Young Writers Society

This Chapter one. If you haven't read the Prologue, please try not to read this one. You might not understand. Read the Prologue!

Chapter One: Eavesdropping

The next morning, Laura woke up feeling tired. She hadn’t gone to sleep well at night because she kept on remembering what the Seer had said about the guardians of the Corex stone.

The Corex stone was a large stone. It was huge. It was as big as an asteroid, but all of the Old Ones knew that it was actually a big ball of power. The guardians’ jobs were to keep the Corex stone safe and to make sure that no one ever made it explode. It was like the sun. It could explode anytime. The Old Ones and the Seer’s had started to run out of magic to keep the Seer’s palace intact, so they had started to use the Corex stones power to keep the Seer’s palace intact. They had also used the power of the Corex stone to maintain the guardian’s powers as well.

The Corex stone was probably as old as the Seer himself and nobody could count how old the Seer was, anyways. There wasn’t any real need for the guardians before, because as they already knew, the Corex stone was safe in the Seer’s palace. And to enter the Seer’s palace, you needed to have permission. But over the years, the Corex stone had got a huge crack running through the center. And the Seer had soon found out that someone had done this to the Corex stone and hadn’t just happened by accident. The next day, the Corex stone had been found broken into many small parts. The Old Ones and the Seer had tried to keep these parts together but, someone had started to steal these parts. The Seer had just thought that it wasn’t that much of problem since there were a lot of pieces left anyway. But then, a few days later, almost all of the pieces had gone. Now only six pieces remained. And it was the guardian’s job to keep these pieces intact and to make sure that no more of them were stolen.

Laura got out of her bed and walked towards the washroom. She bathed and changed into a clean robe. She came out feeling slightly more refreshed but she still felt slightly tired. Then one question hit her straight on the head. How were the guardians going to know each other and who they were and what were their missions? No one was going to tell them.
She had to. She didn’t know why she just thought that. The idea was just plain stupid. The Seer was never going to let her. And if she ever did, the other Old Ones would never let her come back in. They would be enraged and the funny thing was that she was one of the oldest of them. Well, there was nothing to do but ask the Seer. If you wanted to enter Earth or Nanogia, you always had to ask the Seer. It was necessary. Laura sighed and walked out of her room and into the direction of the meditation chamber. I just hope, she thought, that the Seer hasn’t left yet.

Laura walked through the long corridor that separated the Old Ones’ bed chambers with the meditation chamber. The first place to look for the Seer was there. She walked towards it and stood in front of the door. She looked at it and then pressed her ear against it. She could hear someone saying something inside the room but she couldn’t identify the voice. It was probably the Seer, because he could change his voice and his appearance whenever he wanted to. He could change into a baby, a girl a man and many other things. He could also turn into animals, insects and birds. Each of the Old Ones could turn into a special animal. But only one. Laura herself could turn fluidly into a black cat.

Laura tried to see what was happening through the key hole but something was covering it. Or somebody. She could hear something. Somebody was shouting. It sounded slightly like Alfredo, who was only a hundred years older than her and he was one of the people who she hated to most. He was shouting at the Seer. She could hear the Seer too. Clearly.

“I cannot let you do that, Alfredo.” He said.

“But if I don’t, the world will be at stake!”Alfredo exclaimed.

“I know. But you just aren’t one of the people who should do it. I already have someone in my mind.”

“What? Who?”

“You will know in the end.”

“When is the end? What are you talking about?”Alfredo was growing impatient. The Seer had that effect on some people.

“I cannot answer that. But I can tell you something. I have chosen somebody and that somebody is going to do the job I have given.”

“Fine,” Alfredo said quietly. “I can do or say nothing more now. But don’t blame me when more pieces of the Corex stone disappears. You did a mistake by not choosing me. Now, I am sure that the Corex stone is going to completely disappear. ” He added.

“Yes, it might. But as I have already told you, I have chosen someone else.”

Laura could hear Alfredo’s footsteps coming closer. She didn’t think that Alfredo would have liked to see her eavesdropping on his conversation with the Seer so she hid behind the spiral stair case. The door opened and Alfredo came out steaming. He walked past her muttering angrily. She didn’t feel like going into the meditation chamber any more. The Seer might be in a bad mood. And you would not like to see the Seer in the bad mood. She thought about the conversation between Alfredo and the Seer. What was the ‘thing’ that Alfredo had been talking about? Who was the person that had to complete this mission? The words of the conversation swam around Laura’s head as she tried to think of what they might be talking about.

