Young Writers Society

I’ve decided to rewrite the, still currently unnamed, novel that I was working on way back when. Yes all this time later I still have failed to name it. This may be the final draft it may not, I can’t say for sure. Enjoy, and all comments welcome.

I walked slowly with Professor Matson into the meeting room. I was wearing blue jeans and a, plane, short sleeved white top. I was also wearing white trainers. I was twenty-five, had medium length black hair and brown eyes. I was a science student of Professor Matson; but I also took a military training course, since I was going to be working with Matson and other military scientists. Matson was fifty-two, had short white hair and for some bizarre reason always wore black trousers a shirt and white lab coat. He was tall in general and was usually in a focused and enthusiastic mood, however right now we were both in a rush.

The room was dark and there was a black, horse shoe shaped, table in the middle of the room. The room was empty apart from the table and a large screen mounted on the wall opposite the curve of the table. The walls, floor and ceiling were all made of a dull grey metal. Four, square, overhead lights lit the room.

Seven beings were already here, we were late...again. Four of the beings were Lizarian and the rest were human.

Lizarians were the ones who helped us develop space travel back in 3452, and what were commonly known as rift generator drives more commonly known as R.G.Ds. Lizarians were reptilian creatures that stood on two feet, and resembled lizards from back on Earth. They had four clawed fingers and a thumb. Each of their feet had three toes each with large claws. Their scales were a brilliant emerald green; they had orange eyes with slit pupils too. Most of them stood just taller than a fully grown man. I didn’t pay attention to anyone and just sat down in my seat, at the end of the table, next to the professor.

“Now that we’re all here, I believe the professor has something to begin with,” a female Lizarian said, she was sitting in the middle of the curve in the table. She was the Lizarian leader who was referred to as The Princess, or simply Princess. She was slender and looked much weaker than many Lizarians. I knew not to underestimate Lzarians; they could be lethal if they chose to. She stood just a few centimetres shorter than me and look rather young.

“The Samaro graveyard has stalled all attempts to explore it, by disrupting sensor equipment. We have developed a working prototype model that, we believe, will allow us to push deep into the graveyard,” The professor began. The Samaro graveyard was an entire system blanketed in a thick dust cloud; that thwarted all attempts to explore it. The reason we wanted to explore it was to locate Ancestor relics. The Ancestors were believed to be the Lizarians forefathers who had a massive empire spanning the galaxy, and were advanced beyond comprehension. However they simply disappeared; leaving behind relics in remote, and usually deadly, areas of the galaxy.

“When will we be able to test it?” asked a well-built Lizarian, he was opposite me. He was Commander Soraka a well-respected member of the 206th Lizarian assault fleet.

“As soon as tomorrow morning, the prototype is being transported here as we speak,” the professor replied happily. Soraka nodded.

“Presuming this works, and we find Ancestor relics, I want you commander to ignore protocol and bring them directly to Lizaria for examination,” The Princess ordered calmly.

“As you wish my princess,” Soraka replied, bowing his head in respect.

Twenty-six hours later

I was standing on the bridge of a Lizarian battleship. The room was circular. The rear walls were full of screens and control panels with Lizarians operating them. The front wall was a huge reinforced viewing window. Everything in front of us was a brown and orange smudge. The professor was next to me, he was holding a laptop that was linked to the prototype. He nodded to Soraka.

“Take us in,” he ordered. The ship began to power forward into the cloud. Through the thick dust I could make out black shapes. When we got closer they turned out to be bits of ship ranging from wings to engines. We went on for two hours, stopping regularly to check the prototype. Eventually we came to a clearing in the cloud. The clearing was massive; there was a small dying red dwarf star at the centre with huge amounts of debris orbiting it.

“Sir we have reached the centre of the cloud,” A female voice from behind me said.

“Prototype is functioning normally,” the professor added. I was looking at the wrecks when my eye stopped on one that was much bigger than the rest.

