z

Young Writers Society


(Unnamed) chapter two



User avatar
30 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 4198
Reviews: 30
Sun Nov 22, 2009 8:49 pm
Stealth_Slicer says...



Ok here is chapter two. Getting to the action parts soon. I have a rough Idea of some names but haven’t decided yet. All comments welcome. Enjoy

__________________________________________________________________________________________
The great discovery could have condemned every Lizarian in the galaxy to a grim fate __________________________________________________________________________________________

----------------------------------------------------
Mars defence force radio frequencies
Wednesday 11.08.3472
03:20
Mars system front line sector two

----------------------------------------------------
“Huge vessels detected!” someone screamed over the radio.

“Ground command to all units; we read power build-ups within those vessels, open fire,” ground command ordered.

“Roger. Bomber squadrons eight through thirteen engage; we will hold them off your backs for as long as we can,” a gruff stressed voice said.

“Eight leader here we are moving out. They're everywhere. We already lost Jenkins, Ryan, Jake and Thomson. We need-!” Eight leader screamed and his transition cut out as his bomber burst into flames, spun out of control and detonated.

----------------------------------------------------

“To any allied ships in the area, we are under attack by an unknown assailant. we're being ripped to pieces, if anyone can hear this please respond!” A human shouted desperately over the radio.

“Human forces do you read?” Soraka replied.

“Thank God…we need help in the Mars system, we can’t hold. Our forces have already scattered. We can’t let the civilian population come to harm,” the human replied.

“ETA two minutes hold on,” Soraka said.

Soraka nodded to a Lizarian who was at the controls.

“Hold tight,” Soraka said. A large jolt shook the ship, and then it seemed to go into a sharp turn, almost making me slide across the room before evening out again. I straightened up again. Soon after, we dropped out of the rift. A large planet was sprawled out in front of us. The planet was just a bit smaller than earth, had three cotinents and several vast oceans. The land was a tartan of grey, green, white and brown. The planet was almost totally built up with only pockets of greenery, mountains and deserts remaining. The rest was one grey sheet.

“Sir strong anomalous readings coming from locations on the planets surface. One is coming into view now,” the female Lizarian at the sensor controls said. Slowly a large charged black area the size of England came into view on the surface.

“Further scans reveal it to be a crater of some kind…wait…sir eight other signals detected on the surface,” the Lizarian said.

“Who could have done such a thing?” Soraka asked standing up. I shrugged; not knowing the answer.

“Sir atmosphere scans reveal immense levels of planet wide radiation over three million above the craters,” she added.

“The Humans?” Soraka asked.

“Gone…everything’s gone,” the female answered slowly, looking over at us with a look of shock on her face. She was small and looked rather young. She was very thin but not thin enough for it to be unhealthy, and had a small scar just above her left eye.

“Two minutes ago they were alive…what could have destroyed everything in two minutes?” I asked. Soraka shrugged. A small red bolt flew speedily past the window.

“The Vorag military. That’s who,” a voice said calmly over the radio. Suddenly out of nowhere the space around our ship was filled with hundreds of other small fighter size ships, and a single massive one was directly ahead. The ship ahead of us was at least three times as big as us. It was a long thin stretched kite shape. The sides of the ship were bristling with missile tubes. There was a small pyramid on top of the ship I guessed it was the bridge. The front half of the ship was over saturated with missile tubes and the read was full of windows.

“Sir over three hundred contacts detected,” a male from behind me shouted.

“Who are you?” I asked bitterly.

“We are the ones who will reclaim our rightful place as dominating race of this galaxy,” the voice continued. “The Ancestors attacked us in cold blood murdering countless millions. They are the real murderers. They destroyed our home planet and forced us into a nomadic life. Warring clans fought over the last scraps of usable land that was at least uncontested by the Ancestors. After the Ancestors disappeared we banded together and hid fearing they would come back. We came together and as the galaxy evolved once more. We silently built up an armada capable of making us the dominant race, and as revenge we will kill every last Lizarian let them go through the genocide their ancestors forced on us!”

“Shields up prepare for combat!” Sorak ordered sitting back down quickly.

“Combat?” the voice asked laughing. “Look around, you can’t honestly think you can survive,”

“Why are we fighting the Ancestors time was long ago? Old grudges should wither and die not be continued by descendants,” Soraka said calmly.

