Young Writers Society

The children pull on their parents' clothing and set off into the morning. Small, pale hands clutch at gray fabric to keep it from dragging in the street. Arms are flung into the cool, still air to prevent cuffs from falling too low over wrists. Black leather shoes slide off of slender heels, despite many layers of socks. The children follow the same route they used to watch their parents take every morning.
They travel like gray marbles, rolling down through the white city, drawn to the large, bright Cube in its center. The city is perfectly symmetrical—all streets form either lines radiating from the Cube, or concentric squares around the Cube. All the streets and buildings are perfectly white, and built of a stone that does not crack or soil. One small light, cast upon the stone, can illuminate the entire face of a building, and even with minimal lighting the streets glow faintly beneath the feet of the children. The city is white and the Sky is black. Black, with distant, motionless shadows arching through it—if there can be shadows in such blackness.
Inside the Cube, under bright, white lights, the children stand as tall as they can while adults in white uniforms examine them silently from a few paces away. The children do not shrivel beneath the gazes of the adults. Blue eyes meet each other calmly, and pink lips do not utter a sound. Smooth, white skin does not flush. One by one, the children are sorted into groups of one hundred each. One such group is ushered into a train-car, with no windows. The white seats glisten.
The train runs so smoothly and quietly that the children can hardly tell when it has started moving. They remain silent as adults give them white protective suits. The limbs of the suits are too long for the children, and they have to put layers of cloth around their blond hair in order to keep the hoods from falling off. Clear eyes, rimmed with long, perfect lashes, stare placidly at each other through blue-tinted goggles. Whatever parts of their pale faces that are not obscured behind the goggles are sheathed inside a white mask.
When the train stops, the children are informed that there has been another cave-in, and that their job today is to sort the rubble. Most of the children have done this kind of work before, or have heard of it from their parents who used to do it, and do not need instructions. The doors open and the children, now bundled inside their protective suits, clamber out of the train-car. The white faces of the adults on the train are smooth and calm, and their perfect blue eyes do not flicker as they watch the children set to work.
The landscape outside the train is made of the same, luminescent white stone as the city, but here it is perfectly flat for as far as anyone can see—save, of course, the large pile of rubble scattered across it a short distance away from the train. It is all that is left of the cave-in, the hole in the distant Sky having been patched up before now so as not to expose the children to potentially harmful light or falling matter as they work. Large chunks of gray, black and brown stone and shards of metal lie on the ground, but there are also occasional pieces of plants or soil. Seeing these, the children unnecessarily adjust their gloves, making sure that no skin is exposed.
“All you have to do is sort it,” one of the girls says. She has done this kind work before, and now must provide well-practiced instructions for the children who haven't. “Reusable materials—rock and metal—go to Sanitation. Any life-form—even plants or dirt or anything like that—goes to Incineration to prevent contamination.”
The Sky is made mostly of stone and metal, so most of the rubble is dragged to the train-car marked 'Sanitation.' Some of the stones are so large that they require several children working together to move them. The shoes of their suits slip on the smooth ground, and their small hands cannot fully grip the rubble from inside their thick, baggy gloves.
One small boy climbs over the rubble, straying a bit from the other children. He's caught sight of something among the stones that intrigues him—a long, brown... what? A branch of a tree, perhaps? Or the root of some plant? He clasps a precautionary hand over his mask at the thought. It isn't until he is mere paces away from it that he sees what it is. His hand falls to his side.
It is an arm.
But the flesh is a dark, wooden color and slightly speckled, unlike the perfect, white arms of the people of the city. The color is so vulgar that he can't help but find it tantalizingly beautiful. He is mesmerized by the thin line of black under each of the short fingernails. The inside of his mask fogs over a little before his suit adjusts to his quickening breaths.
He kneels down and nudges a sheet of metal away to see who the arm belongs to.
His blue eyes blink. As the metal slides aside, the body of a woman appears, but she is like no woman he has ever seen. Her skin is all the same dark, slightly patterned color as her arm, and she is surprisingly short, compared to the tall, lean adults he is used to seeing. She wears a dull green dress, made of a strange, light fabric with noticeable imperfections in its color and texture. Her long, brown hair is smooth, but speckled with dust from the rubble. It has fallen over her face, and a string of wilted white daisies is tangled into the dark strands like a battered crown. Despite her roughness, she does not seem physically wounded—until he sees her wings. The elegant arches of rich brown feathers look so natural on her back that he almost didn't see them, but when he does, he also notices that her left wing is crumpled awkwardly under the weight of her body. He cannot tell if she is alive. He's reaching towards her to push the hair off of her face, when he hears a voice from behind him.
“What did you find?”
He turns around to see an older boy coming towards him over the rubble. When the new boy sees the dark woman, he wrinkles his nose.
“I've seen those before,” he says. “Nasty stuff. I'll be right back.” He clambers over the rubble towards the train and returns momentarily, carrying two long white poles. “This is the best way to carry it, I think.”
With the older boy directing the younger one, they wedge one pole under the woman's shoulders, right above her wings, and another beneath her knees, then hoist her up. Slowly, carefully, they carry their load across the pile of stone and metal.
“What are we going to do with her?” The younger boy asks quietly.
“You have to Incinerate it, of course,” replies the other boy, without hesitation. “These things are pure contamination.”