“What’s that?” I asked pointing at the wreck.

“Zoom in,” Soraka ordered a square appeared around the object and then stretched to the length of the window. The wreck was neatly curved at the sides and back; but the front was frayed to the point of disintegration, like it had been ripped off by shear force. In the heart of the wreck was a ship. It was a perfect cylinder shape with a right-angled triangle tail fin on top at the back, lower down were two more. There was a small dome bridge section not far from the base of the top fin. Also atop every fin was a box shape with a single huge barrel stretching out from it. The front of the ship was hollowed in like a cone shape; its sides were ridged however like a flight of stairs leading inwards. There was a small slit on the left side of the ship, which looked like a docking bay. The light from the dying sun of the graveyard resembled the light a slowly setting sun on earth; it glinted and danced on the wreck, and its perfectly preserved prise. The dying light made it look almost too amazing to be real.

“Move in,” Soraka ordered, a moment later the ship was heading towards the wreck. We reached it a few moments later and Soraka stood up and gazed upon it. He opened his mouth to speak but just couldn’t find the words. I don’t think anyone could. A concerned deep voiced male Lizarian, who was sitting at the sensor terminal, abruptly and unpleasantly broke the silence.

“Sir massive power spike coming from the object!” he shouted.

“Could it be the prototype failing?” Soraka asked bewildered.

“No…It’s not the prototype, it’s coming from the ship” replied the professor.

“It’s hailing us,” the female said.

“Accept its request. It properly an automated message” Soraka replied. The sound of static, and a scrambled unidentifiable voice, spoke out then the channel closed.

“Move in with boarding frigates,” Soraka ordered. Moments later two oblong ships moved in. The ships had a small square bridge coming out of the top and three engines on the back, six curving fins came out of the back of the frigates too; it was armed with two missile bays built into its sides. The ships reached the wreck quickly, due to their powerful engines, light armour and few weapons.

“Docking port detected...moving in,” A Lizarian from the lead frigate said, as they moved inside the slit. There was silence for about five minutes then, suddenly, the ship lit up.

“Sir, power restored to the R.G.D and conventional drives are online,” the leader said clearly, over the communication channel. The ship slowly lifted from the wreck and moved over to us.

“Good let’s go home. Activate warp drive and head for Lizaria,” Soraka ordered. A large blue and white scar shape opened in front of us, both ships went through it.

“Sir! Drive multifunction detected, I’m locked out of the system!” a male said behind me. My vision went white.

I woke up some time later and looked around. Everyone had ether fallen asleep at their posts, or had flopped to the ground. Soraka was in front of me he twitched, opened his eyes and got up. Within a minute everyone was awake. I looked out of the window.

In front of us was a brown half sphere; it was full of lights and windows. Underneath it was a stretched circular portion, which had a large slit in it. I looked inside and saw some ships, but there were too far to get a decent look at them.

“Sir the main cannon weapon is charging we can’t stop it!” shouted the leader on the other ship; that was slightly in front to our left. Seconds later there was a blinding white beam coming from the ship; the beam hit the station causing several explosions. When the attack ceased half the station was breaking apart. The cannon fired again and the station exploded in a fiery display.

“The dive is back under control,” the female Lizarian said.

“Take us home…” Soraka said slowly and cautiously. We opened another scar shaped rift and headed through.



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Battleship Zakoro black box recording
01:59
Zilik station ruins
Six hours after the attack
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“Evidence of Ancestor weapons detected” a gruff voice said.

“Impossible the Ancestors are long gone,” said another contradicting the first.

