Hi, guys! So my name’s Christina, and it’s been a super long time since I’ve been on the forums, but I’ve got a short, storytime for you. Back in 2016 I was writing two stories, and- well- they both kind of sucked. One of them was called “I’m No Cinderella” and I’ve finally come around to attempting to rewrite the story after I had the original one taken down. So now I’m in that time where I’m at chapter 3 and I’m still working through it, and I need beta readers! So if you’re interested, I’ll leave the share link to my story and if you could be so kind, please leave me some feedback in this thread. Thank you in advance!
Edit: I’m still looking for as many beta readers as I can find.
I put the code in there as a special feature. I haven’t actually used it yet, but for the future, and acceptable code would be “Me And The Sky” (a reference to the LI and the musical Come From Away)
I can read more tomorrow, but something I noticed was that a zoom when Sky says why are we still laughing? Clarissa says something along the lines of I don’t know. When she replies to Sky the zoom is wrong. That’s all my mind can remember right now.
I think that there was a lot of telling us who the characters are rather than SHOWING it. However, I do think that you handled telling us who the characters are pretty well, other than Maddie. I felt like her introduction was a bit overdone, especially with how bitchy her character turns out to be, you know what I mean? Maybe just tweak her description a bit. Like, instead of saying “she’s perfect,” say “she appears to be the image of perfection” or something like that. But that’s just my opinion. And I don’t know if we’re supposed to grow to like Aron, but when I read the first chapter, I found him pretty irredeemably cruel. Sky trying to get with Maddie and her always turning him down is supposed to make us sympathize with him, but me being in her position some times before, it made me a bit ruffled, lol. Like, Maddie doesn’t OWE Sky a relationship just because he likes her; he could be sweet as pie to her and the fact that he thinks that enough perseverance will make her find him as a suitable mating partner is absurd. Sorry, that was a pretty personal rant there, lol, but yeah, maybe tweak the story a bit like: she’s leading him on, hooking up with him, then pushing him away when he wants an emotional connection. But his sympathetic trait being that he’s constantly hounding after Maddie doesn’t hold water in the #MeToo era, you know? As far as the rest of the characters go, I actually really enjoyed them. Especially Clarissa, who I totally relate to!
No, I did not predict what happens next. I have an idea, but not a set prediction. This is a really refreshing and unique Episode story!
Thank you so much for your feedback. I will say one thing. I’m not trying to have Sky try really hard to get with Maddie. The idea for me is supposed to be that Maddie is blowing Sky’s actions out of proportion, so when Maddie says “OMG Sky won’t stop flirting with me” Sky in reality probably only actually said “Hi” and Maddie (being as comically bitchy as I’ve written her) would probably overreact in response.
Oooh! Okay, well then that makes a lot more sense. I know that there was a part of the story where Clarissa said something along the lines of, “Just give him a chance.” And I just read it as Clarissa expecting Maddie to get in a relationship with Sky purely because he likes her. Again, I was probably projecting when I made that assumption, I apologize.
Yeah, the thing Aron did was really, really mean and goes WAY out of the parameters of a prank. Maybe if he didn’t mean to embarrass her or if it was just an earnest mistake that he played off as a prank, it could be justified, but as it is, it just really makes me despise him.
Ya, I do respect and understand your opinion on Sky and am still going to try and change things around a bit to make my intentions with Sky more clear.
As far as Aron being irredeemable… challenge accepted I guess. Lol, I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that during the writing of this story’s old Wattpad version, I did polls on the characters on my instagram, and it turned out that at one point Aron became more popular among readers than Sky and even potentially Clarissa (I’ll never know cus I never pinned these two characters against each other).
But don’t get me wrong, this is a really good story. It kind of reminds me of the Hillary Duff and the Selena Gomez Cinderella stories (which, I love by the way) and I think it’s super cute. I’m definitely going to be an avid reader when you publish it!
