Young Writers Society

I'm so sorry the Checklist Challenge made me do it Hi Omni! Tuck here with a review for you today.

He couldn't help thinking how annoyed Isaiah would be if he could see him - not because he was almost cutting himself just to be able to hear what was going on, but because the apron had been a prize from last year's Comic-Con and that made it a collectible or something so Isaiah was always on his back about how it shouldn't even be touch, never mind actually used.

Like a vacuum had sucked out all the moisture from his mouth, he could barely speak

Hello! So I'm feeling like I don't get to talk to my crew-mates enough and I wanted to make a change to that this month but with RevMo and house mortgage and new boyfriend stuff, it just seems like there's never enough time (plus I love watching stuff on Netflix and have indulged in that way more than I should). What I'm saying is I still owe you a proper hello but until I get my life in order, I figured I could kill two birds with one stone by writing you each a review.

Specifics

1.

Sighing and wiping his hands onto his "Video Games + Cooking / 'Logical'" apron that Isaiah won from last year's Comic-Con (to this day, they still bicker over Ryun actually using the apron, because apparently it was a collectible and shouldn't have been touched or something like that. Ryun never really paid attention to that stuff. What's the use of buying something if you can't use it?), Ryun sauntered into the living and turned up the television so he didn't have to risk cutting himself to actually know what was going on.

"--Reports of tropical storm Seth indicates it will reach landfall in southern Georgia within a day, and estimated wind speed will become upwards of 100 [This is dialogue so you should write this out as one-hundred.] miles per hour within the first day of landfall. Cities such as Jacksonville, Florida and Savannah, Georgia should be evacuated immediately."

Isaiah would be more than willing to help with that last part.

One last line before the commercials started on the weather channel caught Ryun's attention --he really needed to focus on one thing and get it done before the spinach wilts wilted-- and he set the knife down, his brows furrowing.

With only one of them actually having a job at the moment, any money that they could say save, they should.

If the weather channel was right (which, to be fair, they weren't more times than a lot of people realized), then this little modest tourist trap of a town he lived in for the momen will moment would be caught in the brunt of the storm sooner rather than later.

Ryun sighed and glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes had passed, and Isaiah still wasn't hope home.

This was a really good part of the story. I liked the realism in it. Like, in real life, storms and 'wife waiting at home while wondering if he was cheating on her' It shows that you know about normal experiences. I only have two questions? First of all, is Ryun and Isiah gay? Nothing wrong with that, but i'm just curious. Second of all, I didn't get the end part. Like, Isiah comes home and he's really weather beaten, but what does he mean by autumn? Does he mean he thought he was autumn? (Really sorry this is the first part of Harbingers of Revolution I've read)

Anyway though, this is a really good part and keep making more! Keep writing!



-Ross

Hi! Excited to read this! I'm like SUPER worried about Isaiah because I don't really recall seeing mention of him on your character list / LMS notes in general Don't be dead! I'm very much rooting for them to reunite at the end. Actually that reminds me of a movie I watched while on rotation--I say that because it was someone else's house so I'm not sure I can remember the title. A google search makes me think it's "The Impossible," about a family that got caught up in the tsunami in Thailand and their struggles to survive and find each other (true story).

Anyway, firstly I have to say I LOVE the MC. I'm gathering that he lives in a US town but has Asian heritage (sounds Japanese?), and is in a long-term committed relationship (either daydreaming about getting married in the future but haven't got there relationship-wise, or live in a time when they can't and they're just committed life partners). Because of that, Isaiah had BETTER BE ALIVE sheesh!

Plotwise, I think this chapter sets us up well--it's fairly obvious what to expect, at least in the terms of a weather disaster. The only thing I'd add in is maybe a mention about the virus in Atlanta, which I saw in your notes but nowhere in the chapter. The first chapter is where promises are made and expectations are set up, so if there's a supernatural sort of twist to the story (namely, our MC gaining powers), we ought to get an indicator right away, even if it's only a wayward comment on the tv.

Characterization is really strong. Ryun has a lot of voice and personality, and I already get a feel for how he's different to Isaiah (and yet how they complement each other). I think my biggest complaint is that since we don't know who Autumn is, ending the chapter there is rather underwhelming. It feels like it should pack some sort of punch, but I have NO sense of her importance to Ryun or why we should care that she's at his door.

Setting is probably the most lacking department. There are some good little details here and there (looove the cooking detail), but I think we could do with more sense of the actual physical surroundings. The kitchen, the living room, the town they live in, the time of year. There's a lot of introspection about their apartment, but it's actually quite non-specific, I thought. It wasn't concrete imagery I could picture so much as abstract ideas.

Technique-wise, I think this is the biggest area you could improve--but at the same time, this is LMS and a first draft, so I'm not very worried about it. One comment is that the tense seems to slip around a lot. The narrative is rather stream-of-consciousness, in the negative sense. I LOVE the voice and want you to keep that, and keep the narrative depth it gives you, but I feel like the paragraphs are a little too helter-skelter. They don't have a great focus or flow. Consider exactly what you want each scene (and each paragraph within the scene) to convey and accomplish. In some places, Ryun does a lot of thinking about stuff, in a way that drops a lot of telly exposition on the reader. I think you could replace the outright tells with more subtle shows to paint a stronger picture.

For example, this section:

Of course, Ryun could understand where Isaiah was coming from --to an extent. He wanted their house to actually feel like a home. However they could do that, they should. As it stood, they weren't allowed to hang up any pictures on the walls, unless they got those fancy-schmancy tape-hook things that were utterly ridiculous for the price. They weren't allowed any pets above a freakin' fish (and Ryun guessed that walking fish wasn't a thing) nor any large furniture.

In Ryun's opinion, the whole thing wasn't a "home." It was a stopping place while they both waited for something bigger and better. They were only renting this place, and it's not like it was a place they could both live in comfortably. With only one bedroom, Ryun ended up making the living room his room, and it's not like they could end up living forever in there.