BlackHeart Introduction

This is the introduction for my novel which will probably be about twenty chapters. BlackHeart is to be the first in the DARKSIDE trilogy. Please let me know what you think and how I can make it better. Hopefully I can finish the first chapter by next weekend. (It takes me forever to write). Thanks.
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Introduction: The Hated

There was a man hated by everyone except those equally despicable. This, of course, refers to Maldio, the emperor of all Corlithando. It is said that he was born without a soul or perhaps his heart does not exist. He simply lives out of defiance and spite to those around him. It was Maldio who ruined the world. Once, too many years ago to clearly remember, Corlithando was a wondrous place. Elves, dwarves, people of all races lived in harmony. Sorcerers were abundant, free and respected. There was no fear for one’s children save nature’s cold heart. A heart not near as cold or merciless as Maldio’s. Then Maldio came. No one really knows where he came from or who his parents were. He was the most powerful sorcerer in a thousand years. Trained by the elves, a pupil of the elfin king himself, he was the first in all of history to be gifted with all nine gifts of magic.

But this was not enough for him. He started with the elves. Savagely, he attacked a small elfin village late at night and burned it too the ground, killing hundreds. Then he started a war that lasted for five bloody years. Thousands of all races died in the fighting. In the end his blackheart won out. The elves retreated far into the forests and were never seen nor heard from again. The dwarves closed off all entrances into their mountains from the outside world. Ah, but the people, the race of men were not so lucky. They became his subjects, his people. They were forced to obey his will and if not they were destroyed, as was their family. The mighty emperor required all be tested for magic and that all magic users serve him. He required all men to enlist at seventeen and serve for at least five years, though often longer until they were too old to fight. For a small group still resisted, called the Underhand, but futilely. He imposed severe taxes and allowed poverty and corruption to consume the nation. Men waited for him to weaken, get old and die. But because he has no heart he doesn’t grow old for it has been three hundred years and still he strangles their cries. He is a murderer and a thief of liberty and the rights of man. His black hair is the color of his black heart. His cold, dark blue eyes speak of only death. His pale skin is like winter, bringing only suffering and destroying all joy. His muscled physic speaks not of discipline or had work but of an unyielding and merciless power. No man can defeat him and he conquers all. Every man hates him with all his being but hate cannot destroy him. Maldio reins on, an unstoppable terror. Then seventeen years ago he had a son, of an unknown mother. A son with the same hated black hair, dark blue eyes, and pale skin. Brio. This is his story.
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I know it ends all suspenseful and dramatic but I wanted it to act as a hook for my story. Please give me feed back.

Hey I luv ur book. Ur star character is pretty cool. One suggestion don't describe everyone in the book. That will get kinda weird. So far it is really good.

Sunnygirl40

Hey Tigerwolf, I'm gonna try and review this

It sounds really interesting, though the 'dark lord' thing is a tiny bit cliche.
I know this is supposed to be an introduction, but it seems a bit unexciting for a beginning. Maybe start right in the middle of the action and slowly tell what Maldio has done. That way the reader would have some questions and keep reading to find out more.
Sort of a show don't tell type of thing.

Hope this helped!

Hi tigerwolf4,

It's great that you're starting a novel in my favourite genre, epic fantasy.

Sadly, I'm not sure this introduction is starting in quite the right place. It's just backstory - a ton of stuff that happened before the story actually begins. That's kind of dry and boring to read, and since you're not focusing on the actual hero (which I assume is Brio), I'm struggling to care about anyone. I really want to like your hero, but I haven't met him yet.

You state that the piece ends "all suspenseful and dramatic", and it's a "hook", but I'm afraid I don't feel the same. What a fantasy reader really cares about is not a generic bad guy - we've all read tons of those before, from Tolkien's Sauron to Jordan's Dark One by way of Rowling's Voldemort. We care about the protagonist: how cool he is, what he desperately wants, the problems he's facing, and how he plans to overcome them. So we need to focus immediately on the protagonist.

You may be thinking: "Yeah, I was getting to the protagonist already." Problem is, people don't sit through prologues that bore them while waiting for you to bring out the fun stuff. All the super cool stuff needs to come first.

