Young Writers Society

My body betrays me as it continues to inflict pain on me until I feed myself. I'm so damn hungry. Where are the hunters dammit?! They haven't been back in nearly three days. The settlement's food supply is wearying thinner and thinner with each passing week. Surly it won't last another month luckily its only the 3rd, as we are fed a single bowl of whatever the hunters can scavenge and mix into a stew twice a day. Yet I remain grateful I have something to eat everyday and whatever liquid that is drinkable. I suppose this isn't the best way to start off this journal or autobiography or whatever, but I am the author and I shall write as I choose. Not anymore tonight however my watch shift is over and I need sleep.





Done with my normal morning duties, and was just informed that there will not be any lunch today. Seemingly this feels like the best time to write...anything to get my mind off the hunger.

She was beautiful. The type of dangerous beautiful that could have feeling that you could be no closer to heaven when you were next to her, and the deepest pit of hell when she was gone. With blond hair that felt like silk when you ran your fingers through it and skin was soft and pure. Her body was fit energetic and athletic she was up for anything. Most of my intellectual and deepest conversions was with her. We would discuss philosophy, ideology, and self morality for hours on end. Never was there a dull moment with her. With Sophia. She... she is dead now been dead for a little over three years at the age of 16. Without warning or a moment to come to turns with her ultimate mortality she just simply died. Sophia was one of the first to be killed.

To be honest living in the Aftermath for nearly a year I envy the dead. Once again this might not be the most formal introduction, but it is mine and no one can take that away.






(Ate last and feeling better)
You wanna know whats going on huh? The big picture the main concept, right? Well you are still reading so I can only assume you do. Humanity is in a new era dubbed by my community as " The Aftermath". In 2019 America was stuck with another major terrorist attack we were led to believe that no WMD could not hit the nation's soil. We were deceived. The blast grounded Washington D. C.. Seeing America in ruins and nearly 3/4 the nations military in the middle east our countries' enemies saw the perfect opportunity. In 2020 a coalition of governments, that included super-powers such as Russia and North Korea, declare war on the U.S. We fought boldly but strode no chance our defeat was eminent, yet our surrender was a million miles away.
Running out of time will continue the history lesson later tonight.

Hey!

Hmmm, I like this so far. I love the way you've turned it around with the other countries ganging up on the USA. It reminds me a bit about 'How I Live Now' by Meg Rosoff (amazing book!) except that's in England. The diary is a great way to tell the story and you certaintly have an interesting plot. I have just one grammatical nitpick:

Her body was fit energetic and athletic she was up for anything.

This is a run-on sentence - you've got two seperate clauses bunged together, and they need to be connected somehow. Putting 'and' in would make this better. There are a few more of these spread throughout this but I reckon with a reread you could pick them out pretty easily.

Overall, while you have a good idea with the America under attack plot, and I like you way you're telling it through diary entries, I do think there are ways you could improve this. It seems more like the beginning of the novel or a longer story to me, and, taking it as that, to me it feels like you're rushing to get on with the plot and explain the world you've set up, and have skimmed over things that are very important in a story opening, such as describing the setting and introducing the characters. Obviously, it would be unrealistic to begin with "Hi, my name is Shawn and I live in a camp." etc, but it might feel much more natural if you spent some time describing the day-to-day mundanities of his life - we know that there's not enough food, but we don't know anything else. What does he spend his days doing? Who else is at this place? What especially annoys him about it - toilet facilities, irritating people, cramped space? It's your world, you decide.

I imagine that those are the kind of things that a person writing a daily diary would write about, though. While his backstory and this new America will obviously be a huge part of the plot, you don't need to tell us all about them straight away. If you focus on the main character first, so that people get invested in him and his life, and have the details of what's going on emerge eventually instead of dumping the information on us immediately, I think it would work better. The same with this past love interest who died. While going through something like that would definitely be on his mind a lot, you could get so much more out of it if instead of telling us all about her straight away you hinted at first, and revealed their history slowly.

So, really what all my wittering here comes down to is that I don't think you need to drive on with the plot so fast. Take some time to describe where he is and what he spends his time doing when he's not writing a diary, and this could be really great.

I really hope you write more of this, because I'd love to see where it goes! PM me if you have any questions or anything.

Hey there! Really interesting concept and way to execute the story! It kept me interested to see what was happening. Well, I hope I'm not repeating what someone else has said, but it would be nice to see a little more to the journal entries. I think the length was fine for the most part when the character was starving, but once he was fed, you could have described a little more about what happened or how they were living at the moment. I would have liked to know where he got the food from.

I personally really like the idea of journal entries to move the story forward, but you can make a little more clear as to why he is writing as well. It just seemed like he went into the 'history lesson' kind of fast. You can give him a reason to write, like even something as simple as he hopes that someone will read it in the future and know of what happened because all the other documents of the events have been destroyed or something. It will give you a reason to go deeper into what had happened and why.

That being said, I like how you made me feel like there was next to no one still alive in the country. I don't know how to elaborate, but whatever you are doing, just keep on doing it!

Hey there!

So this was interesting. I think that you might have rushed it a bit, but that's ok if that's what you want to do. If you want to slow it down a bit, I have a few suggestions:

Explain things that are happening in the present before you explain the things that happened in the past. You should be doing this with your story, especially because you started, as we like to say, 'in the middle of the action.' If you describe what's going on in the present with casual hints of the past, it will make for a more interesting read.

Get more in-depth with your character. I have to admit, I really like the part about Sophia, even though I can't tell if she was his lover, daughter, or some other form or relation. Have him say more about how he feels the system is set up. Does he live in tents? Why isn't he a hunter if he cares about food so much?

I think if you work on those two things your story should be good.

I really want to get a better picture of this setting. All I know that it's either during or after a war, I'm guessing after because there are hunters? Is it post-apocalyptic? Did something nuclear happen? You should give hints towards it before you go right out and say it in a 'history lesson.'

My main suggestion is just slowing it down, defining your character, and keep a bit of mystery. Writing in journal form is hard, but I think you can do it. I can really hear the characters voice come out in your writing, so keep on keeping on!

Keep writing,

Classy.