Welcome to the Masquerade

I got insprired by the song "Welcome to the Masquerade" by Thousand Foot Krutch. Spit this out, sorry if it's no good! Tear it up Enjoy!
-Irish
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A lone figure walks up to the palace. A cloak is draped across her shoulders and a hood is pulled over her head, hiding her face in the night’s shadow. She carries herself proudly.

She comes to the door of the mansion. An elderly, green-clad servant offers to take her cloak and she nods slipping the hood off her head and the cloak from her shoulders. Exposing her perfect, white teeth, she smiles at the man and hands him her cloak. The man bows to her and carries her cloak away.

She walks through the door and is greeted by a thin girl, her face covered by a silk, green mask in the shape of a long, drooping nose. Her body clad in a shining, form-flattering, low cut, matching green dress. No doubt there was a man here she was trying to impress. The girl smiles falsely at her. “Welcome to the masquerade, Mademoiselle.”

She smiles at the girl; by her tone she sounded maybe early twenties. “Indeed.” She answers slowly. Something about her tone is disquieting to the girl, for she frowns slightly. This frown, however, is quickly replaced by another false smile as other guests walk over.

She moves on toward the grand staircase, and begins a slow decent. Slowly taking in her surroundings.

The ballroom is relatively small as most ballrooms go. A large chandelier shines down on her from overhead making her curling orange hair and scarlet-colored ball gown shimmer. Her caramel eyes scan over the room through a red lace mask lined with thick gold thread. Her blood-red lips curve in a mysterious grin as she sees all the men wearing scarlet. It would be too easy.

At the bottom of the stairs, a hand reached out to her, and her smile evaporates. She looks at it for a moment before looking calmly at its owner. A young man clad in black with a mask resembling something like that looked like a lion. He smiles at her, a devilish glint shining in matching onyx eyes. “Care to dance, milady?”

Her lips curve into an ominous smile. “My apologies good sir, but I have different plans for this night.” She steps down from the stairs and past the man’s confused and slightly surprised face.

Crossing the floor, she takes in the amount of people there are and their state of being for the moment; a drunk there, a flirt there, an innocent girl here, a shy boy there. All followed by those clad in scarlet. The smile grows.

Suddenly, she frowns. Before her is the host of this gathering; obviously, he’s had a little too much to drink. His green and silver tunic is wet with rum, and his matching mask was pushed up a top his head, as to enjoy the entertainment perched upon his lap.

Clad in yellow, the entertainment smiles seductively and whispers something in his ears. He laughs heartily, and leans forward to kiss her neck tenderly.

Her frown grows.

A scarlet clad man walks up to her, she glances at him and gives him one solitary nod. He returns the nod and disappears into the crowd. Suddenly, her evil smile returns.

The scarlet clad moves to place themselves all around the room, two of them stand on either side of the grand staircase. There are no exits. She walks to the middle of the room and looks around, checking each spot. She sighs with satisfaction and faces the host and his entertainment once more. She gives one more nod.

Each of the men around the room reach into his pocket and pull out a shining silver revolver. They count to ten, raise the small gun above their heads, and fire three shots.

Screams erupt in the ballroom and people throw themselves to the floor. The host and his entertainment jump. People try to scatter, but quickly realize they are trapped.

She sighs. “Tout le monde!” She shouts over the yelling and screaming. “Everyone, please!” People slowly quiet and turn to her.

She smiles at them all around her. “Please, everyone. There is no need to panic here… I simply wanted to say,” She slowly turns her eyes to the host, who was know shocked sober and standing, blocking his entertainment from her. She looks into his shocked and confused eyes, “welcome to the masquerade.”

At that given moment, all lights in the room flicker and go out. The screams and shouts uproar as people become blind in the dark.

A scream pierces the dark; louder than all the rest.

Then, as quickly as they went out, the lights came back on.

The screams and yells slowly dwindle to nothing as people come to realize the lights were once again on. They all turn in circles. All those in scarlet were gone; including the woman.

