Young Writers Society

Chapter One

Katie

Sometimes I think I remember my mom, but most of the time I’m not sure if what I remember is an actual memory or just something my mind conjured up from one of the few stories I’ve been told about her.

I only have one picture that she’s in, and it’s far from recent. She and her older sister are sitting on one of the table tops at Zoe’s Ice Cream, an ice cream shop that is still open today. My mom’s blond locks tumble down in light waves from her ponytail, reaching to her shoulders. In her hand is a melting vanilla ice cream cone topped with multi-colored sprinkles and chocolate syrup. A little dab of the ice cream is on her freckled nose. She is laughing and facing the camera, but her eyes look at her sister. I like to think that it’s a look of admiration, but I suppose it could be amusement. My aunt Georgia, her sister, is five years older and around fifteen in the photo. She has dark, wavy red hair that goes down past her shoulders. In her left hand, she’s holding a chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone. She’s laughing too, but unlike my mom’s, her eyes rest on the camera. They are both wearing t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops – a testament to the Florida weather they grew up in.

I used to spend hours staring at that picture, as though by looking at her when she was a ten year old, I could somehow evoke all those memories of her I’ve missed, or be shown some aspect of her life today, or even just the inkling of a reason why she left me. By age seven, the picture was so ingrained in my mind I could recall every single detail of it with no effort at all.

The edges are worn now, from when I used to carry it around in my pocket wherever I went. A corner of the picture is burnt, from when I was six and Georgia realized my mom wasn’t coming back, so she tried to burn all of the photos we had of her. She didn’t succeed in destroying this one, which I stole. After more than twelve years, Georgia has still not found it buried in the sock drawer of my dresser.

My mom and aunt look so alike, in that picture. They have the same prominent cheekbones and tiny noses, perfect eyebrows and lips that are neither too thin nor too large. They even have the same perfect, straight white teeth.

I have been told my mom was a social butterfly all throughout her school years, constantly having a flock of friends behind her. I look a lot like my mom, my aunt says. I have her very blonde hair, along with the freckles. I share the facial structure with both of them. Truly though, I’m just thankful it’s only her looks I got and not her notoriously wild, spunky demeanor.

I hardly know anything about my dad, except for the useless facts that he was a charmer, had green eyes, was left handed, played football, couldn’t stand Italian food, and was allergic to clams, all of which I have gleaned from Georgia over a long period of time. I used to ask what exactly had happened to him, where he was now, whether or not he was still with my mom, but I stopped doing that because every time I’d bring it up, Georgia would conveniently change the subject. I have come to the conclusion that he was not someone I should miss.

When my mom finally gave birth to me on August 13, at 4:43 p.m. during her senior year of college, her parents had convinced her that she needed to stay in school, but I would be too much of a hassle. I was a burden to her high-powered life and career, so she didn’t want me. Georgia had offered to raise me instead, unable to have kids herself. My mom left me with Georgia in Epsilon, Florida, as soon as I was out of the hospital after I was born. She told my aunt she would visit any time she could, call whenever she got a chance, and come get me when she settled down.

Well, my birthday is in two days and as of then, I will have been in Epsilon for eighteen years. Until I was three, she visited often. Georgia tells me we appeared to have so close a bond she felt like she was intruding on something whenever she was in the room. I don’t know if that’s true or if she made it up to appease me. After a while, those visits ceased, and she essentially dropped off the face of the earth.

I know she is still there, because once a month, Georgia gets an envelope in the mail filled with money without a return address. But there is always a note inside, and every time it says the same thing: ‘Georgia – for things for Katie.’ That’s it, only it, and always it. A long time ago, I stopped trying to find hidden meaning in the messages. I used to think that maybe she was a hostage and she was leaving clues to where she was for us somehow for us to find her, but I gave up on that.

I figure that if she really cared about what I needed at all, even the slightest bit, she would contact me somehow. She’s missed all those precious birthdays and Christmases, and my first words, my first day of school, graduation, and, soon, college. She doesn’t really care about me. And that money? It’s just a weak form of child support that’s not legally necessary. Something she sends to ease her own soul.

Georgia always gives that money Mom sends to her to me instead. I never buy anything with it. To me, spending it would be like relying on her, needing her – which is something I’ve taught myself not to do.

Actually, once I had to help buy myself a new pair of flippers for scuba diving, but that wasn’t optional, and the cost was so high to get good ones that I chipped in to split the cost with Georgia, so it doesn’t really count. I left them on the boat deck before a big storm and in the gale-force winds, they blew into the ocean and have been lost at sea ever since.

Scuba diving is my thing. Like how some people run, or play baseball, or paint, I scuba dive. The feeling I get is incredible, incomprehensible, indescribable. The ocean is so huge; I feel like just one cloud in the sky, one little grain of sand on the beach. Like I can feel the whole world around me, but that I’m still important.

I’m part of a squad of five divers working at Morley Aquarium. We’re all going to be going to college this fall, and we’re lead by Joe Hendrickson. Joe is one of those people who becomes less mature the older he gets.

