Prologue
The end of the 20th century was a peaceful time for humanity. A time where the global economy was prospering every individual had a job, homelessness decreased and citizens could afford to have leisure time with family and friends.
The year 2050, 50 years into the 21st century the world's economy collapsed.In order to survive individuals, gangs and families would steal from the wealthy who were not affected by the economic downfall. Robbery of the wealthy became a world wide epidemic to severe for the government to handle alone. The government of theses nations input a temporary solution until the economy was stable and back to previous state. The government devised a system of preventing crimes and creating job opportunities known as CO-OP. CO-OP a independent law force operated by the public which the wealthy can request them to do certain tasks to obtain an reward.
Chapter 1
Awaken
The rapid beating of my heart and the tension in my hands started to build up as I walk on this seemingly endless hallway. As I continued walking I hear faint sounds from a distant, the sounds started to get louder and clearer when I walked to closer towards it.
"Sounds like it's a person crying for help" I said to myself. Immediately I rushed as fast as my legs could carry me to the sound which led in the direction of a wooden door. I felt the adrenaline boiling my blood as I began to turn the doorknob but strangely had no sense of fear. Once i opened the door i see a young girl tied up. Upon approaching her she shook her head in terror and had a fearful look in her eyes.
" Hey don't worry i'm not here to hurt you " I said to her.
Little did i know the heads shakes and the look in her eyes were not because of me but what was about to come. Suddenly two people wearing masks jumped out from the shadows and attempted to ambushed me but i managed to evade their attack.
" Look at what we got here a little kid, you know you shouldn't get involved in a grown up's business, shall we teach this shorty a lesson?" said one of the masked strangers.
"Of course! maybe next you will learn your place next time" said the other.
As the two masked strangers began their next attack, the young girl started to mumble loudly and shook her head even more, I smiled and within a flash the two were taken down effortlessly. I quickly untied the girl, streams of tears ran down her face.
"It's all over now you're safe"
" I was so frightened i thought no one would come and rescue me"
" I hate to ask you this after saving me but can you do me a favor?"
" Sure anything"
" Can you please wake up?
"Huh?" I said with a confused look......
"Wake up wake up" said the young woman repeatedly.
My head started to turn dizzy and the world seemed to be turning.
"WAKE UP SHANE" my eyes opened wide as i leaped from my creaky old bed. I turned my head upwards and saw a very big male in glasses smiling at me.
" Looks like you had a lucid dream again ha ha ha " He said to me
" Oh! It's you Laughing, how in the world did you get into my house?" I replied with an annoyed look on my face.
Laughing was my so called "friend" he was very annoying and often always gets in the way of things but, despite this i respected him and thought of him as family. because we only got each other left to look out for one and another.
" The door was opened, it seems like your dad been busy looking for a job that he forgot to lock the door" said Laughing"
" I'm not surprised ever since the economic collapse he lost practically everything our home, his son. and his wife."
Suddenly Laughing jumped into the air and shouted in my ear "DUDE WE BEEN BUSY TALKING I ALMOST FORGOT THE REASON WHY I CAME HERE! TRY OUTS ARE IN HALF AN HOUR!"
" Dang it i completely blank on on that ! Alright you wait outside I'm gonna quickly get ready ill be out there in 5 and don't touch anything"
" See Shane what would you do without me?"
" Shut up!" i replied rushing quickly to get dressed.
Today was the day of the tryouts for the famous CO-OP Fable which occurs every 5 years since their creation. Every tryout that was ever held, many people have tried to get recruited but ultimately failed. Only 100 people get recruited and trained due to their strict requirements, out of the 100 that were recruited my brother Leon was one of them. Leon was considered a genius throughout his entire life and i would live in the dark as the underachieving brother. Leon died 3 years ago on a job, roughly around the time my mother left my dad. Since then it has been my goal to surpass my brother and be recognized as Shane not as Leon's younger brother.
" It's about time you're done getting ready!" said Laughing
" Was thinking about stuff, how long do we have left?" I replied
" 15 minutes"
" Seriously! alright we gotta run there"
As we ran towards our goal I can' help but feel this is gonna be a start of a long adventure....
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
I do love a good book.
This is a very short opening entry. But I admire the length.
Was the prologue necessary?
I'm not sure. It's the sort of thing I would imagine as being part of a blurb.
On Chapter One:
'Once i opened the door i' inconsistent use of the capital 'I' which you have managed to do throughout the first few sentences. XD A blip, me thinks.
'"Wake up wake up"' again, some punctuation lacking here. These are just tiny things, but there should always be some punctuation after the speech marks.
This needs addressing throughout the piece.
Apart from that, I enjoyed reading it, and it had a very interesting feel to it. Especially with all that dialogue. That sounded a bit vague. I just really enjoyed it.
Well done.
Hey there! I think addicted2theshindig hit the nail on the head with his notes on grammar, so I'll stay clear of that, but I will reinforce that fixing the grammatical errors in this piece is key to making it more approachable to readers.
As a note on the plot; thieving from the rich to support oneself was a legitimate career option many, many years ago. Nowadays, and more so as we move closer to the year 2050, the wealth of the world is digitised, held in bank accounts on faraway shores and locked up in bonds, assets and portfolios. Stealing from the rich now means being competent in computer science, being an expert con-artist. Physical thieving isn't something that is really sustainable in this day and age. I think you need to reconsider this when writing your prologue.
