Young Writers Society

Hello! First of all, I'm just warning you, I haven't read any of the other reviews on this book so I apologize if anything I say in this review is a repeat of another one. Starting with the beginning of your book however, you give us a large block of information about Camilla and her parents. It's good information for us to know, but it's a lot of telling, so instead of putting all this information together, I would try to thread it through not only this chapter but the entire story. Start this chapter when Camilla's parent telling up to her, then go from there, slowly giving the reader a little more information about Camilla and her life.

Also, you do a lot of telling in this chapter, which something that writers typically want to avoid. It's not something you always have to avoid, but you should when you can. So instead of telling us that none of the other orphans like Camilla, show us this instead by showing the other orphans moving away from her as she sits on the bus, giving her side eyes and glares, maybe whispering about her etc. The same goes for Fabio. You did describe him, and I was able to pick up pretty quickly that he was gay, so that's not something you need to tell the readers. Just show them this through his actions and whatnot.

Dialogue. Alright, now getting more into the grammar stuff, you need to clean up a little but of your dialogue. Every time someone new starts speaking, start a new paragraph. Also, if you add a tag at the end of dialogue, do a comma, the end quotation marks, then the tag. So for example instesd of doing ["Those cupcakes look delicious." She said.] you're going to want to write ["Those cupcakes look delicious," she said.] Notice how the order is quotation marks, dialogue, comma, quotation marks, tag, period. This is how you should do all your dialogue. So the dialogue should look like this:

"Those cupcakes look delicious," she said.

"Personally, I think the donuts look better," her brother responded.

And so on.

Sorry for the food references by the way... now I'm hungry...

I like the story so far though, and the mystery of what happened to her parents, disappearing into that bright light, seems very Interesting! This is definitely a book I would continue to read! Keep up the good work!

Hello! I am also new to YWS and this is the first story I have looked at.

First off, I really like the name. Camellia is beautiful. Well done.
I also like the tone. She sounds like just a really happy person despite all of her struggles; being abandoned, losing her adoptive parents, and being ignored and teased by fellow orphans. She is an instantly likable character, at least for me. I am excited to see how her past has affected her and how it will influence the story in the future. I loved the part where she mentions that she gets angry sometimes. It adds a little quirk to her character. She starts off seeming innocent and sweet, then you have this little twist that changes the whole perception of her. You did a good job of introducing a sense of perseverance in the beginning when she's looking at her clues. It was impressive to me what this girl would do for her parents.


For the beginning of the story, add a first line that really sparks the reader's attention. The name of the character can be introduced at any time, but a memorable first sentence can stick with someone forever.
Many people have heard this before: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." That's just the beginning of a very long, but very beautifully written first sentence. It comes from A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.
I'm not saying make history with your first line, and you don't even have to make it memorable, but it makes a really nice story when it is.
On the other hand, if introducing the name is very important to your story, go right ahead.

One grammar thing that hasn't been mentioned: Watch out for comma splices. That's attaching to independent clauses with a comma, but no coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, etc.). For example, when you say, "It's a nice name, I sure like it." That should be, "It's a nice name. I sure like it." To look for comma splices, just look at your sentences with commas, read on either side of the comma and if both sides have a full sentence and there is no conjunction, take out the comma.

Finally, I agree with Nobunaga. Make sure to show, don't tell. You did very well with this in many cases, but you can do so much more with it. A lot of this is telling the reader information. People are pretty intuitive and you can use this to your advantage. Make people feel the pain of being isolated in your own world because nobody believes you. You want to bring people into your story, not just show them words put together nicely. You have already done this well, so I believe you can keep going and you'll only get better!

Overall, this is a really great concept and story. I can't wait to hear more about Cam's world and finding her parents!

Hello and welcome to YWS!

Wow, I honestly really loved this! I like how Cam is talking directly to the reader. Sometimes that can be hard to pull off if your character doesn't have an interesting voice, but I found myself really liking this! It reminded me a little of Junie B Jones, not that the stories are anything alike. I just found it easy to hear her in my head, if that makes sense.

I think you have a really good plot going on here. I'm so interested to find out where her parents have gone! It seems like it's going to be something supernatural - aliens?! I really feel bad for Cam. She has to be an orphan now and, on top of that, nobody believes her! I would like to see more about how that creates problems in her life. We already got a snippet of it with her foster parent frowning at her and opening her mouth and then closing it again. It really shows how persistent Cam is about what she saw and how tired the foster parent is of arguing with her. By that way, that's a great example of showing versus telling!

I would like to see that showing expanded on. You can do so much with it! For example, whenever Cam was on the bus, she was telling us that people didn't really like her because they thought she was crazy. You could also show us this by writing in that people were giving her snide looks or whispering about her as she passed by. Either way, your writing is very fun to read.

You did well on your grammar, there's just a couple of things I want to mention.

The first is that you should start a new paragraph whenever someone begins to speak. I see you keep your dialogue tags within your paragraphs. "Like this."

"But, really, it should be like this. This also helps to give your chapter more shape so that things don't seem as blocky."

On that same note, there needs to be a comma added whenever you're adding speaking tags to dialogue. For example,

“Yeah, totally Fabio.” I respond.

Hello there! Here to do a review (Obviously xD)

Anyways (Ahem xD),

I agree with the comments from Icy. It is a lot of information to take in, and it doesn't flow in an organized. Setting the story line and flow effectively is a good way to keep your reader interested in what's going to happen next. When I read this, it seems the information is kind of being thrown is being thrown at you from different point in the story from different spots.

Something I also agree with Icy about is the the way you have your story formatted. And what Icy meant by the way the story is structured would be something like this:

So I am going to find out what happened to my parents if it's the last thing I do. "Cam it's time for school!" My foster parent yelled through the orphanage.

So I am going to find out what happened to my parents if it's the last thing I do.

"Cam it's time for school!" My foster parent yelled through the orphanage.

Hi there AsterChai,
Icy here for a quick review (also, it's been a while since I reviewed anything, so please bear with me).

So I'm a little confused by your overall premise here. From what I understand, your MC's parents disappeared when she was seven (despite people telling her not to be silly) and she's determined to find out why.

Here's where I get confused:

Technically my "parents" aren't actually my parents. They found me as an abandoned baby and took me in.

My parents disappeared when I was seven years old.

"Cam it's time for school!" My foster parent yelled through the orphanage.

All the other orphans thought I was crazy, so I don't sit by them.

Of course I'd never do that, why would I do something like that when my parents were the nicest people around