Saturday, October 31st—11:30 AM
If you remember, last night Matt and I had our first official broadcast. I’ll admit I had a good time doing it, and it was a nice break from the current monotony of school. I’m in that point in the school year where getting up each morning is getting harder and harder. Now that the freshness of September and October is almost faded, the winter doldrums are about to set in.
Like I said, we’re based in my family’s RV, so it’s almost like a private studio. It was my first dad that was really gung-ho about camping. He used to take Raymond, my younger brother, and I camping nearly every weekend. When my mom got really into it we started to go on camping road trips down in the Southwest.
My first dad wasn’t very good with words, but he could spot beauty that was light years away. He used to call us outside. “Look,” he would say as stars glided over a velvety sky, “Look at the universe.” During the day, he used to spot other things. “Look, Olivia Billia, look at the flowers.” He would point at the small flowers growing out of the cracked, dry earth. Olivia Billia was his dumbass nickname for me. “They’re fighting,” he remarked. I never figured out what exactly the flowers were fighting, but I guess the sentiment was nice.
Mom and my first dad got divorced when I was eight and Raymond was four. The second dad came after that. He’s the one we have now.
Dad isn’t much into camping as much as the first one was. He’s more of an indoors kind of guy. His idea of adventure is heading down to the basement to try and help find one of Raymond’s toys. I don’t really know how we ended up with the RV; it now just sits in our backyard, although Raymond likes playing in there with his friends.
During our broadcast last night, Matt and I talked mostly about the Novites, which is now something I’ll brief you on:
I first heard about the Novites when I was in my first period chemistry class. The teacher hadn’t entered the room and everyone was fooling around. Looking back, a bunch of kids were talking about the coup, although I’m pretty much still asleep first period, so it’s only looking back that I actually remember people talking about it. I vaguely remember the radio anchors on the drive in to school talking about the coup.
It was at lunch that people really began freaking out. By then, almost everyone had heard about it through social media. I was confused at first, and I originally thought the government had shut down again. Headlines proclaimed “WHO ARE THE NOVITES?” and “MASSIVE USURP OF WORLD POWERS LEAVES BILLIONS IN THE DARK”.
I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around how something like this could have happened. All I can picture is the Novites walking into the White House saying something like “Surprise! We’re in charge now.”
The president hasn’t really commented on this whole incident.
Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of conspiracies have popped up, some claiming that the president is dead, others saying that the Novites will bring about the Rapture.
The whole event sounded radical, but to be honest it hasn’t really changed anything in our day-to-day lives. Still, everyone these days loves to discuss who the Novites actually are.
No one has ever seen a Novite in public. All we have seen is a blurry photo that was leaked, and it almost looked like the Novite was wearing a spacesuit.
Maybe the Novites are aliens.
Who knows?
I hope something develops; any discussion of the Novites seems old and repetitive at this point. They’re becoming old news, which scares me. Are we just going to accept this coup?
Tuesday, November 3rd—8:45 PM
I don’t believe it. A kid in my grade (Wilson) has disappeared. I last saw him during Friday’s gym class, huffing into his inhaler on the sidelines.
At first we thought he went away on vacation or something—Wilson had been gone since the beginning of the week— but now it’s Thursday, and someone said his parents are home.
So where is Wilson?
Matt says the Novites took him. At first this sounded ridiculous, but looking back, Wilson isn’t the only one to disappear. One of my neighbors has been gone for a week and a half. Her house is dark at night and newspapers are piling up on her doorstep.
Are the Novites taking people? Wouldn’t Wilson’s parents have said something? Why would the Novites take people? What if the Novites are talking people and the people who know the taken people have been threatened to stay silent?
I’m sorry; that sounds completely crazy. Blame my school-tastic sleep schedule.
Wednesday, November 5th—3:22 PM
Still no sign of Wilson today.
On top of that, a girl at my school figured out that it was Matt and I on the radio last Friday night. She cornered us in the hall.
“Hi, I’m Alicia. You’re Olivia, right?” She stuck her hand out as a greeting and I shook it uneasily.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“I heard you on the radio Friday night.” A tingling wave of panic raced over me as I responded. “That wasn’t me.”
Alicia rolled her eyes and pulled up Twitter on her phone. “You posted ‘why arent people panicking about a government takeover? Idk seems pretty serious tho’. Singularity literally said the exact same thing on air Friday night.”
I turned to walk away. “Doesn’t prove anything. I could just be copying her.”
Alicia raised her voice as I left for the cafeteria. “I want to help you guys! C’mon, it’ll be fun!”
I talked to Matt after school and he thinks we should let her join our team. The more the merrier, right?
If Alicia joined, it would keep her quiet, right?
Thursday, November 6th—8:25 PM
Alicia is on the team! She’s actually pretty decent, although bossy if you ask me. And, if you thought I was paranoid about the Novites catching us, you should see Alicia. If she walked into the broadcast Friday night while wearing a tinfoil hat, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“You guys need to be careful about the way you talk about the Novites. Like, they could track you and arrest you or something!”
All together now: PARANOID!
4:38 PM
Oh no.