It's our – me, Colette, Brenna, Pablo, and Kylar – job to check up on Kohana Reef, which is about a mile or two off the northwestern coast of Cielorojo Key. Ironically, Morley Aquarium is on Havana Key, a mile to the north, so we have to take a boat out to the reef whenever we’re diving there. Kylar, Colette, and I all live on Cielorojo. Cielorojo, and, specifically, Epsilon, its biggest and only city – which isn’t saying much since there’s less than a hundred people on the whole island – used to be a super vacation spot for tourists, before consumerist places like Miami started popping up all over the place, offering resorts that don’t let you see Florida for what it really is.

Back when Epsilon was thriving, scuba diving was offered to the public at Kohana. That was before people started trying to smuggle chunks of coral out of the reef to take home as souvenirs. Not long after that became a common act, Kohana Reef nearly died out because of bleaching, something that keeps the coral from getting food to survive, and then it closed to people altogether.

Now, about twenty years after the bleaching episode, the reef has nearly returned to its full glory. This doesn’t matter though, because it won’t ever be open for the public to visit again. When the bleaching started, the state of Florida made Kohana its own little reservation and put Morley Aquarium in charge of diving weekly and reporting on the condition of the coral.

We dive Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. It’s not like the reef changes a whole lot from day to day but it’s just so we have more data from a short time span if something happens in the long run. I guess then we’d be able to tell when something started, if it ever did.

Kylar can’t always dive with us; most of the time he’s lucky to dive more than once or twice in a month. He has asthma, which basically means his lungs don’t expand enough or something and this is bad, especially when you factor in the cool air from the tanks and the pressure under the water. Whenever he doesn’t dive – which is more often than not; he can’t dive is he’s had an attack in the last few days, or if he’s sick – he either watches the boat or helps out with odd jobs around Morley. The manager, Rhonda, loves him. She thinks he’s the nicest teenager she’s ever met and has informed him, multiple times, that if being a doctor doesn’t work out he’s got a full-time job waiting at Morley.

Every Sunday after diving, Joe treats all of us to ice cream at Zoe’s, which is right between the church (its real name is something long and complicated, so everyone just calls it ‘the church,’ since it’s the one on Cielorojo anyway.) and the Seven-Eleven. The sign in front of Zoe’s, ‘Best Ice Cream on Cielorojo,’ is from years ago, when there used to be more than one ice cream parlor on the island. Now it’s kind of a joke – of course it’s the best; it’s the only. I think that even if there were a thousand other ice cream parlors, Zoe’s would still be the best. Seriously, where else can you get lime soft serve?

I hate the fact that my mom was here. I love Zoe’s, but the fact that Mom sat on one of their picnic tables pollutes it all for me. Because of that picture I have, and Georgia’s rare stories, I know that she and her sister visited Zoe’s frequently as kids. Going to Zoe’s is the closest I’ve gotten to her presence in fifteen years. My conscience tells me to go on with my life, to not hang around thinking about my mother. I listen; if I never went to Zoe’s just because my mom went there, what kind of person would I be? I can’t let her mistakes overshadow the rest of my life.

One thing I try to follow her example of: ignorance. If she can pretend I don’t exist, I should be able to pretend she doesn’t exist either.



Kylar, Colette, and I live for the summers. They are, after all, what our lives are marked in terms of. The summer before seventh grade, we started diving. The summer before sixth grade, Colette moved to Epsilon. The summer before fourth grade, Kylar’s dad died.

During school, we go about business as usual. We do what is expected of us, when it is expected, and nothing more. But as soon as school lets out, we come to life.

If our summers ever seem monotonous, it’s probably because, to anyone but us, they would be. But this, this is what we do. This is who we are. We long ago developed the attitude that everything we do, no matter how many times we’ve done it before, is a new adventure, and requires proper enthusiasm. Also, today might be your last day, so live it like it’s the best of your life.

This stems from a pact we made the summer before ninth grade after watching “The Bucket List.” Every Friday at Kylar’s, we have movie night. I bring pop. Colette brings popcorn. Kylar supplies a movie.

After we watched it, we had a stroke of realization and discovered there were so many things we wanted to do that we had not. So, like in the movie, we made a list. Lie on the beach in the middle of the night and just look at the stars. Walk through the sand barefoot early in the morning. Dive off of Hartley’s Bridge. Spend the night in the lifeguard shack. See the infamous ‘green flash’ when the sun is setting. Go to Paris. Surf. Skydive. Go to an amusement park and ride every single roller coaster. Go to Cadillac Mountain in Maine on New Year’s and be the first people to greet the new year.

Together, we completed nearly every one of those that summer. Of course, there was no way we could go to Paris, or arrange to skydive, and New Year’s isn’t in the summer. But we laid on the beach and looked at the stars; we walked barefoot through the sand; we dove off of Hartley’s Bridge, which has become a routine thing – it’s what we do on Fridays on our way home from Morley; we spent the night in the lifeguard shack; we surfed; we went to Six Flags and rode every single coaster.