After a little while she plucked up her courage to ask the Seer about what he had been talking about. She opened the doors cautiously. The Seer was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the meditation chamber. He was floating slowly. He opened his eyes as she approached.

“Laura. How nice to meet you. I hope you have learnt a little about my talk with Alfredo.” He said coldly.

“What were you talking about?” Laura asked slowly.

“What do you mean?”

“Alfredo wanted to do something that would save the world. What was the ‘thing’ that Alfredo wanted to do?”

“I thought that that was pretty obvious, Laura. You came here to ask for the same thing. Didn’t you?”

“You mean…he wanted to go to Earth to join the guardians?”

“Yes and you do to, don’t you? And your second question is clear too. You want to know who is going to go to Earth to join the guardians. Don’t you?”

“Ye-“Before she could finish, the Seer interrupted her.

“I meant you.”

Laura felt her mouth go dry.

“Make sure of one thing. No one else should know. Especially not Alfredo. And if you are wondering if this is all that necessary, you could just look at how the Corex stone is now and that would change your mind.”

“Yes, Seer.”

The oracle stared at her through his grey twinkling eyes.

“And try not to destroy anything.” He chuckled. It was then that Laura noticed how old he was.

Well, that’s what you become, she thought, when you are ten-billion years old.

The Seer looked at her for a long time like he wanted to say something.

“Lesley loves reading.” He finally said.


Laura walked towards her room. She tiptoed through the corridor, past the other members of the Old Ones’ rooms. The opened the door to her room and packed everything that she would be taking with her.

She packed it all into a sack. She also took some spell books. Then, she slowly picked up the five symbols of the guardians. Water, Fire, Earth, Air, Darkness, Light and Lightning. For Water, the symbol was a huge drop. For Fire, it was a huge flame. For Earth, it was a huge leaf. For Air, it was a huge Cloud. For Darkness, it was a black flame. For Light, it was a rainbow. For Lightning, it was a lightning bolt.

She then walked out of her room and towards the portal. The central portal that travelled to Earth. There was another portal right next to it. It was a gateway for Nanogia. She was about to enter the portal that led to Earth, when she remembered something the Seer had told her.

“And if you are wondering if this is all that necessary, you could just look at how the Corex stone is now and that would change your mind.”That was what the seer had said. That meant that she could look at the Corex stone if she wanted too and who was going to resist the chance to see something they haven’t seen in years and you always wanted to see it too and then someone gave you a chance too?

She walked towards the main room, where the Corex stone was kept. She opened the door and looked and inside. And what she saw inside almost made her stop breathing.

There were only five pieces of the Corex stone left. No more at all. She gasped. The Seer should know of this immediately! Then she stopped herself. The Seer probably knew of this change already.

Laura walked out of the room. And stood in front of the Earth portal.

Laura tried to think of the expressions on the other members of the Old Ones knew about this. But Alfredo already knew of this change. What if the others also did?

With that thought, Laura, with determination, walked into the Earth portal.

Hi Vstarfirix!

I'm back! With a tangerine. You know those cute little ones that peel really easily? Yeah, one of those. It's delicious.

But, onto review.

I'm still liking your underlying voice to all this. It makes for a very much enjoyable read. I'm also intrigued about these two words, Earth and the Nanogia, since it's usually just the one. Something about the plot also resonates well with me. Can't quite put my finger on it yet, though, so I'll let you know when I figure it out.

As for the chapter itself, I have two major points of critique for it. The first is about Laura, and the second is about the masses of information we're handed again.

Laura first.

I had a lot of trouble believing that she's hundreds and hundreds of years old. To me, she seemed maybe sixty at the oldest, probably more like forty--not very old at all. Now, obviously, you've never been that old, and on one in human memory has ever been that old, so you can't exactly Wikipedia what it feels like.

So, my advice is to have fun with it.

And, to make good use of that old writing adage, "Show, don't tell."

Let's look at your opening paragraph here for a second...

The next morning, Laura woke up feeling tired. She hadn’t gone to sleep well at night because she kept on remembering what the Seer had said about the guardians of the Corex stone.

What you're doing is telling us that she's tired, and then giving us an explanation as to why (she couldn't sleep.) To me, I guess, it seems like being that old would always make me somewhat tired, tired in a different sense, and so this lack of sleep business would make the problem worse.

Or, maybe Laura is never tired. She seemed pretty feisty in the prologue, after all.

