Young Writers Society

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

First Impression: Okayy...well for the most part this was a pretty solid first chapter here. It just sort of slipped up a bit there towards the end but on the whole I think you've got yourself a pretty intriguing piece that does manage to get a reader interested in reading on with this story.

Anyway let's get right to it,

“Hey Jackie, congrats on your acceptance to Yale!” Nikki, my best and only friend in the world yelled across the hall loud enough for everyone in Mackenzie High to hear.

I winced. Great, more publicity, more reason for the popular kids to taunt me.

“Hey Nicks, how’s it going?” I responded, hoping to turn the attention back to my enthusiastic friend.

“Not bad, not bad at all. My mum’s pretty satisfied with Williams,” Nikki grinned widely. “She was hoping for Princeton, but any old university would do.”

“I can’t believe we’re finally getting out of this dump,” I sighed. “Now is our chance to walk out into the real world and prove our worth.”

“Ugh, you and your cheesy pep talk. No offense but this is the twenty-first century, not a Shakespeare stage. Save the drama for your mama.” Nikki never thought one thing that she would not say out loud or put into action.

Okay...well this is off to an...interesting start here. There's a distinct air of exaggeration to these characters in the sense that they don't feel fully normal on first glance but seem like slightly more than what would be realistic for students of their age. Its not necessarily a bad thing here, but if it continues for too long, it does get a bit harder to read that way.

“Geez thanks for the support,” I said sarcastically. “You plan on doing somethin’ for the summer.”

“About that…” Nikki hesitated. She looked uncomfortable.

“This can’t be good,” I groaned and put my hands on my head for dramatic effect.

“I was hoping that you would go on a road trip with me and a couple of people from homeroom” she said nervously.

“What kind of trip? How many people are we talking about?” I eyed her suspiciously.

“Well, we were planning to visit the ruins of an aboriginal tribe on the other side of town. You know, the one we studies in history last year.” Nikki said confidently as she ran her left hand through a thick strand of blond hair.

“Who’d you convince to tag along?” I ask disapprovingly.

Okayy...well luckily the conversation does seem to have steered itself towards somewhat saner waters there. I was genuinely getting a bit worried there for a second, but it appears that will not be the case and this little road trip does in fact sound pretty exciting as well.

“Twenty-one including you and me,” she said proudly, her chest rising.

“Hey Blondie, I never agreed to go yet.” I couldn’t help smiling at myself. When Nikki wants something done, she’ll stop at nothing to satisfy her desires.

“Come on Jackie, you deserve some fun for a change. Plus, it’s an educational adventure.” She gave me one of her most convincing pleads.

“I guess it would be nice to be a normal teenager for once in my life.” I mumbled to myself. If only I knew just how dangerous my life was about to get…

Okay...we've got a little bit of that too in this scene it appears, those little comments in hindsight can actually be quite funny sometimes when executed properly, and this one was executed quite nicely with that scene there of this person being persuaded.

A couple girls looked uncomfortable. I recognized most of my fellow “adventurers” from around Mackenzie High. Nikki even managed to convince a couple of curious freshmen to tag along! I have to admit, when it comes to social tips, she’s definitely the one to consult.

I yawned; the two hour train ride has drained most of my inadequate energy. I blame myself for remembering to pack my calculus textbooks in the middle of the night. Not only did my baggage weigh a ton but I barely slept a wink. I would give anything in the world to get a few hours of peace and quiet.

When finally arrived to what appears to be the ruins after a 2 day hike under the hot July sun, most of us barely had enough energy to drag our own luggage! To our dismay, a heavily populated village stood where the ruins should have been.

Nikki’s eyebrows scrunched up in frustration. “What, this can’t be right. The- it should be right here! ”

Hmm..well it seems their trip is already going wrong right as it starts. It also despite the large number of characters being mentioned in the background of this piece, there is actually only these two that we're currently focusing on while the others are acting so far at least as simple additions to the background.

My years of bad luck prevented me from doing a double take. “Don’t worry Nicks; I’m sure that there is a reasonable explanation behind all this.” I patted her sympathetically on the shoulder.

“You’re right,” Nikki said as she regained to her sense. “Come on everyone, let’s get some rest. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

We were all extremely disappointed but none of us wanted to argue. We dragged out feet across the hot rocks and called it a day.

Okayy....well it seem Nikki is alternating between being a bad leader and a good leader with her two attitudes, but at least it seems everyone is in fact following her lead without too much grumbling which is pretty impressive for a set of teenagers.

None of us really wanted to meet the folks who diminished our summer dreams but Nikki insisted on finding out the reason behind the missing ruins. After all, this disastrous trip has made her one of the most hated person amongst the twenty of us.

Finding out the truth wasn’t easy. Turns out, folks in this cursed town despite new comers. “The outsiders” they call us. Ironically enough, a large portion of the population is made up late arriver. Most could be easily identified for the city air lingers on their pale faces.

After several unsuccessful attempt, we realized that no one’s been here long enough to know what really happened to the tribal ruins; except for “the Seeker”: the last descendent of this Aboriginal tribe.

Uhhh...well that escalated very quickly there, much too quickly in my opinion, if you'd ended off at that earlier point, this would've made for a pretty good first chapter with the sort of ending that captures and then keeps your attention, but now we've got ourselves a rather different ending where things fast forward to these details and then some mentions of random important beings and such. Its all a little too much, and while they are interesting, when they are just dumped on us like this without showing the process of how these people got there, it doesn't make for a great ending. That needs quite a bit of rethinking and you need to take a lot more time to showcase these things being discovered.

Aaaaand that's it for this one.

Overall: Overall, I think its a solid start here with a pretty decent premise going for it as well. I am certainly intrigued to see what more can come of this particular premise, but I do think you need to take a second look at that ending cause it does make things look much worse than they are.

As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.

Stay Safe
Harry