That was probably one of the greatest summers of my life. It was the greatest summer of all of our lives, and that’s what inspired our pact. We realized that we had so much fun not for all we did, but for the fact that everything we did was a new, however simple, adventure. We treated each adventure with excitement, and that’s why the summer was so great. From then on, we decided to approach everything this way. Everything in the summers, at least.

It was Kylar’s idea to extend our “Bucket Summer” attitude to all the other summers, so they’d all be just as fun. It was he who understood it best. Even though we all came from disjointed families, me with no mom or dad – Georgia never really counted as either – and Colette with no dad to speak of, Kylar was the only one of us who truly lost a parent. Mine and Colette’s families were messed up, but neither of us had actually had a parent die. I don’t know my mom and dad, but even at the time I was fairly sure they were still alive.

We had been sitting in the lifeguard shack, playing Monopoly – one of our favorite pastimes – which Colette was creaming us at, when Kylar asked us a very deep question promptly after buying Park Place.

“If you died tomorrow,” he said, “would you be happy?”

“Well,” Colette had said at first, taking the dice from him, “I’d be dead. I don’t imagine I’d be happy or sad.”

“Okay…” he said flatly. “Let me rephrase that. If you suddenly found out that you had a terminal illness and were going to die tomorrow, would you be happy with the way your life went?”

“Please don’t tell me we’re making another bucket list,” I had said.

He frowned, frustrated. “No. That’s not what I’m getting at. I’m saying, wouldn’t you want your life to have been as happy as it could be?” Colette and I nodded slowly, unsure of where this was going. “Well, wouldn’t you guys agree that this was the greatest summer yet?” We continued to nod. “And why was that?”

“The Bucket List,” Colette said.

“Watching you puke your guts out at Six Flags definitely made it the greatest,” I joked.

He glared at me. “Seriously. It was great because we were happy all the time. Because each thing we did was new and we were excited about those things, so, like I said, we were happy. Agreed?” We nodded again. “So doesn’t it make sense that if we were always excited about things, we’d be happy all the time?”

“What is this?” Colette muttered, rolling doubles for the second time in a row. “The Optimist’s Club?”

“Yeah, with the resident pessimist.” He smirked and I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Anyways,” he continued, “my point is, what if there was some terrible accident tomorrow and one of us died? Like my dad. He didn’t know that he was going to be paralyzed, and end up dying. No one can predict that. We need to be happy.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Colette said.

“I get it,” I said.

“So,” Kylar said, “let’s be like that all the time. Let’s not be all bored. Let’s just be excited and try every new thing we can, but appreciate the things we’ve done before. Everything is a new adventure.”

“Remind me to get that on a t-shirt,” Colette said dryly, rolling the dice once again.

Kylar smiled slowly at her. “I believe that was three doubles in a row. You are going to jail.”

That was the night we decided to take the Bucket Summer attitude and continue it to all our other summers. We called it the Bucket Summer Pact; we all officially became optimists. After a while, even Colette started to warm to the idea.

The way we looked at it, summers only came around every so often, and, at the time of our Bucket Summer Pact, we only had a few of them left together.

Around that time is when we developed our routine. Sundays, we dive and go to Zoe’s. Tuesdays, we dive. Wednesdays, we make an event of going to the pier, stopping at Federico’s for some of his world famous hot dogs. We actually go to the pier every evening, to watch the sunset because we never did see the green flash during the Bucket Summer and Kylar swears he will see one before he dies. So, every evening, we go down to the pier with a video camera. Thursdays, we dive, and then hang out in the lifeguard shack or at the new place we just found, the lighthouse. Fridays are movie night at Kylar’s. Saturdays, we dive. Sundays, we start all over again.

Long ago, this stopped being monotonous and started just being life. Long ago, we stopped getting tired of each other and instead just looked forward to each other’s company. This is the way we live. Anything else just throws everything off-kilter.



Fried in a gallon of grease and made out of all the disgusting parts of the meat no one else wants, Federico’s hot dogs look absolutely sick but taste like heaven.

“Oh my, God,” Colette says, sinking her teeth into one. “These are so amazing.”

She, Kylar, I are sitting down at the pier, waiting for the sun to go down and watching the little diving birds to pass the time. They hover in the air for mere moments, staring down at the waves exponentially larger than they themselves, then crash down into the water. Seconds later, they reappear, carrying a minnow in their tiny beaks.

Mr. Federico himself, whose cart is only a few yards down, smiles at us. “The hot dogs are good, kids? Yes?”

Mr. Federico is over sixty years old, but still has dreadlocks and tanned, leathery, Jamaican skin. He claims Bob Marley was his cousin, but we think he’s lying.

“Yes,” Kylar says. “They’re very good.”

Mr. Federico smiles, exposing a mouthful of yellowed teeth.

There’s a cheer coming from down at the end of the pier and we look to see a fisherman pull a giant tarpon out of the water. The guy next to him gives him a high-five and they hold it up so they can admire it. It flops at the end of the line and its silvery scales glint in the fading light.

“Big fish,” Mr. Federico says, absently scrubbing the cash register with a tattered old rag.

A little boy not more than seven runs up to the fisherman and hugs his leg. The fisherman attempts to awkwardly hug him back and I realize they must be father and son.