“No we want revenge,” the voice replied.

“Why? You don’t need to. Many races have flourished since the time of the Ancestors who will be more than willing to help you. There is no need for senseless bloodshed,” I said confidently.

“See the craters on the planet?” it asked.

“Yes,” I replied slowly

“An Ancestor weapon was used to make them. The Ancestors used the very same weapon to murder our ancestors and destroy our planet. We control all three of them. There will be no stopping us!” it replied sounding angry.

“Please come to your senses; war can still be averted,” I said

“Incompetent Human…we aren’t being forced into a war we want war! Now live with it or should I say die! All units open fire!” the voice shouted. Suddenly red bolts were flying left and right and being absorbed by the shield. When a bolt hit it cased a small blue, green and red. Circular shockwave to spread out from the point of impact; it would have looked rather nice if it want so unnerving. Large black cylinders exploded out of the huge battleship and sped at us. Flairs spurted out from our ship causing the missiles to go out of control some of them even hit their own ships; most just flew off.

“As we fight a storm heads towards Lizaria. A storm that will sweep away all in its passing,” the voice said unnervingly.

“Get us out of here,” Soraka ordered. The ship lurched forward as the engines activated. A rift opened to the side of the enemy battleship. We flew past it; it was so close I felt I could reach out and touch it. A moment later the rift consumed us. The sight out of the window was a mesh of blue and white; it looked like we were going through a tunnel. Soraka tapped a few things into his control panel in the left arm of his chair

“Lizaria home fleet this is Commander Soraka initiate maximum alert I repeat maximum alert,” Soraka ordered.

“This is General Sheatha. Soraka, you don’t have the authority to initiate maximum alert, what’s going on?” Sheatha asked.

“All due respect General we just got attacked by a huge amount of ships claiming to want war on Lizaria. They destroyed all the Humans soldiers and civilians alike in the Mars system, and have possession of an unknown planet killing weapon,” Soraka explained.

“Planet killing? It can’t be done. Do I have to remind you of the failed P.A.W project?” The General asked.

“No sir but maximum alert must be initiated. If they don’t come today they will come within the week,” Soraka said.

“Soraka maximum alert will n-” The General began.

“Maximum alert will be initiated, I overheard your conversation Soraka,” A third genital, feminine voice interrupted.

“As you wish my princess General Sheatha out,” Sheatha said.

“Thank you princess what do you propose we do?” Soraka asked sounding relived.

“We need to gather more information on this new enemy. Soraka I want you to do that, Weapons, capabilities anything. You leave in three hours,” The princess ordered.

“As you wish my princess,” Soraka replied.
Last edited by Stealth_Slicer on Fri Dec 11, 2009 7:41 pm, edited 5 times in total.
  





User avatar
130 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 24514
Reviews: 130
Wed Nov 25, 2009 5:07 pm
*coco says...



This is brilliant! Not much to say apart from that :D
"Do you know what my heart says now? It says that I should forget about politics and be with you. No matter what. You're a true Queen, a Queen any King would kill for." - Prince Francis ♕
  





User avatar
30 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 4198
Reviews: 30
Wed Nov 25, 2009 6:00 pm
Stealth_Slicer says...



Thanks Coco. I'm glad it is liked. :D
  





User avatar
436 Reviews



Gender: None specified
Points: 83309
Reviews: 436
Tue Dec 01, 2009 7:11 pm
AquaMarine says...



Hey there! Here as requested. Sorry this is a little late, I've been kinda busy/stressed/NaNoing.

I'll just go through some nitpicks. If the change is fairly self explanatory, then I'll just put it in bold.

“Ground command to all units, we read power build-ups within those vessels open fire” Ground command ordered.

Firstly, you need to add either a period or a comma after vessels. Otherwise it's just a run on sentence that doesn't make too much sense. In addition, I don't think that you need to specify that it was Ground Command who ordered the attack after your dialogue as that is already said within the dialogue.

“Roger. Bomber squadrons eight through thirteen engage, we will hold them off your backs for as long as we can,” a gruff stressed voice said.

Comma at the end of your dialogue (in bold). Oh, and a period after "roger".

