Young Writers Society

The Century

Northern Gaul
65 BCE

The decurion frantically lifted his shield, as another barbed arrow failed to cripple him. Raising his sword he made a desperate attempt to rally his remaining escort
“men of the Republic on” his sentence finished suddenly as a well aimed arrow slashed into his throat. The men could take no more, outnumbered and bewildered and just having their commander killed, the moral was completely shattered. Yanking their horse’s reins, they tired to manoeuvre around the dead stream of Gaul’s. Those that were fortunate to break free of the massacre were quickly cut down by streams of arrows, form archers, hiding between the shadows, of the large Gaulish trees.
1 week later

The tribune pounded his deck viciously. Dam the matter that had been assigned to him, he thought. A week before, one of the senates wives, had been kidnapped deep in the heart of Gaul, a party had killed and her taken hostage. Of course, they had demands, but what would it look like in Rome, that the strongest force in the known world, negotiated with a flock of barbarians. No it was not an option. Neither was sending a entire cohort after them. Gaulish forests were known for ambushes. But this was not a matter he could simply ignore, senates were powerful creatures, back in Rome. Knowing that nothing had been done to save his mistress would almost certainly mean the end of his carrier in the legions. Maybe sending a lone century could be the answer. If they could sneak through the enemy defence’s ranks, a quick search and rescue might just work. The hostage location, was known, form the magic of bribes and torture, Yes, he concluded. But now the next task who should he sends on such a fool hardy mission?

Centurion Quintus lay on the begrimed floor. The smell of urine and stale bread hung in the air. His eyes were focused on the stars shining out in the dark sky. People claimed they were Gods, but Quintus never believed in such trivial things. Maybe that was why he had raised through the ranks so fast; religion and prayer had not weighed him down as it did with other officers.

I saw your post in the Lounge and figured I'd review this for you.

Firstly, grammar. The first letter of dialogue should be capitalized, and you use too many commas in this work, or, in some cases, not enough. Check out this article for general grammar, and this article for commas. Also, thoughts should be in italics and, most often, they will have a period in front of them.

As for your plot, I found it very disjointed. There's nothing at the beginning to really hook me into the story, just some confusing terms. I thought that the story would continue along with the aftermath of the fight, but it changed completely and left me lost. And in the third paragraph, you change ideas/characters again. This left me even more confused about what's going on. Check out this article on beginnings for tips.

Your terminology here confused me slightly. I know that you're doing this for school, so the teacher already knows the terms you're using, but we don't. This made your story very hard to understand. Also, be sure to capitalize proper terms and ranks. You'll find tips for capitalization in the general punctuation article I linked.

PM me if you have any questions!

~Rosey

I know I’m late, but I still felt it would be a good idea to give my recommendations and nitpicks on the piece in order to help you out in the future.

Nitpicks

“men of the Republic on”

Okay, so I have a few problems with this here. To start with, the most major deal is in the fact that you haven’t capitalized ‘men’. Another issue is with the fact that for the purpose of punctuation, you really should have added a dash at the end to let readers know that he’s being cut off, rather then thinking that you forgot to finish the sentence.

Dam the matter that had been assigned to him,

Okay, two things. First of all, ‘dam’ is what beavers make. To ‘damn’ is to curse something. Secondly, well, this is something most people will try to do with thoughts and that is to either A) put single quotation marks – ‘like this’- or B) italics – like this – in order to better distinguish thought from action.

one of the senates wives, had been

Should be: one of the senators’ wives had been
The comma is an unnecessary pause and senate is the whole organization. Senator is a single member. It just makes more sense.

a party had killed and her taken hostage.

Um…for one thing, you would want the word ‘her’ after ‘killed.’ But the biggest problem I can see, is why would you take a dead senator’s wife as a hostage. She’s dead. And a dead hostage usually isn’t worth much.

But now the next task who should he sends on such a fool hardy mission?

Centurion Quintus lay on the begrimed floor.

The problem I have with this is more of an issue where some people like it and some don’t. The thing is, when you jump suddenly from one scene to another, it’s a good idea to give some signal of this. Something as simple as *** or a --- to let people know that this is happening. This is a matter that you really only have to take into consideration, but its all a matter of opinion.

Pacing

Right now, you’re taking everything so quickly that we don’t get a chance to understand the situation. Slow it down. Give us detail. It’s because of this that we’re able to feel and have compassion for your characters.

Vernacular

You use several terms throughout the story that are distinct only to the time period that you’re working with. Yeah, you, your teacher, and some historians may know what you’re talking about. At least, out of consideration to the YWS crowd, add as a side note what they mean. It’s a good idea for the less knowledgeable of us. That way, the story makes sense.


I know this seems a little harsh but most of these things are either really very minor or just things that take practice and time to correct! If you have any questions, feel free to PM me.

~lilymoore