Young Writers Society

Storm

I slouched against one of the few trees left in the forest. The charred ruins of a forest flourishing with life only hours ago were all I could see other than that road. There were no roads, where I was from. The sky was the road, there. I was far from my home, further than any person could understand. Or perhaps they could, being put through what I’d been through in my life. Yes, people, the name the beings in 12 of the universes we’d discovered had given themselves. I was currently on one of those 12. One of the ones those in world 0 considered "special". One of the "twin" worlds.

For this reason, we were supposed to never under any circumstances enter this world. The sole purpose of the portals was to study these other worlds. Maybe Angel had a point... After all, we had almost the exact same DNA as these "people". But we were more evolved. We were what they would become. Why did we need to study ourselves? That was basically what we were doing... Entering worlds 1751 or 1752 had ferocious consequences, and my sister and I had done just that.

4 hours ago

Angel and I were at multiverse port, waiting for our parents to return. If only they had shown up sooner.

"Hey Storm, why don't we go to one of the worlds?" asked Angel, my 8 year old sister. She was short, typical for someone her age, but she was freakishly clever. I hate to say it but that's the only way I can put it. But there are different types of intelligence, and some forms of it you have to grow up to gain.

She was very pale, and had chocolate brown hair with golden highlights. Her eyes were white. A rare, but existing trait, linked to genes that sparked immense intelligence... and we were about 150% human intelligence to begin with! But, being eight, she didn't have certain forms of knowledge. She didn't care much about rules, and ever since someone told her about a Japanese teaching from one of the twelve "people" worlds, that basically said "live every day as if it were your last day" she had been a recklessly immature kid who only cared about having fun. She put things together in her head the way she wanted them to go, and that wasn't always the right way.

"Uh, sure, which one?" I replied, brightening. We hadn't done much together in awhile.

"How about 1751?" she asked, and my smile faded.

"Sorry. We both know we can't," I said.

"I know...but..," she started slowly, looking at her feet sadly, then seriously she asked: "Aren't you curious about what's out there? Beyond what we've already seen?"

"Yeah... But why can‘t you just be satisfied with a normal life?"

"Normal? Why be normal? Normal is boring. I don't want to do anything bad, I just want to have fun!" She said, then ran away from me toward the portals. Are Mom and Dad back yet? I wondered, then looked over and saw her running toward Sector 2, the forbidden worlds. I almost got up, but then decided even she wouldn't be able to get into there, right? Wrong.

"Sector 2 Breached!" a voice coming from the overhead speaker said, just after I received a message on my pager from Angel, that said: "I got in! I got in! :)"

"What the-" I said. Well, she'd always been good at trickery... My fingers fumbled with the pager and I typed: "Get out of there, now!" She knew we weren’t supposed to go there. But she did not know the consequences of doing so.

"Worlds 1752-1760 breached!" the voice said.

"That damn idiot!" I said, and begun running in that direction. Then got a text from her saying: "Yeah! Let's see them try to find me in all those at once!"

"That's right... She's using that trick again," I muttered to myself. I ran in that direction as fast as my legs would carry me, arches and people flying past me as I sped toward Sector 2. Halfway there I got another text from Angel: "You're too late! :P"

"Angel!" I yelled, then my pager said she had entered a different world just when my suspicions were confirmed by the message saying: "World 1751 breached!"

"What the hell is she thinking!" I screamed. I don't know why. I just kept running, and when I got to that room I made the most life-changing choice I can remember: I entered portal 1751. I tried to stop, but my legs kept going, before I knew it, I felt the familiar sense of being stretched, from lack of gravity. When I appeared, I looked around. Angel was up in a tree.

"You came, you came!" she said happily.

"Well, don't be so happy, if we aren't off the radar within a few minutes we're dead," I said.

"Yay! Finally some excitement!"

"You're such a tomboy!" I said, chuckling a little.

"What's that?"

"A human term."

