I was just wondering if it would be possible for any of you guys to read this opening chapter as i need to get feedback for my a level coursework. Thankee kindly

Recruitment

Chapter One
Some people who spend their days sitting at a desk, behind a till or doing other menial tasks to earn a living cherish the idea that they’re meant for more. That someday a door will open in their mild beige office, past the ever-malfunctioning coffee machine, to a bright, golden world of opportunity. Of excitement, adventure and colour, a place devoid of uniform machinery, grey cups of tea and… beige. But unfortunately, in this life, it’s always the ones who don’t want, that get.

Toby Hill sat, in his one-bed, “tastefully decorated and modern”, mediocre apartment, sulking. A rich, well-spoken, twenty-something drop-out from Cambridge, he’d had all the chances but never wanted the change. An average built, mild-tempered, plain looking young man, his last girlfriend, Angela, an environmental activist of a distinctly more rebellious nature than he, had even ambushed him one night, dragged him into the bathroom, come close to mauling his head with a foul smelling, dangerously scarlet liquid and unceremoniously thrown him into the shower with Toby exiting a short while later sporting a head of shoulder-length, ragged and quite frighteningly red hair. This, unfortunately, had not helped their relationship which had ended 10 minutes ago in the form of a brief text message from Angela stating,
“Soz Tobz, bn sleepin wiv my roomie Claire 4 the past month n weve jus got engaged wot wiv the new laws n stuff, so its not gonna work 4 me nemore. All the best. Ang”
This had been followed by an overly long row of small x’s and an inaudible sob from Toby himself. ‘Tobz’ had been standing stock still in the same spot for the past ten minutes, long since the phone carrying the offending message had been dropped to the sickly cream carpet below.

A now very audible groan issued from Toby’s slightly slack mouth, followed by a stiff movement towards the kitchen, compelled by a sudden urge for hot tea. His three hundred quid phone still lying, screen cracked, rather dejectedly on the floor. He proceeded to make the tea with unnervingly robotic precision, passing over the mug saying “ANGELA” in bold pink font, he chose a small one at the back of the cupboard in a shade of disturbingly mould-like green. After sipping the extremely milky tea for about three minutes, the phone rang. Toby lunged towards it but hesitated, his mind absorbed by the possible and very upsetting idea that it may be Angela herself on the other side, he paused, waiting for the message service to activate and heard the calming feminine tones of ‘the BT lady’, then,
“TOBIAS, you answer this phone this minute! I know you’re there. You never pick up this fu-”
“Mum, hey”. Toby picked up the phone before his mother’s screeching disturbed the neighbours and got him reported again.“Uh, sorry, not really a great time” he said in groggy voice, more than hinting at unwillingness.
“Not a good time?! It’s always a good time for me , you should be glad I haven’t simply abandoned you and left you nothing! Where’s that girl of yours, eh?”
“Yeah, um, you mean Ang? She kinda left. Um, went to Africa. You know how she liked doing voluntary stuff?”, this was one of his great many, and overused, talents, lying.
“Mmm. You got a job yet then, Tobias? Hm?” Again. Almost every week she’d ring and in that casually inquisitive voice inquire as to his current employment.
“Not yet Mum. I’m really busy. Y’know with my acting and whatever.”
“Hmm”, she replied, accompanied by a prolonged release of breath, “saw one of those army advertisements today, you know. How about that then? You’re a well built, respectable young man. You ought to go make your mother proud, for once.”
“The army?! Mum I dunno. I’ve never even considered it, what with Ang…”, there was an infinitely uncomfortable pause followed by, “you know how she didn’t like the whole war thing”.
“Well that hardly matters now, does it Tobias? And once you’ve put a few years in you’ll be able to put it on your CV and maybe get yourself a proper job, some office work. Make a good excuse for leaving that university as well, Cambridge.”
“I don’t know Mum… Oh, sorry, that’s the landlady, um, best go Mum” and with that second lie he replaced the iron grey handset on its equally grey holder and made his way to his creamy grey bedroom after assessing the condition of his rose-coloured head in the lounge mirror.

