Young Writers Society

This is the opening to a novel I have in my head. Hopefully, it will eventually get put onto paper. I know it needs revising, and I'd really like some input on how I should do so! Thanks!

-Sarah

Prologue

There is a dark underbelly to society that no one knows of. It is alive and fused with courage and sin. When the night burns black in the sky and the moon is but a sliver of its former glory, the streets crawl with dark evangelists. Conceive this if you can: the streetlights are broken. The back alleys are deserted and wet from rain the day brought. There are two moving figures, sometimes three, sometimes more, who engage in a dance. More often than not, the dance ends with someone lying face down, gasping and shuddering with effort to keep these breaths from being their last. There is a pool of blood; actually, there are several. Two lives are forever intertwined, even if it is just a memory. They forever have a common bond of blood and secrets: they are both a part of this hard and bruise-black flesh that hides so well under the comfort of everyday life, and the fear most have of darkness.

Sorcery is involved. It is not the sorcery you imagine, though. It is a dark mysticism that doesn’t come from a special birth, a special ceremony, or calling upon the forces of Satan. It comes from the spirit. This world, this secret, is saturated with a driven, bold, protective spirit. The darkness they fall into, the one that they live in, draws this magic from this spirit. Great power comes to those who find it in themselves. It can be destructive, it can be healing, but it is always dangerous. It can destroy its user, it can destroy nations and armies, kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers. These dark evangelists, use this Good Curse, they call it, against each other, and for you and your brothers and sisters.

There are people out there who have no love for you or for justice. They only love what is corrupt: power, greed, lust, and vengeance. Anyone who found themselves face to face with these men and women would find themselves no longer. Their motto? Everyone loses. There is no good in them, nor do they see the good in life. They cannot see the way you move uncomplicatedly through your life, hugging your neighbor, smiling at the waitress, dancing with your lover. They do not see the simplicity and joy of your life like the others do, the ones that protect you. Death is very becoming, they believe. It is something that suits everyone, they discriminate against no one. Why have you not heard of them? If they are after you all the time, to seek and destroy your life, why are they not on the news? Why hasn’t the National Threat Level risen to orange, to red, because of these? The answer may seem simple when you first hear it, but once you read on, you’ll realize its complexity and depth.

We’ve saved you.

oooh...this sounds really good! please get to work on it right away, missy, or I'm going to get after you....*lol*

Yes, I would. Now write, cos I need to read on!

No pressure though, of course.

I would LOVE to read more of this!

hi, and I'm new, just so you know. But I have to tell you, this is probably one of the best pieces of fiction I've ever read on one of these types of boards. I really enjoyed it. The description was perfect, and I really felt the emotions I think you are trying to convey. Those odd creatures actually scared me. Normally it annoys me when people try to make the reader a participent in the story, but in this case it was perfect! Incredible and I would totally read this book!

Wow. Such detail... I could never write that good! Im reading the second half right now! WOW

I voted 'no'.

Now, before you start claiming I'm evil and whatever, I'm going to tell you why.

That was very well written, with a nice dark lexis.

But (yes, there's always a but) I don't know enough about these people to grab my attention. So - they're dark/evil (seen before), they use magic (see before), they are secretive (seen before) and they have soem sort of control over society (seen before).
The magic is nicely described, but once I finished reading the piece, I didn't feel any need to learn more about it. If you had hinted at something else, maybe that would have grabbed my attention some more.

I did like the finished sentence. It was well led up to, was a good length and used a good choice of words. But for me, it's just an ending - I don't feel any real desire to seek out the rest of the story (this is more to do with the other points - the ending was fine).

- Sureal

DarkerSarah wrote:There is a dark underbelly to society that no one knows of. It is alive and fused with courage and sin. When the night burns black in the sky and the moon is but a sliver of its former glory, the streets crawl with dark evangelists.

This is a very nice beginning. It gives me chills to read this.

I think that it has a lot of potential. I am definitely interested enough in the piece to read it. In fact, it is one of the few stories on sites like this that I was able to get all the way through without stopping once. For those reasons and the fact that the writing is just plain great, my vote is yes!

Hi Sarah. I really like the overall ideas you're trying to get out with this. Your execution is superb, and I love how you word certain things. The only problem I have is in the tone. I guess knowing you makes me more able to know what you're capable of, and I know you can do better than this. You've told me that this isn't how you normally right, and I believe it. This isn't bad, by any stretch, I just feel like you could do so much more with it, give it so many new layers, and make it far more profound than you're actually doing.