"Ah."

"So what was your plan? Come here and run around until you get caught?" I asked annoyed.

"If I go down now, I'd like to do it having fun!"

"Well, let's dispose of our pagers and find shelter."

"Kay."

We would have jumped around, but it was too dark. After a bit of walking, it became darker than I thought possible. Pitch. Black. I'd never been anywhere this dark. It smothered me like a blanked. I could barely breathe. Wait a minute, there was something covering me! I head-butted backward, then pushed the man behind me over, just before being grabbed from behind by someone else.

“Angel, RUN!” I yelled, then felt the gravity return to normal. I was going home. I found myself back in the room I'd came from, and then someone pulled a gun on me.

"Say hi to your sis in hell, kid!" he said, then I swatted the gun out of his hand, and turned around. All the personnel were surrounding portal 1751.

"Well, just as she said..." I said, then smiled. "I'd better go down having fun," Then I lunged into portal 1752.

Hi, IKnowAll! I'm Rach, and I guess I get the honor of being the first to review this. (Unless someone steals my spot while I'm rambling at you.)

First, I've got two words for you: paragraph spacing. The site eliminates indenting and other breaks when you copy and paste in, and the result is a Text Blob that makes reading unfun. It also turns away potential reviewers because they see the Blob and think various shades of, "Oh dear, this is going to be textspeak and cliches and unfun to read."

So, space your paragraphs. Your reviewers will be happy, and you'll be happy because you'll get more reviews. Win-win situation.

And now, onward to the important stuff! Some things I noticed:

1. Your opening paragraph is a beast. I was surprised at the end when you pulled it back around to the beginning--I thought it was going to keep going down the tangent path--but, even if it does hold its own as a paragraph, it might be in your best interest to break it up into a couple chunks. That'll help the reader and give it some flow and a sense of a story and all that good stuff.

2. You use a lot of ellipses. Too many ellipses. Go for the periods and the commas. Ellipses, like Em-dashes, are best used sparingly, otherwise they loose their effect. I'd suggest getting rid of 9/10 of them at least.

As for the general story, I'm liking it! Parallel worlds are fun, and sci-fi in general is a blast to read. Your first paragraph is slightly info-dumpy, meaning it sort of just takes information and dumps it on the reader, but fairly easy to follow.

Your narrator has a good voice, and that's part of the reason this holds together. This piece is short, so I can't help you much more than this. My last observation would be that Angel doesn't sound like any 8-year-old I know. She sounds at least 10, but maybe kids in her world grow up faster?

Anyway, in conclusion, space those paragraphs, break up that big paragraph, and get rid of those ellipses.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Rach

Howdy IKnowAll! I'm Walker, here with one of the many reviews I owe, so feel free to take whatever you want from this!

Nit-Picks:



Overall:

Sometimes you just need to take the goods with the bads.

What I'm going to say is that the plotline, in all its randomness, does have a rather interesting feel. Very Avatar of you, so I'm pretty excited to see more, if you ask me.

But, and this is a big but, you have some fixing to do.

First off, you make your character and your characters sister rather idiotic. Jumping into a forbidden portal thats death if you do so... is it just me or would you not do that? I sure as hell wouldn't. Not if someone ended up pressing a gun to my head. And theres no way of getting back without coming through that said portal, ne? Then why the hell did she do it? This confused me greatly. It made your characters unbelievable childish. Not a 'I'm 8 years old' childish but the 'I'm 4 years old thinking I'm immortal'.

It does not matter if they both agreed that if thats how they would go, then they would have fun doing it. Its the, 'you could have had fun for the rest of your lives!' I didn't see them dying anytime soon.

Secondly, I would like to note up on your structure and punctuation.

You use ellipsis wayyyyy to much. I can't emphasize that enough! They... are hardly... ever fun... to read... and no matter how much they may be a good idea in your head, they are not. It ...drags... this... on... It makes every little line feel like an eternity. Ellipsis are mean't to be used sparsely and only in moments when that drag is necessary. Its not in any of the places you used them. I would take them all out if I were you.