Kylar looks away, but I can’t seem to tear my eyes from the scene.

I watch as a woman walks out of the shadows with a camera and takes a picture of them.

For moments afterwards, the bright flash remains ingrained on my eyelids; I keep seeing the father and son, and the devoted mom, long after they’ve walked away.

Kylar clears his throat and wads up the paper his hot dog was in. I take the last bite of mine, and then wad up the paper and throw it at him.

“Hey!” he laughs and returns it, nailing me in the calf.

“Guys,” Colette says, pointing out in the distance where the sun has nearly reached the horizon. Kylar whips the video camera out of his pocket and begins filming.

Day and night are in the midst of a battle. Their disagreement is reflected on the water like a fractured mirror. Although the rest of the sky is darkening, daylight won’t succumb without one last burst of violets and crimsons. It shoots its brilliant tentacles across the sky, but finally, in the fading light, night prevails. The sun, defeated, sinks below the horizon without so much dignity as to give one last green flash of light to prove it’s a fighter. Once more, dusk settles settles over Epsilon with an old and familiar blanket.

“Dang,” Kylar mutters, shutting the camera.

“I don’t think the green flash is real,” Colette says and kicks at a pebble. It falls into the violet water below with a soft plop. “We’ve been coming here almost every night of the week for the past four years and we haven’t seen it once.”
“It happens once in a million sunsets,” he points out.

“So that’s, what? Once every three thousand years? It’s not even going to happen in your lifetime, Kylar.”

“You don’t know that,” he murmurs.

“Kylar,” I intervene. “Look. I know you want to see one and all, but you’re more likely to win the lottery, or walk out in the street and get hit by a bus.”

“Thanks, guys,” he says sarcastically. “I appreciate your vote of confidence. I hope you know that when I become rich and famous for being the first person to record a green flash sunset, I’m not going to be friends with either one of you.”

I know he’s lying. He wouldn’t know what to do without me. And, to be honest, I don’t think I’d know what to do without him either.

I lay back on the asphalt of the pier, feeling the rough gritty tarmac beneath my back. Up in the sky, the first few stars are beginning to shyly peek out from behind the clouds. Kylar lays down beside me and points up in the sky. “That’s Orion,” he informs me.

“That’s cool.”

“No. That’s Orion.”

I smirk. “Funny.”

Colette lays down on my other side. The three of us stay like that for a long time, until Federico leaves with his hot dog cart, until the fisherman and his son are long gone, until the stars have come out of hiding and are winking down at us, until the moon makes an appearance in the sky directly overhead. We stay like that until we’re all dreaming of worlds far beyond what we’ve always known.

I applaud you if you read this entire thing in one sitting. By now, I've proofread it so many times that I practically have it memorized, so I'd really like some new input on it. Thanks!

Oh! Also, if you can, can you tell me what you think of the characters right now? Like, their characteristics and stuff? I want to make sure I'm portraying them the right way.

Eek, please help! I've just noticed I really need help on my teenager dialogue. And I know that sounds stupid because I am a teenager, but for some reason my characters never have quite the light-hearted, life-is-great teenager dialogue like I want them to.

Hey there

I used to spend hours staring at that picture, as though by looking at her, comma when she was a ten year old, comma I could somehow evoke all those memories of her I’ve missed, or be shown some aspect of her life today, or even just the inkling of a reason why she left me.

The similarities that are apparent on the outside of them apparently did not carry through to the inside. I have been told my mom was a social butterfly all throughout her school years, constantly having a flock of friends behind her. I look a lot like my mom, my aunt says. I have her very blonde hair, along with the freckles. I share the facial structure with both of them. Truly though, I’m just thankful it’s only her looks I got and not her notoriously wild, spunky demeanor.

Here, I'm a bit confused by this sentence here: "The similarities that are apparent on the outside of them apparently did not carry through to the inside."
You say this but you don't really explain.. What does this mean? When you say she was a social butterfly, I don't think as a bad quality yet with that sentence above, you make it seem like she was a mean person or something..

After I was born, as soon as I was out of the hospital , my mom left me with Georgia in Epsilon, Florida.

I would suggest you switch that sentence to that, it just sounds better.

But there is always a note inside, and every time it says the same thing: ‘Georgia – for things for Katie.’

Again, switch this up.

I figure that if she really cared about what I needed at all, even the slightest bit, she would contact me somehow

There's a missing 'that' in there.

Not long after it became a common act, Kohana Reef nearly died out because of bleaching, something that keeps the coral from getting food to survive, and then it closed to people altogether.

'It' if you are referring to the act of stealing coral.

It’s not like the reef changes a whole lot from day to day but it’s just so we have more data from a short time span if something happens in the long run

You just switched to past for a moment there, just remember to keep to present when you are talking about the present.

Every Sunday after diving, comma Joe treats all of us to ice cream at Zoe’s, which is right between the church (its real name is something long and complicated, so everyone just calls it ‘the church,’ since it’s the one on Cielorojo anyway.)

The sign in front of Zoe’s: ‘Best Ice Cream on Cielorojo!’ is from years ago, when there used to be more than one ice cream parlor on the island.

