The stadium was packed. The spectators, whom were all younger than eighteen sat huddled together; their eyes filled with fear and longing to be anywhere but there. And I stood in the center of it all, searching for my older sister.
‘Hanna,” I had called. “Hanna?”
No response. Not that I was expecting any. Everyone was moving throughout the aisles, grabbing onto people’s hands and attempting to find a spot as far away from the first row as they could. After all, the first row was where everyone preparing to fight sat. It was where the majority of people sat when they got chosen, and it was last place many people sat before death. There had to have been three hundred children in that stadium, to the point where even if you moved an inch you would be touching someone else’s sweaty, grimy skin; there was no way everyone could find a seat without the first few rows being full.
“Hanna,” I called out again, desperate. “Hanna?”
This time, there was a response, but not the one that I had been searching for. “Excuse me,” a young girl said, grabbing onto the hem of my dress in order to get my attention. I stopped immediately.
“Yeah,” I said, glancing down at the girl. Her dirty blond hair was knotted and looked like it hadn’t been brushed in months and her eyes were a grayish blue. She wore what looked like a blue jogging suit, which seemed odd, because all girls at Camp were required to wear the same, loose fitted dress, even the ones that were required to fight. That’s right, this was a Camp, but no one really thought of it as one. It was created in order to kill off all humans; first the weak ones, and then the strongest, after the vampires and werewolves had gotten their use out of them. Their parents had already been killed off one way or another; some died trying to protect them, while others had already been through the gladiator fights, and then either killed or sent to fight in the army against the shape shifters and witches, whom only wanted world peace and the killing of humans to cease. Ironic, how the Witches and Shape shifters were fighting for their freedom, yet forced to hurt them in the process?
That was when a symbol on the girl’s jacket had caught my eye. Underneath what I had assumed to be the girl’s name, Nora, written in black cursive letters, was a pentagram and crescent moon outlined in black, which indicated that she was a young Witch. And nobody seemed to notice.
“Where did you get that outfit,” she asked. This girl, Nora, couldn’t have been any older than eight; too young to remember a time when wearing the symbols of Witchcraft when not a Witch was considered disrespectful, yet not too young to become brainwashed by the werewolves and vampires in charge of them. They were told that the symbols that involved Witchcraft of any kind were dangerous, and were to be confiscated immediately if found within Camp. Not to mention the fact that the person found with said items would be punished most severely if caught. So, why was she wearing them?
Nora smiled. “Trust me, no one will even notice me sitting here,” she said. Without warning, a trumpet sounded, followed by an announcement on the intercom. The announcement was from Samuel, the vampire guard that gave out punishments and picked the unlucky humans that would battle each other in the gladiator fights. “Children, this is your fifteen minute warning. I repeat, this is your fifteen minute warning. Any child found outside the stadium shall be chosen to fight in today’s gladiator fight without a weapon. At the five minute mark, I shall draw names to decide what lucky individuals will be chosen to fight today’s battle. Those individuals will have five minutes to strategize and pick their weapon. First choice will go to the youngest child. I then will signal the start of the fight, and release the animal upon that signal. The first person to slay the animal and their opponent shall win the battle. Good luck to all of you.” Even on intercom he sounded cruel, and just hearing him speak made me infuriated. That came with being a vampire though, and although I had wanted to fight him a million times before, I knew that I would lose the fight, not to mention humiliate myself in the process.
Nora brought me back to reality. “You’re Wynter Marx, right? Hanna Marx’s sister? I know where she is. But she cannot, and mustn’t be saved. You’re much too valuable for that.”
What the hell did that even mean? “Tell me where my sister is,” I said through gritted teeth. “Or I swear to god….”
I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I turned around to find some guy standing directly behind me, and I recognized who it was by face, but not by name. He was the same age I was, which is how I recognized him; he looked of Spanish descent and his arms were covered with scars and bruises, which I assumed he had only gotten while at Camp.
“What do you want,” I asked him, annoyed.