Regardless, I as a reader want to know what this tired feels like! Show it to us. Is it in her eyes, her bones? Is it painful? Does she have to stretch? Does she have to pick herself carefully out of bed?

How does she feel about being tired?

That's not to imply you have to go about answering all those questions, but if you keep them in mind, they'll help you characterize Laura some, and help put the reader in her shoes. It's like what I mentioned in the prologue critique--it's not about the amount of details you put in there, but which ones. So pick out the details--the answers to questions and ones you might have for her--that tell us the most about Laura and her tiredness.

Only, you want to make sure that you're showing us what this is. It's not enough to just say that she's tired. Pretend you're telling the story to a bunch of unruly seven-year-old punk kids. You say, "And Laura was very very tired..." and they rudely interrupt you with, "Oh yeah? Prove it!" Which is when you get to say, "Oh, but her eyelids felt like they'd close at any minute if she didn't tell them better, and she nearly had to pick up her legs with her hands to get them to move!"

Take that, unruly seven-year-old punks! Take that!

Just don't get too excited with all the showing business. You always have to keep in mind what your point is.

So, that's showing not telling, and I think if you do that--not just in the first sentence but in lots of places throughout--then we'll be believing how hold she is some more.

Another thing is to be very particular with your word choice. Let's take the section I can see right now:

Laura got out of her bed and walked towards the washroom. She bathed and changed into a clean robe. She came out feeling slightly more refreshed but she still felt slightly tired. Then one question hit her straight on the head. How were the guardians going to know each other and who they were and what were their missions? No one was going to tell them.

When I think of 'walk' I think of, well, walking. Walking the dog, walking through the mall. Walking easily with my hands in my pockets. You know, walking. And sure, Laura can walk...but does that accurately describe what's she doing? She's an Old One--has being an Old One affected her physically at all? Could she bound into the washroom? Or does she have to shuffle?

I'm focusing in on the verbs there for a reason. Verbs are the heart of a sentence, and where adjectives and adverbs can get clunky, verbs rarely do. They also more or less pack a whole ton of information for the reader into one tiny word, which is pretty cool.

So what if you exchanged out some of the more boring or basic verbs you have for ones more exciting, ones with more meaning?

A similar idea goes for all the words you use in general. First, make sure it's a necessary word, make sure it's adding something. Then, make sure it's doing all it can. Make those words work for their money!

Here's another example of what I mean:

'Run,' 'walk,' 'leap,' 'sprint,' 'scurry,' 'slither', and 'barrel' are all ways "to go", right? You can run after someone, walk after someone, leap after someone, sprint after someone. Scurry, slither, barrel after someone. But doesn't each variation of that give you a different picture in your head, tell a different story?

That's what I mean.

So, get a good picture in your head of Laura and everything she does, and find those words that capture exactly what you mean. And before you know it, readers will be all, "Whoa," on you

All right. Now, my other main comment on this chapter was about all the information you gave us. Because what you did is what's called info-dump (I don't know how familiar you are with critiquing forum lingo.) You dumped all this information on us in big old paragraphs again:

The Corex stone was a large stone. It was huge. It was as big as an asteroid, but all of the Old Ones knew that it was actually a big ball of power. The guardians’ jobs were to keep the Corex stone safe and to make sure that no one ever made it explode. It was like the sun. It could explode anytime. The Old Ones and the Seer’s had started to run out of magic to keep the Seer’s palace intact, so they had started to use the Corex stones power to keep the Seer’s palace intact. They had also used the power of the Corex stone to maintain the guardian’s powers as well.

The Corex stone was probably as old as the Seer himself and nobody could count how old the Seer was, anyways. There wasn’t any real need for the guardians before, because as they already knew, the Corex stone was safe in the Seer’s palace. And to enter the Seer’s palace, you needed to have permission. But over the years, the Corex stone had got a huge crack running through the center. And the Seer had soon found out that someone had done this to the Corex stone and hadn’t just happened by accident. The next day, the Corex stone had been found broken into many small parts. The Old Ones and the Seer had tried to keep these parts together but, someone had started to steal these parts. The Seer had just thought that it wasn’t that much of problem since there were a lot of pieces left anyway. But then, a few days later, almost all of the pieces had gone. Now only six pieces remained. And it was the guardian’s job to keep these pieces intact and to make sure that no more of them were stolen.

All of that is good information that the reader needs to know, but all at once? Overload! Also, the principle of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. That quoted section above is like giving the mouse a whole box of cookies. (The stomach ache... it is inevitable.)