Your world-building (description of the setting) is also coming across as a little cliched and generic to me. You've got elves in forests and dwarves in mountains, like the Lord of the Rings or a Dungeons & Dragons setting, and the concept of a small resistance against the evil enslaving emperor has been done over and over - Star Wars, for example. At the moment, instead of really enjoying your work, I'm asking myself where I've read this before and if I really need to read it again. I know it's tempting to rely on staple parts of stories you've already read, but I think they're not doing you any favours here. Try to break away from the cliches you're familiar with and onto slightly newer ground.

Some additional minor comments:

You have frequent tense changes between present and past. Stick to one tense.

Elfin and elven technically mean the same thing, but I think you'll find most readers think that "elfin" means "small, petite, dainty, mischievous", while "elven" relates to "elves".

Your description of Maldio feels over the top. How can his skin be "bringing only suffering and destroying all joy"? Is his skin a separate, sentient being?

I don't understand why Maldio's specific hair, eye and skin colour is hated. Dark hair, blue eyes and pale skin doesn't sound unusual at all. Surely many completely unrelated and innocent people all have this colouring.

You have repeated words and phrases, sometimes in quick succession, like "speaks of". You also used the word "hatred" about fifteen times.

Brio's name is a noun - brio means vigour, energy, vivacity. It's kind of a happy word, so I find it a little jarring used as a name in a darkish fantasy setting.

Overall, I'm not sure this is as compelling a hook as you think it is. I'm a huge epic fantasy reader, and I've read stacks and stacks of generic evil overlords who burn things and look sinister. What makes fantasy stories unique and fascinating (among other things, but I think this is the most important) is a unique and fascinating protagonist. I haven't even met yours yet, so at the moment, I'm not feeling like I want to read on.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Karsten

Hi, Tigerwolf.

I normally don't start out with the negative, but I have to be honest. Reading the two paragraphs above was overwhelming. I felt like you were throwing so much at me, and I was scrambling to keep the details in my head.

Also, I didn't enjoy the way it was told. This didn't read like fiction, more like a textbook. This happened, then this happened, and this is why. I know you were shooting for a captivating hook, but the above didn't do it for me. To draw the reader in, you need to write something that will grab, pull, and keep us in. And idea: Maybe you could start the story in the heat of battle? Maldio sounds like a warrior, after all. Just a thought.

As Karsten stated, at this point, I don't really want to continue.

On the plus side, you have an excellent idea! This has major potential, and you are clearly creative. Use that imagination you've demonstrated and get to writing again!

Good luck,

KJ

Hey Tigerwolf!

So, I thought I would be nice and review this since I've had it open in my browser for a couple of days.

Karsten gave you one truly great review and there's not too much I can add to it, but I will do my best in any case. I advocate taking that review pretty seriously as it will certainly help you develop this a lot more.

Anyhow, let's move along and take a look at some of the things that I've picked up from your piece that I feel could help you with your writing somewhat.

Firstly, let's start with your narration: To start off a story, it is not always good to give us a vague history as this does not hook us. You're a third person narrator and are already somewhat detached from the story. When you start trying to grip us by telling us a tale that has no pertinence to you as a narrator or to your reader you lose a large part of your audience.

So, how do you go about improving this? Were I in your position I'd start trying to show one of these conquests of Maldio's in the prologue. Grab us with an interesting scene that spins off your story and gives us just enough information to work out what has happened at the point that you are going to start your story. It should be exciting, action-packed and detailed. You need to also move closer to your characters for maximum effect. Which brings me to my next point:

Moving closer to your characters: If you want us to truly be able to connect with your story, you can't write it from the same detached point of view as you are now. You need to get closer to your characters and let them do the talking. Let their reactions and dialogue be specific enough to give them an independent and interesting character. The other thing to realize is that your world, big as it is, is merely a home for a story. This means that the people in the story are the people you need to zoom the camera on to and show us. They are the people we want to see.