That and you need to work on dialogue and character. I stated above the the actions were very unbelievable. That no one in their right minds could agree to that. Give us reason and that will shape your characters. Don't just have that reason be a whim.

Lastly, work on your description. We get a lot of inner thought and a lot of dialogue. That and a rough basis of where they are at, but what do we know of character? What does Storm's sister look like? Was the gun shiny and cold? Does the portal have some kind of liquid-gas interior? I want to know this as a reader. Its why I read. Please, step your game up!

So, I believe I should leave it off there. There were some nice aspects to this, but you have lots of places where you can improve.

~Walker

Hey there!

So I'm really liking the concept - the different worlds and how they've adapted to them; how we're not the normal ones, and our gravity is almost nothing to them; how they're like us, but "better". And how they launch into the other, forbidden, worlds.

But, like with everything, this isn't perfect. There are a few things that I think you should really look into changing.

First, the prologue. It's basically a big info dump. Granted, it is interesting in its own way, but I think you can do better. In your main story, consider slipping in the necessary details as the story's happening. And as we don't need to know everything at once, bring in the other things as they become relevant. I think it'd really improve the overall first impression you give us.

Secondly, I have basically no sense of setting. You don't really describe it at all. I don't really know where they are, what the place looks like (or what the basic feel of it is), how close the portals are and why they're that close, and most importantly, how it's so easy to penetrate them.

Okay, that's more my third point. I understand that Angel's like a superkid, but here they're all pretty super, in a way. I just want to see it as a little more of a challenge - after all, if the worlds are off limits, it should be harder to breach them or people would just come and go as they pleased. And it wasn't just Angel. The MC got caught and she still just launched herself into the one portal. I'm just saying, if it were any major challenge for them, we didn't really get that feel.

My last point is, can they just portal jump anytime they want? To at least the worlds they are allowed to travel to? It just seems like there should be at least some limitations, considering people could go somewhere and get lost or die and nobody would know where they were - and Angel's eight, so I doubt (especially without her parents there) that it's just fine for her to traverse across the universe or galaxy or whatever.

Okay, so sorry if these sound harsh/attacking-ish. I don't mean them to. And don't think that because I have these critiques that this isn't good - rather, this piece is still interesting despite those things, which can be hard to do for anyone. I just think that if you at least considered some of my points, this could get so much better. You have so much unused potential.

So keep reading, keep writing, all that jazz, m'kay? =)

loveness, ultraviolet <3

Heya IKW,

Well, this needs some work. While the idea of parallel worlds (and forbidden worlds) is interesting, I found a few problems with the text itself.

- Polishing. You don't capitalize Angel's name at certain points, you don't put in quotes where there should be quotes, and overall the syntax tends to weave a little bit back and forth. Run the story through a spell-checker before you post it; that would be my suggestion. It makes the story much more pleasant to read. Also, maybe give the worlds names. Numbers are really difficult to remember and associate with something important, plus they kind of break the flow.

- Info-dumping. You assault the reader with a lot of information at the beginning. This information is important, but not as important at the point where you give it. You need to space it out a little bit. Drop little bread-crumbs of information here and there. Don't worry, the readers will be able to piece it all together. In fact, they'll thank you for it, because they don't run head-first into a wall of text with info-dumping, like I did. Running head-first into a wall hurts!

Your storm,
cC

Okay, this is going to sound reeeeeeeeeeeeally nitpicky, but I am kind of a science nerd, so... well... yeah.

