The Boundary: Chapter Two
By: Gen1900
A peaceful silence ensued on the way to Head Quarters. I didn’t say anything, and the soldier, who had his gun slowly inched into my back, remained quiet.
As we walked, I noticed a boy about my age strolling casually by me. He had black shaggy hair, baby-blue eyes, and furrowed eyebrows. He looked new to the hell-hole. Suddenly the soldier stopped, and turned towards the teenager.
“You’re suppose to be going to Head Quarters, ” said my escort.
The young man met my gaze, but said nothing.
“Hey! You have a mouth, you know. Use it!” The soldier angrily dug the tip of the gun farther into me. I arched my back forward to release some of the pain.
“You are hurting her, officer, ” he finally said . . . very quietly.
“I don’t really care. What’s your name, brat?”
“Falcon . . . ” the boy replied , trailing off into space.
“Well, Falcon, you get your butt by Pepper here and start walking. You know what happens if you disobey orders. I CLEARLY remember now what your Father did to the President.”
I looked up at the soldier and asked, ” What happened?”
The man sternly returned my look and snapped, ” None of your business. GET MOVIN’!”
We teens ambled along to Head Quarters. The whole time my mind was buzzing.
What did Falcon’s Dad do?
Science Fiction
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If there is one thing that I absolutely cannot deny, it is that you have a great talent for cliffhangers! Similar to what I said in regards to Chapter One, you have a knack for piquing the reader’s interest just enough to compel him or her to keep reading amidst all the ambiguity of the world. I am definitely interested in the dynamic that will inevitably take place between Pepper and Falcon (love the name, by the way) and what exactly Falcon’s father did to earn even his son an infamous reputation.
But, in spite of the stimulating cliffhanger, I am still waiting on world development for this story. Evidently, Chapter Two was very, very short, so there was not nearly enough time to delve into the setting and starting discuss this society’s functions without it seeming like a random information dump. Nevertheless, over the course of the next few chapters, I think the story would benefit if you began to establish and interweave some essential details about the world. For instance, I am still wondering what exactly the Head Quarters is; I would like to know the role of the guard; I’d also love to know how this world came to be like this. While I don’t expect you to divulge all of this information in one go, I whole-heartedly believe that sprinkling a few crumbs here and there would help keep the reader fully invested. That way, you don’t have to rely so heavily on cliffhangers in order to ensure that you maintain your audience and that readers actively seek out the following part!
Finally, one last criticism: I definitely advise that you re-read this chapter with a more meticulous eye in regards to grammar and spelling. There are a few silly mistakes that I caught along the way, and because you do not want to impede the reading experience, it would be best if you fixed those errors as soon as possible.
Regardless of my notes, I just want to reassure you that I am very much intrigued by this story, and there is undoubtedly a lot of potential based on what you have put forth so far. Great job! Keeping going! Keep crafting!
I went back to read Ch1 based on CardinalsLuvBooks’ comment above. I, too, find myself asking the same questions and wanting longer chapters to really get immersed. If content creation is an issue, it might be better for you to write a lot of the story, then release it in pieces. It will give you a chance to get ahead of the game, give us good descriptions, build suspense appropriately, and give us some world to chew on while we wait.
I like the names, and could do with more description through character development rather than just physical description. I know there hasn’t been a lot of interaction yet, so we haven’t really seen Pepper’s sass, but I bet it’s coming. I’m curious about the unnamed crime as well.
I’m trying to hold your curiousity, but I’m writing longer chapters. Hopefully it helps you understand. 🙂
What I can add is that making a story more than just a narration of events, takes more than just filling pages with content. The length of the story should not even be on your mind when you write, because your readers are in your world to enjoy themselves. They enjoy to be there. Your only goal as a writer is to make our time spent in your world enjoyable, not to make our time shorter or longer. They will spend as much time as they needed to be in the space you have created, if you only make them want the answers.
The first rule of thumb I have applied came to me by surprise. I learned that the greatest writers of all time employ a very simple strategy: You must make every sentence – make each and every word – force us to read the next one. There is not one word in your story that is there to just give information; it is all necessary to make us want more of your world. Don’t write down one single thing that doesn’t push us to want more.
You have heard many comments in here about filling in the back story, and giving more details about why things are so bad. They ask you, “Why is the food genetically modified?” “Why do children have to go to Head Quarters at gunpoint?” “Why are people punished fro trying to climb the Boundary?”
I am telling you that those comments are not criticisms, they are compliments. You have forced us to ask these questions, and that means you are getting our attention. Go ahead and let us hang on the cliff, we want to do this. We don’t want to hurry up and get the answer just so we can put your book down sooner.
Go ahead and create your world. One. word. at. a time. Make us beg to read the next word, the next sentence, the next chapter, then the next novel. Put nothing in your story that only serves to fill space. That’s what dictionaries and newspapers do – sell their writing based on word count or page count. Your story is sold by how many times you make our emotions swing.