Young Writers Society

the year is 2075, i am a part of the protect, and lead program formed by the underground. and these are dark times. this is my story.

my name is Zach, and it all started in 2070 when the U.S. put that new president in office. he was part of a religious extremist group that kept saying "gays are sinners, they are a bad influence." well after he got in office it all started to downfall. the congress then became mainly the part of the same extremist group, and together they put the new act in action. they said that gays had to show themselves, and made as they called it "sodomy" a crime. they also outlawed firearms as a way of trying to prevent outbeaks of protestors or freedom fighters. after that all firearms were illegally obtained or in the army. but, bladed weapons were sill very legal, so all gang wars, freedom fighters, and many homes, had swords, knives, daggers, all sorts of blades. after that we started running, a few of the gay leaders created an underground. "the rainbow underground" is what they called it.
it must have been 2 years before they tried to take me. i was working in a gay bar at the time this all happened. a nice place called the arbitar, i was a Gogo dancer working for the owner named buck. one night, the arbitar got raided, police swarmed us, but i was near the back at the time. i managed to slip out with a guy named ching fi. i knew little about ching, but i got to know him after a while. he worked at a martial arts studio on the west side of town, a little ways away from where my appartment used to be. me and ching, i called him chi for short, ran like heck until a couple of hooded guys told us to come with them. they were protectors from the ranbow underground. they heard that the police were moving in on the arbitar and they snuck around back trying to get anybody they could help to the underground. we got in a van, where there must have been at least 5 other people where we rode out of town for about 5 miles, parked the van around back of a little diner that was a safe haven for gays at the time. it was owned by a couple of liberal elderly people and was ran by their daughter. their son was part of the underground, he got away from the "Sodomy Suppression Force" or the SSF, but his boyfriend didn't.
we were then led in to the woods where it was very easy to get lost, a great place for an underground. we then were lead through a cave, through a maze of tunnels. and in to a large underground safe house where there must have been a hundred people, all gay. the men that saved us were part of the protect and lead program, they protect the underground and they would be the front line if we ever had to fight the SSF. they also lead gays to the underground. the place that they took us was the safehouse of our city. it was big because our city was big, but it wasn't close to the rainbow underground city. we were told that the rainbow underground city was carved with explosives, was under water. in a grotto, where there was a downward facing entrance, to keep all the air in. it is on an island somewhere, and they have a whole lush forest underground to keep oxygen supplies great, and for wood. its like a whole huge city. they told stories of it lit up all the time, where there were no windows, so people could sleep on their own scheduel, but they wouldn't have to indure the bright lights on the streets. everyone was accepting because they all know how it is to be discriminated agianst, they had to go in to hiding because of it. they told us many other stories, and it sounded so wonderful. i could not wait until we could go there. the people that were part of the "underground railroad" were taken to the underground city in groups of fourteen, two each day, so that there would be fourteen each week. they didn't take them in large numbers because there is less suspician in smaller numbers. so, i had to wait, and at the time, there would be a very long wait. i was at the last of the list.
they told me to get a partner, this would be the person i would room with until the wait, and travel with when the time came. me and ching partnered up, and they showed us our little place, it was mainly a small room, with a bunk bed, a table, and a lamp. their was also a small refrigerator where we could put the food that came in every week. they sent it in bulk, from the resteraunt, it wasn't much, but it would keep us alive. the safehouse was built in a cave that had a spring, so we had warm water for bathes, but it wasn't healthy to drink, so they also sent gallons of water, enough for one gallon every two days for everybody. it wasn't much, not nearly as good as what the underground city sounded like, but it was definately well organized, and safe. as we waited, ching taught me how to do martial arts, we had plenty of time, and i learned fast. plus it was a great way of exercising. soon after i was done learning, we trained, as another way of keeping busy, and keeping exercised. the word started going around and people started watching. they then wanted to learn, so ching started a small group, where he taught them how to protect themselves in a fight.
that day finally came, where they came and told us that we would have to go quietly, bacause we were going at night. there was more chance of them suspecting something if they caught us, but there was a less chance of them catching us. and they would rather have them not catch us, than to pretend we are heterosexual people. so we set off. it would be a long ride, so we brought all the necessities, food for three days, blankets, pillows, and other toiletries. we rode for about a day, we were just comming in to a new ciry, and police stopped us. they came to the window and the conversation went something like "hey, what are you guys doing here?" the Protect And Lead we call them pals replied "we are going to a football game, its our favorite team and we have been driving for quite a while now. we're all tired and can't wait until we get to the city for the game, and we can settle down in a hotel room. but if we stop for too long on the way, we will miss it." the officer then wanted him to step out and talk to him, he did so and they talked. i couldn't hear what they said to each other because they were outside, but a couple minutes later the pal came back in and said we're ready to go. we then set off once agian, this time without any interuptions.
we got to the beach after a couple days, where one of the pals, his name was blake, led us to a cave where we found a small motor boat. the other pal took the van back, to get another two people. we boated for a few hours to a small island, where we rested for a day in a small hut that was made by the underground, we filled up, and we set off agian. we boated for about three days, stopping at various islands to rest and fill the boat up with gas. after a while of boating on the third day, we reached an "abandoned" island. it was huge, yet mainly a dense rainforest. the rainforest was difficult to navigate through, having deadly snakes, and many other preditory animals. but we made it to a cave, which we went down, and found a spring. we dived in to the spring, finding our way to another spring in a small opening underground, where the only ways to get to this place was in the spring we just through, and another spring, which led to an enormous underground aquifer. inside the room there were diving equipment, which we put on, and dived in to the aquifer. after a while of swimming, we reached a large opening, where we swam up into. there was a lush forest where we came up in, and a path made of bricks. we followed the path to find a beautiful stone city.

