Young Writers Society

This is my first time writing SciFi so crushing reviews are wanted. Thank you in advance


Lightning Platoon 106

9.12.2048
Suur-Karjala, Finland

It was yet another peaceful autumn day, the leaves were dropping of the trees and had changed color. Birds flew over an old house whizzing past clouds and tree tops -they were flying off to south for the winter in flocks. Jari Merinen was sitting on the porch of his house, on an old wooden chair. The porch was painted clear sky blue, as was the chair, though one could argue that clearness was not one of their attributes. Jari’s house was old, built even before the new millennia. It was almost as old as Jari himself, built of wood and stone. The roof was unlike those in the houses built these days, it wasn't flat. The house gave a nice homelike feeling, or that is what Jari always told people, or that is what he would have told people if some ever visited him. So he had decided.
His house was built far away from the actual city of Karjala, people scarcely came this far into the "wilderness" -as they called it- these days. Gone were the days when work was done simply by man and not by some abdominal machine.
Jari shook his head.
He sipped his beer and wondered about life. He was at ease resting his old bones on the cushions. He had decided to keep a day off work and rest at home.
Jari took a better position to sleep on the chair and smiled as the alcohol started slowing down his stray of thoughts.
There was a loud hissing sound, and Jari woke up from his half sleep. He looked up at the sky; he couldn’t see properly and fumbled for his glasses.
He finally found them from the metallic table behind him, swiftly he snatched them from it and placed them on.
There was a small black object plummeting down from the sky not too far from where Jari was. His eyes widened as he understood what he saw.
The object was quickly making its way towards the ground level, as the alarms set off all around the city.
Then the object hit and there was a brief silence.
Jari could only mumble a curse before the bomb exploded. “Fuck,” he said.

First, he saw the burst of light as the energy of the explosion emitted itself to the air. Then he heard the abominable sound that broke his eardrums and he wailed in agony and dropped onto his knees, grasping for his hurt ears with his hands. Then came the effects of the radiation, he could see as his skin started to darken before his very eyes. He began screaming, but no sound came out, instead vermilion blood sprayed a new paint coating for his porch. His body hit the floor and he twitched, he felt only pain. Then came the blast itself and he was lifted off the porch ground along with everything that wasn’t bolted onto the structures. He flew two meters backwards and hit the wall and fell to the ground. His skin rapidly turning black, his ears and nose bleeding. He coughed blood. His hair started falling off in brown lumps. He felt the pain as his eyesight vanished. Then came the heat from the explosion, which scorched him even though the radiation had destroyed most of his nerves off. He could feel the full force of fusion energy on his body just before the dark abyss took him into its cold caress. Everything on the radius of twenty-five kilometres was evaporated and reduced to dust.

Hey there, Lord Anzius!

Okay, for starters, you may want to up the rating on this. The main reason is just because of the word 'Fuck'. Now onto the piece, where I have three suggestions! =]

Now, when it comes to the piece itself, the main thing that bugged me is how quickly you moved on. One second he is drinking a beer, another second he is sleeping. Describe his thoughts more, actually describe him taking off his glasses. Does he dream at all? Tell us more before you move on! I think once you got into the effects of the radiation and such, you started to describe much better.

Another thing (which was mostly in the beginning) was that whenever you referred to him, you used his name. This gets tiring and annoying at some point, so be sure to use His and Him and He, not just Jari, Jari, Jari.

Finally, I don't think you should be exact when it comes to measurements.

He flew two meters backwards and hit the wall and fell to the ground. His skin rapidly turning black, his ears and nose bleeding. His hair started falling off in brown lumps. He felt the pain as his eyesight vanished. Then came the heat from the explosion, which scorched him even though the radiation had destroyed most of his nerves off. He could feel the full force of fusion energy on his body just before the dark abyss took him into its cold caress. Everything on the radius of twenty-five kilometres was evaporated and reduced to dust.

In a moment like this, it's best to just say 'a few meters' or something like that. And also (though this is just my own opinion) I feel it's better that you use less used numbers. 26 is used a lot less than 25. Why, you ask? In a way it flows better in my mind when you don't use the common numbers, and it just seems somewhat different. But really, that part is quite minor and opinion-based.

Otherwise, you've got something quite interesting here and I can't wait to read more of it, if you write more!

Feel free to PM me if you want reviews on any of your other pieces. =]

~Heather

Hey Lord Anzius!

This story would probably best fit a movie! Right now, it seems really random that he suddenly dies and such... a great, action-packed scene for the beginning of the movie, but it kind of loses its awesomeness in a literary sense.

I think it would be cooler to start off with people seeing this explosion happen from far off and deal with the effects. Like, they would come in and try to rescue people, etc. That way, we get adjusted to the story and we have some consistency.

Good luck with sci fi! It's a fun thing to write, really!

Hi Lord Anzius
I like the start of this story, I especially like the way that you describe what happens to Jari when the bomb hits.
I only saw a few things wrong but you can easily sort them out if you re-read the story.
Can you pm me when you post more?
midnightread

Hello Lord Anzius,
This is great! I liked this introduction, it bought the reader staight into the action. I would give one piece of advice though: You don't even need the description at the bottom. A reader will be drawn in by the fact a bomb has gone off: they will be curious, and read on. The description can be worked into another part of the story.