Here, it should be 'is' not 'it is', because you're talking about the sign.

This stems from a pact we made the summer before ninth grade after watching “The Bucket List.” Every Friday at Kylar’s, we have movie night. I bring pop. Colette brings popcorn. Kylar supplies a movie. That Friday, it happened to be “The Bucket List.”

There's no need in repeating that they watched The Bucket List, you already mentioned it and makes the reader feel like he's stupid.

We had been sitting in the lifeguard shack, playing Monopoly – one of our favorite pastimes – which Colette was creaming us at, when Kylar asked us a very deep question, comma promptly after buying Park Place.

He frowned, frustrated, comma “No. That’s not what I’m getting at. I’m saying, wouldn’t you want your life to have been as happy as it could be?” Colette and I nodded slowly, unsure of where this was going. “Well, wouldn’t you guys agree that this was the greatest summer yet?” We continued to nod. “And why was that?”

Kylar smiled slowly at her, comma “I believe that was three doubles in a row. You are going to jail.”

She and , comma Kylar, comma and I are sitting down at the pier, waiting for the sun to go down and watching the little diving birds to pass the time.

“Yes,” Kylar says, comma “They’re very good.”

Day and night are in the midst of a battle. Their disagreement is reflected on the water like a fractured mirror. Although the rest of the sky is darkening, daylight won’t succumb without one last burst of violets and crimsons. It shoots its brilliant tentacles across the sky, but finally, in the fading light, night prevails. The sun, defeated, sinks below the horizon without so much dignity as to give one last green flash of light to prove it’s a fighter. Once more, dusk settles settles over Epsilon with an old and familiar blanket.

I just fell in love with this part. It's so beautiful, and the imagery is perfect. Great job!

I smirk, comma “Funny.”

Alright, overall, I really like this. It's only a beginning but I think the plot will be really good. One thing I have to say is that the first part of this seems a lot factual.. you explain everything and it's just long, readers just want you to get on with the story. Maybe adding more description in there and cutting on the explanation of life to come back to it as you go would be more pleasant for us to read?

The other thing is those '-' are annoying quite a bit. I don't know how much of them you had in there but after four of them in the first part, I was cursing them because they made my reading that much harder. They are quite a distraction, and make me lose my place in the sentence because you start with something then insert one and start on something else, just to get back at the first thing in the end.. result: I have to read the sentence 2 times before I can understand it completely.

The description in the the last part was awesome! It was just perfect, I don't have any critiques on that one. As the fishermen scene, also.

The dialogue between the characters is great also. It seems a bit weird they are just talking about those things just like that but you did a good job at keeping it light and joking at the same time so it's realistic for teenagers. I don't really have any suggestions for that either, I'm sorry I can't help but personally, I would keep it as it is.

That's pretty much all I have to say. Sorry I cannot help either with the characters. Seems like you're doing okay this far but I cannot tell all that much about them just yet. I think I might need some situational characterization for that, but I'm just a person who needs to really know the characters and their reactions. So far, you're doing pretty good I would say. Keep it up!

Feel free to PM me for any questions on anything above or if you'd like me to review your next chapters, it'll be my pleasure.

-Truth-

Hey there! I'm here to review! ^^

So I liked your opener. It wasn't exactly a 'gotcha' but the idea behind it was nice and makes you think, gets the gears going and then you find yourself wanting to know more about the character and his/her relationship to the mother. But then we reach the first paragraph and it's an explanation of the characters in a photo which kind of loosens or might even lose the hold that you initially had on your readers. Don't dive into straight explanations or details. I wish you could have continued with the mother's memories in the kid a little more but not too much to the point where it looks like you're info dumping, you know?

You go on and continue talking about the mother here and it could in fact be slightly much of an overkill. I'd like to know her a little more but remember to focus on your protagonist too. It's his story, not hers. And although she might have a big part inside of it, I want to know even more about your MC. Appearance? Don't neglect her for too long otherwise your readers could get bored hearing golden thoughts about the mom. Actually without the title I wouldn't have found out whether or not your MC was a guy or a girl. Anyway, what I'm saying is to be sure to get your MC our there.

After finishing the first part of your chapter, I realized one thing. Major info-dump. You tell us almost everything to know about this girl's family and his mom, you tell us her hair and eye color, about the aunt and the kids and her friend and yadda, yadda. Not good. Not good at all, you don't need to do that. There shouldn't be a 'setting up' chapter that reveals all this information. That will scare away your readers if you continue stating things like that. Create a scene, act it out and inform us of those little things bit by bit instead of pushing it into our minds at once. It was like a very long auto-biography actually and I did end up skipping over a few lines here and there because I was wondering when your MC was going to come in. So my advice to you would be to cut out all this unnecessary information. A few things you stated we didn't even need to know. When writing, don't waste time on little details unless they seriously add to the story. I don't need to know that the cup was jeweled at the bottom with a scratch on one side and slightly chipped near the edges unless that cup as going to be a major role in the novel. So, I'd probably try cutting up the first part a bit and omitting a few things here and there and making it more showy than tellly.

