High School

Pete's Point of View.

At the beginning of my high school career, the only thing that mattered to me (virtually) was making it big with my band. Playing guitar was a passion beyond anything I’d ever felt before. While most 15 year old boys would say that their passion beyond all passions was something along the lines of “Being remembered as the basketball all-star” or “Master of World of Warcraft” or “Ashley Whats-her-face’s boyfriend”, I wanted success for our band.

It started at the end of the summer- the last summer before high school. Everyone knew I played guitar, and I played good, but no one wanted to be in a band but me- or so I thought.

I was in my bedroom, tuning my Yamaha acoustic (my very first guitar, the one I learned to play on), and my cell phone rang. The caller ID read “Ryan Lane”.

He and I didn’t talk that much. He was quiet… he liked to draw and do that kind of thing. We talked about common ground every once and a while- our mutual distaste for contemporary country music, and overwhelming respect for the work of Morrissey. I would say we were acquaintances. But he had this way of popping into my head at random times in my life, such as, when I was trying to write a song, chilling out and listening to music, or just trying to fall asleep. I would remember the brief conversations we had, and analyze them. I would try to remember the words I had said to him, and the way he acted in response. I would almost always conclude my thoughts with, “Well he must think I’m just really stupid.” So why was he calling me?

            “Hello?” I answered.

            “Hey Pete, it’s Ryan. Let’s start a band.”

My heart skipped a beat.

We called ourselves “The Scars” for a while: I never really knew why- it was just something Ryan had thrown out there. But after we got the rest of the band together, we progressed to “The Revenge”.

It was me on rhythm guitar, Ryan’s brother Matt on bass, Ron Sillo on lead guitar, Benny Kere on drums, and Ryan on vocals. 

Reviews

[Kaylor Mason]

I like this so far (I always wanted to be a rock star). That thing Pete does, about talking a little and then analyzing every conversation, every word--I do that too. It's a mark of greatness in a human being :)

[Alexander Emberson]

I felt the same way as this kid when I was 15. You just captured my childhood aspirations (minus the thinking about a guy part). S**t, what am I saying, I still wanna start a band and be a rockstar!
I'm gonna go ahead and say you capture human emotions and feelings in words pretty damn well, "I would say we were acquaintances. But he had this way of popping into my head at random times" this is a good example of that. KEep it up, and continue being awesome as f**k.

[Que]

Great start. It definitely makes me want to read more.
Which is what I'll go right ahead and do, lol. :)
Cheers.

[Chris]

A pretty good start. The opening sentence is fairly strong. It did a decent job at catching my attention. There is a lot of telling going on in this chapter, though. I can understand why because the reader needs to know what happened up to the point in time in which this story takes place, but I'm not so sure that it's the best way to begin a novel. You could maybe keep the opening line or maybe the opening paragraph the same, but proceed with a scene of the boy's having band practice? That way you would have a scene, and then you could have a brief flashback of how the band formed. Just a thought.

Also, the spacing between the lines is too tight. It makes it kind of hard to read. I don't know if you can change it or not though. And grammar-wise, everything seems to be fine. I'm assuming you're not from the US, but if you are, then you need to keep all of your commas and periods inside the quotation marks at ALL times. US grammar regarding that doesn't follow the logic of leaving or including the periods or commas in quotation marks like Britain or Canada does.