“Lizarian rift drive use detected” added a third

“Lizarians wouldn’t know we are here,” replied the first

“Enough!” boomed a considerably more aggressive voice “The station has been destroyed. The Lizarians must be annihilated just liked their Ancestors prepare a full invasion force,”

“Yes General Rovok” many other voices said in union.
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Hi Stealth

Some quick pointers before I start my actual review:
1) Try placing your Author's Notes in spoilers so that they don't detract from the actual story
2) Give your story a name. It doesn't matter what it is. As it is, you title contains a spelling mistake and is very uninteresting. Even the title "Lizards" would entice more people than, "(Unnamed) Chapter one"
3) Make sure you read over your work before you post it. Your first error within the story itself is in the second sentence, which can immediately deter the casual reader.

Onto the review!

I was wearing blue jeans and a, plane, short sleeved white top. I was also wearing white trainers. I was twenty-five, had medium length black hair and brown eyes.

An aeroplane short sleeved shirt? "Plain" is the word you're looking for. Now, this is something I've picked up on in my years of writing and reading. Never describe yourself if the narrator is the person telling the story. Do we, the readers, need to know that the main character is wearing jeans and a white shirt? Why would the narrator start the story immediately by describing himself? Is he a narcissist?

I was a science student of Professor Matson; but I also took a military training course, since I was going to be working with Matson and other military scientists.

Past tense? Meaning you're not a science student anymore? Also, I think you might want to do a bit of research. Do university students studying science really need to take military courses to work with "military scientists"?

Matson was fifty-two, had short white hair and for some bizarre reason always wore black trousers a shirt and white lab coat. He was tall in general and was usually in a focused and enthusiastic mood, however right now we were both in a rush.

Generally if there is a dress code (which there would be if this was a military base), then people are required to wear said things. Would your main character really know Matson's age? Remember, you're writing in the point of view of a student. I struggled to remember my lecturer's names, let alone bother with their age.

The room was dark and there was a black, horse shoe shaped, table in the middle of the room. The room was empty apart from the table and a large screen mounted on the wall opposite the curve of the table. The walls, floor and ceiling were all made of a dull grey metal. Four, square, overhead lights lit the room.

Repetition.

Seven beings were already here, we were late...again. Four of the beings were Lizarian and the rest were human.

Lizarians were the ones who helped us develop space travel back in 3452, and what were commonly known as rift generator drives more commonly known as R.G.Ds.

Hmmm. As I understand it, this is a futuristic story, and yet your main character is wearing jeans. Also the highlighted part: did you realise you had repeated yourself? Would they really be late to a meeting with a princess?

Lizarians were reptilian creatures that stood on two feet, and resembled lizards from back on Earth. They had four clawed fingers and a thumb. Each of their feet had three toes each with large claws. Their scales were a brilliant emerald green; they had orange eyes with slit pupils too. Most of them stood just taller than a fully grown man. I didn’t pay attention to anyone and just sat down in my seat, at the end of the table, next to the professor.

You didn't pay attention to anyone, and yet described a Lizarian?

“Now that we’re all here, I believe the professor has something to begin with,” a female Lizarian said, she was sitting in the middle of the curve in the table. She was the Lizarian leader who was referred to as The Princess, or simply Princess. She was slender and looked much weaker than many Lizarians. I knew not to underestimate Lzarians; they could be lethal if they chose to. She stood just a few centimetres shorter than me and look rather young.

You're doing a lot of info-dumping here.

“The Samaro graveyard has stalled all attempts to explore it, by disrupting sensor equipment. We have developed a working prototype model that, we believe, will allow us to push deep into the graveyard,” The professor began. The Samaro graveyard was an entire system blanketed in a thick dust cloud; that thwarted all attempts to explore it. The reason we wanted to explore it was to locate Ancestor relics. The Ancestors were believed to be the Lizarians forefathers who had a massive empire spanning the galaxy, and were advanced beyond comprehension. However they simply disappeared; leaving behind relics in remote, and usually deadly, areas of the galaxy.

Very very interesting. I would delete everything before this, and completely start here, or during the excavation.

“When will we be able to test it?” asked a well-built Lizarian, he was opposite me. He was Commander Soraka a well-respected member of the 206th Lizarian assault fleet.