Talking about showy and telly, there seemed to be an abundance of 'tell' and not enough 'show' in your work. The difference here is telling is well, telling us the story. You're giving us information and scenes but it's rather bland and lacks characterism. Showing us is giving us actions. Instead of writing "he was glad that I dumped the water bucket on Chad" it would be "his eyes lit up at the mention of me dumping a water bucket on Chad." Similar to that.

Overall, this has potential and you have a good idea so far. Keep writing and try playing around with what I've suggested. Good luck on the rest of this.

^.^)b
-Pink

Thanks so much for the reviews guys! I'm going to re-work a lot of stuff in this chapter tonight and I agree with what you said about info dumping. I've been imagining these characters for so long that I think of all these details that the reader doesn't care about/need to know. My main purpose in this chapter was to establish three things: 1) that her mom left her, 2) the Bucket Summer, and 3) her friendship with Kylar. I maybe overkilled on the first two and neglected the third one a bit... Anyways I really appreciate your reviews! You've been very helpful.

Here I am to review as requested.

The one thing I noticed about this chapter was all the redundancies. Part of it has to do with the infodumps, and part of it with your organization.

Character appearance and relationships aside, the infodumping was particularly noticeable when you covered the Bucket Summers and how it became more than a one-time thing. The redundancy comes in with how you then have the scene showing us the exact same thing, only this time, it's as it's occurring. Choose one or the other; I suggest keeping the scene as it shows more, especially the characters' relationships, than the infodump.

Redundancy aside, the Bucket Summer scene was also confusing time-wise as there's no clear indication of when the scene is happening, and it's only when your reader has read a fair bit into the scene that they realize that it's in the past. You can play around with the chronology a bit, but if you do, there should be a clear indicator for your reader so they can figure out the rough time the scene is taking place in.

Going back to redundancies, there were a lot of them scattered throughout this chapter. A lot of them were straight-up repetitions of what you'd already mentioned before, though some of them were due to organization. For instance, in the beginning, you start out by describing Katie's mother by comparing her similarities to her daughter, and at the very end you tell us the two of them look very much alike. This leads the reader to become frustrated and think "We already know that already because you've only been showing us how they look alike for the entire paragraph." If, however, you were to start out by stating that Katie and her mother look alike, your reader is more likely to wonder just how they look alike, so when you start describing the similarities, they'll say "So that's how they look alike."

How you organize your ideas has a huge impact on how they're received. I suggest that you go through this, first on a whole chapter then scene then paragraph-by-paragraph level, and see if you can reorganize your ideas so that they bring up questions and then answer them rather than answer the questions before they're asked. Doing so will help you cut out a lot of redundancies and may help you spot information that could be cut out and moved into later chapters, which will in turn cut down on the info dumps. Looking hard at the organization may also help you find a more interesting and gripping way to start off the chapter.

For instance, right now, you start off with describing the mother; the main character doesn't really feature at all in the current version. If you were to shift the scenes around a bit, maybe move the Bucket Summer scene to the beginning, you not only introduce the main character, but also her friends and friendship and that she has grown up separate from her mother, which provides some immediate conflict. From that conflict, you can then go into how she feels about her mother, and so on.

Right now, each of the scenes is pretty disjointed from one another. Having better organization will help you find ways to connect these scenes more strongly together so that they're more smoothly a part of a whole rather than slightly mismatched pieces cobbled together.

Outlining isn't just for first drafts; they're extremely useful for later drafts, and I use them all the time. You might find it useful to make an outline of this chapter as-is, then make a second outline which better organizes the ideas in your first outline. Not only will this help you write more cohesive chapters, but such outlines will also make for excellent references as you get further on in writing your story. The further along a story gets, the more things that happen, and the more chapters you have, and sometimes, you'll find yourself needing to refer back to events in a prior chapter but not remembering exactly which chapter. And if your chapter count is in the double digits, well, searching through all those chapters with all that text just to refresh yourself about one specific event is not fun.

So yeah. Outlining will help you in the long run, not only in revising your chapters, but also in keeping all your events straight and easy to refer to.

Hey there, sorry for being so late to your request! I can tell you put a LOT of thought into this, so I will be as honest and helpful as I can in my review

I used to spend hours staring at that picture, as though by looking at her when she was a ten year old, I could somehow evoke all those memories of her I’ve missed, or be shown some aspect of her life today, or even just the inkling of a reason why she left me.

I think it would sound better if you said 'as IF by looking at her... I could evoke memories of her I've missed'

I hardly know anything about my dad, except for the useless facts that he was a charmer, had green eyes, was left handed, played football, couldn’t stand Italian food, and was allergic to clams, all of which I have gleaned from Georgia over a long period of time. I used to ask what exactly had happened to him, where he was now, whether or not he was still with my mom, but I stopped doing that because every time I’d bring it up, Georgia would conveniently change the subject. I have come to the conclusion that he was not someone I should miss.

I like this paragraph. To me, it shows something about her character; that she isn't particularly interested in her father. Even though she grew up without any parents, she is still more interested to know about her mom than her dad.

When my mom finally gave birth to me on August 13, at 4:43 p.m. during her senior year of college

is the time really necessary?