Paragraphing: There's not much to say here aside from try to break your paragraphs up into smaller chunks. You have multiple ideas in the same paragraphs, and if you wanted our eyes to move through it faster you'd not try so much to cluster it all together. Give us a bite at a time. Remember, a paragraph end is a place that we readers will stop briefly and contemplate on your story. The more we do this, the more attached to your story we will become.

Dialogue: Dialogue often manages to move the readers' eyes away from the monotonous narration of the narrator. Adding dialogue makes us see different tones within your story and varies it making it more comfortable to read. Your lack of dialogue doesn't give the reader an ability to communicate with any of the characters in your story and makes it hard for you to communicate with your readers. Add a bit of conversation here and there, and you'll certainly improve the grip with which we handle your story. No piece of writing should ever be without dialogue, and if it doesn't have dialogue, at least add some thoughts of a character. You need to pin us as readers into your story and dialogue is one magical way of doing this.

Overall: Short as this piece was, I think you have potential. You do need to try to avoid the Tolkien style epic prose, because while he could pull it off, almost no other writer has done so. That style takes years to develop and relies upon a vast vocabulary and comprehension of the English language as well as years of insight into the human mind that most of us younger writers don't have. You have a lot of baggage that you'd want to eliminate in favor of building a more personal relationship with the reader. Try write naturally but specifically. If you can do this, I think you'll do really well.

Hope the review helped!
Have a great one!

Hi, Tigerwolf, I'll be your reviewer for today.

First of all, I'd have to say that Karsten and Master_Yoda both gave you very excellent advice, and you should definitely listen to them. That being said, I do have my own two cents to make.

My chief concern (aside from the cliche elements) is that this isn't a story. Not really. It's a history, and reads exactly like one, albeit one written by a propagandist for the current regime. Which in fact would be quite interesting if you did make this piece into an excerpt from a very biased history, and the main story one in which the heroes discover that this supposdly evil Maldio was actually not so bad a guy (similar to the rehabiliation of King Richard III after the Tudors did so much to slander him. Gave us a great Shakespeare play, though).

All of this is so vague and does very little to show us Maldio's evil. You keep describing him as evil and vile and listing the evil things he's done, but I have no real sense that he's evil because you're telling us how bad he is, not showing. The story would be much more effective if it started with some evil action of Maldio's and the peoples' reactions to it, instead of the rambling history we get. The constant number of times you described Maldio as dark and evil also ironically worked to make him seem less evil, because it got tiresome and comical after a time. And made me think of propaganda.

In fact, it's this Maldio character's supposed evilness that bothers me the most. Antagonists are very difficult to write, as I've found to my detriment, but the key thing is to keep them plausible. I don't believe that Maldio is a living, breathing, human being. I believe he's a Saturday morning cartoon villain. He's just one big long streak of evilness, down even to his physical appearance. What I find even more implausible is how he has zero support at all. Even the most despotic ruler will have some support base. In fact, sometimes the most vile ones will have a massive support base, and that's what makes them all the worse. If a villain is hated by all, it gets us almost feeling sorry for them. If they're loved by all, then holy crap, do we know they are a force to be reckoned with. Case in point: Adolf Hitler.

Overall, I think you need to do some research on historical leaders. You're confusing absolutism with evil, and while that is very often the case (Hitler again, Stalin, Mao), but there are some absolute leaders who try to be "enlightened despots" (Catherine the Great, some Frederick or Joseph from Prussia, I can't remember), and some who historians continue to argue about (Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry VIII). All people are multi-faceted, leaders just as much so. A leader who is pure evil embodied is unrealistic.

Story-wise, I'm more interested in this Brio than I am in Maldio. I like plots where children of villains rise up against them, which I assume this story will be about. Consider opening the story with a narrative scene of Brio instead of all this biased infodumping on Maldio, unless you're going to turn this into a piece from a propagandist's history.

I didn't hate this--I do believe that the main story (centering around Brio) has promise and if you consider the propaganda angle, it will be something quite different from a usual high fantasy. But it'd probably be wisest if you overhauled it completely.

Best of luck in your endeavors, and PM me if you have any questions. Or want to yell at me, that's fine too.