“Eight leader here, we are moving out. They're everywhere. We already lost Jenkins, Ryan, Jake and Thomson. We need-!” Eight leader screamed and his transition cut out as his bomber burst into flames, spun out of control and detonated.

I've put the punctuation that you need in bold. And in addition, I think that the detonation should be described more. As you have it now, it is a very quick thing - although that isn't always bad - and it could be better if you perhaps add in a similie there.

“To any allied ships in the area, we are under attack by an unknown assailant. We're being ripped to pieces, if anyone can hear this please respond!” A human shouted desperately over the radio.

Again, correct punctuation/grammar in bold.

“Thank God…we need help in the Mars system, we can’t hold. Our forces have already scattered. We can’t let the civilian population come to harm,” the human replied.


“ETA two minuets hold on,” Soraka said.

"Minutes".

Soraka nodded to a Lizarian who was at the controls.


“Hold tight,” Soraka said


A large jolt hit the ship and then it seemed to go into a sharp turn; almost making me slide across the room then it even out.

Probably be better if you changed the last phrase to "before evening out again."

Soon after, we dropped out of the rift.


The planet was just a bit smaller than earth, had three cotenants and several vast oceans.

Continents.

The land was a tartan of grey, green, white and brown. The planet was almost totally built up with only pockets of greenery, mountains and deserts remaining. The rest was one grey sheet.

This description is confusing and sparse. I suggest that you make it more detailed and interesting, so that the reader has an clear picture of the planet that you are describing rather than a very vague, generic one.

“Sir strong anomalous readings coming from locations on the planets surface. One is coming into view now,the female Lizarian at the sensor controls said.


“Further scans reveal it to be a crater of some kind…wait…sir eight other signals detected on the surface,” the Lizarian said.


“Who could have done such a thing?” Soraka asked, standing up. I shrugged.

Your story so far has felt like a lot of dialogue, with little description and no emotions/imagery. For instance, here you just say "I shrugged". This action, small as it is, can portray a number of emotions that your character is feeling. (Do they not care? Do they not know? At a loss for words? Too angry/confused/upset to speak?) I suggest that you begin to work on your descriptive and emotive writing, because without these then your story can be seen as very bland and boring.

“Sir, atmosphere scans reveal immense levels of planet wide radiation over three million above the craters,” she added.


“Two minuets ago they were alive…what could have destroyed everything in two minuets?”

Minutes. A minuet is a type of dance, and I assume that isn't what you mean. :wink:

“The Vorag military. That’s who,


The sides of the ship were bristling with missile tubes.

Perfect place for some imagery!

“We are the ones who will bring reclaim our rightful place as dominating race of this galaxy,” the voice continued.

You don't need the bring here.

Warring clans fought over the last scraps of usable, uncontested land.

They aren't uncontested if they're being fought over!

“Combat?” the voice asked laughing. “Look around, you can’t honestly think you can survive.


“Please come to your senses; war can still be averted,” I said


“Incompetent Human…we aren’t being forced into a war we want war, now live with it or should I say die. All units open fire!” the voice shouted.

Here I think you should switch some of the punctuation to exclamation marks so that you convey the feelings through the dialogue better.

What you should work on:
1) Your dialogue. Both the words and the grammar. Here are a couple of articles that will get you started on that!
Dialogue.
Dialogue Grammar.

Overall

Rightio. What you have at the moment is more of a base, something that gives you the basic plot to your story. What you need to do now is bring in more to the story. One thing I would definitely like you to do is develop your characters more. At the moment, people don't relate to much in your story. That, again, is imperitive and therefore something that you really need to spend time on.

If you have any questions then feel free to PM me!

Hope this helps!

~Amy
"It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want."

-Spock.


Click if you love cookies
  





User avatar
30 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 4198
Reviews: 30
Tue Dec 01, 2009 9:41 pm
Stealth_Slicer says...



Ok thanks Amy. Part three is already up but I will try and improve in part four. Unfortunately people don’t tend to comment about improvements etc. From what I have in mind for part four that should give more character background.

P.S. any tips for creating suspense and shock?

All the best.
  





User avatar
83 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 7538
Reviews: 83
Tue Dec 01, 2009 11:32 pm
Fruits_Basket99Tohru says...



