Young Writers Society

@RavenLord - the entire novella is written in second person.

As for the line, it's too vague for me to be interested. "The thing" brings nothing to mind, and it would be better if it was replaced by a specific word. "Even though he knew would not be there" is superfluous and grammatically incorrect (you skipped an "it" after "knew").

I would recommend cutting the line off at the second comma, and continuing the rest in the next sentence. As an addition, you could get a heavier effect out of your first paragraph by telling or showing us how Cedric feels about searching for this "thing" even though he knows it's missing. ("Cedric hurried down the corridor, searching wildly for the [object]. It had to be there. It couldn't be missing -- couldn't!")

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“Does Triton de Masque live here?”

It's a bit of a mouthful, but I like it because it being a question makes us want to know the answer: does Triton de Masque live there? I like the uniqueness of the name, but then it might be less confusing right off the bat if you had it just "Does Triton live here?" though I still like it the way it is.

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The first thing we did was barricade the door.

8

I like it. It throws the reader straight into the action and leaves them curious about what's going on.


Lightning flashed and the troops shifted nervously below.

6/10
I'm not one for the lightning flashes cliche. It's always kind of overly dramatic for me. I do like the mood of the sentence however, the little army all uncomfortable. That's great =3

She went to visit The Monster again.

8/10.
Ooh I want to know more. It's a bit concise but I personally dig the concise and abrupt, so it's really cool.

((sorry, mine's dark))

Termination means two handfuls of pills in the park at night and fifty five phone calls to six different people.

9/10
'fifty five phone calls to six different people' is such a powerful, even memorable, image. It pulls at my heart strings, to think of such desperation, and in such an isolated place. It's really quite masterful, because the audience is already so squarely behind your narrator. They want to know if these people are purposefully ignoring his/her calls, or were just asleep, what messages s/he might have left, what has drove them to such a plight, and what will happen next. This is a hook I would keep on reading.
The only thing that kept me from giving this title 10/10 was the use of the word 'termination'. Perhaps it has a special meaning in the story, but at first glance, it seems like it would be more powerful to say 'Death'. It feels like you're trying to gloss over the subject with a euphemism, while the simplicity of death meaning two handfuls of pills would add an extra oomph to the feeling of the situation.

Middle schoolers are all jerks.

5/10
The line is ordinary and doesn't really catch my attention. It states an opinion that I think a lot of people would agree with. I shouldn't judge the book by its first line but the book sounds like it's going to be about issues in a school. The struggle of a school age kid trying to survive life in general is what comes to me with that hint.

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Nearly dying makes you realize a lot of things, like how you almost caused the end of the world or how demons are much nicer than angels.

2/10 I'm going to be honest here, and admit that you hit one of my biggest pet peeves. It's something Riordan does a lot, and it just kind of irks me. It's good at getting readers interested, but it feels desperate. It displays all these hooks in the first sentence and is like whoo! Look at me! Look at how interesting I am! To me that just screams desperation, and I really can't get behind it.
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Lauren scooted farther back into her corner, as shards of glass smacked into the ground in front of her.

6/10. I'm curious as to the glass being broken, what it's from, what's happening, etc., but you give us that and only that as our taste of the story to begin with. It could be rectified by a strong first paragraph, but I would love to have a stronger narrative voice in this line -- as well as proper grammar. The comma after "corner" is superfluous and incorrect.

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Vera kept her eyes on the darkening sky, the glass bottle in her hand slowly growing warm.

@Lareine

It sounds poetic, but inspires several questions for me at the same time.

Mine is quite boring, but the paragraph afterword fixes that.

Julia Vadik had her tongue stuck out.

4/10. My first thought was "whyyy" and not in the best way. A lot of this is the past perfect, because it makes me feel like the story started too late. It's salvageable with a rock solid first paragraph, but it needs to be absolutely rock solid to get over the general awkwardness of this line. Even just switching this from past perfect to plain old past tense would probably bump this up to a 6.

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Tricksters weren't exactly picky about what jobs they took.

I'm torn, I think. Something about the tense of the sentence pulls me away from it, and the generic "tricksters" instead of plunging us into a real character right away. I don't care about tricksters; I care about the main character, or the supporting character it refers to. Overall, I think this sentence deserves an 8/10 or so, but the generality is pulling it down to a 5/10 or 6/10.

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Nex's gloves fit her like a second skin.

7/10.

This sentence can be interpreted in many ways. My first thought was Nex's a doctor, but my second was assassin. Interesting in either ways. Good job. Oh, and the name was unusual, so I wondered if it was based in real world or fantasy world. But yeah, a good opening.

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Today, events that completely defied any logical reason happened, Jasnah wrote, the pencil making a low scratching noise on the blank page.

8/10

Sounds like a opening to a humorous adventurer. I'd keep reading.

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Most creatures can’t describe what it’s like to be born.

7/10

It is intriguing in the sense that it implies for an explanation of how it feels to be born, but lack a focus in a form of a main character, something that I think is compulsory in one hand, and, in this context, not really necessary in the other hand. All in all, I would be more invested if I'm introduced to a character, because then I would know whether I want to follow his/her journey and all that jazz.

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When I was seventeen, there was a crumpled piece of paper under my table.