January 23rd, 2016 at 08:04pm
First I would like to mention that I was very confused by the start of the story and finally saw that there was a prequel. I have not read the prequel, so I apologize if I am overly confused by some of the happenings.
I am not a fan of the lack of a summary. As insufferable stated, summaries are used to draw readers in. They can also be a place to mention that the story has a prequel in a more visible location. Even if you can't write summaries that well, maybe find song lyrics, a poem, a quote, something that pertains to the story to put there. Because there wasn't a summary, it made reading the story all the more difficult.
Chapter One:
As stated above, I was very confused by the happenings at the beginning and a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of characters introduced (or rather, probably re-introduced). I will say that I like there is a time frame on it from when the last story ended. That gives some perspective.
There are a few grammatical and punctuation errors littered throughout, mostly to do with long sentences that seem run-on-ish and commas (lack of and placement of those there). Just keep an eye on that.
Time error: You'd stated she was on her way home from work, stopped by the cemetery, and then went back to work?
Another thing I'm noticing is how often you are saying that her friends and Travis are coming home. It is repetitive and detracts some from the flow of the story.
The descriptions you provide of the people, objects, and situations are really nice. You do a wonderful job with them. Although, I would like to see more phrasing variations to decrease the number of times you use 'I' in the story.
The fourth wall is broken a little when you use the phrase Oh, I supposed I forgot to mention... It never really seemed like Misa was speaking directly to the reader until that point, I guess. It seems really out of place.
Other than those things, the story has a decent start to it. I will admit that I probably won't read the rest of it because I realize it's not really my cup of tea, but I wish you the best of luck writing it.
I think maybe adding a summary might benefit you with this story. I like to have an idea of what I'm getting into before I start reading, which was quite difficult because there was nothing there. Even a quote or something would help, you know?
Considering this was the sequel, I liked that you kind of recapped what has been happening since (I'm assuming) the first story ended. I would just be careful with your sentence structure, if you have a bunch of short sentences all in a row it can make the chapter really choppy and hard to read.
I was a bit confused about why she went back to work after leaving. I know it said she was going to check up on things, but it still seems a little bit odd to me.
Be careful with phrases like "oh, I forgot to mention" in the story. If the character had kind of been talking to the readers since the beginning it would make sense, but adding it in randomly in the middle of the chapter felt awkward. Even just saying the cat I had rescued when my friends moved away would work.
I like the descriptions that you do have, but I think you could add a bit more showing instead of telling. There is a lot of "I said/did" and "he/she said/did", which could be turned into descriptions of what's going on to kind of break up the repetition in the chapter.
Overall, I think this has a lot of potential. Good luck with the rest of it