OK, this was nice! I liked the excitement, and I followed it pretty well without reading the first chapter. Good job. :)

But it was somewhat hard to understand because of all the grammar/spelling mistakes. For starters:
The great discovery could have condemned every Lizarian in the galaxy to a grim fait
You meant 'fate', right?

Mars defence force radio frequencies
Wednesday 11.08.3472
03:20
Mars system front line sector two
I think this whole section would be better in italics, but that's just me. Also, please change 'defence' to 'defense'.

“Huge vessels detected!” someone screamed over the radio.
I'm not an expert when it comes to punctuation, but I think you should capitalize 'someone'.

“Ground command to all units, we read power build-ups within those vessels open fire” Ground command ordered.
OK, I found this sort of problem in a lot of your sentences. You need to have punctuation at the end of every single quotation of speech. Otherwise, your reader gets sort of lost.
Change bolded comma to a semicolon, and make sure not to have 'ground command' capitalized unless your punctuation is an exclamation point.

“Roger bomber squadrons eight through thirteen engage, we will hold them off your backs for as long as we can” a gruff stressed voice said.
There are a couple of problems here in this sentence. The words are jumbled because of some needed punctuation corrections, and the same problem with punctuation at the end of speech quotations appears here as well. I would say something like: '"Roger that. Bomber squadrons eight through thirteen engage; we will hold them off your backs as long as we can," a gruff voice answered.' (I think you can take out 'stressed'; it doesn't fit in that sentence.)

“Eight leader here we are moving out. Their everywhere we already lost Jenkins, Ryan, Jake and Thomson. We need-!”
This quotation is a little shaky because of the grammar and spelling errors. For example, 'their' should be 'they're'. To help make the dialogue here more readable, I might say: '"This is Eight Leader here. We're moving out. They're everywhere; we've already lost Jenkins, Ryan, Jake, and Thomson. We need--!"'

A large jolt hit the ship then it seemed to go into a sharp turn; almost making me slide across the room then it even out.
This sentence could be made clearer by fixing some punctuation and descriptions. Like, how does a large jolt hit a ship? And your semicolon doesn't belong; change it to either a period or a comma. I would probably say something like: 'Suddenly, the ship jolted tremoundously, veering off into a sharp turn, making me slide almost clear across the room before it recovered.' Basically, you need to just change your wording and incorrect punctuation use so the reader can actually understand it.

Overall, this was a really exciting piece, and I'm itching for more! :D Best wishes to you on the other ones as well! What you need to work on is punctuation use, spelling, grammar, and word usage. Other than that, this was a great story! (Oops...I just noticed that some of the mistakes I noted have already been pointed out! :smt005 Ah well...thanks anyway for replying to my review thread! :))
"We're all born with selfish desires, so we can all relate to those feelings in others. But kindness is something made individually by each person...so it's easy to misunderstand when others are trying to be kind to you."
--Fruits Basket Book 1, page 134

Do you need a review?
  





User avatar
124 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 12298
Reviews: 124
Mon Dec 28, 2009 12:18 am
PatriciaTina says...



Hey! I'm so so so sorry that this took so long! I really don't have any excuse, but I really am sorry about making you wait this long.

I see that the nit-picks have been taken care of, though, so I guess I'll just talk about sentence structure and stuff like that.

The first thing I noticed was that you describe how the people are talking a lot, maybe a bit too much, but you don't really describe what everything looks like. Remember that it's not all about how the people are saying what they're saying, you need balance between the senses. We want to know what the character sees, hears, feels etc. or we aren't that interested.

You might also want to fix some of your punctuation. Just go over your piece and maybe even try reading it aloud. Make sure everything sounds right, with the punctuation and dialogue. Remember that your dialogue needs to be believable, and that we can imagine your characters saying what they say. (ie. character development)

I don't have much else to say, so I guess I'll end it right about now. To tell you the truth, I'm not really that big of a sci fi fan, but this wasn't bad. Keep up the good work, and I hope to read more from you!

Again, I can't even begin to tell you how sorry I am about taking so long. I hope you had an amazing Christmas, and have a happy new year! See you later!

~ Trish :smt006
~ Patricia Tina :smt006

Don't look in the spoiler.

Spoiler! :
I lost the game.

"I always hear punch me in the face when you're speaking, but it's usually subtext."
~ Dr. John Watson
  








We are great at fearing the wrong things.
— Hank Green