My eyes hurt... First, you need to put spaces in between your paragraphs. There was absolutely no capitalazation, which was need in A LOT of places. None of your names or beginning of sentances were capitalized. This was totally rushed, I was confused all the while I was reading.

I didn't know where they were in the first place, the only place I figured out they went was to a stone city. You put (") these in some places where they weren't needed. This had no description at all. Yes you put some adjectives here and there, but barely described it.

You didn't say very much about what the main character what doing and how he was feeling. The large paragraph in the middle could have been made into several paragraphs. This needs a lot of editing.

Tell more about Zach, what does he look like? Does he have any family? Who are the people that he meets? Where is his dialogue in this piece? No one was talking to each other. It seems like a really long summary of what happened to him. As I said before, you need to slow down and descibe what is happening.

He did this, and so-and-so did that. Writing like this makes it uninteresting to the reader. Near the end of it, you were writing them talking like it was nothing. You didn't even really make them say anything!

You said: ...the conversation went something like "hey, what are you guys doing here?" the Protect And Lead we call them pals replied "we are going to a football game, its our favorite team and we have been driving for quite a while now. we're all tired and...

Put what the conversation really was. What did they actually say? What was the main character doing? What was everyone else doing? What was the main character thinking? Since your writing in first person we, the readers, need to know more on what he's doing, thinking, and feeling. You were writing as if in third person most of the time even though you started off in first.

This needs a lot of work. Oh and by the way, welcome to YWS.

umm well yeah it has grammar problems. it comes from my style of writing. i write on the computer and don't go back to edit much. but all the other stuff i did meaningfully. it was made to look like he was telling his story. so it pretty much is a summery.

like what u would read out of a history book.

Hey, scotchtape!

I took a look at some of the other parts, and I've got to say that the interview concept is pretty radical. You are like Braveheart, except presumably not Scottish. Or...something. Your main challenge, should you choose to accept it, is making that genius apparent from the get-go, so that people understand where you're going with it. Otherwise, you get the universal blank stare and the synchronous wail of, "WTF?"