The idea of a world having no gravity is rather ridiculous. First of all, we don't know much about gravity at all; we know the effects of gravity, and that's about it. Still, these effects make all the difference. For instance, it was gravity that caused accretion to happen so that our world could form. It was gravity that causes molecules to link up with each other. Heck, gravity probably helped the Big Bang happen in the first place, since it seems weird that it would collapse on itself just randomly. So, there are a lot of things that gravity is good for, so the fact that you would have a world without gravity is a bit strange... and possibly even worse than anti-matter, lol. Just so you know! I think it would be interesting to see Angel hypothesizing about this. Or maybe even saying something like, "Hm, that's not what I expected! Who would have thought that trees could exist in no-gravity conditions?" Or something really dorky like that... it would be awesome!

Anyway! Other than that nitpick, I thought it was very exciting and action-packed! I'm not sure what's going to happen next... eveyrthing's happening so fast all at once! But it'll be fun to see what happens next. And, I hope government agents are in the next chapter?

Hey there!

Sorry it's taken me a while to get to this. Now, this wasn't a bad piece of writing - you had a plot and two characters that you described pretty well. You also seem to have quite a hang of this world you've created for yourself too, so that's also a good point. Alas, I found my attention wavering when I was reading this, but that's my fault, not yours. I am really picky about what science-fiction stuff I read as it's a genre that I find really hard to get my teeth into. In fact, there's only one series of science fiction books that I've managed to read - The 'Gone' series, by Micheal Grant - I don't know if you've heard of it?

But I tried my best to read this for you and was victorious, but to be honest I don't really think there's much for me to say. The other reviewers have already done a great job pointing out the things that you need to work on. I will, however, touch again on the fact that the first couple of paragraphs were really hard to read. They were so info-dumpish, that I was struggling so hard to take in all of the information about the world you've created, that I wasn't really paying much attention to the plot at all. It was kind of a bit too 'in your face.' Maybe try slowing things down a bit and gently bleeding the information into the story as it develops. I get that you need to let the reader know that it's illegal, so to speak, to go into some worlds, but you could maybe tell the reader about them being more strong/intelligent than regular humans, in dialogue as the story goes on. It's only a suggestion - you can ignore me if you want. I just think it'll give the reader a bit more breathing space; let them explore the new world a tad before they find out everything about the characters.

I also agree that some of the sentences are worded awkwardly. At times it was a bit hard to read.

You need to spell out numbers too. For example - '8' should be 'eight' when he's saying how old his sister is.

This does need some work, but if you take the brilliant advice that the reviewers have given you, you could really start to make progress with this story.

Sorry if this wasn't very helpful, but like I said, Sci-fi isn't my thing.

xDudettex

Hello IKnowAll!

I apologize for the delay and hope this will be worth the wait. ^^

After all, it was only ~1/100 the gravity of my home world. World 0, the most sophisticated world we've discovered. My physical abilities were multiplied by 100 in this climate due to the low gravity. For I had evolved in a different world. I was like what they call and "alien species" although, that was quite literal now, in a way.

I like your story idea, but feeding a lot of information in your reader's mind can lessen their motivation, since they tend to focus more of it than the situation throughout the story. The way you have written this could be so much better. There are too many numbers here and some sentences have fallen a little bit off awkwardly, that I still have to read them twice.

And yes, try not to start a chapter with a conflict, especially if it's not resolved quickly as possible. The tendency is that you might confuse them of what is really going on. Looking at the story overall, I could see this piece as a very rough draft. Don't worry, I like the "other world" concept, but you really need to peel them off and start afresh. Fix those lines which sounds wrong or incorrect. And yes, you need some description so we could feel more of the "scientific" atmosphere. Build it and show it to us.

"Sorry. We both know we can't." I said.

I also have some tips for you especially regarding with your punctuation. If a speech tag (such as 'he said' or 'he replied'), always remember to end the dialog with a comma, not a period.

So it should appear like this:

"Sorry. We both know we can't," I said.


Overall, this has potential. But just what I've said earlier, you got to repair this machine. Know the inner and outer problems. Grammar and punctuation are your usual mistakes, so try fixing them because if not, this would break the flow and cut your reader's connection to your main character. Hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions.