All is quiet until another scream sounds. Everyone turns to find a woman crying into her husband’s shoulder. Her husband, pale and sick looking, holds her tightly, looking at something on the ceiling.

They follow his eyes and gasp in horror.

There, hanging from the chandelier, was a solitary figure. Clad in yellow.

Wow, Irie, this was really good! I haven't heard the song, but if it's anything like this story, it should be good. I have a few little nitpicks.
"Clad in yellow, the entertainment..."

What do you mean by the entertainment? Could you elaborate?

"Slowly taking in her surroundings. "

This should be part of the previous sentence, or reworded.

You had a few other little ones that are quite obvious, like your quotes. I'm awful at them, so I can't give you great advice, but I can at least tell you they're wrong. There should be a paragraph every time someone speaks... perhaps someone else can help you more on that.

As I said, I loved this... but I do think you could have made some things more clear. Who are the scarlet people? What are they trying to accomplish? What do they have against the person in yellow who they killed? And how did the main scarlet woman know about everything, but you wrote it as though she had never seen the ballroom before?

Overall, lovely job. With a few touch ups, this will be great.

Hey Irish! I was surprised that this went for so long with only a single review. Just as a warning, I'm going to give an extensive line-by-line crit and then some overall points, so don't let the length overwhelm you.

She walks through the door and is greeted by a thin girl, her face covered by a silk, green mask in the shape of a long, drooping nose. Her body clad in a shining, form-flattering, low cut, matching green dress. No doubt there was a man here she was trying to impress. The girl smiles falsely at her.

If her whole face is covered by a mask, how can the cloaked woman tell that she's smiling, much less smiling falsely?

She smiles at the girl; by her tone she sounded maybe early twenties. “Indeed.” She answers slowly. Something about her tone is disquieting to the girl, for she frowns slightly. This frown, however, is quickly replaced by another false smile as other guests walk over.

A few things here! For one, there's a lot of smiling at each other in these beginning paragraphs, and it gets repetitive. Also, it needs to be: "Indeed," she answers slowly. Note the comma and lowercase. Next, it seems odd to say that "she answers slowly" when the only thing she said was "indeed". It gives me the impression that she's saying something like "Indeeeeed" which is really awkward. So cut out "slowly". Adverbs are uncool anyway.

Finally, you have some perspective issues in the beginning. After reading through this whole thing, I can tell that your third-person centers loosely on the woman in the scarlet. But around here you let some sentences slip through that are filtered through this girl in green's perspective. Make sure you narration doesn't float around; readers need a point of reference to witness the story from. Read through this and cut the lines with the girl's point of view, like "Something about her tone is disquieting to the girl".

and begins a slow decent. Slowly taking in her surroundings.

You keep repeating "slow" as well. Watch out for redundant words! After you use something a couple of times in quick succession, especially bland words like "slow" and "smile", your readers notice. And why did you start a new fragment for that second sentence?

The ballroom is relatively small as most ballrooms go.

The phrase is, "The ballroom is relatively small as far as ballrooms go." And that next paragraph is a bit info-dumpy. There's an overload of description, especially of the color red and it's variations. Spread out that information about her appearance so it's not too condensed and distracting.

The scarlet clad moves to place themselves all around the room,

"Moves" needs to be "move". It's subject-verb agreement, because those clad in scarlet are being portrayed as individuals, since you use "themselves".

She slowly turns her eyes to the host, who was #FF0000 ">know shocked sober and standing, blocking his entertainment from her.

More repetition of "slow". Also, "know" needs to be "now". Proofread.

The screams and shouts #FF0000 ">uproar as people become blind in the dark.

"Uproar" is a noun, not a verb, and can't be used like you use it here.

A scream pierces the dark; louder than all the rest.

That semi-colon should just be a comma. Semi-colons are used to separate two full sentences, in place of a period, but that second half here is a fragment. Check out this tutorial of mine on semi-colons.