(Aside: this story kind of reminds me of "Wide Awake", by David Levithan, except backwards.)

A few things to chat about...

SELF-MARKETING:

What's more pickier than a speeding semi-colon? ...YWS reviewers!

Even if you're not necessarily a lit guy, it's important to make your work pretty. That is, grammatically correct with spaces between paragraphs. It takes time and is frankly kind of annoying, but I think you'll find that people love you when you do that. YWS can be tremendously helpful, so make sure to take care of the stuff you know is erroneous so that you don't get a load of stuff you already know.
Because, frankly--that's no fun.

YOUR RIGHTS VERSUS MINE:

One thing that you're going to want to avoid with a story such as this is what I like to call the Disney Channel Complex.

Granted, I am a middle-class white straight person, so I seem to see Disney Channel Complex everywhere. The Complex is characterized by the need to over-emphasize societal struggle to the point where you get down to good ol' bad guys vs. good guys.

Granted, you're not there yet. But shedding all traces of such a Complex will make middle-class straight white people love you--and that is just about the largest audience in the United States. Righteous? I thought so.

How do you remove all Eau de Disney?

1. Fear is the source of all hatred. This is probably the one thing that most people who write multicultural or gay lit don't get--people don't do awful things "just 'cause". It's often because they're afraid. Brutality is often a knee-jerk reaction. Erase cunning or forethought from your story--or at least the interactions between your characters and the lower ranks of the government scale. (For governmental cunning, read up on your Holocaust--Night, by Elie Wiesel or your Islamic Revolution--Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. Both are excellent examples of societal struggle with no Complex to speak of.)

2. Oppressed people are oppressed until they snap. Basically, in such dire situations, the oppressed are probably the ones who just take it--that is, until they go a wee bit insane. Having a few worn-down characters will make your story more realistic.

Basically? Everyone has a reason for everything, and some people just deal with it. Having reality--even depressing reality--in your stories will make them a lot more believable and, as such, have a lot more impact.

Why the ramble? You have a good message, and you want it to reach as many people as possible. Making things dreadful and realistic is what will win the hearts of all kinds of readers.

ME, MYSELF, AND I

Let's put it this way: first person is an...itchy bee. How to alleviate that very same itch? Characterization. And characterization is all about an entrance.

Here are a few intros, all from the same story:

My big brother Ben is the best brother in the whole wide world, even when my Daddy said he went to visit the fishies and my mommy told me his brain was very sick. My brain gets very sick sometimes, too, and my nose runs all over my sleeve and Mrs. Parkinson says it’s icky and I have to go wash my hands but the water makes my hands all crackly so I pretend like I do but I don’t anyway.

FACT: I am exactly one thirty-second Pawnee. My great-great-great-great-grandmother f---d a white guy—an army corporal, as legend has it—and a hundred and thirty years later I was born with no trace of it in my skin; no trace of it in my blood but for the weakened native-ness that runs through like Kool-Aid with too much water.

S--t, dude. Of course I remember when Karim Malik first started going here—that was tenth grade or something, right? Yeah. He was really funny-sounding when he first got here, but then he got smart or something.

At first I thought he was pretty cool. He had a hot sister, too, and his hot sister spoke better English than he did. I kind of wanted to ask her out after I dumped Jacqueline, because I was going to do that pretty soon. The same girl gets so boring after awhile. And who wouldn't want a hot terrorist chick? That's just…hot.

See how they're all very different? The second two happen to be both high school guys, but there's a definite discrepancy in worldview and voice. To each his own--that's got to be your approach when working with first person.

A few pointers:

1. Assume that you're so famous, you don't need an introduction. The basic introduction--"hello, my name is"--establishes need-to-know information, but isn't the greatest for character development. How would the character show who they are, rather than tell?