Think about what you're writing. Why exactly are the military part of this exploration event?

“As soon as tomorrow morning, the prototype is being transported here as we speak,” the professor replied happily. Soraka nodded.

"The prototype will arrive tomorrow morning." If this professor is a key person within this project, he would be succinct and cut to the chase.

“Presuming this works, and we find Ancestor relics, I want you commander to ignore protocol and bring them directly to Lizaria for examination,” The Princess ordered calmly.

... Again, think about what you're writing. Would the ruler of the Lizards really think this way? What protocol is she referring to?

“Prototype is functioning normally,” the professor added. I was looking at the wrecks when my eye stopped on one that was much bigger than the rest.

I don't get this. Are they watching all this on the screens, or is the prototype the ship they are on?

The light from the dying sun of the graveyard resembled the light a slowly setting sun on earth; it glinted and danced on the wreck, and its perfectly preserved prise. The dying light made it look almost too amazing to be real.

Repetition.

“Move in,” Soraka ordered, a moment later the ship was heading towards the wreck. We reached it a few moments later and Soraka stood up and gazed upon it

.
Repetition. Also, you should just describe what is going on. If you read other books, best sellers, a writer doesn't need to keep the reader in suspense just to make them keep reading.

“No…It’s not the prototype, it’s coming from the ship” replied the professor.

“Accept its request. It properly an automated message” Soraka replied. The sound of static, and a scrambled unidentifiable voice, spoke out then the channel closed.

What does "it properly an automated message" mean?

“Move in with boarding frigates,” Soraka ordered. Moments later two oblong ships moved in. The ships had a small square bridge coming out of the top and three engines on the back, six curving fins came out of the back of the frigates too; it was armed with two missile bays built into its sides. The ships reached the wreck quickly, due to their powerful engines, light armour and few weapons.

This doesn't make sense... earlier in the story you said the Graveyard was impenetrable, and now frigates, frigates of all things are circumnavigating the asteroid belts and reach the ship in less than two hours.

“Sir, power restored to the R.G.D and conventional drives are online,” the leader said clearly, over the communication channel. The ship slowly lifted from the wreck and moved over to us.

... they come across an alien ship, but they are able to control it? Without any prior knowledge about it? And it just so happens to have RGD drives?

“Good let’s go home. Activate warp drive and head for Lizaria,” Soraka ordered. A large blue and white scar shape opened in front of us, both ships went through it.

How do these rifts work? What do they run on? How are they constructed?

“Sir! Drive multifunction detected, I’m locked out of the system!” a male said behind me. My vision went white.

I woke up some time later and looked around. Everyone had ether fallen asleep at their posts, or had flopped to the ground. Soraka was in front of me he twitched, opened his eyes and got up. Within a minute everyone was awake. I looked out of the window.

This was very sudden and seemed to be entirely plot convenience.

In front of us was a brown half sphere; it was full of lights and windows. Underneath it was a stretched circular portion, which had a large slit in it. I looked inside and saw some ships, but there were too far to get a decent look at them.

Despite how hard you're trying to describe things, I can't imagine what you're trying to say.

“Sir the main cannon weapon is charging we can’t stop it!” shouted the leader on the other ship; that was slightly in front to our left. Seconds later there was a blinding white beam coming from the ship; the beam hit the station causing several explosions. When the attack ceased half the station was breaking apart. The cannon fired again and the station exploded in a fiery display.

“The dive is back under control,” the female Lizarian said.

“Take us home…” Soraka said slowly and cautiously. We opened another scar shaped rift and headed through.

... that was really random.

“Evidence of Ancestor weapons detected” a gruff voice said.

“Impossible the Ancestors are long gone,” said another contradicting the first.

“Lizarian rift drive use detected” added a third

“Lizarians wouldn’t know we are here,” replied the first

“Enough!” boomed a considerably more aggressive voice “The station has been destroyed. The Lizarians must be annihilated just liked their Ancestors prepare a full invasion force,”

“Yes General Rovok” many other voices said in union.

