Young Writers Society

Alex:

The Germans were advancing and our troops were extremely outnumbered. All I could think about was my little brother. The stupid kid signed up the same time I did. No matter how much I had tried to convince him not to, he wouldn't budge on the subject. If it's so dangerous, why did you sign up, he'd say every single time. It's not like I had a sane reason for it. I wasn't about to tell him that I liked seeing things blow up. Of course, back before we were shipped out I wasn't expecting to have human flesh sent flying through the air above my head as I dodged bullets. I didn't know what I was getting into.
Our commander ordered the retreat and I pulled him up, covering him as he ran. My heart pounded in my ears and head as I frighteningly imagined a bullet slugging through his shirt and into his skin. I blinked a few times and pushed the thought away, focusing on what was in front of us and what was behind. A grenade was thrown towards us and I swore, pushing him forward. I set myself over him and weathered the explosion. My arms accidentally had knocked his helmet off and revealed the dark brown hair I begged him to get cut. Why was he always so concerned with his looks?
“You know I can take care of myself, right?” Jason said, wanting me to get off him.
“You’re my little brother, Jay- I can’t just not protect you.” I responded.
I moved off him and pulled him up again. We ran for cover when the gunfire became heavier. I twisted around to make sure the Germans knew that we weren’t going down that easy and swore, seeing the machine gun. Time slowed and I saw the individual bullets headed towards us. The golden shells swiveled in the air as the sun glinted in its dreary reflection. I threw myself in front of my brother and time resumed. My eyes followed them as they focused in on my body. We both stopped and I braced for impact.
Jason wrapped his arms around my stomach and something clicked inside me. We will not go down like this. An inferno formed around us as I closed my eyes. Heat blistered my skin and made a winter day in Europe a summer day at the equator. Every chill in my bones simmered into nothing, melting and falling like sweat to the ground. With every moment inside I felt like I was being drained of everything within me. A worse fire hit my side and it stopped. I fell to my knees, taking Jason with.
“Holy…” I heard him trail off. “A-Alex?”
I was leaned against him, feeling like I’d run ten miles. How much time had passed?
“Wake up.”
I weakly opened my eyes and he moved to lie me on my back. His green eyes glowed with worry and set upon my side- the side on fire. He ripped my uniform jacket off and then my shirt with scarlet fingers.
“W-what happened?” I asked.
“Look around.” He flashed a smile. “One moment, I thought we were dead for sure and then this enormous fire came from nowhere, surrounding us. It melted a few of the bullets but you still caught one.”
I swallowed, going pale. The fire... I weakly moved my hand to my side and a charred hand met blood. He touched my wound with the shirt and gasped, a surge passing through me to him. The flame in my side died and I saw his face grow pale, his eyes torn. My eyes darted around, my gun out and ready, but couldn't see anything further than the four feet of ash around us. They set back on my brother as he stared blankly at the hand in front of him as the blood dripped from his fingers to the ground.
“W-what’s wrong?” I asked, trying to sit up.
I looked down at my side and found that I was fine except for bloodstained skin- no scar, no nothing. Hadn't I been the one who'd gotten shot? I looked back at him and shook my head, swearing. I hurried to throw my jacket back on before unbuttoning his.
“I-I don’t know what happened.” He said dryly, in shock. "I-I just wanted to help you and it-"
"Shh, just stay still. We'll worry about what miracle you performed later."
I unbuttoned his shirt and pressed mine against the wound that he’d accidentally taken for me, his blood discoloring the old tan cloth.
"Christ, couldn't you have listened to me?" I asked. "Why'd you have to come the hell with me, huh?"
I set a hand on the side of his neck and looked around, not giving him a chance to answer. What happened? If it was a bomb, we would be dead, right?Everything was charred and smoking, ash raining like snow. Something deep inside told me that I’d caused it all. Is that possible? Is it possible for me to have caused such a thing? If it was, couldn't I have protected my platoon?
“A-Alex, shouldn’t we get out of here?” Jason shivered, snatching me from my unanswerable thoughts.
I ripped the sleeve off my shirt and used it to tie the rest of it against his wound. He winced, drawing his lips back in a grimace, and I tightened his coat around his body, buttoning it for him. I buttoned mine and stood, adrenaline from the need to get him help overtaking my fatigue.
“W-where are we anyway?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, keeping him close.
I had him lean against me as we walked, him slowly losing strength. It took us thirty minutes to get here; it should take us thirty more to get back. All I have to do is count steps.
“T-the camp w-wasn’t f-far, right?” He asked.
“No it wasn't.” I replied.
We stopped and I took out my compass. I set us in the right direction and started counting steps like I thought to. One, two, three, four... The sun was nowhere to be found, black clouds covering the sky. We better get back quick. Who knows how long he'll last in a blizzard.
He leaned deeper into me once we hit halfway and I started to worry. Snow had started to flurry and he was shivering more violently than he should have been.
“How you doing?” I asked.
“It’s cold.” He replied.
The ashes turned to a snow storm and the ground below us was no longer burnt. There was rustling in the brush around us and I made sure my gun was at hand, wondering how in the world I could protect him like this. How will I see the enemy?
“Your side, how’s it feeling?” I asked, glancing at him.
He was paler and his lips were blood red, his eyes hallowing in with bags around the rims.
“I-It hurts.” He said, looking at me.
“You’re gonna be okay,” I told him. “We’re almost there.”
He swallowed and looked down. Fifty seven, fifty eight, fifty nine... His legs went weak and I had us stop again. His eyes were drooping and his skin was a transparent white.
“I’ll carry you, alright?” I strapped my gun over my shoulder and scooped him up.
“Alex, it’s cold.” He said again.
“I know, just hang on.” I said. “It’s a little bit further.”
I was getting weaker and weaker too. I kept wondering what the hell had happened to us and how we were able to do everything we did. I must have done it. I mean, what I felt afterwards... It had to have been me.
We approached the camp as the snow began to blind me and soldiers swept us away. The medics took Jason and looked me over real quick. I dipped my hands in some of the lukewarm water they had in their tent and brought it up to revive feeling in my face. Flashing a smile, I turned to the exit, using a thin cloth to wipe the moisture away. I slipped a new shirt on and sat down, running a hand through my damp blonde hair. If it wasn't me, it was God. I remembered the snapping I'd felt in my stomach when the fire first started and my fingers tingled. Looking down at them, I caught sight of a man in a suit with slicked back hair waltzing his way towards me.
“The name’s Callaway,” He showed me a weird badge. “I’d like to speak with you about what happened earlier.”
What's a government agent doing here? How does he know about the...incident?
“I'd rather not talk about it." I said.
He studied me, his auburn eyes being those of someone who knew too much. A fire had started in his pupil and I made out the two figures in the middle as my brother and I. Draining of color, I watched as I stood in a crucifix position with Jason bewildered behind me.
“You and your brother will need to come with me,” He sighed. “You two are going to be a part of an extraordinary organization. Your skills will finally be recognized.”
I just stared at him as he walked away to go talk with my staff sergeant, astounded by what I'd seen by peeking into those looking glasses of his while his words began to process.