Raymond just found out about our radio club.
Remember him? Raymond? My younger brother?
He came across the equipment in the trailer while digging around for the flashlight he left in their on our last camping trip. Now he’s demanding we left him join us. He’s an 11-year-old who is in that “swag and silly bands” phase.
I don’t know, should he join us?
Is it safe?
Well of course it’s safe, the Novites haven’t come after us yet, right?
I know I was really paranoid in the beginning, but now I think we’re all over-reacting on how “serious” this broadcast is. We’re just messing around, cracking some Novite jokes, trying to solve the great Novite mystery. And if people want to listen to us, that’s fine, but we’re not the “voice of freedom” or anything (if people start using that phrase, I’ll throw up in my mouth every time I hear it). Anyone else can have a show like this; I don’t think it’s illegal.
10:33 PM
Okay, now that we have four people on the team (we let Raymond in), we may as well fill out the group a little more so it’s not super awkward with just me, Matt, Alicia, and Raymond. I was thinking of inviting my friends Kaylah and Lauren to join us. Matt wants to invite his friend Gavin to do tech for us; I think Matt wants to balance out the boy/girl ratio.
Friday, November 7th—8:53 PM
I’m going to head out to the RV in a couple minutes to set up for the broadcast. So much has happened in the last week that it’s hard to believe that this is only our second show. I think everyone is coming tonight, except for Kaylah, who is studying for a test tomorrow.
9:01 PM
This is so awkward. Gavin was the first to arrive and I don’t really know this kid. He just critiqued the setup of our mics, saying that it will give us “hella feedback” if we put them that close to each other.
Although he just ran some sort of check on our signal and he says that he set it up so that it can’t be tracked. That’s probably a good thing.
9:43 PM
Everyone is finally here and we’re trying to make a list of everything that should be discussed in the show. So far we have:
I think the “missing people” will take up most of our time. It’s a bit unnerving, if the Novites really are taking people. I can’t even think of what kind of correlation Wilson and my neighbor have. One is a male teenager and the other is a middle-aged women.
10:36 PM
We just finished our second broadcast! Matt and I did all the talking again, while everyone else hung out. Next broadcast should probably have more discussion with everyone. Although, Gavin seemed to enjoy criticizing our incompetence with technology.
We closed out with the song “What a Wonderful World”, because we’re cheesy and enjoy irony.
11:03 PM
Three people listened in tonight. Matt checked the online statistics when he got home. I was hoping for more people, although that’s three more than before, since Alicia was the only listener we had last week. She accidentally tuned into the show while driving home from work.
I wish I could drive, but I’m not even old enough to get a permit yet. Alicia has her license. I think Alicia is the oldest one on the team since everyone else, besides Raymond, is my age.
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A/N
Happy 4th of July everyone! If you already lost track of all these new characters, have no fear. They’ll become familiar soon.
Decode this for next week’s title:
20-15-26 20-8-5 7-18-5-1-20 1-14-4 16-15-23-5-18-6-21-12
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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140,085 Literary Works • 672,996 Reviews
Hey again! Back for more...
Okay, so I thought that these were broadcasts but now I'm thinking no, that they're journal entries? I guess that means you can maybe ignore my comment on that point in my previous review. My bad.
Try to steer clear of statements like "now let me tell you about...". Because readers tend to go "oh no info-dump alert alert" and it is off-putting. You kind of have to strike a balance between having a voice that's distinct and clear and one that isn't distracting. Narration should tend to have an almost invisibility about it - if it sounds too much like the reader's being narrated to, or narrated at it does tend to pull them out of the story.
I feel like things maybe moved at a slightly too fast pace in this chapter. I think that the initial conversation with Alicia could have been fleshed out and developed a little further. That can be done by adding emotions and reactions and descriptions - mostly I feel like it should have been more of a scene than it was - and I think if you slowed the pace a touch it might have felt like a bit less of an onslaught of characters being introduced.
Something that I really did love about this chapter was the gentle sense of humour you have going on. Your writing is funny in a really charming, subtle way. Even though the very quick introduction of so many characters felt quite sudden and a bit confusing, I was quietly chuckling to myself as I read it - I'm not sure if you were aiming for humour in this chapter, but at least for me, it was there, and it worked really nicely.
I liked how the radio show went from being this really secret hush hush thing to having a zillion people knowing about it. Not only is it funny like I mentioned before, I think it's the realistic result of a bunch of teens who start a supposedly secret show on a whim. To be honest, I think I'm looking forward to seeing how all the characters interact with each other more than I am the actual plot. But the plot's pretty interesting, too.
The contrast between the everyday and the disappearances and such is really interesting, as well. I did like that, because I think it would be realistic. Even though there's some pretty crazy stuff happening in your characters' world, life goes on and I like how you captured it. I kind of think that there'd maybe be a little more fuss going on than your character suggests, but really she seems pretty chill so the normalcy's probably just from her perspective.
Looking forward to the next chapter!
