Young Writers Society

Hey-o! I see a good story to review! Let’s dive in.
This seems to be a really good story, but I feel that in a few places there could have been better sentence structure. For example, when you wrote “Kai made his way down Jack Road, and the familiar feeling of dread filled him.” We have two separate phrases here, that could have easily been separated in to two separate sentences: “Kai made his way down Jack Road. A familiar feeling of dread filled him.” Or is some places where there was a bit less rhythm, where the ‘beat’ of the story of was three sentences where there was only one subject. Sometimes, this is good. But in this case, a better beat would be ‘single term, sentence with comma, single term’.
Second, what do you mean by ‘derelict building’? Of course, it’s always good to leave some questions unanswered in a story, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have good description! It would add more suspense to describe where our character is.
Overall, great story. It seems to have a lot of lore, and potential. Happy writing!

Hey there! I’m here to leave a review:

I really liked the setting of the story: a world after a war with AI. I also liked how you brought the building from the beginning of the story back with the lesson. Although, I feel as if some things are confusing. You may have heard of “Show, don’t tell.” Showing something is saying something like “the building was scary,” while telling something would be describing how the character feels or reacts to something. Hope this helps!

—GengarIsBestBoy

Hello Sunflower here for a quick (probably not) review!

So I would like to state before I begin my critique that I found your story immensely and I will in fact touch upon the things that I like in the story because there were quite a few! But before that I'm going to get some of the negatives out of the way.

So one of the major problems I saw was the fact you tended to tell instead of show when it came to your writing telling us how eerie and creepy the setting felt and such. One example would be when he was walking past the old training center:

"Kai made his way along Jack Road, and the familiar feeling of dread filled him. In front of him was the derelict building he hated walking past every day to school."

Instead you could do something like:

"Kai made his way down Jack Road, that familiar feeling of dread krept up his spine. The building in front of him... god it sent shivers down his spine, he had once even considered finding another way to school just so he would have to pass it every day."

Something like that because remember an opening(which this seems like it is) is ment to also introduce the characters personality and seeing he seems to be a bit of a nerd type character you want to show that off through him planing or taking different things into consideration.

Another problem I have is he gives off a bit of a Hiccup problem vibes, which if you don't know is when an entire society as a whole is wrong but are main character is right and knew all along this can usually end up leading in the Mary/Gary Sue archetype. This problem could be fixed by some kind of explanation being woven into the story, why does he think this way: His parents, another teacher, a bigger group movement at large? It's a great way to not only widen your world but also make it feel more real, perhaps in this world the AI were a sort of conspiracy? It's something to think about.

I also noticed are main character felt as if he had a mix of a superiority complex (when it came to learning about the AI wars immediately thinking he knew more than even the teacher and the government) btu he also seems to have inferiority complex (I.E not being able to hang out with his class mates and seemingly being pretty lonely) these are interesting character flaws that could make the MC feel far more interesting than your average main character is your really go all in on it, because I feel as if it's rather rare we get any main characters who aren't perfect and are even slightly snobbish and rude.

Lastly I want to talk about the writing style itself, your story is very creative but your writing is a little bit bland. Most of the language is very straight forward and bland, you tend to get straight to the point, and while a story doesn't need excessive amount of fluff it needs a little bit to make the setting feel real. A good way to do this is describing the main characters feelings physical and mental as well as the surroundings and minor events happening like the gut who never pays attention in class or the man who always stands smoking on the side of the road, stuff like that!

As for the positives, I absolutely adored the plot itself! This short story raises so many questions that I'm dying to have answered! I loved the ending being such a cool cliff hanger. I like the fact that the main character seems to be a little snobby and not a perfect little angel it's a really interesting character trait that we don't often see in modern literature! I really think this story could be quite interesting if you put in the effort ( which you already seem to be doing) and I'd honestly love to read more!

Thank you so much for reading my stupidly long review, I hope you have agreat day/night and keep on writting! Bye!

Hello, Mika!