------------------------

There's not much to say here, because as is this text is virtually perfect. It certainly is an interesting idea, and I would be completely fascinated if you continued this. The only problem/thing I really noticed was the beginning.

The children pull on their parents' clothing and set off into the morning. Small, pale hands clutch at gray fabric to keep it from dragging in the street. Arms are flung into the cool, still air to prevent cuffs from falling too low over wrists.

The beginning confused me. At first I thought you meant the parents were with the children. And the parents were flinging their arms about, dislodging the grasps of the children. Other than that confusion (as you can see, this way of reading it makes the whole paragraph sound weird and jumpy, too many short sentences that say nearly the same thing), I could find nothing about this flash fiction that sounded wrong, or rang untrue.

It was hard to visualise the insides of the cube. Initially I thought you meant it was night-time and there was so much pollution that the stars weren't visible. Without sunlight people don't grow. That might sound stupid, but you know (stolen from some website):

Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin that is found in food and can also be made in your body after exposure to ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun. Sunshine is a significant source of vitamin D because UV rays from sunlight trigger vitamin D synthesis in the skin.

The major biologic function of vitamin D is to maintain normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorus. By promoting calcium absorption, vitamin D helps to form and maintain strong bones. Vitamin D also works in concert with a number of other vitamins, minerals, and hormones to promote bone mineralization. Without vitamin D, bones can become thin, brittle, or misshapen. Vitamin D sufficiency prevents rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults, two forms of skeletal diseases that weaken bones.

Sun exposure is perhaps the most important source of vitamin D because exposure to sunlight provides most humans with their vitamin D requirement.

So... no sun more chance of brittle bones.

Also, what sustenance do these Cube people live off? Mushrooms? But mushrooms are living things, thus contamination? I also don't see how the outside world isn't always trying to get in. What about roots that dig into that rock? What happens when the Cube becomes overpopulated? Are there more Cubes?

Interesting concept. Really enjoyed reading this.

Oh, one more thing. You suddenly personalise the ending. The children become real, they have thoughts, they speak. I'm not sure if I liked that. Everything was impersonal, things were happening without any questions. If it had remained that way, if a random child with no name found the body, but didn't consider it beautiful, called someone over and they put it in the incinerator without a guilty thought, then it'd be more chilling.

Alternatively, if you have begun the story from the point of a child, allowing the reader to feel his/her confusion, anxiety etc, then the ending would be more realistic.

I don't know what I'm saying

- Jai

this is... intriguing. This could be easily turned into a novel. Definitely a lot of potential and unanswered questions. You seem to have set the stage for a novel that could be very philosophical in nature (particularly pertaining to morals, and society). I like this quite a bit and sincerely hope you do>>> please PM me if you do!

I agree with seemingly meaningless. Well done. The only thing that really bugged me was the shift from a reporter-esque narrative to a third person limited omniscient. I cant say which one you should go with to be honest, though if you were to turn this into a novel the later would be more suited. I do think that you should make a choice though. (maybe even go first person)

Overall i was impressed. You should totally do a bit of refining and then maybe even submit to a few contests!

