Tales of a Kingdom

Hi there. This is the edit of my first chapter. I really would like to see if I followed the criticisms given to me well.

Smoke rose above the horizon; harsh, acrid smoke, which choked the land of all life.The thundering of horses was drawing nearer, an ominous sign of the savagery to come. The residents of the little hamlet of Orch feared for both their lives and their livelihoods, for they knew the barbarians were coming. Traveling refugees from sacked villages would often tell horrid tales of their debauchery: they showed no remorse in their killings, and no care for the harm they caused. The stories now filled their minds as they all hunkered down in their shacks, awaiting the deadly warriors. Mothers weeped for what would happen to their families, fathers grimaced at their lack of ability to prevent such fates, and the children searched for any sign of hope in this emotional abyss, and yet they found none.

A few desperate, and arguably insane, families walked through the village, seeking to harvest what they could from their orchards, their livelihoods. The few men-at-arms that guarded the border-straggling town gave up trying to convince them to turn back and went to their barracks, readying themselves for the attack. As they dressed themselves, a sense of solemnity and futility descended upon their dormitory. A fairly new graduate of the Academy, named Galius, was among the grimmest there.

"I had always hoped that it wouldn't end like this," he sighed, bitterly. His father was forced to sign him up at the Military academy, and he always hated it. He had rejoiced when he learned he would be stationed at the sleepy hamlet, but as the border raids escalated, he realized that his profession's consequences would eventually catch up to him.

"Pft, and you call yourself a soldier! I am proud to serve my country, and you should be to! Unless you're a ... treasoner, liked your damned father!," barked a rather thickheaded, big-boned rookie. It was common knowledge that Galius' family had a knack for skepticism of the kingdom; his family had multiple accusations of conspiracy under their belts. His own father had been forced to send his son to the military, for openly criticing his lord, to somehow purge the boy of such thoughts. All he received in reply was glares from all in the room. He chuckled to himself, muttered something about the sad state of the kingdom, and left. The others followed him out to the room and pulled out their arms. On the road, they could see the billowing cloud or dirt, signifying the coming of the horde. The men looked at each other, gave themselves weak smiles, and faced the onslaught.

Their attack was comparable to a wave crashing upon a young child's sandy creation and spontaneously destroying any memory of it's former grandeur, all in a matter of seconds. With a party numbering around 40, they stampeded the terror-stricken soldiers and rid most of them of their earthly duties. From that point on, chaos descended upon the hamlet. Their wicked laughs mixed with the crackling of flames from burning homes and formed an inescapable, audible monster that struck fear into all living things. Systematically, they ran through the village back and forth, first raiding a shack and then burning it on the second run-through. They slayed the men, captured the women, and left children to watch as their world collapsed around them, bit by flaming bit. No matter the seeming eternity of this living hell for its inhabitants, however, it not last even even for half an hour. In their wake they left utter carnage: flames consumed Orch, masking the sound of crying children trapped in their homes and half-dead citizens moaning on the winding path through the hamlet.

Galius awoke from his sickly stupor to find himself surrounded by destruction. As the smells of death entered his nostrils, he achingly managed to lift his back to look around. The mangled bodies of his brothers in arms were lifeless, and Orch had been reduceded to a crumbled, ashen pile. He nearly puked when he saw a decapitated head on the road. Examining himself, Galius saw that he was in no better condition: his legs were numb and bleeding, his head throbbing, and one of his arms had gone limp. Suddenly, he heard a sound coming from within the village. "A horse...", he muttered to himself, fear spreading through his entire body. With great effort, he got to his feet and hobbled off the dirt path and into a small meadow that led to the orchards. He lay on his stomach, happy for the coolness of the sodden soil, and waited. The click-clack, click-clack of the hoofs became more audible, and finally a horse and rider emerged.

I was very impressed with the clarity of your writing. I only had to read this through once and feel like I have a perfect understanding of what's going on.

The scene is also interesting and a good way to draw a reader in. With a little work it could be not only interesting, but brilliant.

The first thing I'd advise you to do is introduce a character earlier. Show us their relationship with the people of this village and how important it is in their lives. If we take a look at this sentence:

They pillaged, killed and imprisoned villagers, and burned down the small cottages that constituted Orch as a settlement.

