Young Writers Society

Thanks for the reviews!
Really helpful!!!
-Jojo

So this is your plan, eh? Ask me to review a piece that already has a bunch of reviews on it? Haha, just teasing.

I liked this a lot! You can tell that your a poet, for sure! You have really great cover design skills! (Not sure what those are called...but it's cool!)

I think the way you have your prolougue set up is a tiny bit confusing for those of a more simple mind. Your novel is called Chapter one. She's reading a book? I'm not sure if anyone else noticed that but it kinda confused me. Put more spacing and more derectivity to fix that.

There's not really much else to say. Sorry for the worst review ever!

Hello there Jojo!

Although you have been a solid YWSer for almost a year, I still didn't know you were more into poetry than stories. Shame on me. *headdesk*

Considering this is your first shot (or the second time) in writing a story, I enjoyed reading this. Yes, this creates a thrilling atmosphere as far as the story can go, but I think this prologue lacks depth. At first, your main character is describing that upcoming fire, but it's a little bit confusing because I want to know the place he is exactly standing. Or even the place before that. I'm just curious because his thoughts and reactions aren't that sufficient, especially there's that something that pulls him not to tell that there's a fire. Speaking about your character, this leads to my second point. As of now, I couldn't say that the MC's a girl or the opposite- though I guess it's a boy- but still, his personality is quite a blur. You might want to fix that.

And for the sake of the prologue's realism, I'm wondering where the setting is. Maybe in a ship because of the oil spill? I don't know. And why weren't there any adult to guide the children? Also, it's a good spice in your piece if the main character was giving off some thoughts or any thinking of the possible suspects of the said "sudden incident". If this is an accident, then I couldn't see any point why you should continue the story. But anyways, you should remember that prologues are the ones attracting and motivating your readers to crave more of your stories.

Also, I want to comment on the story format. It's inconsistent as I can see, especially that you need spaces after a dialogue. That's just a minor thing though, so onwards. ^^ Grammar wise, I like how you kept the prologue pretty simple, and that's one of the reason why I like this. It's easy to comprehend and doesn't involve too much of descriptions and blah blah blah. Buy just like what I've said, you can dig deeper into the soil. Make this stronger and it'll be better.

All in all, I enjoyed this. I hope I didn't sound that rude or harsh. Anyways, everything is based entirely on my opinions. Let me know if you have any questions.

Keep writing,
Yuri

Hey there, Jojo pie! (Sorry I randomly name people)

Here to review as requested and I hope I could be of some REAL help. Even though some great reviewers have come to your rescue already, I'll try my level best to help you out. And as for the cover---it's rocking, and I really liked the title, too. It really makes me interested to know what this story is going to be about.

I do get you now. I really think that italics have been over-used more than a bit, and even though in suspense thrillers' novels it's usually great to see italics and memory flash backs, but you'll have to definitely go less with them and really like stop. Besides that I really know that you can pull off without italics and mostly the sentences which were italicized were not something related to the past and so therefore you could have done without them also. I mean, mostly the inner thoughts or things from the past are italicized and I don't think what you had were any of the two. But still it's a writer's creativity and approach and you have a full permission to choose the format you want. Besides that I'd also say that since it was her POV, there wasn't much going on actually, so her thoughts(the ones you italicized) were in no need of been given this treatment.

My other point here would be that although you gripped our interests and I really liked the way you began and how the things went on, it was all the while her thoughts or the telly things. But according to me, the fire scene could have had so much to be describing. I mean, all the while we knew that there were some children who were going to be affected by this tragedy and that's mainly because you told us this. But what about showing? What I think that could have made your story was creating a scene. I really didn't see anything in my mind. And as the great Kakagirl says writing is all about making a picture with words. I know you can do it, judging by the thrill you created for us, but honestly, I felt a bit lost all the while.

Now other thing would be that your story's ending was much more interesting than the beginning. But it should be that both of them are interesting. I mean there was mention of some fire and I really was keen to know if she/he was going to be affected by the fire or not, but for a description lover like me, the story really felt apart when you went ahead. Anyways, it can be just me, and also seriously speaking prologues are mostly simple and it was a very good attempt considering that it was your first time writing prose.

