Young Writers Society

Pain seared across Alec’s palm, a brilliant light filled his vision.
“Alec, we are the Academy. The only safe place for you now, you’ve been marked out as a mage Alec. Within twenty-four hours, if you not a student at the academy, you’ll die. Good Luck” A glowing mark made of swirling ice blue lines appeared across his vision. Alec slipped into a dreamless sleep.

Allo. I'm Ninj. I'll be your reviewer of the day.

My corrections; please take these into consideration.

Pain seared across Alec’s palm; a brilliant light filled his vision.

“Alec, we are the Academy. The only safe place for you now that you’ve been marked out as a mage. Within twenty-four hours, if you not a student at the Academy, you’ll die. Good luck.” A glowing mark made of swirling ice blue lines appeared across his vision. Alec slipped into a dreamless sleep.

It's intriguing, but one of the reasons I clicked on this is because it's fantasy; that could make me biased. I caught most of the grammatical errors, but I'm not an expert, so I'd recommend going back and rereading this a few times, just for safety. Make sure you stay consistent- the capitalization with "Academy" got missed once. Also, don't overuse the name too many times within a few lines; it gets repetitive.

Another thing is that you shouldn't always use the comma-'a' combo like you did at the beginning. In some cases, it can look artistic, but in others, it just looks unprofessional.

With a little bit of R & E, I think this would be fantastic- there's hardly a paragraph to go on and I already want to find out what's going on. I'm a bit of a fantasy junkie, I will admit, and I commend you on writing in this genre. It's always great fun.

Good luck with future works, and have fun writing!

~NCM~

Thanks for that. I should have been more careful. Chapter One will be poster in about an hour so gift it a look if you want to...

O.o Now I want to read more. Good job on the hooking me in. However, some corrections:

wizkid515 wrote:Pain seared across Alec’s palm, a brilliant light filled his vision.
“Alec, we are the Academy. The only safe place for you now, you’ve been marked out as a mage Alec. Within twenty-four hours, if you're not a student at the academy, you’ll die. Good luck”
A glowing mark made of swirling ice blue lines appeared across his vision. Alec slipped into a dreamless sleep.

Comments: I've made the second part of that paragaph unitalics because the first part of the story wasn't in italics, so I couldn't figure out why you made the second part into italics. Is there a specific reason for this?

The reason I crossed Alec out is because it seemed a bit unecessary and repetitive.

Also, I think you need to make this sentence a bit more clear:

wizkid515 wrote: Within twenty-four hours, if you're not a student at the academy, you’ll die.

With the 'if you're not a student at the academy'. Does that mean that he has to reach the academy? If so, I think you need to just state it out in the plain obvious, "if you do not reach the academy within twenty-four hours, you'll die" Or something like that. The sentence is just a bit vague.

And the 'you'll die' bit seems a bit sudden too. It's just like saying to someone, 'if you don't eat that cake, you'll die.' See what I mean? It comes out of the blue. What about making it more omnious? like 'you'll meet a bad end.' Or something?

Other than those tiny nit-picks, it's good. I want to read more now.

A nice start. My thoughts going through:

"Pain seared across Alec’s palm, a brilliant light filled his vision." I think maybe more than a comma should separate these phrases... Perhaps you should consider the merits of semicolons! 8D

“Alec, we are the Academy. The only safe place for you now, you’ve been marked out as a mage Alec."
Again, more than a comma should separate those phrases. Or maybe you were trying to join them together, I don't know. It should either be more like this: "The only safe place for you now. You've been marked out as a mage, Alec." Or like this: "The only safe place for you, now that you've been marked out as a mage, Alec." Either way, comma should come before Alec.

"Within twenty-four hours, if you not a student at the academy, you’ll die. Good Luck” This is phrased a bit oddly, on top of a typo (you should be you're) and missing punctuation at the end (you need a period before the second quotation mark). I would say it more like this: "If you're not a student at the academy within twenty-four hours, you'll die. Good luck." This will also separate the two 'you-' words a little more, which wouldn't hurt.

Also, why will he die? Is it because of some tragic side effect that will rip him apart if he doesn't get help from the people who know how to control it? Or will they just flat out kill him if he doesn't show up on his first day? This seems like a very drastic way to recruit students. Yet it also seems familiar, almost... Anyway, why does this guy just walk away after that? Shouldn't he be giving a little more information about what's going on, or is that part of the challenge? 'Finding the academy.' What is the academy. Does Alec even know? Do we have a name? A local superstition? A myth? Ads in the paper? How's Alec supposed to find this place? What was leading up to this, and what will come after? Alec only has twenty-four hours, and right now he's wasting a lot of time lounging around unconscious.

Who is Alec, and why should we care about him?

This is very short, even for a prologue. It feels more like the little snippet they have at the beginning of a book sometimes as a teaser. It's got a hook "Ooh, is he going to get to the academy before he dies? What was he chosen for?", but we don't really have any context for it. We don't know if he was walking down the street when this happened, or if he was at prom, or if he was camping in the wilderness miles from civilization.

Overall, I think this piece would be a lot stronger if we had a little more context and started to understand a little more of what's going on and who our main character is. Make sure you proofread, and check your punctuation. If that's something you're bad at, get a friend who rocks the comma hard, and have them give it a whirl.

Potential here, but I'd like to see you give us a little more information, just to really grab us. You've got the action, now back it up with some background.

Keep writing.

Okay, this, however short it may be, was very well-written. It definitely builds up the anticipation for whatever you're writing next. There were a couple of grammar things that you might want to fix though:

Pain seared across Alec's palm, a brilliant light filled his vision.

I would either put a semicolon where the comma is, or put an 'and' there. Most of the other things I found were already fixed by someone else.

Definitely elaborate and give us more of this. With such a short excerpt, we'll need another chapter with a lot more info for us!

Cheers,
Luxe