Hi! here for your requested review! first of all congrats on the green!
thoughts:
1)this could easily be a novel. A very GOOD novel. Consider that....
2) your choice of words in places confuses me. Its good to use big/not oftenly used words, but maybe not so much.
Nitpicks:
1)
I can't understand this beginning. Its just to......ubrupt. I think re-wording is in your future
2)
marbles? marbles? are they some how rolling to the place they want to go??? this is really a weird choice of words, though unique

Overall:
Grammar:
weird choices in some places, but overall nice.
Plot/storyline:
I like it. As I said before PLEASE consider turning into a novel! if ya' do let me know.

Well, thats all I can think of, hope this helps.
~Luvs,
Pointe

I have not visited this website in years...I have been flying around the internet bored to insanity until I alighted on this story and saw the forest around. I am back at the young writers society.

Tiger here to review! Or comment. Or review/comment.

Well, I like this. Actually, I love this (obviously, you wrote it . The description is great, and the story is enthralling. I can only find a few nitpicks:

The children do not shrivel beneath the gazes of the adults.

While I understand how this is meant to describe the scene, that particular word looks rather out-of-place here. I know they're not very different, but maybe shrink or simply cower would be better?

The white faces of the adults on the train are smooth and calm, and their perfect blue eyes do not flicker as they watch the children set to work.

Not that the word is out-of-place, but merely I wonder what it is describing. Their eyes do not flicker between or from or away from the children, I assume? You do mention that they are watching the children, but in mentioning the word flicker (even if the action is performed) you have to mention what their eyes might be flickering towards or from or, well, you get the picture.

But apart from that, no nitpicks. I do agree with something seeminglymeaningless said though; though the general feel of the story started as detached and apathetic, towards the end the children become people with emotions and feelings. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a bad thing, but it sort-of goes against the feel you've set up in the beginning.

And that's about it for my nitpicks. Which weren't very important or helpful, to be honest.

Anyway, this is great. As the others said, I could definitely see a story growing from this, because in such a brief space you've created a world which the reader wants to explore and learn about. It also feels like you've given us a brief sketch of the whole story, that there is so much more to be told. And the way you've tied the story into the interpretation of the painting is impressive. Great job, and KEEP WRITING!

Tiger

One Saturday night, a dead terrorist with her black cloak and mask, came down from Purgatory to review Azila's work.

Hello there!

I apologize for the delay because I just finished my three-day examination. ^^

First of all, it's nice to know that this literary piece is inspired from Himberg's The Wounded Angel. Portraying arts into stories is a pretty, tricky way of writing a short story, but I think you have managed it very well.

~

Honestly speaking, your introductory part quite confused me the first time I read it, but the second time I did, I kind of get the picture. The idea you have here is unique and what gives this story a good effect on the readers, is that you show the children's innocence through their actions and their everyday lifestyle.

Let's go to the second paragraph, it seems that you're really focusing about the 'Cube'. But it tends to make me just skip that line because I think some are unnecessarily mentioned. Though don't get me wrong, I like how you describe the rubble, the oblivious people and all.

Considering that this is a flash fiction, I get the story idea or the plot. But (yes, there is) by the end of the story, it leaves me full of mysteries and unanswered questions. Maybe just giving out a slight information as to why and how the parents are letting their children work might give your readers a bit understanding of the story plot. ^^ Like for example, what is with the rubble, what happened to the angel and all. Try making your story more independent. Sometimes making your readers curious even at the ending part might dissatisfy them. But anyways, I like how you portray the angel, the characters present here and of course, the setting.

As for the last part, I like it. It's a bit surprising when the older boy says to incinerate (btw, I don't think you still need an uppercase "I" for incinerate) the body without even showing concern about the 'angel'.

Grammar wise, I think you did a great job. Your usage of present tense affects this story in a good way, that I can still imagine the story events. Spelling of course, are good and you tend to show more, a plus point in here.

Other things:

He is memorized by the thin line of black under each of her short fingernails.