The collapse of an entire world economy would have drastic consequences and I don't feel like you emphasise that enough. Without an economy there is no police, no health care, no government. I think perhaps you should revise what you want from an economic collapse as a plot device and redetermine how you should really employ it as such.
I think the dream sequence could be a good way to introduce the CO-OP. Instead of it being almost meaningless to the rest of this passage, why not have Shane dreaming of being in the CO-OP already? Why not have him being jerked awake by the harsh reality of the girl he is saving being disappointed not to be saved by Leon? I feel like a dream sequence must have a reason to be included otherwise it is really nothing more than a cheap plot device.
Also, Laughing is a very odd and confusing name to give a character. It's the kind of name I can see ruining sentences and causing rereads for your audience. Having a name which is a past-tense verb is a nightmare in long passages of text, so I would maybe advise finding a different name for this character, but that's a pretty personal opinion.
In any case, you've managed to make me curious about what the CO-OP Fable really is and the story is of course only in its infancy. Keep up the writing and feel free to let me know when you write more.
Roach.
Hey, welcome to YWS, and congrats on your first post! I think this was an interesting idea, although the premise did remind me of The Hunger Games. I'm going to jump right into the review, then...
- First off, you seem to have many distracting grammatical errors, and I found myself trudging through your story as a result. I will not go through all of them myself, but let me just highlight a few:
You have missing punctuation (most notably, commas and periods) in several places. In (1) below, you are missing a comma between 'prospering' and 'every', and in (2) you should remove the comma and start a new sentence (or split up the utterance). In (3), there needs to be a comma after 'now', and the utterance should end with a period before the closing quotation (as is the case in dialogue throughout your piece):
In other cases, you have capitalization (see 4 below, where 'alright' should be capitalized) and spelling errors (5, should be written 'can't'):
It's not worth the time to point out all the errors right now. I recommend writing in a word processor before posting in order to make spell-checking easier! Also, you can search the forums or articles on Google to explain conventions with punctuation if you have any problems. These are easy errors to fix if you review thoroughly, so it's not a big deal. I'm sure you will catch everything when you edit.
__________
Okay, moving on! I'll leave a few critiques on the story itself:
- I take it that the purpose of your prologue was to introduce the economic crisis that has plunged your world into chaos, but it was a bit vague for my taste. I would appreciate any more details behind this "collapse" that would explain why it affected the lower and middle class only.
Next, in the line "The year 2050, 50 years into the 21st century the world's economy collapsed", I think "50 years into the 21st century" is redundant.
Last point about the prologue, an important clarification needs to be made - you say that "The government devised a system of preventing crimes and creating job opportunities known as CO-OP", but then you call it an "independent law force operated by the public". Which is it, public-, or government-run?
- Next, you open chapter one with a dream sequence. At first, I thought you were lacking a lot of detail and context to what was going on there, but I sort of forgave you when I realized it was just a dream. However, was there a purpose to the dream? Was it foreshadowing a similar encounter for Shane in the future? I hope so, otherwise it would turn out to be out of place and meaningless!
You also switch tenses early in this dream scene ('started to build up', vs 'I walk', below), so double-check that you are consistent:
- The dialogue between Shane and Laughing seemed kind of stilted and unrealistic (side note - Laughing is a strange name choice, any reason for this?). Further, I became confused as to who was saying what in some places. I suggest inserting some descriptive phrases between dialogue to give us a better understanding of the surroundings, and to slow down the pace a bit.
Also, the whole idea of Laughing entering his unlocked house came across as a cheap plot device to remind Shane of the CO-OP Fable. Could this have been done any other way? For example, what if Shane just knew about the event himself (no need to be reminded), and then Laughing would be introduced later, on his way to the event? Just some ideas.
- This paragraph dumped a little too much info:
You're obviously really excited to introduce this event, and to give us a bit of Shane's backstory, but try holding it off and revealing pieces of it throughout the story! For example, maybe someone calls Shane "Leon's kid brother", or tells hims that he would never live up to his brother's standards. I think that would be a more interesting way to go about the introduction of Leon.
Also, I am still unclear about what the CO-OP Fable is. You went into details about how many people are selected, how often it occurs, but at this point all I know is that it is some kind of "job opportunity" involving "try-outs."
__________
To summarize, you obviously have a very interesting idea in your mind and I can tell that you've spent time thinking about the history behind your plot. What you need to do in order to convey these ideas is to work on dialogue and characterization, add details about the setting and physical appearance of your characters, and work on grammatical issues that detract from the overall experience of reading your story.
I hope my review wasn't too harsh; I just wanted to help you move forward! Good luck with this!
Hey! Addicted First i like to say thanks for reviewing my work. I like to ask a few questions that maybe you can answer.
1. Out of 10 what would you rate the story in general excluding the grammar mistakes. ( Please be honest)
2.Do you think this story has potential ?
3. What makes a story well know in your opinion? Like sites such as Fictionpress or Wattpadd etc
4. Do you like cookies ? LOL