The following morning was grey. Toby Hill paid no heed to this however, as he walked dejectedly through the streets of Crawley. A small, rather crumpled post-it note sat in his quite claustrophobic jeans’ pocket and he hummed the tune to “A Whiter Shade of Pale” which happened, not by coincidence, to be Angela’s favourite song. As sellers in the market stalls nearby sacrificed their larynx to the sale of a pound of potatoes, he glanced glumly at the chipped, cobbled stones on which he walked, reflecting on the state of his unfortunate existence. Preoccupied with this, it took him a few moments to register the fact that someone was calling his name. Looking up, surprised, he saw a middle-aged woman with a mop of rust brown hair turning to and fro in the manner of someone who has just lost something. He walked towards her realising that she must have been the one to call him, but before he could reach her she let out a cry of angst-ridden relief and hefted a small boy from under a nearby stand. Feeling more than a little embarrassed Toby feigned looking at the green-draped table from under which the boy had recently emerged.
“Thinking of joining up, lad?”
Toby looked up at the man who had addressed him; he was in his forties, bulky and dressed entirely in army green. As Toby’s perception cleared he realised that it actually was army green, the man in front of him was a soldier and the stand, at which he was gazing so determinedly, was an army recruitment stall. It took him several seconds to understand that the soldier was expecting a reply.
“Er, no. I mean yeah, sort of”
“You’ve got to be sure about this kind of thing boy”, the use of that word made Toby feel as though he were being confronted by the headmaster of his secondary school. He stumbled back as the powerful man thrust a leaflet into Toby’s hand, “I’ll give you one of these anyway lad, think it over. You won’t regret it, there’s nothing like having the feeling of meaning you get from patriotism to Queen and country”.

Feeling a little disturbed by the coincidence of the conversation he’d had with his mother and his shock encounter that day Toby Hill returned to his apartment. After carefully placing his heavy grey-beige coat on the stand by the door, he proceeded to make a cup of milky beige tea. The phone rang, it was his mum. He let it ring. Miming the curses that rang from his mother’s mouth on the answering machine he pulled a pair of blue and white striped pyjamas from the dryer. After changing he sank into a sandy beige armchair and switched on the TV. It was ‘Eastenders’. He had no idea what was going on in ‘Eastenders’, other than the fact that someone was having an argument with somebody else, but that didn’t matter because he never watched the TV. It was just something he had, that he put on every afternoon after doing the shopping, making his tea and changing. While ‘somebody argued with somebody’ on the TV he thought about the events of the past two days.

On the third day of his ‘liberation’ he found himself trudging again through the streets of the town. He walked with a purpose, following a direct route to the stall he had seen the other day. His mind was made up. There was nothing for him in Crawley, with its cobbled streets, market stalls, promiscuous women and abusive mothers. He was going to join the army. He was going to join the army; he ran the thought over in his mind. He was going to join the army, wasn’t he? He stopped dead in his tracks. “Wait” he thought. “This is a big step, you can’t just join the army, can you?” He took it anyway, one step, and continued walking. He reached the spot, and almost stepped into a puddle. It was gone. They’d moved the stall. He wasn’t going to join the army. “Where is it?” he said out loud, not on purpose.
“What?”
Someone had replied, he looked round, and couldn’t see anyone.
“Where’s what?”
The voice had replied again. Toby looked down and to his surprise saw a small figure, just above waist-height, at first sight he thought it was a child, until it spoke again.
“Where’s what ye silly bastard?” The voice was rough like sandpaper, and the speaker emitted a number of quite drunken hiccoughs.
“Er, there was an army stand here yesterday. It’s gone now” He felt a bit stupid saying the last as the small man could probably see that there was nothing there now.
He was about to move away when the man asked, “Thinking o’ joinin’ up are we?”
“Um yeah, I was actually” Toby was becoming increasingly irritated by the little man’s jovial inquisitiveness.
“Might be able tae ‘elp wi’ that”. Toby was extremely dubious about this and was about to ask the man to go away when he said “look, sign ‘ere an’ I’ll take ye tae see some mates o’ mine, they’re army officials like.”
Toby stared at the piece of flecked, stained paper that had been thrust into his face, “Look, I’m not falling for any stupid scams of yours. I frankly do not believe you and truthfully, I think you’re drunk so if you can’t show me any proof of the validity of your claim please leave me alone” He felt very proud of himself for saying this and expected the man to leave immediately. Instead he proceeded to shuffle through his thick moleskin coat and pulled out a shiny plaque and a certificate.
“’Ere ye go.” He thrust the two items towards Toby and nearly succeeded in hitting him in the crotch. Toby unfolded the paper which stated that ‘Archibald Jones’ was a Major of the British army, as did the plaque.
“‘Archibald Jones’?”
“Ay, that’s me”, the little man scraped. Toby was still quite unsure about the truthfulness of this strange man but decided he had nothing to lose and signed the parchment. “Follow me” said the little man in the moleskin jacket and shuffled off with Toby in tow.

They walked for quite a while through parts of Crawley Toby had never seen, through dark alleys whose walls seemed an eerie purple-red, past buildings whose walls seemed to crowd out the sky, and on. When they finally arrived at a dead end, the small man said quite happily, “We’re here”.
Toby thought this was a very strange thing to say and started to question his idea of not having anything to lose, “We’re nowhere” he replied.
“Oh no, we’re not” replied the little man, and saying this dragged Toby through a door, which had seemingly materialised onto the wall ahead, into light. Bright light. Toby was greeted with a sensation of falling into a pool of water but not getting wet, which he discovered was a very strange sensation indeed, and emerged into the room beyond. The room, which wasn’t a room but a field, a wet, muddy, green field was packed with people. Tall people, short people, round people, orange people and over the din which this incredibly odd assembled crowd was making the small man said “We’re here”.