It's our – me, Colette, Brenna, Pablo, and Kylar – job to check up on Kohana Reef, which is about a mile or two off the northwestern coast of Cielorojo Key. Ironically, Morley Aquarium is on Havana Key, a mile to the north, so we have to take a boat out to the reef whenever we’re diving there. Kylar, Colette, and I all live on Cielorojo. Cielorojo, and, specifically, Epsilon, its biggest and only city – which isn’t saying much since there’s less than a hundred people on the whole island – used to be a super vacation spot for tourists, before consumerist places like Miami started popping up all over the place, offering resorts that don’t let you see Florida for what it really is.

If I’m bring really picky, I’d say that this paragraph is a bit confusing. I have to read parts of it twice in order to get the differences straight between the Havana Key and Cielorojo Key. I think maybe you give the readers a bit too much information to remember in this paragraph. Everyone’s names, information about Episilon, and her job as a scuba diver. It seems like a rushed paragraph that breaks from your easy laid-back pace. In my opinion.

Whenever he doesn’t dive – which is more often than not; he can’t dive is he’s had an attack in the last few days, or if he’s sick – he either watches the boat or helps out with odd jobs around Morley

This sentence could use fixing; it kind of bounces around.
Maybe you could rephrase it to something like this:
Whenever he doesn’t dive - which is more often than not - he’s had an asthma attack in the last few days, or is sick. If that happens, he usually stays back and watches the boat or helps out with odd jobs around Morley.

One thing I try to follow her example of: ignorance. If she can pretend I don’t exist, I should be able to pretend she doesn’t exist either.

I love this part

It shoots its brilliant tentacles across the sky,

I don't think tentacles is the right word, in my head it makes the wrong kind of image.

Once more, dusk settles settles over Epsilon with an old and familiar blanket.

typo

“Thanks, guys,” he says sarcastically. “I appreciate your vote of confidence. I hope you know that when I become rich and famous for being the first person to record a green flash sunset, I’m not going to be friends with either one of you.”
I know he’s lying. He wouldn’t know what to do without me. And, to be honest, I don’t think I’d know what to do without him either.

The last two lines sound out of place. And they go without saying, I mean the bond the three characters have is obviously very strong.

Kylar lays down beside me and points up in the sky. “That’s Orion,” he informs me.

“That’s cool.”

“No. That’s Orion.”

I smirk. “Funny.”

I like this quick exchange. I think it shows Kylan’s character; quirky, if not a little shy.

We stay like that until we’re all dreaming of worlds far beyond what we’ve always known.

The last line sounds cheesy, like something you thought up quick on the top of your head. It was also a little confusing to me, I wasn’t sure if they had actually fallen asleep or were just lost in their own worlds. I think you need a more definite ending to this chapter. Maybe mention that after another hour or so of lying there together, you decide to go home and call it a night. At least that’s how I would do it. It just seems like an odd place to end a chapter, in the middle of a daydream.

So I was able to read this whole thing in one sitting, and that’s really a huge thing. I can honestly say that I wasn’t bored once, and that I didn’t have the feeling that your pace, or the character’s voice changed anywhere in the chapter. It all felt very smooth, laid-back, and connected. You’re a great storyteller, and I can feel how this chapter can set up the story to take off at all kinds of different angles. Will there be an appearance from her mom anytime soon? Maybe something exciting will happen on one of their dives. I’m eager to find out more about your characters, and what else you have in store.

Since you want to know what I think about the characters,
Katie- very easy to relate to, I'm sure a lot of people have issues with their parents, or lack of, that they try to ignore or suppress. I'm very sympathetic towards her. However, besides that, she seems a little dry, but mayeb that's just because you've hardly given her any time in the spotlight. After all, wasn't this supposed to be HER chapter?

Georgia- a minor character, from what I can see. You give us a good idea of how Katie sees her, but not much else.

Colette- sarcastic. That's really the only thing I know about her.

Kylan- He's the most interesting character to me so far. He obviously has the most struggles to overcome in life, the loss of his dad, and asthma. He seems like kind of a shy guy, but with a good sense of humor. He's had so many obstacles to overcome in his life, and they obviously haven't put him down, they just seem to have made him stronger and more determined to enjoy life to it's fullest.

I'm sorry to say that you might've failed in describing any of your characters physically; I have no idea what any of them look like, and I keep picturing Katie with brown hair O_O

So, that's all the help I can give. PM me if you post more, or if you have any questions!
~blacksheep

Hey Gen.

I seem to have gotten here late... You've seriously gotten some great reviews. Because of that, this review may look rather tiny and pathetic, but hey, I'll try and help you out. If you have any questions or comments after this review, be sure to let me know.

As a whole, I thought this was pretty good, Gen. The grammar was very well done, which made the piece lovely to read when it came to the flow and junk. You also had some really nice sentences in here that caught my attention, in a good way, of course. I like the whole idea of this too, by the way. I have a thing for stories that include thigns like missing parents and such, so this is probably something I'd buy from a bookshop.

