Looking for some tips on how to improve writing?

Question

I have just completed my first draft of a novel. Now the story is completed it's time to capture the style so the reader can engage in the story. I want to make sure the story style is easy enough for the reader to read. I have added my first couple of pages below for some critique. 1. Does the first couple of pages grab your attention? 2. Is the writing style easy enough to read?3. What would you do to improve the writing style? >She has the Sight >Chapter 1>Marston Children’s home is where fate brought the three of us in 2011. Stuck rite in theheart of Glasgow, the rundown building is an orphanage to many children that have beenabandoned, abused and left by their families to shrivel away into nothing. Most peoplewho come here are doomed before their feet even get through the door. Kid’s either take their own lives, turn to drugs, prostitution or serve a life behind bars. Destiny to most here is to get knocked up, junked up or locked up. Self destruction, demolition, devastation becomes worse here when too many kids are put together with similar family traits. A bad start in childhood leads onto being negative, depressive and suicidal in real life situations. Problems normally start to arise in teenage years and just deteriorate from there. Life isn’t to chase your dreams here it is to break the law and chase the dragon. This is how the neglected of the lower class escape everyday situations. This is the life they are dragged into by their abusers and society. The only life they know. This was the life and doom that was expected for me Danika Nebulae and most of my friends. An existence I never wanted but an existence I only knew of, a way of life that only I could change.>I was becoming an age where I had to go and fend for myself; in fact I had been fending for myself for as long as I can remember. My mother spent most of my young adult life in Garvlock Mental institution. The only information I had about my father was his name Felix Nebulae and that I had the same Aqua blue eyes. The rest of the family didn’t care much for me. They saw me more of a hindrance due to me being in and out of trouble with school and the law. I was 17 time was approaching for me to no longer be under the supervision of the childcare system. At the age of 18 I was expected to go and find my own way in life. This was the time for me to decide if I was going down the black path of doom that so many followed or was I going to head into the light, glowing, blistering white path that nobody that I ever heard of had even stepped in the direction off. The only beliefs I use to have were karma, what goes around comes around. I was christened a catholic, and that was the only ties I had to any church. If you treat me with respect I will treat you with respect. I wasn’t brought up to believe in god I was brought up to survive. As a young adult I don't follow authority and I don't let anyone take advantage of me. That’s the way I use to think until the visions started. Now I feel like there is something else out there. Something that wants me to open my eyes, life was about to change, I could feel it. Although my upbringing wasn’t the best I felt protected, protected by something that I didn’t know. I didn’t believe in God or the Devil, I believed in good and evil and there was a choice in this life to do well or do bad. >I was a limbo state of mind of how we got here and why we were here. What I did know was the visions were sometimes events that would happen days later. The first time I realised this was more than a dream was when I seen my mum lying in bed with pills lying around her, I knew something was going to happen to her. One week later she over dosed and then got submitted to the nut house. What haunts me is I don’t know if I can change destiny or is fate just meant to happen. I don’t know why or how the visions have started or what they’re trying to tell me. What I do know is: they are a small part of a puzzle that I’ve yet to figure out.

Answer 1

1) Yes, it grabs my attention.

2) I’m a little confused about when the narrator is telling this story. Is it present tense, where they don’t know what is going to happen. Or are they looking back having the perspective of what they have learned?

3) I would recommend more showing and less telling. For example, “I kicked at a brick that was about to fall out of the wall,” instead of calling the building “rundown.”