Young Writers Society

Prologue: To "Wolf's Graceful Heart"

*I have completly reworked my Prologue! Please help me by reviewing any grammar mistakes you see and/or if you have an opinion on the prologue's new story rework.*
enjoy!

Prologue to Wolf's Graceful Heart as of: Saturday, November 5th, 2011-

Deep within the darkness beyond the living, there lays a man on his knees. His elbows dug deep into the cement, his claw-like fingernails digging deep into his skull. Numb from the pain, he feels his heavy breath being forced out of his body. Streams of tears falling from the corner of his eyes, vast visions fly through his mind, and in horror he sees what may come to past. Out from the shadows comes a woman of true beauty. Walking to the tortured man, she attempts to calm him with her soft and loving voice. "What troubles you into this horridness, dear Rein?" Watching as the blood drips from Rein's face she notices the blood reaching his goatee as he tilts his head down to allow the blood and his black onyx hair to fall. "You lied to me Lilluth--" With widened eyes Rein begins to breathe deeper and heavier than before. Looking up at the beautiful Lilluth he watches as she moves her gorgeous snow white hair to the right shoulder. Even more worried than before Lilluth abruptly tries to explain to him, "I never lied to you--I only thought it was better if you were not troubled with such things." Staring deep into her eyes, Rein can see the shame of her actions inside of them. "Rein we are in between worlds, this is not the best time for this--" being cut off by Rein, he snaps towards her with much ferocity. "You're job was to protect her and get the girl to him!" With much sorrow Lilluth turns away from Rein only to try and think over her next thought carefully. "What will you have me do then?" Replying in a soft whisper she closes her eyes through flustered feelings. Finally, Rein rises from his fetal position of pain; he looks at her with cold dead eyes. "We must get them together before this new future can be molded into their reality. This vision must not see the light of day." Waiting for a reply from her, he backs off and falls back into his previous position. Lilluth feeling defeated, she too backs off returning to where she originally entered from, "Then, I will start a search for her." Evaporating out of the empty void in which Rein is being held; once alone, he closes his eyes only to endure the same horrific visions again. With his Gnawed teeth piercing his lower lip as his eyes show him the horrific visions, he back tracks to the beginning of the vision:

From the dark night walks a figure, around him is nothing but cracked earth, dead trees and death all around him. His hair running down to his feet, as we walks he cannot help but step on the remains of the villagers he had slain just an hour ago. Looking up he stares at the crimson moon up in the sky, remembering who he is; remembering the monster he was always meant to be. Looking around he sees the bloody corpses of human and wolves, his short pointed wolven ears twitch and his thick long tail wagging in delight over all the gore and death around him. With a smile, he shows his blooded teeth feeling drips of blood falling down his chin. Far from his reach, packs of wolves and a squad of crusade men band together to face him. Lunging towards the figure, with either their claws or long swords drawn, they charge after him. Unable to see the gruesome face of their opponent, he chuckles out of humor. Only a couple of feet away, all the men and wolves stop in their tracks. The figure draws out his claws and hunches over sprinting, slicing and cutting his way through the retaliators. With fresh blood spewing all over the war zone, and covered in their blood, the figure couldn't help but to laugh even more. From the distance in the corner of his eye, the figure can see the outline of a wounded girl. Turning towards her position, he strolls over towards her, looking left and right to see if any had survived the slaughter. Once face to face with the young priestess, the figure smirks,

"You have no more value to me now Priestess." Through aggression, half a war tone and half a growl, he spits fresh blood from his recent kill on her cheek.

"You will never leave this world with this kind of satisfaction, because of your crimes against nature--Beast." Spitting her words back at the figure with as much disdain that she could ever have for another person.

"Do you really think I care for any of your petty insults witch?!" with the same tone as before, he Punches the priestess, driving it into her left cheek.

"I will not let you harm anyone else--Blass--you will die with or without me--"Unable to talk from loss of breath, the priestess turns her eyes away from Blass to her dead sisters at her side. "Liana--Elli--Please forgive me--" tears rolling down her eyes, Blass readies one last blow to her head. "Renah, I plan for this to knock your head clean off." Blass smirks at his comment against her as he readies his punch.

Hi, I am here to review!
I didn't really get a feel for the beginning, "One apon a time" reminds me of a children's book starter, and I didn't like that. Maybe you should change it to something different instead. Now for my nit-picks.

hair of snow white. And as she dreamt, those who were given the pleasure in watching her sleep called her a sleeping beauty.

Here, you don't need the and. It's pointless and "and" is a connective, which does not belong at the start of the sentence. Here are two ways you can change it:

hair of snow white; as she dreamt, those who were given the pleasure in watching her sleep called her a sleeping beauty.

or

hair of snow white. As she dreamt, those who were given the pleasure in watching her sleep called her a sleeping beauty.

