Young Writers Society

Again, I love constructive criticism!!
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My dad makes a living out of chasing things other people hide from.

Ever since I was old enough to understand this, it has fascinated me. He must be some kind of superhero, I used to think. Brave, strong, smart, learning about things that hurt people so that in the future, he might indirectly save lives.

By the time I was old enough to realize that he was not a true superhero, just an everyday man doing what he felt was his duty, it didn’t matter, because he was my superhero.

“Look, Zee,” he says, patting my leg. I am sitting on his shoulders in the middle of a field during a rather intense thunderstorm. The storms are beautiful. He and I - and maybe the rest of his chase team too - may be the only ones who think so, but it doesn’t matter. Sometimes the greatest beauty is that which goes unappreciated.

The wind whips my hair until it’s damp enough from the rain that it will only stick to the back of my neck. The sky is greenish black and swirls all around us, but up here, on my dad’s shoulders, I am invincible.

It is then I see what it is my dad pointed out. In the distance, a small twister ropes down from a cloud. At first, it swirls down slowly, like it is uncertain. It has yet to decide one way or the other if it would like to come down and cause destruction or stay in the clouds and watch the action instead. As soon as it touches the ground, though, it grows rapidly, increasing first in width and then in wind speed. It is far enough away from us - and moving the opposite direction - so we do not have to worry, but still my hair stands on end.

“What do you think of that?” my dad’s chase partner, Kaelum, asks, putting down his ginormous video camera to grin at me. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

I nod slowly. It is beautiful, especially this kind. My favorite. The skinny, pretty little ones that are out in the middle of fields, so many miles from civilization that nothing is destroyed. With gorgeous, harmless, enigmatic storms and twisters like these, it’s sometimes easy to forget just how dangerous they really are.



The drive home is bittersweet. Kaelum normally drives, but this time my dad is, which gives Kaelum too much free time and he doesn’t shut up for an hour and a half. I am sitting in the middle back seat with Kaelum’s son Dustin, who is sleeping - he doesn’t have ‘storm fever’ like the rest of us do - and Alice, the ‘numbers nerd,’ who records and keeps track of the data for storms.

“That was really a beautiful tornado,” Kaelum is saying. “A great way to end the season. I mean, a stronger one would have been better, but it’s okay. At least it wasn’t a bust like last year.”

My dad just nods. He has stopped using words to reply to anything Kaelum is saying; Kaelum’s not really paying attention to the rest of us anyway. He is the kind of person who talks just to hear his own voice, or at least that’s what dad sometimes says.

Alice nudges me, rolls her eyes, and flaps her hand like it’s talking. I stifle a laugh and she smiles. My dad sees this in the rear view mirror and just shakes his head at us. Kaelum, though, Kaelum just keeps talking. He is talkative normally, but now, on the high one gets after catching a good storm, he is just about unbearable.

This was our last chase of the season; now, it is getting deep into June, and strong storms are getting fewer and farther between. Like I said, the ending to storm season is always bittersweet. Dad says it’s good because we should be thankful we’ve had another safe and successful season. But it’s sad because now it’s going to be many months before we all chase together again. And many months without that crazy adrenaline rush.

If it was up to me, I’d be storm chasing every day of the year.

As is our tradition for the end of the season, once we’ve driven the several hours back to our hometown of Delphi, Illinois, we go to Pizza Hut. I impress the waitress by rattling of tornado trivia: A tornado has occurred in every state. Texas gets the most tornadoes. The farthest distance traveled by a single tornado is 219 miles.

She is very impressed and gives me a sucker. Dad says that by the time I’m ten I’ll be an expert, then tells me not to get a big head.

While the rest of us talk twisters, Dustin just picks at his pizza. So he doesn’t feel left out, I ask what he thought of the twister today. He says he slept through it.

I could never sleep through a tornado. The sound, the feeling, the pressure in the air; I am fairly certain I would even react to those in my grave.

“So, Zephyr,” Kaelum says. I look up at him with a straw sticking out each corner of my mouth like a walrus. “More storm trivia for ya: what’s the most dangerous thing associated with a thunderstorm?”

“That’s easy,” I say, “a tornado.”

He shakes his head and takes a swig of his beer. “Nope. It’s-”

“Lightning,” Dustin says, his first words involved in our conversation all night. “Everyone knows that.”

Except for me, apparently. I feel the need to out-do him, so I ask Dustin, “But did you know that lightning never strikes-”

“The same place twice,” he finishes. “And actually, that’s false. The same tree can be hit more than once.”

“That’s not true either,” I say. “The tree won’t be there the second time.”



Dad wakes me up at shortly before 6 a.m. the next morning. “C’mon, Zee,” he says, helping me pull on socks. “We’re going storm chasing.”

