Young Writers Society

Thanks. I am posting up more chapters now.
AMGreen

It's a good concept, but it feels rushed. This is a six year old, so the emotional content isn't going to be quite as in depth as an older child or adult's would be, but it still feels a little like this is just happening, with no real backstory. Though, if used too much, backstory can bog a story down. This is just a first draft though, so you can always go back. It's not bad, though, not bad at all.

A. M. Green wrote:Thanks, I really appreciate that. I totally agree with you on description and stuff like that. My main goal right now is to get the story down, then edit it later. Once again, thank you. This helps a lot
AMGreen

Thanks, I really appreciate that. I totally agree with you on description and stuff like that. My main goal right now is to get the story down, then edit it later. Once again, thank you. This helps a lot
AMGreen

Hi A. M.,

Review as per your request.

Overall, I’m afraid I wasn’t quite as hooked as cheez_burger. I found the piece quite brief: you’ve crammed several life-changing events into a mere 450 words, and it feels to me like you’ve skipped a lot of what would make the story compelling and the characters engaging. I think that this piece would benefit from being doubled, perhaps tripled, in length -- thus allowing the reader time to settle into the story, and providing greater depth to reel us in.

A key problem with this piece for me is shallow point of view. You relate events and actions, but rarely the protagonist’s thoughts, feelings and perceptions. We don’t go inside the protagonist’s head until she begins to remember Tricopia, and even then only for a sentence. I count only three such sentences throughout the whole piece. So the vast majority of the story takes place without the protagonist ever thinking anything or feeling anything. She doesn’t seem to feel fear of the changes ahead of her, confusion at why this is happening, anger toward the people ruining her life, terror of being parted from her family, etc. She doesn’t experience her heart rate picking up and her stomach starting to flutter as fear kicks in. And so on. The whole piece feels very shallow to me, and I don’t get much of a sense of the protagonist at all.

It’s for this reason that I was confused by the protagonist’s final action: attacking the guard and running away. Why does she do this? I could take a guess at her emotional state, but I’d have to be guessing because it’s not in the text. There’s no buildup, no emotional context, no motivation.

I was also confused by other character actions throughout the story. For example, I couldn’t understand why the protagonist’s parents allowed their six-year-old daughter to be abandoned on another planet never to be seen again. They put up a little resistance, but seem to allow a single guard to intimidate them both into backing down. Then they “willingly” get into the rocket and “smile” as they abandon their child to her horrible fate. Why? The urge of a parent to protect their child is incredibly powerful. People are capable of unexpected, even superhuman feats of strength and determination to protect their children. But the protagonist’s parents just seem to shrug and give up.

(If the message I’m supposed to be getting is that the opposition is so overwhelming, the parents can never possibly hope to free their child, then the scene probably needs more than one guard and/or heavy weaponry or something. At the moment it reads like the parents gave up very easily.)

Another problem I struggled with was white room syndrome. There’s basically no sensory description throughout the piece. No visual description, no tactile sensation, nothing. You mention a “pause [that] hung in the air”, but are we talking the hot, humid air of a tropical jungle, or the crisp recirculated air of an air-conditioned conference hall, or the frosted air of winter, or what? There’s a “crowd”, but is it a crowd of ten or ten thousand? A crowd of picketers clutching misspelled signs, or a crowd of football fans in their brightly-coloured scarves, or a crowd of disgruntled striking miners clustered round burning oil drums? Are the protagonist and her family being jostled and pushed around by the crowd? Is it deafeningly loud? What’s the rocket look like? What about the guard? What sensations and feelings does the protagonist experience as she slashes the guard -- does his skin tear like paper, is his blood hot, does she get a kick of adrenalin?

Ultimately, I feel like this piece needs to be expanded and deepened. The technical problems like extraneous commas and shaky dialogue punctuation need to be cleared up (and I’m not too keen on the second sentence which reads like a very obvious stage direction to the reader), but mainly, I’d suggest focusing on the sensory description and deeper point of view. Show us the protagonist’s perceptions, both physical and emotional: her sensations, her thoughts and feelings, her memories and fears.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Karsten

Thanks Cheezit! I really appreciate it. I've done a couple of short stories, but this is my first attempt at a novel. I'll be posting more soon!
AMGreen

Wow! What a great prolouge! Is this your first piece? If so, then outstanding! I love the detains of you raking your claws down his arm! I can't wait to read more!!! ~Cheez_Burger~