So, my advise is to take that information, break it up into pieces, and scatter it about here and there. A lot of it you could probably sneak in in this chapter, but putting some in the next chapters never hurts.

By breaking that information up, you make it a lot easier for the reader to read (big paragraphs can be a turn-off for today's ADHD generations). And, if you get clever enough with how and where you stick the bits of information, the reader won't even realize that he or she's been given information! Sure, he'll note the information, but it won't feel like he's just being told it. Which is another plus for today's skeptical generation.

And, I think that's it.... WAIT! IT'S NOT!

I had one other you did really well to mention so you can keep up the good work:

There were only five pieces of the Corex stone left. No more at all. She gasped. The Seer should know of this immediately! Then she stopped herself. The Seer probably knew of this change already.

That's just one example of where you do this, but those sections I bolded are good ones. Why? What you've done is taken her thoughts and made them part of the prose--you let Laura help you write it for a moment. Touches like that add a lot of richness, because they show us her reaction (there's that word again) without going through the whole "Laura thought, "The See should know of this immediately!"

Because really, who thinks like that?

But by combining that reaction she has with the prose itself, it all seems much more natural and believable. So, great job, and keep it up. (But as with all things, don't do it too much or it'll just lose its effect.)

And, that's it for real this time. Again: let me know if you have any questions or comments or are confused about anything! The hard thing about doing these critiques is that I never know how much background in writing and stuff someone has, so don't feel bad if that made no sense at all (and on the contrary, if you're thinking, "Well, duh!"... oops!)

So yep: questions or comments or whatever, come bug me on my Wall or send me a message!

Rach

Wow. I was going to review this post, but really RachaelElg! Wow!

Everything I was going to tell her, you said it perfectly! But just to make it seem like I'm actually doing something, I shall go over the main things as well!

RachaelElg wrote:Only, you want to make sure that you're showing us what this is. It's not enough to just say that she's tired. Pretend you're telling the story to a bunch of unruly seven-year-old punk kids. You say, "And Laura was very very tired..." and they rudely interrupt you with, "Oh yeah? Prove it!" Which is when you get to say, "Oh, but her eyelids felt like they'd close at any minute if she didn't tell them better, and she nearly had to pick up her legs with her hands to get them to move!"

If ever you are having issues with figuring out how to show, just like Rachael did, think that everyone has 5 senses; to taste, hear, touch, see and smell. If you re-read your story and notice that none of these things have been mentioned, in whichever way, then most likely something has got to change

RachaelElg wrote:All of that is good information that the reader needs to know, but all at once? Overload! Also, the principle of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. That quoted section above is like giving the mouse a whole box of cookies. (The stomach ache... it is inevitable.)

So, my advise is to take that information, break it up into pieces, and scatter it about here and there. A lot of it you could probably sneak in in this chapter, but putting some in the next chapters never hurts.

By breaking that information up, you make it a lot easier for the reader to read (big paragraphs can be a turn-off for today's ADHD generations). And, if you get clever enough with how and where you stick the bits of information, the reader won't even realize that he or she's been given information! Sure, he'll note the information, but it won't feel like he's just being told it. Which is another plus for today's skeptical generation.

Well said! Agree with you 100%! The beginning of the chapter was loaded with so much information that I was just about to quit reading it..

One thing that I will add that Rach hasn't said (yes, I am useful) is about the continuity of your story. Before your chapter begun, you wrote how people who haven't read the prologue should go read it. I have to say, that's raarely ever the case. People usually come to do 1 review at a time; not go read a prologue before just to come bacl afterwards. Unfortunately, that's why most people will have 13 comments on their prologue or first chapter and then by chapter 5 only have 2-3 people still reading. Believe me, I know.

I read it in an article on YWS that instead you should put a summary of what has happened so far in your story, that way anybody can do a review for you, despite not having read any of the chapters before. It is just a suggest, but I think it'll help you get a few more reviews in the process.

Well, I hope I've been a little helpful, although I doubt it

Hi again!
How are you? Good? That's good!
Now onto the review!
I loved how you gave reasons for why things were happening, why people were a certain way, why people had a certain view of something. Your description is better than in the prologue, but it could still be better, though don't over do it. I do that sometimes and it destroys the story.
Also, we learned about Laura in this chapter, I got the feeling she was pretty old, like centuries but she gives off the personality of someone young and feisty, that is great! I liked the two being combined.
She seems dedicated, which is something that will come in useful later.
I really enjoyed it and hope for many more chapters.