Young Writers Society

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

First Impression: Okay...well, this was an intriguing one here, as far as prologues go it appears to be trying to get towards some sort of revolution against an evil king or something along those lines, but also its a tiny bit confusing and that part where this person is narrating a thing that happened to the king comes off as a bit awkward in some places. More details on all that down below.

Anyway let's get right to it,

"This is what happened King Albion. The night sky was darker than usual, whether this was due to the thick blanket of clouds or because it is winter, I do not know but no stars shone. I could hear the sound of the horses hooves clattering on the stone driveway which led up to the Darkfire mansion I exited the carriage and walked up the stone steps leading to the door. I knocked and Lady Darkfire opened it. Her was a hair looked pitch black in the darkness, her face had a quiet beauty to it, her eyes were a soft brown but the bags underneath them told me she was tired."

"What do you want?" Her voice was quiet with a hint of annoyance

I replied, "Official demands of the King, he has asked me to take your twins to the castle to be fostered,"

"What?" Her voice raising in volume

"King Albion asks that you give them to be calmly or I will be forced to take them," I replied

Without saying a word she threw her arms across the doorway. Sensing there would be no other way, I budged pass her easily. The mansion was lightly furnished giving it the effect of being more spacious than it was. A small fire was burning in the corner and the twins' cot was near it. As I walked towards it, I heard a faint whoosh. I turned quickly but my sword was halfway out of the hilt by the time the flaming blue arrow hit me in my eye, I screamed in pain but as your strongest knight, I pulled the arrow out and charged towards Drusilla Darkfire. It took two slices to break her bow and two more to break through the protective field she summoned around herself. As soon as the field around her broke, she summoned a wave of fire from her totem but using most of my strength to hold it off while the flames licked around the edge of my sword, the feedback was too great for her and she fell to the ground."

"I see," King Albion said from his mighty golden throne. "Stormestrung, taking into account all you have said, I am sentencing you to a lifetime in the Laughing Skull. I can sense a great evil in you!"

"B...b...but your majesty!" I stammered but it was too late he had said the words. "But now, now we can overthrow the King, I shall not rest, we shall not rest until everybody who loves him, who cherish him, who worship him..." I paused. "Are dead"

The battle cry was that went up after that. Was music to my ears.

Hello friend

Your decision to have this scene as dialogue is peculiar. Did you choose to do so for a reason? If so, I'm not getting it. You probably want to expand more on this aspect. Otherwise, it's generally a safe bet to just narrate the action. It's more vivid and would capture my attention better. In this case, for example, because the main character is narrating to the king, he doesn't explain why he's sent to take her children. I understand why -- it would make little sense for the knight to say 'as you know, your majesty, you sent me to abduct Darkfire's children because x and y and z'. However, because he doesn't motivate his actions, I, the reader, am now super confused.

As a side note, I am a fan of over the top fight scenes, but you're going to have to better explain how your knight took a flaming arrow to the eye and shrugged it off. And apparently holds off a wave of fire with his body? I'm guessing he has magic too, but it's not obvious. Something like that should be specified.

Then the King suddenly decides to punish his most trusted knight? You're going to have to set this up a bit better for me to buy into it. Out of the blue like that, I'm just even more confused. Then the knight says something about overthrowing the King. Which king? That king? Who is 'we'? What battle cry? Are there more people around?

To me it seems you had a lot of really cool ideas in your head that you absolutely had to write down, and didn't bother to read what you wrote afterwards. Slow down. Ask yourself: as a reader, can I tell what's going on? Then decide on an aspect to focus on. Reading your work afterwards also helps you correct grammar, which definitely needs to be done here. Run your work through a spellchecker.

Once you do calm down a bit and slow the pace down, or at least add more detail, I think this could be really cool. Do keep me posted on any development.

As a final note, I don't really like prologues. This one is no exception, in the sense that, why should it be a prologue? It could very easily be a chapter one. Anyway, this is less important. Hope I could help

~Ita

Hey there! Mav here to review, hopefully this can be helpful.

Okay, I’m going to be completely honest, this is a bit rough around the edges. I get the gist of this prologue, and I like what you are trying to portray. That being said, there are some basic grammar rules and the like that need to be fixed!

First off, let’s discuss the first paragraph. You have encased it in quotation marks. Why? I’m pretty sure this story is supposed to be 1st person and that it’s your main character's view, meaning there is absolutely no need for them. This is the same case for the random ending quotation mark in your other giant paragraph.

THIS IS ME ADDING IN STUFF AFTER I FINISHED MY REVIEW: After re-reading this several times, I FINALLY understand what is going on. Your character is recounting his battle with Lady Darkfire to King Albion. In that case, there is a WHOLE lot to discuss.

First off, if your character were recounting a story, they would not phrase it as you did. It sounds like he is reciting a novel, which is not realistic in the slightest. I suggest you somehow work this into a flashback scene instead. You could start off with him recounting the story to King Albion, distinguish a flashback with the use of italics, and then finish off the story with more speech to the King.

Now, if you are dead-set on keeping it as such, be weary of the quotation marks you are using. As said by wiki: If quote marks are used inside another pair of quote marks, then single quotes are used as the "secondary" style. Thus, Storm’s dialogue with Lady Darkfire would use singe quotes: ‘ ‘. This honestly would make the entire thing so much less confusing.

Next point: please review basic punctuation rules and proofread this work! There are several sentences that don’t end in a period (I won’t quote them, they are pretty easy to find). In addition, make sure you are using the proper punctuation; you used a comma instead of a period in the third paragraph/line.

To build onto this point, don’t hesitate to use commas to enhance natural pauses like you are supposed to. For example, adding a comma in this place…

Without saying a word, she threw her arms across the doorway.

As soon as the field around her broke, she summoned a wave of fire from her totem but using most of my strength to hold it off while the flames licked around the edge of my sword, the feedback was too great for her and she fell to the ground.