Young Writers Society

Hiya, Boluk! I noticed that this has been kicking around in the Green Room for quite some time, so I thought I'd pop in and give you a quick review. I'm going to focus on different areas in my critique and tell you what I liked and what to improve on. Let's go!

Grammar

Grammar is one of the more superficial issues, but it's still crucial to get right. Here's a quick list of all the things to keep in mind:

1) Keep an eye on your capitalisation. You have a habit of giving capital letters to words that don't need them, and you sometimes forget give a capital letter to the first word of a new sentence. Remember that 'I' always needs to be capitalised if it appears on its own. Most of the time you get all of that spot on, but it has to be consistent - it's a good idea to read through your work several times for typos before you post it up on YWS.

2) You're a bit shaky on your dialogue formatting and punctuation. I'll take a section from the chapter to illustrate:

"Hey Scott" my dad yelled. "you'd better get down here fast or ill feed Your bacon and eggs to the dog." "That's odd" I muttered to myself.

The most important thing to know about dialogue is you must start a new paragraph every time a new character speaks. If you don't, it gets incredibly difficult for the reader to follow the conversation. Punctuation wise, you're not far off, but you need to remember to close your dialogue with a comma, or sometimes an exclamation mark or question mark where appropriate. Keeping those rules in mind, the above quote should look something like this:

"Hey, Scott!" my dad yelled. "You'd better get down here fast or I'll feed your bacon and eggs to the dog."

"That's odd," I muttered to myself.

If you're ever not sure about how to present dialogue in writing, the best thing to do is to look at the dialogue in a published book. I mostly learnt the rules just by following the examples of good writers. It can be a bit of a headache to get your head around at first, but eventually it becomes automatic.

3) Watch your tenses. Most of the piece is written in the past tense, which is fine, but at the beginning and the end of the chapter you slip into present tense. You need to keep it consistent. As with the capitalisation problems, I think you'll be able to fix this quite easily if you just make sure you proofread your work a few more times. Tense slippage happens to us all.

Writing Style

Once you've cleared up the scattered punctuation problems, I think your writing style will be pretty competent. You're pretty good at description, though you could definitely be a lot more thorough; it would be good if you filled us in a little more on what the house looks like. When Scott's dad opens the door and the snow comes in, it would be good if you could describe how the cold air swoops in as well, just to root your description in more senses than the visual.

Probably my main issue with your writing style is how you choose to write the introduction to the story. Even though the idea of wind gods and demons and ghouls is all interesting to me, you're giving the game away much, much too early. I never like to see stories open with what is effectively a summary of the whole plot, because it feels like you're trying too hard to convince the reader that the story is worth reading. It also means I know exactly what to expect, which takes the mystery away.

You need to let the novel speak for itself. Scrap the exposition at the beginning and start the story where it starts - in this case, with Scott waking up, realising he hasn't done his homework, then finding out there's been a huge snowstorm in a place where it barely even rains. That will get us straight to the action, straight to the mystery, and will hold our attention a lot better.

Characters

It's obviously a bit early to be forming opinions, but Scott seems like a pretty fun narrator! You do a good job at capturing his voice and personality even though this piece is so short. I think a lot of people will be able to relate to him. He's quite different to how I was as a twelve-year-old, but I like his plucky attitude.

Plot

I think the plot has a lot of promise, and I definitely like the intrigue of starting with a snowstorm in a place that is usually very mild. It raises immediate questions and makes me wonder what could be going on. One thing that did perplex me was why it took so long for Scott to realise it had been snowing. Did he not look out of the window once while he was pacing around his room? And if there's an ice tornado outside, would he not have heard the wind? It just seemed like a bit of an oversight to me.

Still, it is a pretty solid opening. My main concern is that I don't think this is complete enough to be a chapter in its own right. You do get some pretty short chapters in novels, but they have to feel self contained and like a complete unit. This one feels like it drops off a bit out of nowhere. You have more scope to write about Scott voyaging out into the snow and meeting his friends, and you could dedicate a lot more time to him investigating the strangeness of it all. When we get to the end of the chapter, I want to feel like the story has progressed a little, and that the characters are in a slightly different place to when they started. Think of chapters as stitches in a seam, each one leading into the next. Each stitch (or chapter) should help to bring the beginning of the story a little closer to the end.

So, in short, I'd say that the best idea would be to extend this chapter. Tell us about what happens after Scott leaves the house and continue to draw out the mystery of the snow storm. Then you'll be on your way.

I hope this helped! If you've any questions about anything I said in this review, please don't hesitate to ask.

Keep writing!
~Pan