The guy snickered. “If I were you, I’d stop talking to yourself… It may give people a bad impression.” He then laughed so hard that his entire body shook; to the point where he needed to grasp onto the ice cold bleachers to stop himself from falling onto the ground. His left hand was touching Nora’s thigh, and he didn’t seem to feel a thing. How weird.
“Shut up,” I said, widening my stance as if prepared to fight. He stood up and did the same, but then lowered his fists and shook his head. “Let’s save it for out there, “he said just as another guy walked up to them. I assumed that it was one of his friends, because only seconds later they left, laughing as they joined a couple of more guys and made their way towards the first set of bleachers. I waited until they were completely out of ear shot before turning back to Nora.
“What was that,” I asked her. “Why couldn’t he see you? Can’t anyone see you, or am I just crazy?”
Nora shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. “Only those I want to see me can see me. And there are only two people that I want to talk to today; you and Hanna, so, to answer your question, no, no one else in this place can see me except you.” She smiled. “Oh, yes, your sister isn’t in this Stadium just about yet, however, she’s alive. The only thing is, to see your sister, are you willing to have her die?” Nora’s face turned serious as she waited for a response. Despite the fact that she seemed to be only eight years old, I could tell that she matured a lot faster than she should have. We all had. But it was even worse to see a kid have to go through gladiator fights and sleep deprivation just to stay alive. I guess that the Witches went through shit, too, especially since from what I had heard their headquarters had been attacked around four months ago, so now they were forced to live as Nomads. Camp had a huge feast over this “accomplishment” a while back; it had made me sick to my stomach. Even more so since the witches were usually very trusting people, the only ones to ever make their headquarters public to everyone, and now, no one could be trusted.
“How do I know that you’re being legit,” I asked. “For all I know, this could only be a trick to get me killed”
“Witches only tell truth, even when they don’t want to. It’s one of our most sacred laws. As for you not believing that I’m a Witch, that is your choice. But you don’t have much time.” The girl glanced up at the timer, which was counting down to the start of the fight. I only had ten minutes left. I looked over at the commentator’s box, which was where Samuel and a couple of other vampires or werewolves sat before the fight. There appeared to be no one inside, but that didn’t mean much. I looked back at Nora.
“Fine, I believe you. I just want to know where Hanna is,” I said. “I don’t care about the consequences.”
Nora shook her head and suddenly looked extremely sad. “I commend you for your bravery. I really do,” she began, almost as if she was about to try and convince me not to leave the Stadium or something. She sighed, and then said, “Alright. She’s in Cabin 4A. One cabin down on the left from her usual Cabin.”
Cabin 4A? I thought about it in my head. There were twenty cabins in this camp; ten girl cabins and ten boy cabins. There were no cabins with letters after them.
“It’s a cabin reserved for punishments. You know, the cabin where you sleep with no sheets, only have cold water, and sometimes where you get woken up in the middle of the night to do character building exercises,” she said as if reading my mind.
I had heard of people having to endure such things before, but I had never had to go to this cabin before. I didn’t even know that it was even near where the other cabins were.
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
First things first, you need to slow this down. I felt like the pace was way too fast. You placed a lot of important information in a very small story. I recommend that you pace yourself so that the reader isn't overwhelmed with lots of information.
Second, your concept, I think, is very interesting. This world where supernatural creatures have somehow subjugated mankind. However, you need to think about somethings. In all mythology, no matter what countries or cultures, Werewolves and Vampires have always been enemies. Why are they allies now? I feel like you should explain that so some readers aren't confused.
Third, your characters. I enjoy strong women in literature. I always read about women who can't take care of themselves and it is so annoying. I'm glad Wynter is strong and independent. Nora was probably the most interesting. I want to here more of what she has to say.
Other than that, you have a great concept and great characters. I can' t wait to read more. Keep me posted. Happy Writing!
Hey mnkeygrl11,
Although the concept of having supernatural creatures enslave humans and have them fight to the death is well . . . awesome, I did feel like it had been done a million times. Which in a way isn't so bad depending on how you write the novel. But with the way you are writing it how it screams HUNGER GAMES. Now the Hunger Games were great books but you don't want your readers to only be thinking out THOSE books when they are reading YOUR book. Then the last problem I had with this work is that it's hard to follow, you need more details so the readers really know what's going on.