This whole part is lacking in punctuation and sense. You don't need to write it like this. You don't need to be mysterious.

So, overall:

Premise/Plot
I think you have a good idea here, but at the moment it's being poorly executed. Your characters do things that don't make sense, and your transitional scenes don't flow correctly so it's hard to picture what is occurring half the time.

Characters
As it is, your characters are really flat and one dimensional. You have the elderly man, who's the Scientist. The young Princess, who just happens to be a rebel. The Commander, who probably loves the princess and is the typical loyal military advisor. And your main character is that unimportant student who will inevitably save the day somehow - for instance, he was the one to notice the Ancestor ship amongst the wreckage.

Keep on writing, rehaul this section a bit more, and don't hesitate to reply to this thread with questions, comments or concerns regarding my review.

Cheers, Jai

Hi, I'm TheNewHero and I'm gonna review your piece

Firstly I must say I liked your premise and your idea. In fact, it was awesome. But poorly executed. This might be a long review, but stick around because it's really hard to review something bad and yet I can write a review for your piece which means it's awesome Here are the problems I had:

Descriptions
Way too many. Rigid. The chance that one of your readers is only now reading or experiencing sci-fi is slim. In other words, we've all been crammed full with info on how starships look etc. I would say that you should only describe the really important starships. The first description in the story that hurts is the table. I mean really, is it shaped like that for any particular reason. Setting only matters when it creates atmosphere, and a horse-shoe table does not create atmosphere.

Then your descriptions on people. Professors are stereotypically portrayed as either old or young, and both with glasses. It's a stereotype that you might have to stick with, so there's only so much room for description. You can only describe ODD details (Like he always has a strand of hair hanging down), but blunt details do not even twitch us. For example, I imagined him in the same uniform that my first team rugby wears (The formal one) and he looked pretty awesome until I found out exactly what clothes he wore (black trousers, a shirt and a white lab coat). And guess what, I totally discarded that description in favour of what I thought. He became my professor, even though he's your character and that's a good thing. You've already made me realize him as a character, you don't have to shove him down my throat with a description about how he always wears whatever. Furthermore, what will you do when he goes to Mars, for example. He can't still be wearing the same clothes, and then you'd have to describe what he's wearing then because it will be important. Your most important (Physical) description with the professor is his lab coat. It just lets us wrap our minds around him, is all.

I said earlier that setting (and description) perform the role of generating atmosphere.

He was tall in general and was usually in a focused and enthusiastic mood, however right now we were both in a rush

That was the best possible description you could give in that whole first paragraph, and I missed it the first time round because my eyes automatically skipped certain sentences and that one being at the end made it unnoticeable, even though it was an awesome line.

So, chop out any description that doesn't add to atmosphere or at least help us figure out which stereotype to apply. For the reptilians you could've done much more. You could've explained that they forked out their tongues every few seconds and that their eyes were slits. Already we imagine them as sly and clever. Are they not? Are they more like the commander? Well then say they were well built and a lot of them leaned on the desk, making it tilt slightly as either parties were lined up opposite each other. You've then already given us personality and helped us visualize the scene physically.

There's a lot more I want to add, but then this review becomes jumbled and irritating. Instead, let me source you to an awesome sight with great advice: Superhero Nation. They have a particularly good article about what I'm trying to get at, and it's hilariously drawn up. Enjoy: --------------------------------------------------

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Your Point of View
I want you to be aware of something. Your character, your MC!, your narrator and the guy who is synonymous with (Unnamed) Chapter one (Rewriten) , makes one contribution to plot in the whole first chapter. Now, first chapters are difficult to pull off, mostly because we have to introduce an interesting MC. And I can tell you from personal experience, a lot of us (especially me) have suckish MCs. Often, we've pumped all we've got into our supporting characters and left no personality for the MC. Really good writers pull this off. Smart writers with NaNo time limits just dump their MC all together. What you've done here is neither.