This is Alex/ShallowHouse, I've been out a long while and this might be a good time to come back to this site by reviewing your work! Given, it was a request but thank you for that, hehe

So first of all, wonderful job on this short story, it had a vibe of... forgotten ancient technology a la Horizon, Breath of the Wild, Final Fantasy VII/X, the anime Deca-Dence and Ergo Proxy, Ghost in the Shell, the works. Just your favorite anime-inspired post-apocalyptic setting- at least, that's what I felt from this.

Now, I'll admit. The teacher was pretty mean laughing at a simple innocent question but it does happen in real life sadly.

I would have loved to know more about the backstory of the setting. Lots of questions, them being...
What was the original purpose of the A.I.?
Were there any contemporary theories about why the A.I. malfunctioned?
What were the Training Centres for? Why were they called that?
And how did Humanity prevail in the war?

I would love to read a sequel to this, if you're thinking of making one!

Hi there! Lim here with your requested review!

General Impressions

I’d actually read through this story a few days ago and I particularly liked the beginning. The introduction of the “derelict building” created this ominous atmosphere that leads in to the plot twists later on. I also related to Kai’s feeling of fear regarding the AI and also loneliness when everyone else in class seems to make light of it. The fact that none of the classmates are described in detail, and only the teacher is named, somehow gives the story an eerie feeling, like something is not quite right from the get go.

Plot

Something I liked about the plot was how you handled the twist, which is that actually, Kai is right and the danger of the AI has not been completely eliminated. As I was reading it, I felt like this ending was being foreshadowed, but I also kept thinking (along with Kai) that hmm, hey wait, maybe things really are fine after all. The scenes where the tension is relieved and other people are acting casual, going about their day-to-day lives, help ‘mislead’ the reader or at least make the reader second-guess themself. So even though it’s foreshadowed, the ending still has an effect of surprise, which makes the story interesting.

Descriptions and Style

Something that could be improved would be the word usage in the descriptions. While adjectives like “creepy” and “derelict” tell me that the atmosphere is supposed to be ominous, I find it a bit hard to picture in my mind what the building looks like. That makes it harder for me to step into Kai’s shoes as the main character, so to speak. Adjectives can be less immersive or vivid than using specific verbs or nouns, and adjectives are used quite frequently in the descriptions here, for example:

Kai made his way along Jack Road, and the familiar feeling of dread filled him. In front of him was the derelict building he hated walking past every day to school. He quickened his pace and distracted himself by thinking of the interesting history lesson about the AI War that his teacher had taught. The scientists had invented something unimaginable, something even smarter than humans.

The piercing sound of the school bell told Kai to hurry. He was late. He put on a burst of speed and entered the classroom.

Everyone was wrong. They had been wrong about it their whole life.

Hey there Mika, Icy here for a quick review on what is a very rainy Sunday afternoon for me! I was intrigued by the title of this, especially given all the recent chatbot developments, so here I am.

I think the first paragraph of this was a good way to get us into the theme of the story, but I found it to be a little too fast paced. I'd love for some extra description of the derelict building and perhaps some insight into why Kai is scared of it, before we jump into his thoughts about AI.

I'm also not sure if you chose Jack Road as a name on purpose, but I found it a bit confusing as we'd just been introduced to the main character by name, and I kept thinking of him as Jack instead of Kai for the rest of the piece.

“The AI malfunctioned and went out of control. When our country tried to shut it down, it only got stronger, sending out robots to defend itself. As you all know, the robots were merciless and aggressive. To keep our country safe, the government had to set up multiple training centres all over the country.” Kai gasped. He had not known that

Hi, hello there! This is Ina speaking. I am here to give a little comment/review for your very interesting and well-written short story. Anyways, let's get into it.

I have never read a very interesting science related story in YWS but this one caught my eye. I love how you described Kai and his emotions about this AI war. I think your story was descriptive and has good dialogue. Although, you forgot to capitalize some words, you can re-read it again to double check and I think this should have other chapters or related stories for this because it seemed cut short at the end and to explain more about the AI war. Also, about how Kai is related to this AI war.

I hope this helps! Your story is good and can be better if you fix it a little. Have a good morning, day, afternoon, or night.

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