Now for what I really like about the book. I'm all for the supernatural creatures, human enslavement camps, and battles to the death. It's really interesting. I also like Wynter, she seems like a strong independent female character. I like how you put her in a world where she's at the bottom of the food chain yet she's still pretty darn fearless and smart. Nora's character intrigued me too, I look forward to reading more about the little witch girl.
So basically I like the concept, you should work on putting more details and making it sound a little more original. It's okay to use an idea that's not totally original as long as your writing style is and people don't get bored while reading it. Good luck and keep writing!
Hey mnkeygrl11,
This is quite interesting, and I enjoyed reading it. I like your ideas; the supernatural camp, the fights, etc. I’m particularly interested about Nora - who is she, exactly, and why is she there if she’s not meant to be? There are some good ideas here and I’d be interested to see how they developed.
There was just one main thing that stood out to me as needing to be improved:
I felt in parts of this that you were trying to give away too much information too quickly. You weren’t completely dumping information on the reader, but in some parts I did just feel that there was a little too much, and that it disrupted the story. In these parts it seemed as if you were just trying to give the reader information, which isn’t what I wanted: I want to know about the story, and the other things as they come into the story. I don’t really want to read long sections which are purely your narator explaining something, not when they get in the way of the story. Also, you don’t need to completely describe and reveal everything about a character at once; in a way, this takes away some of the fun of discovering them.
There are some really interesting ideas here, but you’re giving it away all at once and taking the magic out of them. Instead of having the narrator tell the reader about the camp and the vampires’ and werewolves’ motives, could you not show them? If you did this by describing a fight in action and showing the reader how the each of the different species play a role in it - the humans being the “prey” and wanting only to survive; the vampires and werewolves being malevolent and wanting to use and kill the humans (for enjoyment, or something else?); the witches/shape-shifters making some attempt to stop it all…that would contribute a lot more to the story, adding to it rather than disrupting it. If you say “they killed off the humans” I don’t really feel anything, or see anything in my mind. If you describe the culling of one of these humans, and make it real, I will likely feel for them and they will become a part of the real world of the story.
I just wanted to say that the best parts of this — the ones in which again the story was playing in my head like a movie — were the parts where you were describing what was happening, staying fairly consistently ground in the moment. Obviously it’s necessary to slip in a bit of information from time to time, but completely pulling the reader aside from the story to present them with a paragraph of textbook, unemotional information? Not so much.
So my main suggestion would be to slow down, and show us through real situations and characters with depth what’s really going on at this camp- stop trying to reveal a lot at once, and instead focus on the story and the characters and really making them real, both to yourself and the reader.
~Niebla
Hey mnkeygrl11,
This is quite interesting, and I enjoyed reading it. I like your ideas; the supernatural camp, the fights, etc. I’m particularly interested about Nora - who is she, exactly, and why is she there if she’s not meant to be? There are some good ideas here and I’d be interested to see how they developed.
There was just one main thing that stood out to me as needing to be improved:
I felt in parts of this that you were trying to give away too much information too quickly. You weren’t completely dumping information on the reader, but in some parts I did just feel that there was a little too much, and that it disrupted the story. In these parts it seemed as if you were just trying to give the reader information, which isn’t what I wanted: I want to know about the story, and the other things as they come into the story. I don’t really want to read long sections which are purely your narator explaining something, not when they get in the way of the story. Also, you don’t need to completely describe and reveal everything about a character at once; in a way, this takes away some of the fun of discovering them.
There are some really interesting ideas here, but you’re giving it away all at once and taking the magic out of them. Instead of having the narrator tell the reader about the camp and the vampires’ and werewolves’ motives, could you not show them? If you did this by describing a fight in action and showing the reader how the each of the different species play a role in it - the humans being the “prey” and wanting only to survive; the vampires and werewolves being malevolent and wanting to use and kill the humans (for enjoyment, or something else?); the witches/shape-shifters making some attempt to stop it all…that would contribute a lot more to the story, adding to it rather than disrupting it. If you say “they killed off the humans” I don’t really feel anything, or see anything in my mind. If you describe the culling of one of these humans, and make it real, I will likely feel for them and they will become a part of the real world of the story.