It is certainly interesting, but it lacks emotion. I don't personally know any of these people. It's like the difference between a relative dying and a news report about someone having a car crash. It would carry much more punch if you showed this from a character's point of view, so it's loved ones dying, not just some unknown people.

You've also overused telling in my opinion. The easiest way to use more showing will be to write this in 3rd person limited or omniscient. At the moment it's 3rd person objective.

I think you should bring the soldier in straight away. Detail the fear and suspense leading up to the attack. Show us him desperately fighting, and seeing his comrades and family killed. That would be far more pleasing to read.

I truly am the living dead. He though to himself

It should be a comma after dead.

So, put the character in earlier and show, don't tell. That's my advice to you.

Bye

Greetings, Epenguin! ^^

First off, I am impressed. I understood what was going on the whole time, and saw only a few grammar mistakes, and other minor faults.

Traveling refugees from sacked villages, whose visits would often come daily, due to the increasing amount of raids, would often tell horrid tales of their debauchery: they showed no remorse in their killings, and no care for the harm they caused.

This line does not flow as well as the rest of your passage- it's much too long. It's packed with information, and by the time I had read the whole line, I had to blink and take a second to take it all in. I would suggest you shorten it up. Also, in context with the rest of the peice, you have a lot of long sentences. This gives your peice an 'explain' feel. It's intresting, but after a while, the reader starts to skim. What I suggest you do is introduce some shorter sentences, which will speed up the peice, give impact and also give the reader a rest from the information.

I noticed you used 'it's' in the wrong place a few times- remember, the possesive form of the apostrophe does not apply to 'its'. The only 'it's' there is is short for 'it is'.
See viewarticlebody.php?t=35798 for more details. It's a brilliant little tutorial on apostrophes that I have referred to many times. ^^


My main fault with this peice is the lack of emotion- while it is interesting, your lack of description leaves me unmoved. Most of this is telling, and I gain very little picture from it. Why not expand this way- tell us how it smelled, how the smoke tasted, how the villiage looked, what the screams where, describe the barbarians, the fighting, the killing. Make it visually, audibly, tactilly imaginable.

For instance-

From that point on, chaos descended upon the hamlet. They pillaged, killed and imprisoned villagers, and burned down the small cottages that constituted Orch as a settlement. In less than half of an hour, all was quiet.

Could be described more thoroughly.

Forty steaming horses broke through into the streets of the hamlet, causing chaos. The taste of smoke reached hiding families as their nieghbour's houses were burnt, the inhabitants dragged out with gutteral screaming or, even worse, in complete silence. Children cried. Blood splattered the earth as men stood to defend their families, and lay gasping for breath as their wives and children were raped and murdered.


Etc, etc. It's not a great example, my writing skills are rusty. But you see my point?

On the positive side, what you have is interesting and clear, and gives a good background to something that could be absolutely brilliant. You should PM me as you post more- I want to see where this goes.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. I'll be happy to help. ^^

-Nutty

Thanks to the both of you! I think I'll be able to edit this soon, if not by the end of the week.

Kinda busy with... life.

just read it my review is when is the 2nd chapter coming ?

Hiya!

What to review here? There isn't much to pick at overall...

for they knew the barbarians were coming. . Traveling refugees from sacked villages,

Add a period to make this an ellips or delete one to make it a full-stop.

A few desperate, and arguably insane, families attempted to harvest some of the apples from their if this was gone, their families would go hungry in the upcoming winter

"From their is this was gone" confused me here. Explain a bit more?

The raider would at least number in the 30's,

"Raiders"

I truly am the living dead. He though to himself,

~ Comma instead of a period

~ Thoughts should be in italics

~ "To himself" is a bit redundant here, since you can only think to yourself, no?

Glimmer of hope: I hope you clear this up in later chapters, but I'm wondering what, exactly, that glimmer of hope is. But I do think that can be solved in the next part easily. But perhaps a little more mention as to why?

Overall: Wow. Other then one confusing line, and perhaps some stray pronouns that could be replaced with proper names, this was just amazing. The use of commas makes this a slow, steady read, a style that fits very well for the tone here.

I'd watch for a few stray spellings here. Read this backwards to catch any, or out-loud. Reading backwards works if you don't want anybody to hear you.

Keep it up! And if you have any questions, PM me.