Overall, I think the beginning needs some work done, but as you read through it does get better and the only thing I need to say about the ending is there is no need for the dashes (---). I see no point in them.
Anyway, well done, and keep writing.

You may have the beginnings of myth here, and rather interesting one at that, but ultimately this piece was so wrought with errors and inconsistencies that the story was lost.

I really thought this piece was going to come of as myth. A story that is told around the campfire to little children and then retold by every subsequent generation, you have the start of a legend, but it never really comes to fruition. Your tone is very inconstant. First we get a far away, formal sort of tone, one that typifies legends, and then, once you start introducing the pronoun "I" we get a rather informal everyday tone. The result is jarring and is a determent to your piece. I would choose one tone, and if I were you I would pick the "mythology" tone , and run with it. So if that means keeping everything in third person with a mystical edge, do that. Also, I might research and read some good myths and possibly a few origin stories to get a sense of what works and what doesn't for these types of pieces. To start you off:

The Iroquois Creation Story
The Story of Arachne and Minerva

I would just google around to find some others, their fun stories and I think they will help you when editing this piece.

For nitpicks and such, you had a number of spelling errors, missing words, and your piece switched between past and present tense throughout. All these errors are relatively easy to fix, you just have to do a thorough read through and I am confident you will catch most of the problems. If you are interested in editing this piece further and would like some help on this, shoot me a note and I would be happy to help out.

If you rewrite this, the other thing I would focus on is clarity. I was confused why your characters chose to act the way they did, and the sequence of events did not really make sense. Such as, how did Liluth and Fasaut meet? What compelled them to get married? What did the curse have to do with anything? (Though I will say that curse you had there was excellently worded.) Fasaut lived in Nazzirir? All of these things I was confused about. So my other big piece of advice is just to slow down. Let your reader absorb one piece of info before you hit them with another. Elaborate more, and explain the why as well as the what.

Last, I would try reading this piece out loud to yourself or even have a friend or family member read it out loud to you. If they get tripped up or confused with what's going on, that usually is a good indication that you might want to change or rework something. I know that I have thought certain sections of my work is excellent, but then I have someone read it to me and they stumble. It's really helpful technique for finding sticking points in pieces.

You have good and interesting ideas, and that's the start of any good writing. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to drop me a note via PM or my wall!

W

Hey, Speck! I'm here as requested.

So I really like this! It's definitely a typical beginning chosen for fantasy stories, but I do enjoy the bedtime stories like this. It's a great way to share information with the reader when it's done correctly! What you have here is definitely on the right track, and I'll try to give some advice to help improve it a bit.

First off, however, I do think this got a bit long and uninteresting. But! This is mainly because it wasn't broken up much in paragraphs, and there were very few breaks to see the dad and his three daughters. Basically, I would like to see more characterization (or personality) with the main characters, especially if Renah is important! I would never have guessed Renah being the important kid. Liana was my first guess, and Elli was my second. Renah was my last though 'cause I didn't see much of her! So while this whole prologue is obviously focused on the story being told, it's still a story being told by Dad to his daughters. These are the main characters, so try to focus on them a bit more. That way, the reader will learn to love them more!

Okay, so when it comes to storytelling, it's kind of an art to its own. I don't know if you've ever tried it before? I'm an older sibling, so I've had my chances. I was pretty horrible at it though! I always resorted to picking a book off the shelf. Storytelling is hard. You have to keep it interesting to not only the audience but yourself as well. So everyone has to want to pay attention. That means keeping it interesting with a variety of characters, dialogue, action, etc.

What doesn't work is the info-dumping. That is, telling straight facts like what a werewolf is (I apologize, I don't remember what they were called here. <== this could be a bad sign, by the way! Your reader doesn't remember!) doesn't hold a child's attention during storytelling. Pictures usually do though, so if you can paint an image in their minds as well as keep it interactive, you'll keep their attention. And with storytelling, this is all done on-the-spot, so it takes a lot of skill!

And also, bedtime stories like this are very fun! But the kids sound very young, so Dad wouldn't tell such a long story in one go. In fact, he might split it up over a few nights. It's kind of a long story, and I don't think the girls would really care much!

On a final note because I just thought of it now (;)), I think the girls need a little more individuality. They all seem the same, and they act the same, and they all don't have any faults to relate to. Basically, they seem very Mary-Sue to me! And Dad a Gary-Sue. So I'd suggest a little more character, though now that I think about it, I think I already mentioned this.

But that's all I've got for you! I think your idea is very interesting, and it's a great story! Really! There's just probably a better way to share it so as to keep the reader interested. I definitely look forward to the next chapter if you ever post it. Just let me know!

Keep writing!

Jabber, the One and Only!