Young Writers Society

Hey there, I'm here to give you a review, if you don't mind! This work is like three weeks old and has some good reviews already, but I thought I would comment on this first chapter before reviewing the second.

So, my first thought after reading this is that it seems pretty rushed. The narrator barely glosses over events that I would absolutely LOVE to hear more about - a six couple makeout session? Twerk off? How did Kaitlyn manage to fit those cookies in her stomach, and how did she manage to steal beer? I'm super interested in hearing the sweet deets about these - there's some potential in them, after all.

Showing us these events is a great opportunity to really build your characters and show them off to the reader, rather than just being told that, for example, Mason swears a lot, or your main characters have strict parents. I would prefer to see these characters and judge them for myself rather than being told that they're funny and quirky, heh.

I... also question why and how thirteen year olds are getting their hands on beer. If their parents are strict, I'd think they would notice missing alcohol, or that their children are missing and making too much noise. Also, hangovers - how do they deal with them? xD

I think that's all the criticism I have to give, really; I don't have much to say since it's a short chapter and everything goes by kind of quickly. One thing to note is that there's no sure sign of conflict yet - just some information on past events that I can't say I know are super important to the storyline.

That being said, the "170 days before" and "161 days before" is a pretty clever way to set up tension, and I'll keep reading to see what happens! I also want to say that I love the voice of the main character, like Carlito; it's surprising how many works I see where the main character lacks voice in their first person narration, but I think you've nailed it.

That's it from me - onto the second chapter! Hopefully this helped just a bit, but if you have any questions, please ask! I'll answer them to the best of my ability. Good luck, and thanks for the good read!

Hello and happy Review Day! I’m tgirly, here to review your chapters.

I like the “___ days before” headings. I think they’re intriguing and leave the reader wondering what monumental event is so important that the characters are counting down to it half a year before hand. I like the effect of prolonged suspense it creates. However, a similar countdown is used in “Looking for Alaska” by John Green, so be careful to make sure it doesn’t feel like you’re copying that.

Using a semicolon in the very first sentence makes it seem like you’re trying to hard in my opinion.

When you introduce an acronym, unless it’s incredibly common, you should explain what it stands for right away. If you’re not ready to tell us what it stands for, maybe your narrator could acknowledge the fact that they’re withholding information?

I like the really casual tone of the chapter. It’s very conversational and makes it feel like the narrator is someone comfortable with talking to the reader, which establishes a really interesting dynamic. I also like how you set up this tone right away with the “so me and my friends”. The phrase gives us so much insight into the type of character the narrator is and the type of novel the reader’s about to begin.

You don’t need the . after aka, nor to have it in parentheses. Really, the whole part from aka to front yard could be in parentheses, same for the other aka.

It sounds like the night went exactly as planned, I don’t understand what the narrator means when she says it didn’t.

Additionally, this scene of the all-nighter could be seriously elongated. You could include description of the room they’re in, what it was like drinking the beers (probably for the first time for some of them), and having 12 people in one persons’ room, which seems like it’d be kind of crowded. Additionally, since it’s told in first person, it would probably focus on whoever she was making out with, describing him and what that was like. Right now, you’re just giving us a synopsis of what happened, but the readers want to feel like they were actually there. The second all-nighter has a bit more description, but could also use more details. These two nights should take up at least a page each, if not 4 or 5, though of course if they got that long you’d have to introduce other conflicts as well.

You have a really similar writing style to me; I always rush my scenes in earlier drafts as well, and then have to spend all the later drafts stretching them out. The important thing is you’ve got some major conflict started (the way the kids are obviously not on the same page as their parents, and aren’t able to communicate their frustrations to their parents, so they have to go behind their backs and start to go a bit extreme with the partying), and I’m excited to see where this story’ll go and what it’ll turn into. And the characters are getting set up really, really well, so that’s really great (though I am curious to see if the main character Jessica also has a nickname.)

I hope this review helped! If it seems harsh, it’s only because I think this piece has got some potential. Good job; I hope you keep on writing this!

-tgirly

Hello hello!! I picked this out of the green room because realistic teen fiction is the BEST fiction!! So lets get started!

Welcome to YWS by the way!! Super excited to see you getting involved right away! Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help you with anything at all as you get used to the site

I'm super intrigued by your "170 days before" and "161 days before"! To me this implies that something big is going to happen in 170/161 days and I can't wait to find out what! Some of my favorite books have used devices like this and I think it can be super effective (one book I'm thinking of in particular is Looking for Alaska by John Green).

I'm also into the voice of your main character so far. I looooove first person narration because we can really get into the character's head and know what they're thinking. Voice becomes super, super important in first person narration because the person's voice is telling the story and if they don't have an awesome voice, it's going to be hard for the reader to engage. Voice can be super hard to do and capture, but so far, I like your narrator's voice.

