you go onto anything else.
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