This is pretty good! I really love the characters and their brotherly love. Also your descriptions are so vivid! I feel like I am out their with them! I really love these kinds of stories and you are doing a great job!
'Time slowed and I saw the individual bullets headed towards us. I threw myself in front of my brother and time resumed. We both stopped and I braced for impact. '<--This, by the way, was probably my favorite part! I really loved it!
Anyway great job & keep writing!

Hello there! I'm Rose, and I'll be reviewing this piece today.

I absolutely love the characters you've created. They're strong and I believe in them; when writing a novel, that's half the battle. If your characters are interesting, they'll be able to do anything and people will still want to read about them. In fact, once I'm done reviewing this, I'm going to follow you because I can't wait to hear what happens next!

I do have a few objections, such as how you started out the story by explaining what character was talking. If you're going to tell the story through the eyes of two different characters, then they each have to have differences in their storytelling abilities that will let me know who's telling the story. Even if they are brothers, they're different people. That's the difficulty when telling a story where the person who's telling the story changes from chapter to chapter. If you don't want to take on completely understanding two characters' emotions and feelings, then stick with one and make the story unfold from his viewpoint.

Another thing: make sure that you don't always start sentences with "I", "He", or "We." It gets old after a while. Choose different words to start sentences with so your writing will flow and not feel chunky.

Also, make sure that you use different types of sentence structures. Make sure you use commas and semicolons and other things that will help make the structure of your writing interesting.

All in all, amazing work! Always keep writing!

-Rose

Very nice! I liked the story, it seems to get off to a wonderful start! Can't wait for more! I'll be sure to read as much as I can! Thanks!
~Randi (Alabaster)

Hi there, up and out. Pink here, I'll be doing a review for you today. ^^

So, let's start off with introductions, shall we? I thought yours was a tad bit bland in comparisons to others that I've read which get me pumped up just a little bit so I continue reading. You did have a sense of that in here but I'm sure you could really illuminate the intro to your story a lot better given the core storyline that I've recognized after I read through all of this.

As far as spelling and grammar goes, I didn't see any major mistakes or anything that I needed to point out besides some grammar rules when writing dialogue. It's something most people struggle with in the beginning because it has a different way of going about it. Anyway, here's a wee little lesson on that - hopefully it helps you.

“The name’s Callaway,” He showed me a weird badge. “I’d like to speak with you about what happened earlier.”

Right here, what you did was, you put a comma after Callaway when there should've been a period at the end. Why? Because the comma is used when the quoted sentence is being spoken and sort of kind of shows how the sentence is being spoken to a certain point. For example:
"I ate my breakfast this morning," said Lily. That vs. "I ate my breakfast this morning." Lily sat down and looked at her mother. "I don't want any more pancakes."
The period is used when you're going to add an action instead of dialogue tag. Hm, does that make sense?