My biggest qualm so far is that this is mostly telling and I want way more showing. This is an article I really like about the difference between showing and telling and how you can show more in your work. (The article comes from the knowledge base here on YWS, an awesome, awesome resource for all things writing!)

I want to see this club. I want to feel like I'm there with them. Give me some more description of the setting and put me there. Then show me these kids and what they're doing and how they're interacting with one another. I want to see all of the shenanigans they get into and see how their night doesn't quite go as planned. And then I want to see all of the crazy things that go down at their next all-nighter. Put me in the scene with them and let me see all of the things they do and experience what they are. Slow both of these scenes down

Other than that, I'm really curious to see where you're going to take this! It sounds like you have an interesting cast here and I am very intrigued about what the count-down is for Let me know if you have any questions or if there's something you'd like feedback about that I didn't mention! I hope you keep working on this story and that you keep posting it on YWS. If you do, let me know if some fashion (tag me @Carlito in a wall post, write on my wall, send me a PM, whatever floats your boat) and I'll keep reading it!

Hey there Jurelixranoanad and Welcome to YWS! It's just lizzy dropping by real quick, so without a further ado, let the reviewing begin.

So this whole thing is just a bit outrageous, even for fiction. I don't know how you spent your time during your 13th year, but as a homeschooler, I can definitely say I wasn't holding a kegger in my basement when my parents were out of town. If you're gonna have characters doing such things as drinking and actually being able to hold down any sort of liquor, older characters might be a better option. The themes here are pretty mature and just don't seem like things that would actually happen within a friend group, no matter how restrictive the parents had previously been on their lifestyle.

All of the entries sound like they're purposely written in a drunken state and that is just another thing that puts me off from this work. I noticed that you're using a similar formatting as Paper Towns which has some similar themes in it and is part of the point of why I'm bringing it up. The formatting of explaining the nicknames is also a bit awkward and I'd recommend some parenthesis combined with italics to make it neater. As it is, the story just sort of stumbles through the motions but never really gets anywhere content wise. I'm not really that interested in it, just mildly, but enough to keep reading about how you stretch this zany idea out over an entire novel.

The cursing is also a bit messed up and the characters are just sort of dancing around in it. I'd suspect with a character purposely written for creative swears, that you'd actually write in some creative swears. As it stands, it's just relatively mild things and is just another case of teenage rebellion and saying words they don't really understand. There's more mature bits scattered all around and that's sort of bothersome to a reader because you're mildly concerned for these characters.

And yeah that's all I really wanted to add to the conversation. If you have any questions about this review or anything else, feel free to shoot me a pm.
~Lady Lizz

This review courtesy of

Hello! DragonNoir here for a review!

Well, I suspect that this will have much more depth to it in future chapters, but I still managed to find a lot of puncutation and spelling mistakes. Just don't worry about it! It happens!
First of all, you write that the narrator is 'Jessica Ditka', who is also head of 'WVHC', but you never really tell us what those letters stand for, unless you plan to reveal that in later chapters, which won't necessarily work now that you've mentioned it.
"... to 11 13 year old..." Here, you could have used a dash between 11 and 13, just to make it neater.
"The fist big thing..." You spell it as 'first'.
"That night didnt go..." You must use an apostrophe between the 'n' and 't' of "didn't"
"First of all Kaitlyn aka. the cookie monster because she once ate 12 cookies then barfed all over my front yard..." Here, a comma could be used after 'First of all' and the rest of this quote after 'aka.' should have been put in parenthesis. Same goes for the fragment about Fox and Mason.
"... a major make out 6 couple make out..." Here, 'make out' needs to be written with a dash, from what I know, and a comma should be placed after the first 'make out'.
"God love him" You usually say 'God bless him' but it might be different from your area. Also, it wouldn't hurt to add a comma after 'him'.
"...never the less." You spell it as one word; 'nevertheless'
"... ice water..." It's either ice or water. Or it's very cold water. Take your pick.
"... he said WTF..." 'WTF' should be in quote marks.
"Mostly twerking, at one point we were having a twerk off." It would be better written like this "Mostly twerking at one point. We were having a twerk-off"
"... on the floor giggling about things we were saying that looking back weren't actually funny." This could be written as: "... on the floor, giggling about things we were saying that, looking back, weren't actually funny."

Now, on a more positive note! I really look forward to the next chapter, it seems like this will be an interesting piece of prose. You used the theme of young rebellion very effectively and made things go quite dark in that last line. Overall, pretty good, but your punctuation and spelling could be better. I hope this review helped!