But I have to give you the credit for the news clipping you wrote about. It just seemed interesting. Also more than the emotional pain she was feeling, I wanted to know that if there was any physical pain to her or not. I am mentioning this because it seems like there's some realm transition story in this one and if it is so I was keen to know whether going into that world has some physical impact or control on her or not. Not a brilliant thing to ask, but I was just curious.

Anyways, sorry for rather a hopeful review.

Hey there JoJo I really like the prolouge it was good. I can really feel that your character feels guilty about those kids. You should try adding more imagery so readers can get a better sense of the setting. You have a lot of inner thinking from the character try letting her hear what the kids are saying it will make the dream seem more real. Thanks for asking for my help, appreciate it.

Yours Truley,
Lana Brown

As requested.

I suppose it will suffice to say that this was interesting. Very Kafkaesque, in a way. But, then again, it is very different from anything he wrote. Unless this is based off of some tributary of Inception, I'd say this is original - so far. We'll see. I have a strict sense of unorthodoxy.

First. My nitpick.

A few tripping over trays, banging pots together, and ran toward each other with those sweet smiles.

"Ran" should be "running."

I'm not going to give you a long-winded critique on plot structure or character development, since this is just a prologue, but I am going to give you some ways that this could be made better. First. The MC really needs to feel more emotion toward the children. From what you've got here, all he cares about is himself. He calls out to the children because he doesn't want to feel guilty. Please. Is this supposed to make me feel sympathetic? Secondly, you need description. Yeah, I know this is a prologue, and description isn't that necessary, yadda yadda, but when I don't even have a vague picture of what's going on, you know you have a problem. Describe the kitchen. Describe the fire. Where is it coming from? Thirdly (this is a little more nitpicky), when you say "oil spill," all I can think of is a massive oil disaster, like the Gulf oil spill. I have a feeling this kitchen incident wasn't caused by an oil rig explosion.

That's about it. Keep writing.

-Kafka

First. My nitpick.

A few tripping over trays, banging pots together, and ran toward each other with those sweet smiles.



"Ran" should be "running."

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was waiting for someone to catch that mistake.. hehehehe..
Now i have to go off and edit it...
* prances off*

Hey there, Jojo. Here per request. *bows*

So, I won’t sit around nit picking. There really isn’t anything too pick. You have a lovely way of writing. It’s not too simple nor is it too flowery. You have a good balance, something I still haven’t figured out (and I’ve been trying too for a long while).

The one thing I would really recommend is learning when to reveal what you need to reveal. Because this is the prologue, there’s no rush to give anything away. But you do really carry an air of mystery and drama in this. You really held back on giving anything away in this but don’t maintain this too far into the story. I just reviewed a chapter of Skins’s novel “A Shot of Arrogance” and a very key aspect of the story is her characters ethnic background (which is the reason behind the awful business of arranged marriages). She told me later that this important little detail isn’t revealed until chapter 20 or so. So this is really more advice as you keep writing but make sure you pace and appropriately place your details, especially the important ones.

If you have any questions, let me know. Sorry if this wasn’t the most in depth but you do seem to have received quite a few very thorough reviews already.

Happy Writing!

~lilymoore

Hi there,jojo
I'm here to review:)
I think your prologue was very creative and had alot of details in it. You really built up the suspense and mystery as the reader dives farther into the story. Overall, I thought it was flawless. And I think you should keep writing and make it into a longer story.

Wow this is heavy.
It's good but...
I didn't quite understand it though, I'm just a bit confused about the whole concept of this prologue.

But it was good anyway.

Tiger here to review, per request!

So, this is an interesting start. Interesting as in, the concept seems very promising, rather Inception-y actually (though perhaps not, I haven't actually watched the movie yet). But as promising as it seems, there are a few nitpicks to be pointed out that other reviewers may or may not have touched upon already.

The Italics...