I just wanted to say that the best parts of this — the ones in which again the story was playing in my head like a movie — were the parts where you were describing what was happening, staying fairly consistently ground in the moment. Obviously it’s necessary to slip in a bit of information from time to time, but completely pulling the reader aside from the story to present them with a paragraph of textbook, unemotional information? Not so much.
So my main suggestion would be to slow down, and show us through real situations and characters with depth what’s really going on at this camp- stop trying to reveal a lot at once, and instead focus on the story and the characters and really making them real, both to yourself and the reader.
~Niebla
...okay, you might want to ignore this. Sorry for the double post. =/ I hope the review helps, though. ^^
Alright, hey mnkeygirl11, Louis here to review!
Alright, first paragraph: it’s pretty good, for a start, but it reminded me terribly of the Hunger Games (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, the Hunger Games were a good series). However, I would have added a comma after ‘eighteen,’ as ‘whom were all younger than eighteen’ is a subordinate statement to the main, thus needs to be separated by a comma. Furthermore, I’m not sure how necessary that ‘And’ is, introducing the new sentence. ‘And’ would be used when there are multiple elements to the sentence (I’m not sure I’m explaining myself properly… it would be like “people sobbed, others milled about and I stood in the center of it all” if you see what I mean). The ‘and’ is fairly redundant.
Alright, I see what you’re trying to do there. By using ‘had called’ you’re saying the MC called her sister some time previously, and is not doing that as of now, yes? That confused me. Also a nit-pick: you used an apostrophe in front of the first ‘Hanna’ instead of a speech-mark.
Aha, but we encounter another technicality here. By using ‘had called,’ in this sentence, naturally, it should be ‘There had been no response,’ as that way the tenses fit. So, either you get rid of ‘had’ in the first place or add it in the second sentence. Furthermore, I would replace the full-stop after ‘response’ with a comma, to tie the two sentences together. However, I appreciate the full-stop creates a faster pace, which might be what you were aiming for, in which case by all means keep the brief sentences.
I have a minor issue with this small paragraph. It’s related to the first, where you describe the stadium as being packed with people. However, it’s placed after the main character calling for her sister (why where they separated in the first place?) and so, to me, it appears a little jarring. You may want to re-locate either one of the sentences/paragraphs. And also, one more thing, concerning the ‘after all:’ by using ‘after all,’ it seems the main character is casually brushing off the fact they had to fight as nothing important, but I gather she has a different opinion. You may want to consider editing.
Good, I like the description of the skin. Very visceral, realistic. However, I feel you could take this one step further, by adding senses such as smell (smell is a very powerful sensation, even to humans), and how being packed makes the main character feel. Is she uncomfortable, is there a knot in her throat (also due to fear of having to fight), is she sweating, does she feel pressure from all sides? Such minor details like these really throw us into the scene. Also, about the ‘had to have been:’ I recommend replacing ‘had’ with ‘must.’ And about the last part, after the semicolon: I think I understand what you were trying to say, but maybe that’s not the best way to say it. Perhaps something along the lines of ‘there was no way everyone could find a seat in the first few rows.’ Or perhaps that’s not what you were trying to say, and I’m misinterpreting due to sentence construction.
Line break there, new person speaking.
You mean asked, I assume
Hmm. By using ‘that’s right,’ you’re implying a dialogue… but she’s not speaking to anyone (at least, in this way), except the reader. Phrased like that, it seems like the main character is addressing the readers directly. Which is totally legit, in fact I adore leaning on the Fourth Wall, but maybe that’s not what you were aiming for? Having the main character know she’s talking to an external party… maybe it’ll make sense at the end of the book, like in Percy Jackson. If not, you may want to edit.
Interesting. So it’s a fantasy version of the Hunger Games. No, I kid. But it’s remarkably like the book, I repeat. Also, if so is the case, why was this arena created? All these tantalizing questions arise, waiting to be answered. Also, why is ‘Camp’ capitalized, on a side-note?