How you mentioned the highlighted phrase is unexpected, especially that there was actually no sufficient evidence for the narrator to conclude that the arm's from a woman. Maybe this is just me but just by looking at an arm wouldn't tell me directly the gender of whose arm is that.

His blue eyes blink.

You have just said about the "blue eyes" before, so you don't need to say it again. I suggest slashing the adjective "blue" one out.

he also notices that her left wing is crumpled awkwardly under the weight of her body.

That's a bit awkward to read. lol. Seriously though, I think you can rephrase that with something else because that tends to weaken your prose.

Overall:

I am looking forward for the next chapter, if there is. I hope so anyway.Thanks for the good read and I hope you still see this review helpful, Azila. This review is entirely based on my opinions, so please let me know if you have some questions or clarifications. 8D

Keep writing and peace out,
Yuri

Aiya Azila! Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever reviewed anything of yours... muhahahaha!
Just kidding.

Azila wrote:The children pull on their parents' clothing and set off into the morning. Small, pale hands clutch at gray fabric to keep it from dragging in the street. Arms are flung into the cool, still air to prevent cuffs from falling too low over wrists. Black leather shoes slide off of slender heels, despite many layers of socks. The children follow the same route they used to watch their parents take every morning.
They travel like gray marbles, rolling down through the white city, drawn to the large, bright Cube in its center. The city is perfectly symmetrical—all streets form either lines radiating from the Cube, or concentric squares around the Cube. All the streets and buildings are perfectly white, and built of a stone that does not crack or soil. One small light, cast upon the stone, can illuminate the entire face of a building, and even with minimal lighting the streets glow faintly beneath the feet of the children. The city is white and the Sky is black. Black, with distant, motionless shadows arching through it—if there can be shadows in such blackness.

Wow. This sounds like such a boring place XD. Don't mind me, i'm studying in interior design...gotta love color

Azila wrote:One such group is ushered into a train-car, with no windows. The white seats glisten.

I'm a little confused. If there are no windows in the train-car, how can we/you see the white seats glistening?

Azila wrote:The landscape outside the train is made of the same, luminescent white stone as the city, but here it is perfectly flat for as far as anyone can see—save, of course, the large pile of rubble scattered across it a short distance away from the train.

I'd just remove the comma

Oh that's nice; not much nit-picking to be done
I have to say, wow. You have a beautiful way of writing. It's so vivid, so loaded with info without being overbearing. I loved it. I'm curious to know where these people are and why they live in a "perfect" world..

I have to agree with bladesmith; this could easily be turned into a novel. And if you to make it into one, let me know. I soooo want to read it

Anyways, that's all I really have to say.. LOVED it!
Spitfire *likes*

*deep breath* Alright, here we go.

As usual, I'm not going to spend any time reviewing technical aspects of this work like word choice, grammar, or spelling, because I think all of those are adequate and don't make for an interesting review. Instead, let's go a little bit deeper and try to figure out what this story is about. This will be infinitely easier than your previous story, which more or less told you exactly what its theme was; here, we've got a bit of wiggle room in terms of interpretation, given the abstract nature of the work. So, without further ado, my interpretation of the work.

The setting is hell. Rather, purgatory: a bleak, colourless place where people just bide their time. There's no point to these people's existence, they don't advance. Normal human cities are chaotic clumps of randomized advances, while your story setting (SS) is a geometrically perfect place where no progress is allowed, for fear of spoiling the symmetry. So many things are wrong with the SS. Children are wearing adults' clothes, and are doing adults' work. Adults, who should be doing this instead, are just twiddling their thumbs, probably bored out of their minds. No one is doing what they want to be doing, everyone's doing the opposite of that. The SS is sterile, because dirt would evoke emotion, so would any sort of decoration; any colour. So would beautiful landscapes - and that's why the only landscape we see is an endless white void without a horizon. The cave-in serves as a break for the weary eye, it lets the viewer think about something, feel something - which is exactly why it must be removed. This is purgatory, there are no emotions. You're not allowed to feel. You're only allowed to bide.