It isn’t until we’re out in the car and heading down the road that I remember something. “The season’s over,” I say stupidly.

“The team’s season is over,” he corrects. “Just because we stopped chasing together doesn’t mean there’s not storms. There’s a line firing up west of here and I think we should chase it.”

“Is everyone else coming?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I asked, but they’re not coming.”

After only about twenty minutes, I can tell we’re getting close to the storm. The sky is beginning to turn a very strange color for this time of morning. Something about this storm is not quite right. It is angry, fury building up in the sky, spitting and growling at us. It is violent.

Dad must think so too, because he keeps twisting his head at funny angles to look out his window. He would open it, I think, but there are occasional chunks of hail and no one really wants to get hit with those.

Kaelum showed me a scar on his arm from when he got hit with hail one time. It actually broke the skin. He used to play college baseball, and he said that the hail hurt a hundred times more than being hit with a pitch.

Right then there is a loud thump as an abnormally large hailstone collides with our windshield. Cracks radiate out from it like tree roots. I pretend not to hear my dad cuss under his breath. This is not the first time our windshield has been broken by hail - it’s just something you deal with as a storm chaser - but we only had this one put in a few weeks ago.

Dad pulls the car over on a dirt road. I climb out cautiously, checking first to make sure that it’s not still hailing - it’s not - and join him at the edge of the field.

A huge wall cloud looms in front of us, descending from the sky in a huge and dark mass. “Wow,” I breathe, watching the winds swirl. Thunder rumbles overhead angrily, spitting and growling.

Dad pats my shoulder and walks deeper into the field. “This is going to be a strong one, Zee. Stay there.”

I don’t listen and instead follow him farther into the field.

I look up just in time to see it slice open the sky, shattering the world into a million little pieces that rain down like stars, singing my skin. I am glowing. I am fire. Something is ripping off my skin, all over my whole body, tickling and burrowing into my muscle like a thousand stinging ants.

I try to scream, but the ants swallow the words before they can leave my mouth.

Everything is white.

And then, suddenly, it is just black.

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The full completed version of Chase can be found here: http://www.wattpad.com/1589650-c-h-a-s- ... logue-cole

One of the few things I've been able to read on this site I thought it was very interesting, i like the way that the chapter is not too long and not too short often i have started reading something and its okay, but then i scroll down and it just goes on for forever. the way you kept the pace was also good not too fast not too slow.

You know what you should get this published. I love the beginning, the way you talk about the thunder (maybe you should have described the beauty of it a little more). I think i love it because i find beauty in things others don't.

I liked this chapter, but I think that it was a bit too slow after reading the prologue. The prologue is full of action and this is something completely different. I even found the ideas different, like two different concepts.
The beginning was good, it was full of detail and catchy. Then after the three little stars I found it slow, even a bit boring even. I think you could make it a bit faster, although I understand that this is the beginning and you are explaining the story and introducing the characters.
Then in the end you caught me again, from the moment the narrator started feeling something was wrong. I really liked how you explained what happened to the narrator, which I assume, was lightning.
Although as I said, the story seemed very different with the prologue, I assume that they will come together when I keep on reading the next chapters,
That's all. Good job!

Hey again!

The way you write is great. There's just enough description for me to picture what's going on, without flowery prose distracting me. The dialogue is realistic, and I liked the way you characterised each character without info-dumping loads of facts about them. I especially liked the car scene.

Alice nudges me, rolls her eyes, and flaps her hand like it’s talking. I stifle a laugh and she smiles. My dad sees this in the rear view mirror and just shakes his head at us. Kaelum, though, Kaelum just keeps talking. He is talkative normally, but now, on the high one gets after catching a good storm, he is just about unbearable.

The way you wrote it made it easy to imagine. Kaelum sounds like a friend of mine, so I immediately found the whole scenario relatable and like I said before, relating to the characters is good.

The whole chasing storms idea is great. I've watched documentaries on storm chasers before and it fasinated me, so this story seems like a must read to me.

Going back ten years is okay, but just make sure that you don't keep it too long between flashbacks and the present or people who have read the prologue might lose interest waiting for you to refer back to it.

I didn't find any mistakes, so well done there. In fact, the piece reads like you've spent a good while editing which is nice to see.

I was a little confused about Zee's age for a bit. He's obviously young enough to sit on his dad's shoulders without hurting him, and then you go on to tell us that he's under the age of ten. It's just that sometimes, the way he narrates this makes me think that he's in his teens. This could just be the way Zee is though. This is the first chapter after all, so we're only just getting used to how the characters are.

I noticed that the next part is from Cole's point of view, so I'm looking forward to finding out how he is. I'm guessing he was the narrator of the prologue? Which could make Zee the guy who he's talking about in the prologue. I guess I'll have to read on to find out

I hope this helps!

xDudettex