This paragraph seems to me not only a bit info-dumpy, but also a tad out-of-place, given the circumstances (the main character being very worried indeed, packed, and possibly about to fight to the death, yet she reflects on history – once again making me think she’s very nonchalant about this whole thing). However, it’s a tricky question, as it is important to have some backstory early off. I also, though, think you haven’t addressed the right question people may be asking themselves, that being ‘why are they fighting?’
Should be a question mark there, she is asking a question. Also, why is Nora asking it? From what I gather, the main character isn’t wearing anything particularly out of the ordinary.
So, readers now know we’re in a relatively modern time-period. I like fantasy/modern/sci-fi crossovers, so you’ve just scored a bonus point
Again, should be a question mark there.
This doesn’t strike me as the speech of an eight-year-old. Just saying. Despite this:
Well, now, onto the overall impression. This was good, but, lacked some description in some places. The minor grammatical errors are inconsequential, really. I hope to see more of your work.
Hope this helped
~Ita
ED here, I'll try my best to help you out with this one.
So, one look at this and my eyes bugged out of my head. Space out those paragraphs! (I know, I know, stupid YWS and all...) That being said... your story drew me in right away, I loved the voice of the main character!
Now, you need some revision on your dialogue, things are a bit choppy and it can be hard to tell who's speaking and when.
That being said... my biggest thing with this whole piece was the character's actions and reactions. They're often superficial and seem forced/unrealistic. For example, when the face-dude bad kid laughs at the MC talking at himself--- that's a bit over the top. The humore (or lack thereof) did not warrant such an exagerated reaction. There are other cases too--- the way the witch and the MC act during their conversation, and the MC's wandering thoughts when it comes to his sister. I think the problem here is that, since this either took a while to write or you banged it out without much thought, there is a lack of continuity. Try and make the characters action's match their personality.
My next point is that there doesn't seem to be too much originality here, with setting and character description--- you seem to borrow quite heavily from some other works which are currently popular. This doesn't seem to be too prevalent here, but just be warned and strive for originality. I liked your twist on things though, keep up the creativity!
The one last thing I want to point out is that this seems to be based off of... hmm, summer camp perhaps? Interesting, and it's good that you're using a point of reference. however, keep in mind that keeping 300+ kids in cabins is going to get difficult... especially for security reasons. I would suggest researching this and rethinking. (Also, there's only 300 humans left on earth?)
Great job, interesting, fast read, which I loved. Keep up the good work. *thumbs up*
You lost me when you mentioned the vampires and werewolves. When I first started reading this I thought that this would be a fairly realistic story, so when you mention the fantasy creatures I was confused and wasn't sure what their place in the story even was.
As a whole, I'm not sure what to think of this piece. While I admit that the concept intrigued me in the beginning, the more I thought about it, I wasn't sure if it was even that original. You have children (you mention everyone in the stadium is below 18) being randomly selected to fight each other to the death in gladiatorial battles. I'm not saying you're trying to copy the Hunger Games. With the publication that of that book there has been a lot of similar literature that has followed similar themes, and I'm not sure at this point where your story is headed.
In dystopian fiction such as this, it's really important to establish the society. If you're going to write a dystopia, you should ask yourself, "how did our current society regress into a world where it possible for things like this to happen?" I'm not really sure I get that with your story right now. Right now it just feels like killing for the sake of killing. You move really fast, and I think that, since this a novel, it would be good to have a little breathing room to establish the world in which this society takes place, establish who the characters are so we are more invested in the tale as a whole.
Hope this helps! Feel free to shoot me a PM if you have any questions-- best of luck with all of your revisions, my dear.
So, about the whole Hunger Games thing, this first chapter is really just the start. Actually, (spoiler alert) I am going to officially end this chapter with Wynter forced to kill her sister in the gladiator fight, then she is going to join up with one of each species to finish the prophecy that will be mentioned in chapter 2 because the witches only know about it... If that makes any sense
I like it. Descriptions are good, you can visualise it in your head. Really unexpected that vampires and werewolves are ruling humans, mostly it's the other way around. Good job.