*moved to Other Writers*


People might be more likely to help you if they knew you better. We tend to get to know each other before asking folks to do stuff for us. Welcome to the boards, though!

K Sorry. Just thought i'd get some good feedback from people who read good fantasy rather than the weird people at my college who really can't give me anything useful.

Aha, flattery will get you everywhere.

So, I don't normally venture an opinion on this kind of thing but I happen to be on hold at present with no sign of anyone answering so lucky you.

My two pence, and bear in mind my comments are unburdened by any kind of literary study beyond GCSE, is as follows...

I think you need to paint a clearer picture of Toby's emotional state at the beginning. I don't know if he's bored, upset that he's been dumped, undergoing an existential crisis or just a numb-nut that doesn't know what he wants beyond drinking milky tea.

If he's considering joining the army that implies a desire to break out of his current life - get that across. Or not.

Also, the sentence at the beginning where you describe getting his hair dyed is a bit epic, you might want to break it down a bit.

And it's a pet peeve, but the scene where he goes through the gate is a bit... ordinary. There could be a bit more wierdness.

On the plus side you have a nice turn of phrase and its easy to read. You just need to amp up the colour a bit and you're there.

Sorry if this sounds like unremitting critisism - the most important thing to remember is to keep writing. Good luck.

Joe's criticism is a good one, I think.

Style-wise, I don't have much to say/add. But the proofreader in me wants to tell you there's some attention there to be paid to punctuation (particularly, commas) and that you might want to break down the longer sentences, as they don't flow quite right.
Also, it's spelled 'aye'.
And you probably want to use these 'quotation marks' and not "these" (I am assuming you're British, and those are the ones used in Britain, at least last time I checked about this sort of thing, I could be wrong).

told you I was a proofreader Also, I not a native speaker, even though I have this amazing proficiency with the English language...

<---is not pedantic

The story itself i think you know, much better than any of us. I assume you know where it's going, how his character develops and so on. So for me the question is of mechanics and techniques.

i'm not going to offer much specific suggestions of what to do on the passage you quoted, but i'll give you some questions you should consider.

But there are also some basic 'rules' of writing.

gramatically, these are fairly standard, so the sooner you get into good habits, the better...
1. Use "these" to indicate speech, use 'these' to indicate any other quotes, like text message or street sign
2. Indent paragraphs. Makes reading much easier.
3. For formatting purposes, use double spaces after full stops, single after all other punctuation.
All these are going to help the reader forget they are reading and concentrate on living in the world you are trying to create.

First Chapters:
the purpose of a first chapter in an out-of-our-world story is to get people wanting more. It's a fact that people's recall about writing is pretty poor, as a rule. you shouldn't try to blind with too much information. Before the reader can get into a book they need to establish a framework of understanding. You need to pick four or five basic bits of information/exposition which the reader will take away.

Pick what those are going to be, and write from there. If a paragraph this early isn't illustrating one of those 4/5 important things, then lose it. Pacing in an adventure story is crucial.

First Paragraphs.
it's good that you establish there is adventure coming into his life, because it casts a shadow and contrast over the mundane life you describe in the next pages. However, at the moment it lacks punch. it's a bit vague and wishy washy. you use 'some' and 'other menial tasks' etc. Use specific words, be forensic, pick out details and phrases.

I might edit it like this

quote:

Most people cherish the idea that they’re meant for more. Stuck behind a desk or a till, they imagine that someday a door will open in their beige office, past the ever-malfunctioning beige coffee machine, to a bright, golden world. A world of excitement, adventure and colour. A world devoid of uniform machinery, tepid cups of tea and… beige. But unfortunately, in this life, it’s the ones who don’t want, that get.

Show, don't tell
Don't tell us what Toby is like. Illustrate it. Drop information into the text that way.
The second paragraph begins with a capsule of Toby's character, which is good to have.
However, we don't need it. For me the second paragraph should be the text message. tell us he's been dumped, by TEXT MESSAGE? It's an image we can all relate too, staring at a text message in disbelief.
You are missing an opportunity to show us how he reacts, which will tell us more about him.
This bit? We don't need. This reads like a charcters precis and notes. lose it.

quote:

A rich, well-spoken, twenty-something drop-out from Cambridge, he’d had all the chances but never wanted the change. An average built, mild-tempered, plain looking young man, his last girlfriend, Angela, an environmental activist of a distinctly more rebellious nature than he, had even ambushed him one night

you can relate the red hair shower incident a bit later, when he is reminded of her somehow by the stains in the bathroom, or something. But the general point being you should lead into information like this by a specific incident or memory, rather than beginning general then getting specific.