2. What do your characters think of others? One of my guilty pleasures is having characters comment on each other. Not everyone gets along just peachy. When you're in first person, go ahead in depth within the world you've created to figure out just how they would each react. I especially want to know of Ching the gaysian--what is Zach's perception of him, other than that he has mad skills?

3. Writing is for noobs. Strange as it might seem, talk the parts of your characters. Does it sound right? Could you take it as a script into Hollywood and sell it? The fluency that your voice adds to the narrative is really important for getting a feel for what works and what doesn't in first person. So close your door and make sure no one's looking--and do a read-through.

___

*glee* If you have any questions, simply prod me. I'd love to discuss story-related things and stuff.

I really liked this story, it had an essence of nature, and was flowing, i really enjoyed it, mail me if you have any more stories like this one...

A true masterpiece...

Space out your paragraphs. I started reading it, trying to ignore it, but then there was the punctuation. If you fix these things, then I will begin to critique it, but right now, it hurts my eyes way more than I can stand.

I don't want to insult you, but this really isn't that great. The ideas are very good, and I like them, but your writing is poor. You have minimal grammar. There is nothing to make me keep reading. Your style leaves no suspense and is pretty much entirely flat and devoid of feeling. Also, this is not a story, so much as a description of one. Where's your plot? The flow is almost non-existent. It reads very jerkily. I think you have some potential here, but you really aren't bringing it out at all. Firstly, I'd go over your piece for grammar, form, and flow. Next, try to develop your ideas and plot. As you make corrections, feel free to PM them to me. I'm very willing to help another writer develop their style.
best of luck,
-Overflow

SPACES PEOPLE SPACES!!!

ouch...
ok could of things. You need to CAPITALIZE the first Letter of every sentence. That really bugged me

secondly. (I'm not but i know a few) Gay people prefer the term homosexuals, and not to be stereotyped just because they are.
Haha i thought the rainbow part was funny and all i could think of when they ran from the cops is, what would it look like if a gay go go dancer and a chinese dude were running down the steet. HILARIOUS!

I also was wondering why they would let people still own blades. Some people can throw a knife more accuratley and deadly than a gun


Well all I can say is good luck

actually i am gay. and i really don't find the term gay to be offending.. some other terms, yes, but gay is not that offending of a term. and in case you did not know Rainbow is one of the major signs of the GLBT community. i didn't just wake up one day and say "hey! im going to write a story about gay people because it sounds fun," this was sort of an attempt at an activist story. im a big gay rights activist. and yeah its missing capitals and maybe a bad punctuation and sure not great spelling or grammar. but i really did not write it to be the next new york times best seller. another thing is that in the future who knows what kind of guns we could have. we could integrate the technology of magnetic fields with weapon technology and create a hand gun that is silent but can shoot through 10 feet of solid concrete. plus with the right training yes a knife can be potentially more deadly. but it takes a lot of training and i ask you can you go into a place with 2 targets both the same distance from the standing point, and with 1 throw 10 knives, the other shoot 10 bullets and hit more times with a knife faster and with more force than with a gun? even if u had training its doubtful that you can do it with more force. although with training you could probably hit more stealthily because it makes less noise. but out of 100 people how many are going to have that sort of training?

scotchtape2scott wrote:the year is 2075, i am a part of the protect, and lead program formed by the underground. and these are dark times. this is my story.

Ack. No no no no no. You never want to start with a beginning like "Hi, I want to tell you about my tale!"; it's boring, formulaic, and basically sets the tone for the entire story as one of textbook description rather than magic. That's what I forsee, anyway; let's hope I'm wrong. Either way, change this.

my name is Zach, and it all started in 2070 when the U.S. put that new president in office. he was part of a religious extremist group that kept saying "gays are sinners, they are a bad influence." well after he got in office it all started to downfall. the congress then became mainly the part of the same extremist group, and together they put the new act in action. they said that gays had to show themselves, and made as they called it "sodomy" a crime. they also outlawed firearms as a way of trying to prevent outbeaks of protestors or freedom fighters. after that all firearms were illegally obtained or in the army. but, bladed weapons were sill very legal, so all gang wars, freedom fighters, and many homes, had swords, knives, daggers, all sorts of blades. after that we started running, a few of the gay leaders created an underground. "the rainbow underground" is what they called it.