...are not too bad. In the beginning, they add to the MC's emotion about his (her? I got the impression they were male) dilemma. It's later, and the repetition of them at the beginning of almost every new paragraph that it begins to get annoying and gratuitous. You've mentioned something about being used to poetry, but that's not much of an excuse. I know other YWSers here who write poetry 99.5% of the time, but who can still deliver great prose without adding many touches of their poetic side. So I do sincerely hope that in writing the first chapter, you ignore the past poetry you've written, numb the poetry-efficient part of your mind, and just write some prose.

And it's not in italics, but what's with the block sentence in bold at the prologue's beginning? It's not a direct thought, as it's not in the infamous italics, and it's not a title, because prologues don't have them. On top of that, it has nothing to add to the story which follows. So why is it there?

New Lines

You seem very fond of starting a new line for nearly every sentence at the prologue's ending. Visually, it is distracting.

XxJojoxX wrote:And it'll be me, who wakes up tomorrow morning as if none of this ever happened.
As if I never heard their screaming, never heard their pleading.
Never saw the accidental oil spill that caused the fire in the first place.

And to a lesser extent here:

Hell, I might even try to act surprised when I hear of the 'sudden tragedy' that occurred while no one was around.
Because I was. And even though I know exactly how those children died, I'll pretend that I don't.
Just to keep myself from dying along with them.

The flow of the story is broken each time you do this, and because of this the lines stand on their own. This sort-of makes it seems that each line is a new level of complaint for your MC, and builds up to evolve into...angst. Do you understand what I mean? I'm not sure I'm explaining this well. But this leads on to my next nitpick...

Complaints and Angst

Though the concept of the story seems interesting, your MC does not so far: they're a bit whiny. It's not so apparent at first, but all they're doing in this prologue is complaining.

Why do I have to have this gift? Why do I have to watch the kids die and get more guilt to live with? Why do I have to live with this guilt? Why do I--

That is pretty much the MC's thought train, in its entirety. The concept of their gift is interesting. How they seem to be dealing with it so far...is not.

Now, because I'm not sure whether this is some sort-of teenager-who-got-a-gift-and-is-now-angsty-because-of-it or an-experienced-adult-who's-lived-with-the-gift-and-is-still-angsty-about-it, I can't get into depth about this nitpick. But hopefully, your MC is neither of those. Hopefully this is someone who's recently gotten the gift, and is merely not yet comfortable with it (but will be eventually), and will not turn into the cliche options I mentioned (personified by Eragon and Henry DeTamble respectively). This sentence however, does make it seem as if your MC is swinging towards the second cliche:

It's been that way for as long as I can remember.

And the last thing...

This and this.

And it'll be me, who wakes up tomorrow morning as if none of this ever happened.
As if I never heard their screaming, never heard their pleading.
Never saw the accidental oil spill that caused the fire in the first place.

Oil spill? In a house/apartment/block of flats? Wouldn't a gas leak be more likely? But either way: this is a feature of the story which needs a little elaboration, a.k.a. explanation.

-ALL OF THE GRUESOME IMAGES FROM "THE DAYCARE FIRE"--
-"YES, KATY, THIS IS A VERY SAD STORY AND A SUDDEN TRAGEDY TO BEHOLD-..."

The smallest nitpick, but still. I suppose the above to sentences are the MC imagining the news broadcast? Only problem is, I don't think an anchor would speak with such emotion. They've a job to do; report the news and do it plainly. Not get emotionally involved which is partially implied with the use of such words as "gruesome", and both "sudden tragedy" and "sad story" at the same time. At most, one would be said and that's it.

And that's it for the nitpicks. All in all, this was an interesting/promising concept, but I can't feel any emotional connection your MC yet. They seem a bit cliche at the moment, a problem I hope will be fixed in the next chapter. All in all, good job, and KEEP WRITING!

Tiger

Heya, JoJo!

I'm sorry it's taken me a bit of a long time to get to this, but better late than never, eh? I swear, I only get to log onto YWS for five minutes nowadays. Anyways... because I am late, you seem to have already gotten a billion reviews, so I'm not sure how helpful I'll be. With any luck, I'll be able to find at least one thing that hasn't' been mentioned yet.