Thank you for the reviews TriSARAHtops! I really appreciate it! I'll work to fix up that info-dump, and that conversation with Alicia
Hey, jumpingsheep. This chapter is sort of slow, and not very interesting in my opinion. Also, honestly, I think that you could have left out the cussing, because you never really established a personality for the main character that makes her (is this a girl?) a type of person that cusses. (Mostly, I don't really appreciate that sort of thing, if you didn't get that from my reviewing standards...)
Anyways, although not much happened except more people joined the radio team, I think that this story still has a lot of potential. I hope that you will seriously consider my advice from the reviews. Good luck!
Thank you! I'll plan to work on the whole "slow start" problem in later drafts! Maybe the first couple chapters could be combined into a "back story" that could be explored as the story goes on. Then I could push he start of the story to around chapter 3
Also, it is a girl, something I'm working to clear up in later drafts. I'm so sorry about the cussing. I try to avoid it, but occasionally a few (what you saw is about the worst... I don't venture into the big ones) will slip in when it feels right. Sorry again!
Hi, back again now that it's the weekend! Let's see what happens, shall we?
I'm always a bit torn about this point. I usually stick to the rule that backstory-land is not a place you want to be in the first two chapters. It's always a bit sad because usually the backstory is interesting, it just feels out of place. Here, I love the characterisation of her first dad. But at the same time, it throws the breaks on everything to take several paragraphs to tell us about all this. I think the solution is generally to move it and/or to make it more... incognito. Kill your darlings, as they say. Even though it's a lovely bit of info, it's time to be merciless.
Everyone says to try and put backstory in dialogue, and that's a great suggestion, but it's not your only option. I actually don't mind some "telling," if it's appropriately placed and subtly done. I think they key is making it relevant to the scene at hand. So if she sees something that triggers these memories, she could have a few thoughts, grounded in the present, that also inform us a little about her past. It's hard to talk about this without examples, since it's all so vague and lacking context, but the long and short of it is: cut down on telling, and feed the backstory gradually to us as it becomes related to what's happening in the main story.
I have similar feelings about the stuff about the Novites. I almost feel like we needed some of that info in ch1. And while I like what's written, it feels kinda out of the blue--again, it's delaying any sort of actual scene or plot progression in the story "present." It may also be a case of "kill your darlings." I'd recommend looking for ways to sneak those comments in to an actual scene, maybe thinking about them in reaction to stuff, like the natural train of thought in her head as she makes her diary entries (as opposed to "I'm going to tell you about them now, dear reader). In lieu of that, I'd at least consider putting it into ch1, to give the opening some more meat (and context).
Wilson disappearing seems like the real start of the story. Everything before that strikes me as set-up. Perhaps that's where chapter 1 should start, and then fill in the details from there?
This is starting to turn into character soup. :S There's no way I'm going to keep track of all these people. I guess it gives you lots of extras in case people get disappeared, but it's also going to be a lot harder to characterise so many people so that they're distinct and memorable. I was hold on with the original 4, but once we got these extra three I kinda shut down.
I'd suggest taking a careful look at each entry and ask yourself a few questions.
1. What do I want this entry to show?
2. How will this entry forward plot and character?
3. Do I need this, or if it is removed, does it affect anything?
While I didn't dislike it, I found the entries under friday a little choppy, start-and-go, without each adding a whole lot. There's a bit of redundancy, repeating things that were said earlier in the chapter, and I guess overall I found myself questioning what the purpose of it all was. It seemed a little... floundering? I'm sure it probably isn't, but I wonder if there's a way you can write it so it has some more apparent direction, since I as a reader don't know where any of this is going.
I'd also say that the ending isn't a very strong hook. I wouldn't mind an indication of what's to come in the short term. It could really go anywhere, I think. And presently I'm not really worried or curious or whatever about any particular thing, so there's no major draw for me to keep turning the page apart from a mild curiosity to see where you take things. People always talk about the hook at the start of your story, but really I think it's the hooks at the end of chapters that are most crucial, because once people start your story, you want to keep them drawn into the thick of things.
Despite my complaining, I found this a pleasant and easy read, and will go on to ch3 right now! Thanks for sharing and happy writing!
Hello.
The writing is fresh and the story is engaging and mysterious. I definitely want to uncover the mystery of the Novites. Based on the narration, the story doesn't seem to the typical sci-fi stuff that we're generally used to, so far, it's pretty unique.
There doesn't seem to be a correlation between the missing people, so, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it, but... time will tell.
Keep writing this. Great work.
I'm really liking this story so far. Your writing is fresh and conversational so it's not too heavy. I liked the little details about Olivia's first dad to show a more introspective side to her. You seem to be writing it to get more serious gradually instead of jumping from silly teenagers to DOOM too fast (though it's obvious that shit's approaching the fan). I can't see any spelling mistakes or improper grammar which is good.
The only thing I'd be worried about is how building suspense or writing action scenes while using the past tense. I don't know if you're going to change it as the story goes on or work around it. You seem to know where it's going though so don't worry too much about it. Lokking forward to the next chapter.
Thank you for the review MacOitir; I really appreciate it! I've actually was just thinking yesterday about the tense I picked. I may have to alter the tense as the story picks up. I agree that any action scenes in the past tense would be tough