hey! im avoiding homework so i can give you some tips
1: aligned is spelt with one L; its very important to get spelling right in a novel, especially in the title, description, and first chapter - this is where youre making your first impression, and many discerning readers will clock out at spelling errors.
2: you need to brush up on your grammar; your first sentence is a run on sentence. it should be something like:
"School can be really stressful - especially when you have alcoholic parents, 2 jobs, no money, and 4 siblings."
the end of that sentence is a list, and when we list we comma.
Also, you need to end sentences will periods, even at the end of the line. EG:
This needs a period at the end.
Besides technical errors like that, you could also benefit from a greater variety of sentence structures and lengths - throw in some semicolons and some dashes in place of some of your periods, commas, or 'so's. Prose has a rhythm controlled largely by sentence length; a short sentence will have greater emphasis amongst long sentences, and a long sentence can create emphasis among short sentences.
Also, another technical error: you gotta format your speech properly. It's a must. EG:
This should be: "...was walking by she said(COMMA) "maybe you should take up some tutoring."
When introducing speech ('she said,' 'he walked up and shouted,' etc) there needs to be a comma before the speech begins. when coming after speech in the same sentence ('blah blah blah,' she said / 'blah blah blah,' he shook his head.) there should also be a comma ending the speech. You generally seem to have a grasp on this, but need to make sure you remember it always, and keep an eye out for it when editing your work (which you should be doing, at least twice)
3: thiiiiiiiis comes out of nowhere
you havent set up at all who josh charlton is, or that jennifer has any desire for a romance. like, sure, she probably does - but why is this not established? in hindsight it makes 'god dammit' make sense - but you should have set up the existence of josh before this phonecall and jennifers feelings for him, and developed jennifers reaction beyond just 'god dammit.' she expresses her emotions to the reader a lot - why isnt she telling the reader who josh is and why we should care?
here are some videos on setup and payoff that will help you with structuring your story to make sure reveals like this mean something to the audience:
also - why is she getting so excited if she already know she was going to josh's house to babysit? this whole 'oh no im babysitting' 'oh no youre not, im not going out, lets go out' thing is unnecessary and confusing; the second you set up a mild conflict, you deflate it again. think carefully about what information A: interests the audience B: makes the audience care about whats going on and C: moves the story forward. everything you keep in the story has to hit at least 2 of these, and dont be afraid to edit out what isnt useful.
wheeling aaaaaaaaaaaall the way back to the start for 4:
why is knowing the names and ages of all four of her siblings relevant at the very start of the story? they arent mentioned again in the entire chapter, and a list of names and numbers like this is not very engaging or informative. theres an overall lack of description or showing in your writing - showing / describing to your readers whats happening and putting them into a situation is a great way to get them to care about your world and your characters.
for example, rather than telling us in the first few paragraphs of your story what jennifers home life is like, you could have set up a situation where jennifer has to navigate that very homelife - maybe shes rushing to get all of her siblings ready for school while her parents sleep off hangovers, pushing aside empty beer bottles to make space for bowls of cereal that they have to share because cereal costs money. theres a way to tell the audience 'this kids parents are alcoholics, theyre poor, and she does all the leg work' without ever outright saying it - show the audience what that looks like, what it feels like.
similarly:
you just summarised your entire first act in a paragraph!
in a romance, its not good enough for your protagonist to develop feelings for the love interest - the audience need to too. you need to charm us with josh, show the two having good times together. as of this point we dont have enough information on jen OR josh to give a damn. force us to give a damn.
also, whoa, break up this paragraph. this is where what i said earlier about rhythm and grammar comes into play again.
oof, that felt kinda harsh... but i didnt hate your story at all. i think youve got the makings for a really great story here and its clear you have something to say, and you should definitely say it! there are lots of tools and tricks to get people to hear what youre saying with this story, and once youve learnt them youll find that applying them to your writing is a lot of fun.
tl;dr, to improve, id advise:
- making sure all your writing is grammatically correct with correct spelling
- do some practices in description - think about what you want your audience to know and what you want them to feel, think about smell, sound, taste, touch, and sight, and creative ways to communicate feelings.
https://www.writingforward.com/creative-writing/descriptive-writing-practices
- look into the rule 'show dont tell,' and apply it wherever you can
- look into setup & payoff / chekhovs gun - the two videos i linked above are from some really great film critics on youtube who taught me a lot about writing. theres also channels like Just Write on youtube that do some really great writing teaching, you should check them out.
good luck with your writing, aaaaaaaaand now im off to do that homework