For the writing itself, I think it's too free-lance for the topic. I mean, you use very child-like words like "huge explosion" and etc that degrades your writing. The scene, in my mind, was something that was quite serious and almost a little beautiful with brotherly affection and the whole 'saving' with some special power aspect. That said, I wish this was written with a more serious tone of voice.

Another thing I want to add on to that would be that this is very fast paced! Try slowing things down and add some more description to this. Since it's first person, try getting into the mind of your character and exploring more of the emotions that are at play here. I think if you do that, it'll elevate this story to another level which is great because I see some potential in this.

Keep writing and if you have any further questions, shoot me a PM. I'll be happy to help.

All the best,
-Pink

UpandOut! Hi.

There were a few things I wanted to stop to critique you about that, if edited, I think could most certainly benefit this piece of yours! In general, it was very cleanly written. But it was also very safely written. You didn't quite go out of your way to make it anything too intriguingly detailed or further in depth than it was. The story just zipped right through itself without even digesting half the things it could have. Perhaps that was my only main issue I caught in reading this. You knew where your scene was. I could tell you knew how you wanted it to be executed, but it didn't seem like you gave it all that it deserved.

Your introduction into the scene was brief and fell a bit flat in my point of view as an audience. It felt as if you were merely leading me halfway and then quickly jumping onto the next great something in your line of vision. In introducing a scene, especially that of a first chapter and an action packed one no less, you want to be able to liven up the imagery and narration a bit by taking your time to soak in all of what is going on. For example, I might've liked to have had you talk a bit more on Alex's point of view about he and his brother being recruited together. You give the audience some info, but you take it away just as quick without further elaborating on the little things.

Another thing I wanted to bring up. I can understand the brother to brother relationship set in stone here. I understand that they're close, but you don't want to weigh down the dialogue with the obvious. I know they care about each other. You can let the reader know that their relationship is strong by action more than the back and forth of what they say to each other. Addressing each other by their first names isn't a needed, and you seemed to do it quite a bit here. Take it down a little bit, and your dialogue should be more golden. :]

I seemed to grow lost in the little details here. You seemed to contradict what happens when Alex gets shot by having his brother also get shot. Granted I can conclude that his brother's wound was much worse than his own, but how and the heck is Alex good and able to get himself and his brother out of this little warpath so seemingly easily? I say, for one, spice up the difficulty in the task. Describe some sort of obstacles, otherwise the believability your readers may have invested into your story has a chance of quickly dying down. Back to the thing about both the brothers being wounded, you mention nothing more about Alex's wound! Did he magically heal? Or did I just miss something. Don't leave little details to falter. Readers notice.

By the end of your story you wrap it up with the two reaching the camp and being attended to by medics and such. This is when that Callaway fellow comes into play, mentioning how there skills will finally be recognized. You don't seem to give the reader much incentive to feel that these two pretty normal soldiers deserve any sort of special attention. I know that soldiers are brave and can endure so much. I feel like you should have given the reader some sort of reason to agree with this Callaway man that they are indeed something special or out of the ordinary. Unless this whole scene about the two brothers being the only one to make it was some sort of test. but it's all a bit too vague for me to draw that conclusion from it. Please think about elaborating some! :3

Anyhow, I hope this helps, UpandOut! Feel free to holler at me if you have any questions and such regarding my review! Happy writing!

-Smylin'

Thank you all for your reviews. I tried to put them all to work and it ended up coming up as the edited version instead of a separate piece. So the new and hopefully improved is above.

Thank you all for your reviews. I tried to put them all to work and it ended up coming up as the edited version instead of a separate piece. So the new and hopefully improved is above.

Hi there, UpAndOut! I'm here as requested.
I hope you had a great Christmas or Hannukah and a lovely new Year!

My first impressions of this is that the paragraphs XD This is so picky of me, but if you could physically space out the paragraphs on YWS, that'd be great. I know on word, there's line spacing and stuff, but it can be a little bit off putting because it looks a block of test.
-Whatever CX

Anyway. Your opening wasn't very intriguing, I'll be honest. It was a bit disappointing because when I read further, I became intrigued. Here, I think that the whole beginning is completely unnecessary. If you cut to the moment just before he was about to get shot, and then filled in all the detail at the beginning later on in the chapter, it'd help.

At the moment, I've got a nitpick here:

You wrote:A worse fire hit my side and it stopped. I fell to my knees, taking Jason with.
“Holy…” I heard him trail off. “A-Alex?”
I was leaned against him, feeling like I’d run ten miles. How much time had passed?
“Wake up.”

Few issues here:
1. It's confusing. What's going on? After reading it over, I'm assuming that the scene is changing. If it is, could you make a large gap or put an asterix ( * or *** ) to separate the scenes.

2. I don't think you could say 'a worse fire' here. You might say that you could feel the fire tickling/licking at your sides, singeing your clothes or something.

3. You missed out 'me' after the narrator said he took Jason with him.

This story has a lot of potential, but I think it needs improvement. It goes really fast in places, so try to slow down the pacing.

But this has a lot of potential. I'd love to see how it goes.

Keep Writing!

-Mac