Waiting In Between, Prouloge

She lay in a dark room, shadows draped her still body. She listened to her own heavy breathing, deep and steady. She felt nothing, not the blankets beneath her, nor the bed beneath her. She was not asleep, her vivid dreams were gone. She was not awake, her concious mind was not thinking. She was simply lying there. Lying between everything, night and day, light and darkness, sound and silence, and sleep and awareness. She was not thinking, she was not dreaming, she was waiting. She was waiting in between.

The first thing that caught my attention was that so many sentences begin with "She [insert verb here]", which can get a little tired after a while, especially in something so short. Branching out from this form not only keeps it fresh, but can help in describing things rather than just telling what is happening.

I'd most certainly be interested in reading the rest of this, assuming that there will be more since this is labled as a prologue.

PM me if you need any help

-Amelia

This is odd. Where is this going? Why is she "in between"? Better yet - why should I care?

Remember, beginnings need to catch the reader, make them ask questions. But this is one of those "I really don't care" questions, so it doesn't work.

She was not asleep, her vivid dreams were gone. She was not awake, her concious mind was not thinking.

Is she dead, then? Don't contradict yourself like that. know what you are talking about, before you talk about it. Perhaps she is in a comma? Otherwise, this makes no sense, and I highly suggest you figure out what you are talking about.

If you're trying to make us go, "oooh that's weird I want to read more!" it didn't work. Try making us interested, and care about the girl. This is just... blazé.

And I totally agree with the "She [verb]..." thing.

I totally agree with both of the previous crits. You need to have sentence veriaty. All your sentances have she, as the begining. Maybe instead of she, put her name.

She was not awake, her concious mind was not thinking. She was simply lying there. Lying between

Instead maybe do, "Not thinking, Not awake nor asleep; simply lying. Lying in bettwen."

Juts suggestion.

An interesting concept here, though I do not fully understand it. Like others, I was irked by the uniform sentence structure. Variety is your friend.

A few technical things...

She lay in a dark room; shadows draped her still body. She listened to her own heavy breathing, deep and steady. She felt nothing, not the blankets beneath her, not the bed beneath her. She was not asleep; her vivid dreams were gone. She was not awake; her concious mind was not thinking. (< nice parallelism there) She was simply lying there. Lying between everything, night and day, light and darkness, sound and silence, and sleep and awareness. She was not thinking, (commas without conjunctions do not separate complete sentences; use a semicolon or period here) she was not dreaming, (same here) she was waiting. She was waiting in between.

Hope that helps a little. So, work on sentence variety and watch out for run-on sentences; they're evil. Keep writing and PM me if you have any questions.

Only one sentence didn't start with "she" it made me wince. (sorry it did). Its also rather short for a prologue, so I didn't get what was going on. But I do admit it sounds poetic, and there you find yourself in a problem. It is too short to be a decent prologue (as in intro to the story) but also adding onto it would make it forced (never a good thing).

Almost all the sentences started with 'She'...it got tiring. Like everybody said.

Lying between everything, night and day, light and darkness, sound and silence, and sleep and awareness.

The last part of this sentence, 'and sleep and awareness.'
Doesn't sound right. Try:

...silence, sleep and awareness.

It's the 'and' that stopped the flow in that sentence.


Apart from those, the prologue was good, and now I'm going to read the chapter.

Judging from your descriptions, this takes place somewhere similar to our time?

I can really echo what everyone else is saying, not to mention it is too short for me to make an accurate judgement on.

Looks interesting though, mind writing more?