White Demons Prologue

(First off, sorry about posting a whole different version. I've been writing and rewriting the start of White Demons since forever, and I was really just testing out the novel feature.)

Benjamin Mantle ran for his life. Behind him were shrieks and wails and the most horruble noises he'd ever heard. The trees flashed past him like dark shadows, but he didn't pay any attention to what he was going past.

His mind couldn't process anything but a single word.

ESCAPE!

Benjamin's entire being throbbed with the need to get out of these accursed woods, and back to safety. Back to the village. Back to home.

Another scream crept past his ears, and then there was silence. Benjamin didn't stop running. His feet stung from the repeated effort of placing one in front of the other, and his lungs burned as they struggled to pump oxygen to his over-working heart, but Benjamin still didn't stop. He didn't even slow down.

He couldn't even blink, for whenever he closed his eyes the terrible things he'd seen returned to haunt him.

Finally, after what had seemed like years of non-stop running, the trees began to thin. Benjamin sprinted until he could see the lights of the houses, and then he collapsed into the snow and sobbed.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. It's too short to really leave an impression on me. Even prefaces aren't normally this short. Prefaces are generally an out-take of a story, so this shouldn't even be called a preface. It's more like a blurb, but even blurbs have more information.

At the moment, with what you have, I'm not sure if I'd continue reading, as it sounds a little cliché.

Hello.

I agree with seemingly that this is short. I also agree that this is just a bit cliche.

The main reason is the bulk of your sentences make me think I've got another story with a Mary Sue on my hands. A Mary Sue is usually described as a perfect character, or one who society doesn't know what to do with. "Nobody paid attention to her" reads, to me, as "society doesn't know what to do with this character, so she's probably a Mary Sue." Which is really not a first impression you want to give.

The second line was slightly better, but the odd behaviour really stood out to me. The line could go either way as cliche or not. It did help in establishing that the girl nobody paid attention to is not the MC, which helped the Mary Sue

The third line is where you have another lineup of character descriptions that don't make me as interested. First, you don't really show the scene. You tell us she saw something bad, but we can't draw this conclusion for ourselves since we don't even get a hint of what she sees, other than a girl playing in the snow. With your title, I'm pretty sure this girl is the white demon. And with "which was her doom" I'm pretty positive the character is going to die.

Which makes me wonder why I should read the story if I know the end. And even if she doesn't die, you're creating a first impression that she is. It doesn't mater what happens later in the story; first impressions are the only ones that count.

For rewriting this, you have two options: drop the preface, or make us incredibly, incredibly curious as to how two people will interact throughout the course of the story. Since I have seen "darkness will hit soon" done well once, in quite a few books which try for that tone, I'd suggest cutting the preface and just starting the story.

Take a look at this article on beginnings. It details various ways you can start a story and what a beginning should do for making us curious.

Hope this helps! PM me if you have any questions.

~Rosey

Hi! I have to say, this was interesting to me, despite the shortness (at least it wasn't a terribly long epic lol) I love the name Alice, i love the ending, it drew me even further in! I really hope to read more on this story! One thing, harmless and harming...was that on purpose? if so, ignore this, if not, maybe change it to something like, undisruptive, or something . . . well, feel absolutely free to ignore me, i say it in every post, these are suggestions, take what you like from them and go ahead and throw out the rest, don't worry at all, it wont hurt my feelings lol. Talk to you later!
This was Awesome, i hope to read more in the near future!

Hey, i have to say that even though it was very short i actually liked it.
it was different to what people normally write on here and it had its own character.
So congrats on your uniqueness.
Leaves suspence, kind of remeindes me of a blurb, but oh well.
Love Georgie xxXXxx

*is sitting on edge of seat*

Okay, first off let me tell you this--awesome prologue. Mine are normally ten times longer. I didn't notice much wrong with the grammar except things that bugged me, mostly, which is good--because I can attack things with a vengeance if I feel up to it.

Anyway, I thoroughly want to know what's going on with this kid NAOW, so please get along to writing soon.

Here's two things you might want to fix, anyway:

Including his whole name didn't do much to aid the story. It gave us a name, but, well, it doesn't make us any more interested in his plea. Maybe describe him, or add more emotion, or something--on top of his name. Not literally, but give him more depth. Plot keeps a person turning the page, but characters make the book.

Secondly, this...

" His mind couldn't process anything but a single word.

ESCAPE! "

...would probably look better like this...

"His mind couldn't process anything but a single word--and that word was escape."

You could even put escape in italics. *nods* It just makes it seem more...professional.

Anyway, hope this review helped and, like I said, can't wait to find out what's going to happen next. Once I know more about him, I may be back to nitpick, however, so half-expect that.

-Cspr

hey this is rly short but rly rly good (: I was holding my breath through the entire thing ! Your a kick-ass writer, but you should rly work on it- make it longer !

Okay, the reviewers before me pretty much mentioned everything. I did like the suspense you created here, however it was super, super short. This reminds me of something you'd read on the back cover of the book; kinda like an excerpt.

One little nitpicky thing:

Behind him were shrieks and wails and the most horruble noises he'd ever heard.

The part in bold should be "horrible".

Rosey gave you some pretty good advice on beginnings, so I would definitely look into that. Other than all that, I'm very interested to see where this goes. You've created a bunch of suspense and now I want to learn more about your character!

Happy writing,

-Jelly