The Dragon Knight Legacy Chapter 2 (Remake)

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SOMEBODY! ANYBODY! CRITIC MY WORK, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

Well, since you asked.

It's very good, I can find very little wrong with it, and the ending was fantastic! Although, you don't tell us what he's thinking and feeling after all that, is he feeling guilty? Pleased? Is he thinking of doing it again?

I have one question about it. Why did you use red?

~ Shadowsun

Written earlier, but oddly enough, much better than your chapter four. A much better fight scene, well done.

My only problem is the reference to March and January. For me, March is the middle of autumn, January the middle of summer. So if you're meaning that it's spring but feels like winter, then say it, rather than assuming that all your readers will be either American or in the northern hemisphere, otherwise your atmosphere is totally ruined.

If you want it to be cold, say it, don't name the month of a season, because the seasons don't stay the same all around the world, you understand?

That's about all I could pick on, nice character developement, ish, but still...it seems to be lackign something. Perhaps i'm just being pedantic.

Tata mwa!

SS

Dynamo wrote:It was almost sunset when Kai was on his way him. He was excited about telling his mother the news. Finally they would be able to leave this hate filled city and start a new life somewhere else. He noticed that the sky was getting dark, like it was going to rain. He decided to take a shortcut through the alley to get home quicker.

You're missing a word in the first sentence -- it doesn't make sense. O_o

In the second and third sentences, you tell and don't show. I haven't read chapter one yet, so I'm not sure how much information you've given already, but I do know that I don't really care that they live in a hate-filled city. What would make the story more interesting is if you actually expanded on it. Once again, I have not read the first chapter, so I don't know, but why is it a hate-filled city? Give tangible details to show this and I, as a reader, will believe you more.

Basically? Make the first paragraph in the second chapter as yummy as the first paragraph of your first chapter, and it will be a wonderful lead.

That's all I want to do a line-by-line. Let's get general!

First of all, you really really really don't need to have the red text. If anything, just make it italics. There are a couple of reasons why I say this. First of all, your dialogue is EXCELLENT, and, even without any tags, it's evident who the speakers are. The accents are very well-done, the characters each have their own voice, and so on. The red text actually takes away from the dialogue because it slaps you that the speaker is different when, actually, I liked it better when the dialogue stood on its own without emphasis. Trust yourself more!

I like the description of the evil man(?) and everything. Well... I think he's a man, though he seems to be a demon. He's very mysterious nevertheless, and that's good. To maybe improve the mystique of the whole thing, try describing other aspects of him other than the visual aspect. What does he smell like? I don't know. But more description would generally be better.

Also, you're going to need to emphasize the transition between when the evil demon leaves and the men come. I think making the disappearance more impressive would help with that.

Hope that helps!

I wrote this about a week ago, but couldn't post it... it kept saying there was something wrong with the PHP database or something o_o

Let me first say that I think your writing has improved a lot just between the first chapter you posted and this piece. Great job, and keep up the good work.

Paragraph four – I like the way you described the “push of the wind”. That’s nice. When you say “to leave the alley quicker,” though, that sounds awkward to me. Quicker than what? How about just “quickly”?

In the fifth paragraph, the word “butt” is rather informal, which wouldn’t be a problem save for the fact that it disturbs the flow of the prose. Butt is an inherently funny word and thus if I were you I would find a substitute more fitting for the mood of tension and danger that you’re trying to create.

Just after butt, you switch back into present tense. This is the pretty much the only place where you’ve done this, so again, it stands out. The sentence beginning with “his canine teeth” actually changes tenses – it starts out in present tense and then moves into the past with “were,” which is kind of a no-no in grammar. My advice would be to change “the man has” to “the man had” and “resembles” to “resembled”… et cetera.

Just after the man gives Kai his bone-chilling smile, we see:
“The look in the man’s face was something one would see from a murderous psychopath.”

To me, this is wordy. I think you could cut down the number of words here and be more concise with something like “his eyes held the glint of a murderous psychopath,” and so forth. Use description sparingly, phrases like “the kind of man that one would see on a street corner in a box” or “looked like a ferret might have if it had been swimming with some difficulty” are (exaggerated) examples of wordy descriptions that can usually be slimmed down to a couple of words. You’re an author, so you have the power to conjure up whatever images you like – if your character looks like a homeless man, say so. If he looks like a drowning ferret, say that too, and say it with authority.

Skip to “Kai went through the alley at a dead run” and look at the next sentence. Can you spot another tense shift there?

Skip the next paragraph and look at second sentence, starting with “The last strike was made”. You've used passive voice here, and I think it makes it unclear - but that's just a preference thing, I guess.

After the period of dialogue, you start off a paragraph with “a dark power coursed through his veins”. In the last paragraph, you used the pronouns “he” and “his” to refer to a different character, so you should probably say “a dark power coursed through Kai’s veins” to avoid any confusion. I got a little muddled up there.

That’s the verbose part finished... now for some general notes, whee.

I would like to see you make use of your buddies metaphor and simile more often. You don’t have to litter your work with “SHE SWOOPED DOWN ON THE CARROT WITH THE FORCE OF A VULTURE HUNTING ITS PREY” every other sentence, but using little literary devices like these to your advantage can make a big difference. It’s like adding icing to a cake. Chocolately icing. Mmm.

My second suggestion is, again, a human spell-checker – or two or three, just to decrease your margin of error. The first line – I bet you meant that he was “on his way home”, not “on his way him”. This is another one of those typos that a spell checker won’t catch, since him is a real word. Get a beta-reading buddy if you don’t already have one. However, I suspect that maybe some closer editing has been going on, since there are fewer typos in this chapter than in the last one. Good job, man.

I’m also glad to see that you’ve strayed away from your influences a little more. When I was 12 or 13 I used to watch a couple of anime shows on Cartoon Network pretty religiously (Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Candidate for Goddess… the whole lot) and I remember one called Inuyasha. I didn’t watch it so I don’t really know what it’s like, but I was getting a little scared because your main character seemed to bear a lot of resemblance to the title character of this particular show. Although your story has a definite “anime” feel, I don’t see him collecting shiny little shards of destiny or whatever they did on that series, which is a relief. The main point - don’t get too engrossed in trying to make your story similar to your favourite shows or games or books. I remember feeling very awkward as I read a story once where all of the characters were named things from Final Fantasy X with one vowel or consonant changed – i.e. Rikka, Luna, Tilus, et cetera. It’s okay to garner inspiration from existing works, but don’t take it too far.

…and you’ve already got chapters three and four up! Man, you’re prolific. I’ll try and read through them when I can. Until then, have fun, and keep writing! I'll try and see if I can read some of that other fiction that you mentioned (I don't want to read the FF8 one yet because I'm still playing it I want to avoid spoilers, heh).

It was almost sunset when Kai was on his way him.

Shouldn't that be "home" instead of "him?"

Kai gasped as he saw someone standing directly in front of him. The surprise took him off guard and caused him to fall on his butt. The man has long black hair with a tinge of red that closely resembles the colour of blood.

Again, parallelism.

With on strong movement Kai flung the man into a nearby wall.

Shouldn't that be "one?"

“Sorry, all out of mercy.”

It's probably better to use italics instead of bold font or red.

Other than that, very nice! Love the story! Just, give us a little bit more into Kai's feelings. How does he feel after he regains his senses? So on and so forth.