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Red Light
How It Rates
Description
Two students try to escape an invasion of creatures in their high school. A pulse-pounding thrill ride for the whole family. Unless you have kids. So probably not the WHOLE family. But the parts of the family that have been toilet-trained in the last ten or so years. They can have a pulse-pounding thrill ride.
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Comments
I guess I'll give this a thumbs up. I liked it until the very end, when I went, "Whaaaa????" I have no idea what happened there or why. SPOILER. . . Or not, because i really dont have much of an idea what happened. Were the kids scapegoats handed over by the adults to save the planet? Something like that? I think we need more preparation if so. But as I say, I liked the story to that point.
Sorry to say but i have to agree with Jane. It was a pulse-pounding thrill. I really liked how it started with action.It drawed me in and carried me along most of the way. The pace kept up for most of the story and that was good too. The end was too cheap. It was like a short cut. There is no clue at all to what the "black vans" are. I think if you can keep up with what you started with in your second draft this could be a good story. I would like to read a rewrite. Thanks for sharing.
--Jonathan--
This is a very good one for me :) Contrary to the first two comments, I liked the ending. To me, it was just the right combination of hinting and vagueness that leaves room for the reader's imagination to roam, while suggesting a wonderfully dreadful fate for the characters; *SPOILER* that the monsters arriving at their school was not a random accident, but a conspiracy involving the school authorities (implied by no teachers mentioned as victims, and all school exits being locked), contributes to the sinistral beauty of the plot. The beginning was very engaging too!
I'm really split on this, so to play fair, I'm giving it neither a thumbs up or down.
At one point, you keep the action going, non-stop, throughout the entire story. It starts with word 1 and never falters, so that's a plus. You gave us a pretty messed up scenario, a school full of kids being torn to shreads by aliens? monsters? evil creatures of some kind, and then make the situation even more dreadful when we see they are planting eggs(?) inside the kids and keeping them alive. And then, when you have us think the 2 main characters are safe, bang, they're not. These are all good things.
But something didn't work. I didn't feel like I knew the place it was all going on. A school, yes, but without further detail it was a generic school with nothing special about it. And where were ALL of the other kids? They're running down halls, but not tripping over bodies? The dialogue definitely felt action-hero-ish to me, which I guess fits the story, but not super realistic.
I don't know, I'm sorry, I wanted to like it more. But, like I said, i certainly didn't hate it. I'd also love to read the next draft, see where it goes. It could be a matter of having to squeeze too much in to fit the guidelines. So bring on the revised second draft!