Peace out,
Yuri

Hey, there! Pink here, I'm here to review for you.
I'm sorry for being sorta/kinda late but hopefully that won't stop me from doing a somewhat decent review of this. ^^

Alright, the first thing that I noticed about this was the opening paragraph. It was kind of info-dumping and although you captured my interest with the first sentence, you quickly started stating things about worlds and their gravity differences which almost kind of confused me for a second. I don't think you should explain that right in the beginning and if you do, don't go into so much depth. Just say something along the lines of this world's gravity being different than another worlds. Well, try to simplify it otherwise your readers will feel like they're left out - not understanding the information that's given to them. ^^

Another thing that I noticed was that you had some tense slip-ups. You might want to browse your piece to catch them, there weren't very many - I don't think so but you should take a second look at them to make sure.

Numbers. You have to make sure that you write out all the numbers in here - for example the age and number of people and etc. Anything under a hundred actually should be written out instead of using the symbols. It makes your writing seem more professional and all that good stuff. So when you mention her age, it should be "eight" instead of 8.

Also, when you describe Angel - her personality seems to have a misunderstanding or is kind of contradicted. For example, how in the world can she be clever and yet, immature? Smart for an eight year-old but acts like a five year old by going to places she's not supposed to go in? I find her personality/ attitude a little hard to digest. Perhaps it's just me but maybe you can flesh out her character a little more too.

And mentioning the world flesh, you need to add more description and information with this chapter too. I don't even know where they are or what they're doing. You have no explanations and my mind can't build a picture in my head without any foundation. Things like setting or what a door looks like - you have to explain these things too so we can see it. Just saying it's a portal doesn't do any good. Remember to explain/describe things in the future if you go to edit this.

"Sector 2 Breached!" a voice coming from the overhead speaker said, just after I received a message on my pager from Angel, that said: "I got in! I got in! "

Why? Why did you use a smiley face here? D:
In comments and forums, this is fine but in a published book or something you want to present - I think this should be taken out.

The ending just confused me. I have no idea what happened to make him want to suddenly have fun and jump into another portal or something.

Overall, it's a good idea and seem to know where you're going with it but the challenge is to make sure that you can explain it right so the reader's know what you're thinking too. Give us some more information but avoid info-dumping.

Let me know if you have any questions,
best of luck!

-Shear

Hello there! I just noticed this on my reading list so I figured you asked for a review at some point on one of the competition walls or something. Anyway! There's a lot I like about this. Good plot, engaging character and some nifty parallel worlds. However, I think a few things could have been better. You've got a descent amount of reviews so I'll skip straight to the general stuff.

Characterisation

While I liked Storm, I found that her personality was somewhat inconsistent. At first she seems rather sensible, up for a laugh sure, but not the type to jump through a portal without any second thoughts. She doesn't put enough thinking into it and once there she's jokey and casual instead of being panicky and accusative. It's much more fun for us as readers when the characters get all emotional and stressed because then we get to worry about them, whereas here I didn't feel the danger.

Then there's Angel. She's a super intelligent future kid who took a maxim too far. That's pretty cool. What's not cool is that we didn't get any of the fun of her getting to the portal. That scene using text messages to tell us about it? That was a little lame on the visual side. Pretend this is a film, right? Well while all the awesomely fun action is going on the idiot of a camera man has decided instead that he'll point his camera at the floor so we can hear it but we don't get to see it. Get the picture? That scene has the potential to be really fun and engaging so... go fix it yeah? Don't let a mobile phone ruin your movie

Atmosphere

Most of the time I wasn't feeling it. You rush quite a lot and don't take the time to describe things for your reader. This means the reader has to use their own imagination more and they're not as into the story because it's not as well filled out as it could be. Add some more sensual description, some sounds, some textures. More stuff like that please.