Hello there!

Here to you-know-it.

It was yet another peaceful autumn day.

I find this as an average sentence but always think that this is the part where you grab your reader's interest and attention. So how about defining 'peaceful' here? I mean, describe or show to us the wind, the birds, the sun, falling leaves and many others.

The porch was blue, as was the chair, a clear sky blue, though one could argue that clearness was not one of their attributes.

You see, reading repeated words are sometimes never fun and it bores me a little bit here.
This is merely a suggestion but how about you write it like this:

"The porch was blue, same as the chair and the clear sky..."

Jari’s house was old, built even before the new millennia.

So how about portraying us the appearance of that old house?

Jari sipped his beer and wondered about life.

I don't know but this seems to be a bit unrealistic. I mean, who would be drinking a beer during morning?

First, he saw the burst of light as the energy of the explosion emitted itself to the air.

A comma needed to indicate a quick pause.

holding his hurt ears with his hands.

I feel like 'holding' isn't the proper word to use here.


...


First of all, I would just like to say thanks for requesting a review.

Okay, so let's go back.

Show don't tell

The fact that this turned into a short prologue was because you tend to do the telling part rather than showing to us more of your main character's point of view. (though I understand it's hard because you're using the second person) I won't say much of this because Firearris has said already the things I should say here. But really, this lacks a bit of informations and descriptions. Though I can imagine the story well, still you need some good portrayal here. It's because I don't feel any sympathy to Jari here even if that he's already going to die because of that explosion. Make us feel his agonizing pain and don't forget the people surrounding him. Show us the people dying too or screaming when they witnessed the bomb going towards the ground level. Don't worry though, I'm sometimes guilty when it comes to that.

Repetitions:

Just as I've said before, repetitions are never fun to read, except when they're really intended to with a purpose.I noticed you tend to repeat words especially from the first paragraph. I tell you, a dictionary and a thesaurus are going to be your new friends when it comes to your writing skills.


Pace:

I find the pace fast and so I think you need to slow it down. Even a prologue could be long but not that really long or you just don't notice it 'cause you're really intrigue to know what will happen next. (Blah.. blah.. blah.. ehehe)
What I just wanted to say is that you need to make things slowly. Yep, I said that twice because you really need to. After all, making this in a rush manner will decrease the percent of interest from your readers. You can't just expect them to read random things, it'll be hard fro them to catch up and thoroughly understand your story.. Explain the scenes very well.


Good things:

I agree with Snoink here. This can turn into a good sci-fi or an action movie. Your spellings are good and I can see you're struggling well when it comes to punctuations. Your verbs are all consistent so be happy for that. I like the last paragraph because of the tension or the climatic scene you're making there. I find it interesting of knowing what will happen next. As with your grammar, I think I'm not the right person to correct you on that particular matter, but I say, I find it pretty neat and clean.



Overall:

Kicking aside those nitpicks and comments of mine, this has a potential. And I just wanted to say that since this is a prologue, I think you wrote this very well but taking your critiques into consideration, this will really turn out good. PM me for questions.

Keep writing!

Peace out!

~yuri

Yuri's given you a great review above, so I think my job has been reduced. Here as requested, though, and I'll give you a general review.

Description

This mainly concerns the first chunk of the prologue, which is largely not that interesting. You tell us a lot: this happens, then this happens, and this was old and this was blue. There isn't much to it. Vary your sentences and use some metaphors and similes rather than basic adjectives. I think there needs to be some sort of driving feature about this autumn day, and a stronger sense of character to go with it. If Jari's slightly drunk, or his hands are shaking, and then you describe a sweltering heat or a slight breeze, your piece will have a little more originality. As it is, I think we lack atmosphere at the beginning and that's never a good sign.

Action

It's difficult to write and I think you do a decent job of it here, but there's a seriously high octane scene at the end. First, break it up into two paragraphs, so we don't have one big block of text to wade through. Then, stop beginning sentences with "then" (see what I did there?). It's repetitive after a while, and we can't get a good sense of the emotion and sheer terror in that entire moment. You're basically describing total annihilation; you've already made use of "fuck", so I'd just pump the writing up to go with it. This is an incredibly violent scene, and if you've ever seen any images of Japan after the atom bomb or of the Vietnamese people after heavy bombing, you know the horror of this. Make us shiver. Make us feel it. Make us want to escape it and know that we can't. If you want an example of a shocking video to base this off, you don't have to look far. Vietnam's a good starting point. Some of the events in that war were absolutely horrifying.

Work up the contrast between this and the previous section. You have an idyllic setting and then you have death, and lots of it. That's a pretty huge contrast for you to work with.

Overall

Show, don't tell. That's the mantra of reviewers all over the site, but it makes sense. Notice how many times you use the words "[subject] was", or simple verbs in simple structures. You don't vary your language and style that much. It's actually pretty readable, but I think you need to mix it up a bit. This is your hook.

Normally I don't advertise prologues, but I have to say, this one has me behind it. It certainly plunges you into the middle of things. It's left me wanting more, so work around the few issues it has and you'll have a very strong beginning on your hands.

- Jet.