~Rosey

Hey there Enigmatic_Penguin, it's been a while.

I'm not going to be too detailed with this critique, but I think I should give you the main issues that I have with this piece.

1) Keep it brief.

Your sentences tend to be rather wordy due to excessive descriptions, redundant adjectives and unnecessary detail. As I was reading this, I sometimes got confused, lost, or bored with your sentences as they were so long winded. Be more concise in what you are saying. By doing that, you will be able to grab the attention of the reader much better and your piece would also flow much better.

2) Needs more specific details + more exploration into your idea.

As my fellow instructors above have said, this piece lacks emotion. But why is that you may ask? The problem lies with your showing. It's too generalized in my opinion. What you are showing is pretty much what one would expect when a village is being raided. There's no insight to it. (e.g: Why did the mothers weep? What's the reason behind the raid?) A good way to fix this is to keep asking yourself "why". By doing that, you are digger deeper into your idea and doing more than just merely describing, you are exploring your idea and/or theme through your writing.

I can't really give you more help than that since there's not much to review here. The best way to go about improving this piece is to think more about how you would react in such a situation and why, what they are feeling and why etc. It might also help to have more of a specific conflict in mind. You only have overall conflict in the piece, but if you want to be able to write more to this and to make your work more meaningful, you need to look deeper (e.g: Is there debate as to whether to run or fight? What items to take? Where to go and meet up?). When you do that, you are also doing more than just generalizing and describing, you are exploring your idea or theme.

I hope this has been of help somewhat. Your writing skills have certainly improved Penguin, and I also developed some slight interest as I was reading this.

Keep up the good work.

Andy.

Alright, I edited it! I hoep it works out well =P

Enigmatic_Penguin wrote:Alright, I edited it! I hoep it works out well =P

I like the additions but from what I remember there was no dialogue in the chapter just describing and I liked that better cause it just set a good mood. I'll reread the edited version to see if it warms upto me 2nd time through.

lol, looks I can only do one or the other well at the same time >.<

I'll await your reread and see what the others say before I do something though

Well, considering I very much liked your first version, you can just imagine what this review will end up as.

The first person here doesn't do it for me. It makes the narrator seem very unemotional and if it hadn't been for my memory of the first draft I wouldn't have felt anything here. The viewpoint deadens the tone, not enhances it.

I miss the long, rich descriptions here. They made things vivid without making any character sound too poetic, which is what happens now somewhat. Because the old description was tied into characters and emotions remarkably well, the reader's emotions just filled things in. It made things more intense, and now your character's descriptions feel like info-dumps.

And the ending, that's really what suffers the most here. The old ending was a bit weak, I'll admit to that, but this one doesn't have any promise of something new. Because you've made this first person, we don't get any sort of continuation of the story.

In short, please tell me you have the old draft still in tact somewhere? I liked that one a lot more.

Questions? PM me.

~Rosey

Alright, my second revisions has been posted and is more akin to the first draft.

Hiya!

Much better.

Unfinished: Some of the ideas at the beginning, about "deadly mass" in particular, seem to be unfinished in their wording. It could be that you're doing it on purpose, but I'd be careful you're not just leaving things hanging for the sake of it.

The End: When I said the ending hadn't been emotionally involved, I was mostly speaking about the funeral was met with zero signs of remorse or loss. The structure of the plot was such that a messenger like that was needed to make this continuable.

Galius I'm unsure about his description of things at the end. I liked how he was the sole survivor in the first draft when he crawled out, and I found the way his wounds were described beautiful (not beautiful in their completeness, but the way they had been described). Something about that is lost in this draft, since we're closer to his head.

Overall: I liked how you blended things together here! I would, however, find a way to put the messenger back in somehow. Perhaps have Galius hear hoof beats right before he passes out? I just feel this needs something to continue it.

Questions? PM me.

~Rosey

I thought it was esceelent. Very well written and layed out. I just saw one thing thta i didnt't like.

and the children searched for any sign of hope... but yet there was none.

When you say but yet there was none it sounds a little odd. Try just saying but there was none. i think it would sound a little bit better.

Other than that i thought it was good so keep up the awesome work and I look forward to seeing the progression of this story.

Alright, thanks to the both of you!

Looks like this chapter is in the final stretch of the editing race.