No I wouldn't. For one, this seems too one-sided. Automatically when reading this, the evil side is looked upon as the good side. Some writers might see this as a welcome change of good is always good, but I find that, if evil is good, then it is best to lull the reader into the story, not thrust them head on into it.

Another thing that bugged me. Oh, yay. We get to see a bunch of bodies sway to evilness. Dance to it. Some artsy types might be thrilled with the description; I'm not. It sounds boring.

Also, I noticed this was called a prologue. If this were the prologue to any book, I would close it. Immediately. If this was developed into something mysterious, it might indeed be a good book, but the prologue needs to be deleted first. Why? Because part of the mystery is distorting the reader's mind to make them see good as evil and vice versa. If you pick a side straight off, it wouldn't work.

Those were my thoughts on it anyway.

I guess I didn't do too good a job with it if you think that my "good guys" are evil. They're not. They're good. But there is not Absolute Good, there are always some gray areas. Since this was the basis of your not wanting to continue with the story, it is hard for me to take what you wrote into consideration.

For one, this seems too one-sided.

You complained about me making evil good, but if I were to take the good side (which I actually did) my story would still be one-sided.

But it isn't one-sided either way.

You had "read on" in your prologue and you mentioned "we." I'm assuming you have that throughout your whole story, this mysterious narrator?

Here's a grammatical error that bugged me:
"It is something that suits everyone, they discriminates against no one." (They discriminate against no one.)

The prologue itself was heavily loaded with lots of detail and description, which I think you should place into your actual story. It didn't really draw me in. It seemed more like a summary that wasn't really clear on its topic yet.

*shrugs*

If roles are going to be reversed and you want to turn the conventional upside down and on its head, you better lull the reader in. "His Dark Materials" comes to mind. Thrusting it to the readers in a prologue like this wouldn't be smart. The prologue didn't lull me in, therefore I didn't like it, nor would I read anything with such a prologue.

It's not that I don't like it when sides are reversed, but there has to be a subtlety to it -- a grace -- that leads the reader into these ideas. When this happens, there is power. Consider "1984." Consider "The Giver." They don't force you into it, and you don't realize how hooked you are until you try to put the book down. Too often, writers believe that they must make the beginnings of their books must be violent with tension to captivate the reader. That isn't true. In fact, with stories that have shades of gray, the opposite is nearly always true. Lead your reader in slowly and the story will have power.

Here is a rule for you guys to think about.

In general: A prologue must not tell anything about the main character, a lot about the settings (although not how they got that way necessarily) and only hint at the plot.

Take Lord of the Rings for instance. They do have a prologue, which tells of the forging of the one ring of power and it's history. It doesn't talk about Frodo, Bilbo, or "that incident with the dragon". Notice how at the end how at the end it hinted at the fact that evil had come again and left it to our imagination what sinister forms it had?

This is why you don't introduce the main character to others, you have him introduce himself. When you talk to the audience, it is like giving a lecture. It feels like it to the reader. When you describe action, you are no longer lecturing them, but giving them words which are translated into a mental picture. It is the difference between talking about a video game and its unique characteristics and actually seeing it!

I just hope this makes sense.

Griffin: You made lots of sense, but I'm not exactly sure what your saying about my prologue. I never imagined their being a specific formula for a prologue, and so I just kind of went with setting up the mood of the story, rather than the setting, characters, etc.

emotion_less: The story is in first person, but you are introduced to the narrator, she is not a mystery. The "you's" and "we" are few and far between, but I tried to make it like she is telling her story to you. *ticks* That "discriminates" was a typo. I know very well that singular verbs go with plural nouns.

Snoink: I'm still a little unclear on what you think would be best for me to do with this. If you don't like the story, and were just trying to tell me that, then I don't appreciate it. But if you're trying to help me revise this in some way, I appreciate it greatly, but I'm not exactly sure what to do. Because the prologue is not the main focus, I didn't really spend a lot of time on it. I was just trying to set the mood. I was not clear about anything, which I thought was "lulling." Oy, but opinions differ.

Thanks everyone for your comments. I'm trying to revise it at the moment, which is actually a lot harder than I thought it would be, even with all these comments.

-Sarah