My main problem with this right now is something that I believe has already been mentioned. I found this piece rather info-dumpish. It felt like you wanted to give all of the improtant information to us in one chapter, and it ened up feeling a bit forced to me. One thing that you really do need to remember is there's no rush. It's always best to give us information in little pieces, not in great lumps. For example, take the whole scubba diving thing.

You told us when Katie did it, what she thought of it, who the people she did it with were, what they were like and loads of other details. You don't need to tell us all of that right now. Take the feeling she gets when she dives, for example. I'd like for you to describe that to us later on, in an actual diving scene or something. As for the people she dives with, you don't need to tell us that they have asthma or whatever. You can show that to us alter on. Do you see what I'm getting at? Pace is key. Don't rush all of the information out straight away. Instead, you should release it slowly.

I know this has already been mentioned and that you're aware of it, but I just wanted to let you know that I also think that some aprts of this are info-dumpish. I also want to say that I don't think it's a huge peoblem though. With a little bit of editing, you culd tone it down, but still keep the piece as good as it is. You seem to be a good writer overall, so I'm sure that you can do it.

Is it okay if I don't really mention your characters? It's just that because this is the first chapter, I don't feel I'm familiar enough with them yet. So far though, thigns seem to be going well. All of your characters seem like different people, so that's really great. It's certainly a good start. Your MC has an easy and comfortable voice to follow, and I quite like the way she thinks, acts and such. I hope you don't mind me not going into much detail about this because you did ask about your characters in your post.

Other than that, I think that's about it. I don't want to blabber on because everything I really have to say has already been said. Like I said before, if you have any questions about what I've said, don't hesitate to ask! Oh, and also, I'm sorry for any typos or wrongly spelt words in this review... I have no spell checker. xD

Keep writing,

xoxo Skins

Hey again!

Sorry it took me so long to come back... I think the others pretty much said everything I wanted to point out. It's good you have been putting a lot of thought into this, obviously it makes a better story and if you know your characters, you'll make it easier for us to know them As for the info dumping, just taking your time with some info will be good. Not everything needs to be mentioned at once. If it is important but you could mention later on, it's better to wait to make the piece flow better. I don't know what is important here, and that's why I cannot really take out stuff for you, but I can give and example so you can see what is important in the reader's eyes, but still you, the writer, are the master

Sometimes I think I remember my mom, but most of the time I’m not sure if what I remember is an actual memory or just something my mind conjured up from one of the few stories I’ve been told about her.

I only have one picture that she’s in, and it’s far from recent. She and her older sister are sitting on one of the table tops at Zoe’s Ice Cream, an ice cream shop that is still open todayYou mention this at other times and even if you didn't, if it would be closed, then you would have said it, it's understood that. My mom’s blond locks tumble down in light waves from her ponytail, reaching to her shoulders. In her hand is a melting vanilla ice cream cone topped with multi-colored sprinkles and chocolate syrup. A little dab of the ice cream is on her freckled nose. She is laughing and facing the camera, but her eyes look at her sister. I like to think that it’s a look of admiration, but I suppose it could be amusement. My aunt Georgia, her sister We understand, by saying 'my aunt', that she is also her mom's sister, is five years older and around fifteen in the photo. She has dark, wavy red hair that goes down past her shoulders. In her left hand, she’s holding a chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone.Is that necessary? She’s laughing too, but unlike my mom’s, her eyes rest on the camera. They are both wearing t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops – a testament to the Florida weather they grew up in.And this? Is it too? I understand you plug in here that they are in Florida..

I used to spend hours staring at that picture, as though by looking at her when she was a ten year old, I could somehow evoke all those memories of her I’ve missed, or be shown some aspect of her life today, or even just the inkling of a reason why she left me. By age seven, the picture was so ingrained in my mind I could recall every single detail of it with no effort at all.

The edges are worn now, from when I used to carry it around in my pocket wherever I went. A corner of the picture is burnt, from when I was six and Georgia realized my mom wasn’t coming back, so she tried to burn all of the photos we had of her. She didn’t succeed in destroying this one, which I stole. After more than twelve years, Georgia has still not found it buried in the sock drawer of my dresser.This here, could be told differently.. 'I fingered the worn and burnt edges, from when I was six and Georgia realized Mom wasn't coming back. After twelve years, there was still this tiny bit of memory that had escaped her ravage.' Don't know.. just a suggestion.

My mom and aunt look so alike, in that picture. They have the same prominent cheekbones and tiny noses, perfect eyebrows and lips that are neither too thin nor too large. They even have the same perfect, straight white teeth.We don't truly need to know what they looked like. The important could be said earlier when you talk about the picture.

I have been told my mom was a social butterfly all throughout her school years, constantly having a flock of friends behind her. I look a lot like my mom, my aunt says. I have her very blonde hair, along with the freckles. I share the facial structure with both of them. Truly though, I’m just thankful it’s only her looks I got and not her notoriously wild, spunky demeanor. Again, I'm not sure what this does in here?

This is just suggestions, of course. I don't know what is important for the plot or not, so you will have to judge if things could maybe be said later on. Try showing us, not telling us.

I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help. Hope this helped!
-Truth-