Knights of Dawn Chapter 1: Genesis

Scraped it and is in the works (again)

Hello.

Hey readers 1st let me start off by saying if you haven't read prologues part 1 through 3 then I strongly encourage you to do so or you will be confused. 2nd for those of you who have read them you will find that this first chapter is not my best piece of work but I promise future chapters will be better. So enjoy!

If your prologue is necessary to the story, then why is it a prologue? Prologues are meant to be their own self-contained story and talk about past conflict that the MC had no part of. You should, in theory, be able to cut a prologue and not lose anything in the story. Since you recommend we read the prologue in order to understand this, your prologue is clearly not a self-contained story. Since this prologue introduces action, and most readers are likely to skip the prologue completely (and you can't really put a note in the published book saying "you have to read the prologue in order for this to make sense"), I would suggest you just make your prologue chapter 1.

Because I am one of those readers who would rather skip the prologue, I have chosen not to read it.

As for the rest of this, I shall first explain a concept called "talking heads." Talking heads is when you only have dialogue in a story. This makes the story confusing, very quick, and you have no time to understand the characters. You might have tags to the dialogue, but you still don't leave any room for description, or getting to know your character, or much of anything. I'd suggest you read this article for tips.

I'd also brush up on your punctuation. Right now, you have some errors. If you want me to go into a grammar review on this, PM me and I will gladly do so. Right now, though, I'd suggest you brush up on your dialogue punctuation and your punctuation in general.

My biggest suggestion though, is to slow this down. Right now you have one event after another after another happening, and that can get overwhelming to a reader. By hitting us with rapid fire events constantly and not giving us a chance to learn about the characters, or the situation, or what an "average" day is (minus the dreams) for your character, I'm not relating to him yet.

And, yes, some of this might be fixed if I read the prologue. But, as I said before, if your prologue is needed for the story to be comprehendible, then it's probably not a good idea to make it an actual "prologue" more as a chapter one.

Hope this helps. PM me if you have any questions or comments.

~Rosey

Hello there. I haven't read the prologue, so if anything I point out was already covered in the prologue, feel free to disregard it. Rosey Unicorn does bring up a good point about prologues in general, though, and I agree with her that if the prologue is so essential to the story, it should be named Chapter 1 instead. Contrary to popular belief, not all novels need to begin with prologues. :D

The first thing I notice is that your grammar isn't exactly up to par, especially with regards to punctuation. You also have a number of misused/misspelled/missing words. This really isn't a good first impression, so I suggest that you review the punctuation guidelines and be more careful in the future. There's no rush to posting your work, and proofreading it several times before you post is always a good idea.

The second thing I noticed was that there's no real description. Just dialogue. As a result, I have no clear idea who is talking since I have no image of who they are. Essentially, all dialogue and no description is bad because it's difficult to relate to the characters, especially if you have several talking in a short period of time. I suggest slipping in a little bit of description here and there about the speaker's expressions or tone of voice to give your readers something solid to latch onto characterwise.

The ending of the chapter struck me as a bit abrupt. It just... ended, and there was no clear reason for it, except that maybe you wanted to end it on a cliffhangerish note. It doesn't work, however, because the following conversation and events are pretty predictable, so there's no "What's going to happen next?!" running through your readers' minds.

Overall, proofread your work more carefully before you post, and include more details. Details are what give your readers a solid connection to the story and the characters; without them, your readers will wind up confused or bored because they can't relate to anything.