Overall

Okay, so! I like the idea, and I like the amount of suspense you maintained. If you tried to explain everything and shed light on every aspect of this strange scarlet group, it'd lose some of its mystery. However, you do need to explain the significance of the hanging figure clad in yellow. This is, I assume, the same "entertainment" who was clad in yellow on the man's lap? Alright, that's cool. But you set this up like that's a really important fact, without ever telling us why this "entertainment" woman matters in the least. And so, the overall effect falls flat. It's not as dramatic when we don't know why the drama occurred in the first place.

That's my opinion on plot, but I'm going to mention the actual writing style as well. It's very bland, in general. As I've mentioned, you repeat a lot of words, namely, "slow", "smile", "clad", "scream", etc. You've stripped this story back to the bare essentials of action, except for when you narrate every single facial expression (there is seriously too much smiling and frowning and grinning and glinting going on). I think you do this partially for dramatic effect, but again, it falls flat since the language isn't very engaging.

Work on your delivery, first. Towards the start, connect some of those sentences and make them less choppy. Allow the focus to slip a bit from every slightest movement of this woman, and set the scene with scattered descriptions. You've established a very strict and distant third-person, and that, paired with the present tense, makes the narration somewhat stilted. Make your images a little more fluid, see if you can develop these strange people a bit more instead of letting each character spin in and out of the scene's focus.

This is a cool idea and a good start. I hope you can turn it into something even better, and PM me for anything you need.

~Evi

I like how mysterious the woman is but you've only describe her looks maybe describe how her eyes look through the mask?
there are a couple of punctual mistakes
so i suggest giving u this article that someone else gave which helps me alot
topic44898.html
^-^ keep going it's great!

Hey Irie! I'm here to review, finally. I know I said I would be here yesterday, but I was babysitting. xD Still, here goes nothing. I'm going to start with the nitpicks and then move on to my general thoughts on this as a whole.

irishfire wrote:I got insprired by the song "Welcome to the Masquerade" by Thousand Foot Krutch.

I know that song! Can't remember if I like it...

A lone figure walks up to the palace. A cloak is draped across her shoulders and a hood is pulled over her head, hiding her face in the night’s shadow. She carries herself proudly.

Info-dump. For the opening of a short story, this isn't very good. There's supposed to be some kind of hook, something that intrigues me and makes me want to read on. As it is, you're only describing the bare essentials. "She went and did this. She then moved like this. Then this person did this. She did this and then did that." It's all a bit vague and single-minded.

She comes to the door of the mansion. An elderly, green-clad servant offers to take her cloak and she nods slipping the hood off her head and the cloak from her shoulders. Exposing her perfect, white teeth, she smiles at the man and hands him her cloak. The man bows to her and carries her cloak away.

More info-dump. There should be a comma between "nods" and "slipping," because you're adding detail to the main idea of the sentence (The servant offering to take her cloak). Also, do her teeth have to be perfect? And if that's really necessary, do we as the readers need to know? All this accomplishes is creating a "perfect" setting, one that calls for little to no sacrifice by the writer (in other words, you can make the setting/characters as pretty and flawless as you always thought them to be, and let your actual writing skills suffer as a result). You need to have some kind of compromise.

As for any other nitpicks, I think Evi covered them all nicely. I definitely agree that you need to avoid repetition, not just in paragraphs and sentences, but in your entire short story. You used the word "clad" waaaay to many times for my liking.

Plot

All a bit vague and stationary. Sometimes a bit of fogginess can play to your advantage, creating mystery, but here all it did was create a big "Huh?" I was completely confounded, not shocked, by the ending. I saw no significance in the "entertainment," not because there was none but because you hardly tried to explain it. I think you were going for the very last sentence to be that kind of clincher, the one that really wrapped up the entire story, but it didn't work. I just got a sense of seriousness from it, as if the narrator was staring at me like this O____O just waiting to see my shocked expression that he/she just knew was coming. Which didn't.