Corny, mundance, and vague. What's the president's name, first of all? If they were an "extremist" group and not a mainstream one, how did they get elected in such large droves to government office? (I hope you know that currently, the US is becoming more and more liberal...please explain in the story why and how there was such a huge shift in political opinion. Nobody in their right minds would vote for such an extremist candidate unless the US was really shaken up at the time, such as an economic depression, civil war, etc.)

You didn't talk about the freedom fighters at all except for that they existed. That tells me nothing. I want to know about some of their publicized attempts, rumors, and such; that brings some blood and flesh into the skeleton background of your story. Currently, it's as boring as my copy of a US History textbook.

it must have been 2 years before they tried to take me. i was working in a gay bar at the time this all happened. a nice place called the arbitar, i was a Gogo dancer working for the owner named buck. one night, the arbitar got raided, police swarmed us, but i was near the back at the time. i managed to slip out with a guy named ching fi. i knew little about ching, but i got to know him after a while. he worked at a martial arts studio on the west side of town, a little ways away from where my appartment used to be. me and ching, i called him chi for short, ran like heck until a couple of hooded guys told us to come with them. they were protectors from the ranbow underground. they heard that the police were moving in on the arbitar and they snuck around back trying to get anybody they could help to the underground. we got in a van, where there must have been at least 5 other people where we rode out of town for about 5 miles, parked the van around back of a little diner that was a safe haven for gays at the time. it was owned by a couple of liberal elderly people and was ran by their daughter. their son was part of the underground, he got away from the "Sodomy Suppression Force" or the SSF, but his boyfriend didn't.

Okay, no. Once again, you provide no imagery or description to the story and basically tell us everything as if you're writing an essay instead of an emotionally-charged and fluctuating tale. You didn't expand about Ching at all. You didn't expand upon your relationship with the bar owner and how you felt about your condition in life at all. You didn't elaborate about the attack itself and what you felt that night at all. You didn't tell us your mixed (or happy) feelings about meeting the strangers at all. You didn't expand upon the SSF and it's activities at all. You didn't talk about the stay at the elderly people's house at all.

These things all need to be worked out heavily before your story can even be considered a true story. Also, why do mysterious people always have to appear with cloaks and hoods? Seriously.

we were then led in to the woods where it was very easy to get lost, a great place for an underground. we then were lead through a cave, through a maze of tunnels. and in to a large underground safe house where there must have been a hundred people, all gay. the men that saved us were part of the protect and lead program, they protect the underground and they would be the front line if we ever had to fight the SSF. they also lead gays to the underground. the place that they took us was the safehouse of our city. it was big because our city was big, but it wasn't close to the rainbow underground city. we were told that the rainbow underground city was carved with explosives, was under water. in a grotto, where there was a downward facing entrance, to keep all the air in. it is on an island somewhere, and they have a whole lush forest underground to keep oxygen supplies great, and for wood. its like a whole huge city. they told stories of it lit up all the time, where there were no windows, so people could sleep on their own scheduel, but they wouldn't have to indure the bright lights on the streets. everyone was accepting because they all know how it is to be discriminated agianst, they had to go in to hiding because of it. they told us many other stories, and it sounded so wonderful. i could not wait until we could go there. the people that were part of the "underground railroad" were taken to the underground city in groups of fourteen, two each day, so that there would be fourteen each week. they didn't take them in large numbers because there is less suspician in smaller numbers. so, i had to wait, and at the time, there would be a very long wait. i was at the last of the list.