By the time I read about the cave-in, signifying that this place is underground, I was absolutely convinced of my idea of the SS as a purgatory. But the cave-in itself is interesting - why did it happen? Or was it an accident? No, the person that was dug out had wings. It couldn't have been an accident, if it was an accident, it would have been a normal person from a normal world, not an angel. The angel tried to enter the purgatory by force, perhaps to save someone, only to be buried alive beneath the rubble (aside: "Buried Alive" and "Beneath the Rubble" are my favourite songs by my favourite band, Front Line Assembly. Awesome!).

But then the kids discover the angel, and something strange happens. They go off to incinerate her. They must have understood, at least the boy that has seen them before, that they couldn't have just randomly appeared here - they were here for some purpose. Yet there is no show of emotion to signify that any of the children felt like this. Have they been transformed by this place? Do they, just like the SS, feel nothing? They treat the angel the same way they would treat a dead cat.

You mentioned that this piece is allegorical. I think its message is something along the lines of "where you are transforms you into who you are". The children witness an angel, something that even the most hardcore atheist would have been excited by, but the SS has changed them into, well, little more than a part of the scenery. Just emotionless props.

I would also like to respond to a few of the criticisms above.

Seeminglymeaningless brings up subjects like what do these people eat and how come their bones aren't made of wafer. Even ignoring my interpretation of purgatory, I don't think this piece should be taken that literally. It's actually kind of similar to the first story I ever wrote (called Ash). It also takes place in a strange setting, and quite a lot of the comments I got were about the details of the world and how its inhabitants get by, what everyone and everything looked like, and so on. For stories like Ash and Once Again, these details shouldn't matter. There's a reason the author didn't put them in.

Also, I disagree with most of the reviewers' ideas of turning this story into a novel. It's a beautifully self-contained flash fiction, and it works best just like that. You COULD, maybe, write a novel from the point of view of someone rescuing someone else from the SS (and then you'd basically have A Wrinkle in Time but with more religious undertones). The whole thing about the SS is that it's an impenetrably boring place - Once Again's brevity makes sure that the SS doesn't overstay its welcome. But if you write a whole novel about living in it, it would make for an impenetrably boring novel.

Finally, both seeminglymeaningless and Tigersprite mentioned the change of tone as a bad thing, and I wholeheartedly disagree. As I mentioned, the SS is devoid of emotion. The cave-in is a disturbance of the SS's sterility, and so you have emotion being born from it. If you think about it from that point of view, the appearance of emotion, the shift from an impersonal exposition to much closer narration not only fits, but is actually a genius move.

Overall, good job. My favourite story by you is still The Forger's Apprentice - this one, I think, lacked the fresh imagination and crisp diction of Apprentice - but Once Again has made for some very fun analysis. If you have any questions or would like any other stories reviewed, by all means, give me a shout.

Your servant,
cC

Pretty awesome, I must admit. Very disturbing and strange sterile ambiance here. I think its interesting that the woman is not only darker skinned than usual, but has wings. It made me wonder if it would make a difference if she had only one or the other? Anyway interesting man vs. nature kind of dystopia weirdness, me likey.

I'm an awful person! I told you to send me an angry PM if I didn't get to this within a week. I swear, I'm completely useless without proper incentive. Anyway, because of my procrastination, you've already gotten some extensive critiques.

One of the first things I notice is that you mention colors a lot. This in itself wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but they're heavily concentrated in the third paragraph, and also all seem to be basic shades: white, gray, black, blue, pink. Especially white. You use white fourteen times-- I noticed the repetition in the third paragraph particularly. I understand that you're probably bringing it up so much because it's a symbol or metaphor for the blankness and and sameness of this place, but after a while the word ceases to have any descriptive meaning and it gets redundant. We can only hear that they're white-skinned and blue-eyed so many times.

Also, skimming over some of the other crits, I agree with TigerSprite's two nitpicks. And have one of my own:

He is memorized by the thin line of black under each of the short fingernails

Memorized = mesmerized

Overall, this was intriguing. It was certainly written well, but I can't say I loved it, simply because of how sterile it was. That distance is intentional, I'm sure, but it's all very tell-y, and it's such a small snapshot of such a huge scene that it doesn't feel complete. I love the idea of this Cube, and this symmetry in it, but I have a lot of questions that I feel are two important to bring up and then just forget about. For one, what's with all the "adults used to", "parents used to" mentions? This kind of thing raises a point that's never expanded on. I also feel like you're on the brink of some great allegory and there's rivers of meaning behind this, but I can't really connect everything. The find this dark, blemished angel, but the story ends without exploring her significance, or any real reaction to it.

