Young Writers Society

I don't have a title yet, but this is the first chapter of the book i started this summer. It's still in progress. It's rated pg-13 because later on there is a battle and i want to keep the rating the same for all the chapters I post.

Chapter One

“Pérez es muerto! Pérez es muerto! Cambia es libre! Viva Cambia!” These constant cheers of rejoicing have been playing on the living room radio for hours. My father adjusts the knob to phase out some of the static that inhibits him from hearing more about the current situation. Eager to escape the confusion, I log on my computer to check my MySpace. My profile page cheerfully reads: Hello, Margo. I half laugh at that. The computer is the only cheerful one today. Hesitantly I glance at the bulletins. One read: “Have you seen him?” I instinctively glance at the date: July 7th, 2007. My mind tells me not to click on it, after all no news is good news, but my body disobeys and opens it anyway. “Please if you see this guy, IM me or call me right away. He has been missing ever since the uprising. I think he might be dead. If there is any information, please tell me ASAP” -Maria. Attached is a familiar picture of a Latino youth staring into nothingness, oblivious he is the photo’s subject. Suppressed tears rise up. Soon I am bawling into my mahogany desk. Why did this have to happen? Why a rebellion? We want them to have freedom, but not like this. There are better ways to solve issues; unfortunately violence was chosen due to its celerity and the impatience of the radicals.


It has been a little over a week since the chaos. Carlos Pérez, malevolent dictator of Cambia, has finally passed away after months of sickness. The plan was for his brother, Ramon Pérez, to take over permanently after ruling in his sick absence. The Nuevo Revolucionarios had other plans. The Nuevo Revolucionarios, or NR for short, started out as a group of Cambians who want to be free of dictatorship. Unfortunately they are slowly becoming that which they were trying to overcome. They stormed into the funeral of Ramon Pérez’s recently deceased wife, to catch him off guard physically and emotionally. They pinned his guards to the ground and snatched up Ramon. Ostensibly this caused a huge uproar and local police reacted immediately, not a well thought out part of the plan. So instead of kidnapping him for negotiations, they took him to the nearest room, hastily pointed a pistol to his slick jet-black hair and demanded he give Cambia back to the people. His response was as cool as a snake’s back, with the scorpion’s sting: “Never”. Within an instant he was dead, and the rebellion had begun.


My thoughts return to Maria’s bulletin. Maria and Julio have been dating for nearly a year. I find it odd that he would leave her, but at the same time nationalist’s blood flows through his veins. Julio disappeared shortly after the rebellion had broken into full swing. My only guess at his whereabouts is that he is in Cabino’s capital, Amer, joining his fellow young rebels, or on a cheap fishing boat to some similar destination. I sigh. He always was that type, the one who would pick up and leave when adventure called. The minute he found out about the NR he must have thrown what little clothes he owned into his tattered school bag, with bike chains and old combination locks attached, and caught the first boat out, 90 miles south, to the chaotic center of the uprising. The government has been attempting to keep citizens from storming to Cambia, but their minor efforts were not enough to stop several thousand rebels from taking over the docks for their revolutionary purposes. It stands to reason that the fishing industry is suffering due to this, but the fishermen don’t care. They were the first to sail out of the harbor, past the docked cruse ships, under the 7 mile bridge, and well past all signs of our territory.

Good start, but too much telling. If I want to learn about a war or rebellion from a detatched narrator, I'll read a history book, not a novel. Never tell what you can show. Disobeying this written and uwritten law will result in the downfall of your novel or story. Your second and third paragraphs kill the story - no matter how little there is so far - immediately. As interesting as the history of the revolution may be, I don't care about it. I care about the people, the here-and-now, the real story. Backstory is not your friend. It's necessary sometimes, but in very, very small degrees.

My advice: write a prologue from a throwaway character's PoV, who sees everything you tell in the first chapter. This will breath new life into this piece.

Secondly, this almost seems to be Science Fiction. Consider moving it there.

Thirdly, try your very best to leave things like MySpace or Ipods, for instance, out of your story. In ten years time, they will be dated. They immediatly put an age tag on your writing.

Suppressed tears rise up. Soon I am bawling into my mahogany desk. Why did this have to happen? Why a rebellion? We want them to have freedom, but not like this. There are better ways to solve issues; unfortunately violence was chosen due to its celerity and the impatience of the radicals.

This portion feels contrived and awkward. Too wordy and too emotional at the moment. The "bawling" has no effect on me, because I don't know the character yet.

Fourthly (is that a word?), this is a little short to be a first paragraph. Make it longer by focusing more on character development rather than story.

Cheers, and welcome to YWS.

-Kylan

I have to agree, that you compress a lot of historical information into a rather short first chapter. The details of the rebellion may well be very important, in which case you could use Kylan's idea and instead of telling us about what happened to Carlos and his brother, write about it. It could be in third person or even from Ramon's point of view. That would be interesting and that way you could convey the emotion and the tragedy of the situation even better.

Also, I think some more description would be nice but so far, this looks like it's going to be an interesting novel and as for genre, I don't think it's science fiction and action/ adventure fiction seems about right, especially if you have a battle in it later. Anyway, other than that I have just a few specific suggestions -

Eager to escape the confusion, I log on to my computer to check my MySpace.

One reads: “Have you seen him?”

Suppressed tears rise up. Soon I am bawling into my mahogany desk. Why did this have to happen? Why a rebellion? We want them to have freedom, but not like this. There are better ways to solve issues; unfortunately violence was chosen due to its celerity and the impatience of the radicals. [I agree that this needs work. The word bawling really doesn't fit and it's all much too dramatic and on the verge of info dumping. Perhaps something like 'Suppressed tears rise up. Soon, I am weeping, the warm droplets of water spilling across my mahogany desk. How could this have happened? Was freedom really worth the lives of so many? The radicals certainly seemed to think so.']

The minute he found out about the NR he must have thrown what little clothes he owned into his tattered school bag, with bike chains and old combination locks attached, and caught the first boat out, 90 [I'd change this to ninety.] miles south, to the chaotic center of the uprising.

They were the first to sail out of the harbor, past the docked cruse ships, under the 7 [Again, it's best to write the numbers out in words.] mile bridge, and well [s]past[/s] beyond all signs of our territory.

Other than that, I think it might be an idea to translate the Spanish at the top? Or at least give the reader a vague idea of what it means. I mean, I can see that it's not necessary (my knowledge of Spanish can just about stretch that far ) but readers get curious and some might even go in search of a Spanish dictionary, thinking they're missing out on some real important part of the story.

Overall, work on adding more description and such but you have a good base for a novel here and I shall certainly read more.