Characters

Put it this way: I won't remember them tomorrow. I won't take anything from their actions, personalities (or lack thereof) and think about how great or different they were compared to others. They were only used, in my opinion, to get you to that last sentence, the clincher. Intentional or not, this was the result. It's as if they were in a play, a puppet show, with you as the puppeteer. They talked, smiled, got drunk, danced together. Not because they had any kind of personality, but because they served that one purpose of getting to the end with the author.

So work on creating characters. Give them personality, background, history,and flaws. Don't make actors, who have their set of lines and actions, and then nothing. Basically, if you can't imagine how each main character will play out their lives after the events that have taken place in your story, then you have no characters, and you're already set up for failure.

Setting

This was what really bugged me. You leave no room for the imagination, no breathing space that I can use to supply my own details to the story (i.e. season, weather, quiet/loud, etc). You give me the absolute bare essentials of what's happening in your story, and the visual focus is one-dimensional and clouded. Just picture wearing a pair of glasses, with the lenses covered in Vaseline, and the only clear part directly in the middle. In those two tiny circles you can still comprehend what is going on in your story, but as soon as you look away from any one object, it becomes blurry, almost nonexistent. This is exactly what it was like reading this. You go from one subject to another. To another. And another. And that's it! You don't give me a wide sense of what is happening everywhere, you give me little info-dumps here and there.

I hope you get what I'm saying. :/ Just work on giving your readers a broader scope of what's happening.

Anyways, that's that. Let me know if you need anything else.

Well, I must first admit that I have never heard the song on which this piece was based, however, I think I can help you out a bit.

I noticed that a lot of the words you use tend to be reused enough times to make the writing seem repetitive and, in all honesty, a bit boring, here particularly;

She comes to the door of the mansion. An elderly, green-clad servant offers to take her cloak and she nods slipping the hood off her head and the cloak from her shoulders. Exposing her perfect, white teeth, she smiles at the man and hands him her cloak. The man bows to her and carries her cloak away.

The same word is repeated four times in three sentences.

Another thing I noticed is that you have a lot of 'telling' and not 'showing' going on. The key to fluid writing is to show the readers the situation rather than to tell them what's happening, like so;

Suddenly, she frowns. Before her is the host of this gathering; obviously, he’s had a little too much to drink. His green and silver tunic is wet with rum, and his matching mask was pushed up a top his head, as to enjoy the entertainment perched upon his lap.

You say 'she does this' and 'he's done that' rather than giving the reader adequate imagery of the situation. Show us how the man is acting to make her think he's had too much to drink. Is he dancing strangely, walking funnily, laughing raucously, or slurring his speech? When you describe him as having a spill and a mask on his head it could be simply coincidental. Someone could have bumped his glass making him spill it on himself, or his mask could have been making him uncomfortable so he decided to do away with it.

There are also a few grammatical errors throughout the piece, such as in this sentence:

She moves on toward the grand staircase, and begins a slow decent. Slowly taking in her surroundings.

This is a simple mistake really, but I feel I must point it out. 'Descent' is the word to use here. Another thing I wish to point out about this is the repetition of the word 'slow'. I would suggest using a nice adjective here, maybe to show a bit of her demeanor or personality? It seems that she's supposed to have a quiet, but malicious air about her, so why not reinforce it with a subtle description of her behavior? Any word would do here, maybe 'delicately' she observes her surroundings, or 'gingerly', or 'quietly'. All these words already have a slow feeling about them, so they work.

Crossing the floor, she takes in the amount of people there are and their state of being for the moment; a drunk there, a flirt there, an innocent girl here, a shy boy there. All followed by those clad in scarlet. The smile grows.

Just pointing out more repetition and a sentence fragment.

There are also a few places where you accidentally slip into past tense:

Then, as quickly as they went out, the lights came back on.

There, hanging from the chandelier, was a solitary figure. Clad in yellow.

I think the idea of this is really interesting and I love thinking about it, however, with just a few little tweaks this could be awesome. =]