Which is, I guess, the point. That these people are sheltered and sensitized beyond caring. While that's poignant, it seems like a cop-out to me, and leaves me asking "So what is this really saying?"

Anyway, I really like your writing style, and your descriptions were beautiful. I'd just suggest not opening so many loose ends, avoiding redundancy, and showing some reaction. Best of luck and PM me for anything!

~Evi

This piece felt so tragic. But that word is too blunt... I felt like it was complex, in a simple way--powerfully allegorical... You can really build up tension during your most climactic moments:

One small boy climbs over the rubble, straying a bit from the other children. He's caught sight of something among the stones that intrigues him—a long, brown... what? A branch of a tree, perhaps? Or the root of some plant? He clasps a precautionary hand over his mask at the thought. It isn't until he is mere paces away from it that he sees what it is. His hand falls to his side.

It is an arm.

...but you can also write in a smart way, which I can't do for the life of me--like in this final piece of dialogue:

“What are we going to do with her?” The younger boy asks quietly.

“You have to Incinerate it, of course,” replies the other boy, without hesitation.

(Though that second sentence can be trimmed. I feel like the "without hesitation" echoes the "of course", and having both is a little redundant. I'm actually not that sure about it. I also think you could get rid of the "boy" and just use, "replies the other." Why I'm not so sure about these edits is because I sort of get the subconscious need to leave the reader with some degree of narration--that is, since the entire piece is composed of mostly exposition/narration, it seems a little rushed to leave us with a simple quote. But, I'm not so sure about any of this. I think my trimming efforts are good, but I wouldn't mind outside enforcement from another editor.)

So much "black", "white"/"pale", other really block-y, boring hues. We have six senses, and our sense of sight has like a million different colors you can use for which the English language gives about a thousand different names to. Why rely on "black" so much? Black leather, black sky, black stones, black nails... I hate colors! They're so... given! Another example: "His blue eyes blink." Why do his "blue eyes" have to blink--why can't he just blink? "He blinks"--so simple, clean, colorless (in a good way.) But I do want to know how this place looks like--scratch that, feels like: What does this place smell like? What does it sound like? When you lay your hand on the Cube, does it feel sleek, or is it bumpy like cold skin?

I guess this transitions into my main problem with this piece. Tension! You start building tension only when the boy sees the arm... but the majority of the piece just seems useless if it doesn't highlight some sort of tension stylistically, since plot-wise the piece seems like all tension. Giving us a comprehensive glimpse into this dystopia will definitely help create some tension, so follow the "show (everything), don't tell (one thing)" rule I suggested above--but also, I felt stifled by the lack of character/interesting narrative in the first half of the piece. It seemed like you were setting up a novel rather than a short story. Is that what you had originally planned for this piece to turn out as? (Rhetorical question.)

Try stealing a famous writer's style for two sentences or two. I suggest Hemingway for this piece--because he's easy to imitate and because I feel like your piece is strongest when it's most similar to him:

He clasps a precautionary hand over his mask at the thought. It isn't until he is mere paces away from it that he sees what it is. His hand falls to his side.

It is an arm.

Your next sentence could've been something great, but it feels so expository right now: "But the flesh is a dark, wooden color and slightly speckled, unlike the perfect, white arms of the people of the city. " Trim the "but", the "is", the "unlike", the "of"s--strive for simplicity here, simplicity being "word"--"action"--"literary device", without the complications of unnecessary "be"ings and idea-linking.

Here--let me get a try at this:

"...
It is an arm.

It hangs against the rubble, dark as cedar, its limp, folded fingers caked with specks of dirt."

Does that make any sense? Or what I just wrote utter bullcrap?


Overall, the piece was solid--smart, moving, always pushing forward. With even more attention to detail and less reliance on exposition, it could pack an enormous emotional punch.

Hope I helped! Sleepy time
-Gadi