Your MC seems to be here for the sole purpose of allowing us to read the story. You could've used third person and even second person for all that matters and it wouldn't have made a shred of difference. You could've had the professor or someone else play the part of the guy that points out the ship. And then what? Where would your MC be, what would he do. seeminglymeaningless Had a point, he can't just randomly save the day. It won't be as fulfilled. Give him a personality and a bigger role, or dump him.

And this applies for all characters. However, I can't continue before I say that I liked the commander. Generic and rigid or not, he was portrayed nicely with the one liners

Info Dumping
Beside the description, you had quite a bit of info dumping here. Make up your mind, what really drives your story. Your plot? Your characters? Is it an interesting world? You get a wealth of books that are driven by many different things. For example, in Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment, I hardly care about the plot. I know they're gonna win in the end, that's how it works. It's the characters that interest me. Their turmoil and their lack of respect and their all around non-Angelicness. They are interesting to me and that's why I keep reading despite the critics raving about how bad it is. Percy Jackson might not have the most interesting narrator in the world, but I mean come on... the world is just awesome! Great Expectations, Pip is not the coolest narrator and I can't remember Estella ever wielding a lightsaber, but all those plot-twists keep me hooked long enough to not fail my exam.

Now, your story. I feel this is going to be plot driven. Sci-fi story's would struggle in creating interesting worlds without a gimmick and those are really hard to come up with. Your plot is actually quite interesting, but badly written. I want to find out what the Ancestor Relics can do but you didn't even give me a hint! That's not intriguing and it doesn't beckon me to read on, it just turns me off. Check out RangerHawk's Icefire story synopsis. It also has a weird device/relic/weapon thing, but she doesn't at all hide what it can do. Because what it can do is what's awesome, and it's what will cause us to read write up until the moment (which we know is coming and yet don't dismiss as cliche) when the mighty villain finally has the thing in their grip and is about to conquer the world in Fire or Ice (Although I haven't read the story).

*Also, characters like Prof and Soraka might really help it out*

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Nit Picks:

Twenty-six hours later

This struck me like, "This author really wants to write third person. He has an interesting MC who only really gets interesting later on and the author realizes that and really wants to switch to 3rd."
Of course that can't possibly be what you were thinking, I know. But it is a good line of thought. You have a first person narrator. And even with third person you could've easily made it that the princess nods her head and everyone disperses quietly... and then have like a double break before introducing your next scene. See: Any book, for example in Percy Jackson and the Olympians - The Lightning Thief. Percy has to move from the museum to outside. He doesn't have to describe himself moving through the doorway. And he doesn't have to say five minute later. It just happens and the audience is expected to keep up with that, which they can.

Perhaps I've over exaggerated there, but that threw your piece off rhythm.

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And here's what I loved:

despite it being ridden with static descriptions, you had good form... blocky. Your ideas were logically and chornologically presented. For example we are introduced to the characters, the plot, the catalyst (your starship) and a villain in that order. Add some descriptive oomph into that and we've got: enviable main characters, an enticing plot, a starship that a lot of us would love to live in because it has this or that and a villain we're all terrified of. Why didn't you describe the villain!? It wasn't mysterious, just... disappointing.

The Professor and Soraka
Yes, you might call them stereotypes and cliches, but they're also classics. And classic is not always bad. Sure, maybe you could give them more personality but that only has to come in later in the story. Only advice is to give the professor more motivation. Soraka doesn't need one, he's following orders. Instead you could give more personality earlier on. Is he really as brave as most captains? I don't know. Would he ever swear? Is he a character I love so much that I'll burn the book when I find out he's the villain only to buy like three hundred copies? In fact, if you struggle with your main character, just write from Professor or Soraka or both views. Seriously, I'd read the story for them.

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Anyway, that's my review, hope it helps. Thanks for the read, PM me if you edit!
TheNewHero,