Realism

The best fantasy stories and science fiction stories are real. I mean that in the sense that everything is made possible and the elements we're familiar with are so strong that we believe this is a reality. The characters are so vivid, the scenes so familiar and yet crazy at the same time. Sometimes you do this well with the waiting for the parents, the characterisation of Storm. However, other times it's lacking. The security in this world needs to be better. It's unrealistic that it hasn't adapted enough to deal with the children it's producing. Sure, they can get through but! It should be a combination of smarts and luck that gets them there and Storm should certainly have more difficulty than her sister. Why is the portal not surrounded by security guys by the time she gets there? Where's the struggle? At the moment it's much too easy for your characters to break the rules.

Overall

Like I said, I liked this. Some very inventive ideas and it was an entertaining read so thank you and I wish you the best of luck with any edits or further installations. Hopefully this will help you somewhat,

Heather xxx

The charred ruins of a forest flourishing with life only hours ago were all I could see other than that road.

There should be a comma after see.

There were no roads, where I was from.

You don't need the comma after roads.

The sky was the road, there.

You also don't need a comma after road.

Yes, people, the name the beings in 12 of the universes we’d discovered had given themselves. I was currently on one of those 12.

Numbers should be spelled out. This means 12 should be twelve.

The sole purpose of the portals was to study these other worlds.

Was should be were.

Maybe Angel had a point...

The ellipsis isn't needed and should be a period.

"Hey Storm, why don't we go to one of the worlds?" asked Angel, my 8 year old sister.

Spell out numbers.

I hate to say it but that's the only way I can put it.

There should be a comma after it.

A rare, but existing trait, linked to genes that sparked immense intelligence... and we were about 150% human intelligence to begin with!

The ellipsis should be a comma.

She didn't care much about rules, and ever since someone told her about a Japanese teaching from one of the twelve "people" worlds, that basically said "live every day as if it were your last day" she had been a recklessly immature kid who only cared about having fun.

This is a run-on sentence. You will need to reword it so it can be two sentences. Been should also be become.

she started slowly, looking at her feet sadly, then seriously she asked: "Aren't you curious about what's out there?

The colon should be a comma.

I don't want to do anything bad, I just want to have fun!" She said, then ran away from me toward the portals.

She should be lowercase.

Are Mom and Dad back yet? I wondered

Thoughts should be in italics.

, then looked over and saw her running toward Sector 2, the forbidden worlds. I almost got up, but then decided even she wouldn't be able to get into there, right? Wrong.

"Sector 2 Breached!" a voice coming from the overhead speaker said, just after I received a message on my pager from Angel, that said: "I got in! I got in! "
...
My fingers fumbled with the pager and I typed: "Get out of there, now!"

The colons should be commas.

Well, she'd always been good at trickery...

The ellipsis should be a period.

"That's right... She's using that trick again," I muttered to myself.

What trick?

I tried to stop, but my legs kept going, before I knew it, I felt the familiar sense of being stretched, from lack of gravity.

This is a run-on sentence. To fix it, the comma after going should be a period and before should be capitalized.

"Well, don't be so happy, if we aren't off the radar within a few minutes we're dead," I said.

This is another run-on sentence. The comma after happy should be a period and if should be capitalized.

Wait a minute, there was something covering me! I head-butted backward, then pushed the man behind me over, just before being grabbed from behind by someone else.

Wouldn't she notice that a bag was on her head?

"Say hi to your sis in hell, kid!" he said, then I swatted the gun out of his hand, and turned around. All the personnel were surrounding portal 1751.

This part doesn't seem realistic. Would this really be the way someone would talk about an eight-year old? Also, why would it be so easy to take the gun out of his hand?


Overall, this was a good story, but there were two problems. There were a lot of info-dumps. Instead of explaining about who they are and about the portals in paragraphs, try to spread the info out. You also use ellipses in places where they weren't needed. They are rarely used. Other than that though, there weren't a lot of major problems. Just proofread it and it should be fine.