The Unthinkable

prologue
"Beep, beep! Wake up, Sitka! It is dark and cloudy, again--," My alarm was shut off just then. I sat up to stretch all the kinks of a deep sleep out, fighting my eyes against the blinding daylight.

I, Claire, lived in a small town, Sitka, Alaska. The town was extremely small, surrounded by acres upon acres of forest. And it was extremely depressing. It could make the most exuberant person alive turn blue, not just from the cold, at the thought of it. The nasty weather never seemed to give in! There was rain just about every day, and on those miracle no-rain days, it was muggy and cloudy. So either way, is was a lose-lose situation.

I am a fairly popular girl in my high school of 1,000. Well, okay, I am kind of the most popular, only because I am the new city girl. But, I would give that title away any day. I am extremely self-conscious, as is any super klutz. Nobody else saw me as unconfident, but I never let anyone in enough for them to realize. Nobody besides me knew this... for now.

Please do not be afraid to critique harshly, since this one has been edited. But I just can't seem to find that copy anywhere.

Hi there! Welcome to the site, and I'm glad you decided to post something!

I'm magicman, obviously, and I'm here to critique.

Firstly, I see you have a prologue going here, which is great. Prolouges can add a lot to the story, but shouldn't be directly connected with the main plot. What I mean is it shouldn't start strictly at the beginning of a story, because then that would be Chapter One. This seems to do that, so I don't think it's necessary to call it a prologue.

Secondly, I also think that it's too short for either a Chapter or Prologue. Now I know this is debatable, but I would seriously consider lenghthening it. At 190 words, it shouldn't even be considered flash-fiction, which is between 200-500 words. You need to have enough story to make the reader interested. I doubt even the most skilled of writers can carry out any scene or event in only 190 words, if we're talking about a novel. And something needs to happen, preferably something interesting.

Thirdly, and most importantly, this entire passage is just one big info-dump, except for the very beginning paragraph, which doesn't seem to make much sense in the first place considering you don't even elaborate on what happens after she gets out of bed. An info-dump, if your not familiar with the term, is a chunk of writing that simply tells the reader things, instead of showing them.

What I mean is, you just tell us what we're supposed to know, instead of letting us draw those conclusions by ourselves by giving an example of those things. For example, Claire says she is a popular girl. Why should we believe her? People lie about themselves all the time, so we can't be completely sure she's telling the truth. Now if you showed us her popularity, by making a scene where she's walking through school and everybody reacts to her like she's so popular, then we'd have proof that she's popular, without you having to make Claire say anything about herself. If you have anymore questions on this info-dump thing, feel free to PM me. I'll admit, it's not the easiest of concepts.

So, there you go! I hope my comments will help somewhat.


MM

Ok, I don't have much critique for this, since it was so short. All I can really say is that I'm curious to see where this goes.

I'm introvert by the way.

---Em

Hi, I'm flytodreams.
This prologue was much too short, and it didn't really catch my interest. Plus, it was more like a first chapter. Nothing out-of-the ordinary happened, you know? Make something interesting happen.

I see what you guys mean! I think that I will change it around a lot. And I mean a whole lot!

Thank you for the critiques!