As a whole, I thought this was pretty good. It could definitely be better, but I think what you have already is a sound beginning. Like the others have said, my favourite part of this is what we can tell of the plot, so far. I'm a big fan of these kind of stories--you know, death, violence, thrillers, secret powers e.t.c. Judging by this prologue, I think this could certainly be a very entertaining and generally good story. Nonetheless, there are things that I think could be improved and such.

You've had quite a few comments on the italics, and I must say that I do agree. You do have a lot of them and they can get annoying. It's not a huge problem, but you should seriously consider revising them. I don't mean to sound rude, but I have no idea how the fact that you're used to writing poetry has anything to do with the amount of italics you use. I mean, the poetry posted on the site is hardly ever in full italics or anything... Anyway, that's kind of unrelated. Let's take some of the instances where you used italics. Dialogue, for example. I think you used italics for every line of dialogue, but I'm really not sure why. The solution's simple... just unitalicize (errr, that's a word) them. That's all it takes. Backspace your heart out.

The one formatting that really bothered me though was your paragraphing. Now, I'm partially OCD, so if something's format is a bit 'off', I go into hysterics and I get distracted easily. That's what happened here. You seem to be starting a new line for every new sentence, but I have no idea why. I get how you may say that it's because of the poetry thing, but still, whenever I write poetry, I don't write it in a prose format because, well, I know it's a poem, so I know the layout should be different. For example, if this was my piece, this is what it would look like:



Obviously, that's how I'd put it, so you may think that layout is foul, but I hope you can see how that format is more... proseish. I think it's a lot neater really. I'm not saying that you have to change the format that you have right now, but I would advise it. Jashee, for example, commented on how she didn't like the formatting. I think a few of the other guys mentioned it too.

I think I'd have to agree with Tiger on what she said about our MC. She annoyed me a bit... Like Tiger said, I found her whiny by the end. Okay, you have a gift, it involves horrible things and you hate it. Meh... live with it. You've got it, so you may as well accept it, or at least try and figure out how to use it/if there's a way to get rid of it. This may be what the novel's about--trying to get rid of the power or something, but nonetheless, your MC's attitude towards her powers is a bit too whiny for me. Admittedly, I'd be a bit annoyed if I knew when people would get hurt and I couldn't do anything about it, but I think I'd either be determined to figure it out, or the power would have made me go insane and I'd be a completely nut job. I don't think I'd whine about it so much though.

The main problem with this is that, if I'm honest, a teenager who wines about having a power is a cliché. Two out of the last three books I read involved an MC exactly like this. I'm one of those people who don't actually mind clichés all that much because if those clichés are written well, then I don't think it matters. The only clichés that really bother me though are character clichés, especially if they're the kind of characters that annoy me. I'm not saying that you have to change your MC entirely, but I would think about avoiding clichés, and also be careful not to edge on whiny.

Oh, a little note! I also agree with what a couple of people have mentioned. After reading this, the first thing that hit me was the film/movie, Inception. If this is based off that film then you need to be careful. You don't want to end up having this weirdly similar to that.

The only other content critique I have for you is that I'm basically a little... I don't know. Confused, maybe. I think this feels a bit empty, right now. I won't bother you too much about this because it's a prologue, so it's totally understandable for you not to be that vivid. I do think that quite a few more details could have been included into here though. I mean, I don't know where this is set. Because of the oil spill mention, I was a little baffled about that. The only places I could imagine an oil spill being possible is on a boat, or maybe on a road after a truck falling or whatever. Other details like who your MC actually is, for example, is another thing that I'd like to know more about.

Anyways, I'm blabbering now. Even if this review may not seem like it, I do like this piece. I'm interested in seeing where you're taking it. Good luck and have fun with it!

Keep writing,

xoxo Skins

gah.
I'm not too sure that I'll continue this on *this* website...
I'm a terrible writer in the sense that I can only write when I feel like it. ( Not under compulsion)

Sux for me.

-Jojo