Once again, imagery. This part of the story was actually okay except for the fact that everything above and below it sounds exactly as monotonous and singularly descriptive. It's fine to keep this paragraph as is because it's supposed to be a descriptive and explanatory paragraph. The other paragraphs should not be like it.

they told me to get a partner, this would be the person i would room with until the wait, and travel with when the time came. me and ching partnered up, and they showed us our little place, it was mainly a small room, with a bunk bed, a table, and a lamp. their was also a small refrigerator where we could put the food that came in every week. they sent it in bulk, from the resteraunt, it wasn't much, but it would keep us alive. the safehouse was built in a cave that had a spring, so we had warm water for bathes, but it wasn't healthy to drink, so they also sent gallons of water, enough for one gallon every two days for everybody. it wasn't much, not nearly as good as what the underground city sounded like, but it was definately well organized, and safe. as we waited, ching taught me how to do martial arts, we had plenty of time, and i learned fast. plus it was a great way of exercising. soon after i was done learning, we trained, as another way of keeping busy, and keeping exercised. the word started going around and people started watching. they then wanted to learn, so ching started a small group, where he taught them how to protect themselves in a fight.

Expand expand expand. Tell about Ching, how you spent your first days and got used to the place, how the martial arts classes went. Tell us some mini-stories about how you and Ching bonded together as friends. Tell us something!

that day finally came, where they came and told us that we would have to go quietly, bacause we were going at night. there was more chance of them suspecting something if they caught us, but there was a less chance of them catching us. and they would rather have them not catch us, than to pretend we are heterosexual people. so we set off. it would be a long ride, so we brought all the necessities, food for three days, blankets, pillows, and other toiletries. we rode for about a day, we were just comming in to a new ciry, and police stopped us. they came to the window and the conversation went something like "hey, what are you guys doing here?" the Protect And Lead we call them pals replied "we are going to a football game, its our favorite team and we have been driving for quite a while now. we're all tired and can't wait until we get to the city for the game, and we can settle down in a hotel room. but if we stop for too long on the way, we will miss it." the officer then wanted him to step out and talk to him, he did so and they talked. i couldn't hear what they said to each other because they were outside, but a couple minutes later the pal came back in and said we're ready to go. we then set off once agian, this time without any interuptions.

Expand expand expand. In this paragraph, I want you to show us how frightened you were about the officer. Describe his eyes as they swept across the room, accusatively settling on either you or Ching. Show me how intelligent and kind the PALs were and how they interacted with you on the journey.

we got to the beach after a couple days, where one of the pals, his name was blake, led us to a cave where we found a small motor boat. the other pal took the van back, to get another two people. we boated for a few hours to a small island, where we rested for a day in a small hut that was made by the underground, we filled up, and we set off agian. we boated for about three days, stopping at various islands to rest and fill the boat up with gas. after a while of boating on the third day, we reached an "abandoned" island. it was huge, yet mainly a dense rainforest. the rainforest was difficult to navigate through, having deadly snakes, and many other preditory animals. but we made it to a cave, which we went down, and found a spring. we dived in to the spring, finding our way to another spring in a small opening underground, where the only ways to get to this place was in the spring we just through, and another spring, which led to an enormous underground aquifer. inside the room there were diving equipment, which we put on, and dived in to the aquifer. after a while of swimming, we reached a large opening, where we swam up into. there was a lush forest where we came up in, and a path made of bricks. we followed the path to find a beautiful stone city.

Whoa, what? You just strung me along and then dropped me off a cliff at the very end. This paragraph was getting good until the last sentence, when it completely self-destructed and made the entire section look bad. You can't just say "we followed the path to find a beautiful stone city" and leave it at that! End it with a flair; describe your feelings and tears of wonder at seeing the city, maybe some elaboration on the city itself and the warmth of the sun as you advanced towards the gates.

In general, this story was as rough as they come. It seemed like a very poorly writing first draft and I'm perfectly fine with that if you admit it. Please go back and fix the entire story - there's literally no part in this story that can remain as it is now because of the myriad of mistakes that are present. Good luck.