I felt the room begin to shake. But only the room I was in i was shaking. There were people walking in the hallways with no idea of what was going on in here. Scared for my life, I quickly ran out of the room when trophies and picture frames began falling. Only the strange thing was that it was following me into the hallways of the school filled with people. The floors were splitting open as I ran. No matter where I went it kept following me. Suddenly the roof began to cave in and I found myself running faster than before. “MAKE IT STOP!” I heard someone yell from a distance. Other than a cry for help from a scared, young, child all I heard was constant screaming and the sound of the school falling into pieces as I ran. As I began to get tired I thought to myself “I can’t believe I am doing this!” The room began spinning and I could no longer hear the screams of innocent people crying for help. I suddenly flew up from my sweaty pillow, painting hard from what I thought was a terrible nightmare.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
139,045 Literary Works • 672,398 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okayy...well this was a really interesting piece here, a pretty powerful point to start a prologue off there if I'm reading these hints that have been left correctly. I love the way that it doesn't seem to explicitly state any of said interesting parts and lets us as the reader decode the little hint hidden here and there.
From what I can see it looks like this person somehow causes some kind of earthquake in a school where it looks like practically everyone manages to end up dead as a result of all the chaos going on...and from what I can see it looks like this person manages to decode what's happening far too late to change what happens because it does look like this person has no idea they're causing the earthquake until the very end...and then they somehow wake up from a nightmare of some sorts.
On one hand, you get the feeling that perhaps its just a terrible nightmare this person sees in this prologue, but that last line does a wonderful job making it seem like this isn't just a regular nightmare but could be some form of premonition or something that they accidentally did in their sleep somehow. At any rate, this was a really interesting little prologue here...and certainly something I'd read more of here.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hey there, vewrites!
Well, this is an exciting start! A terrifying an unexplained earthquake (or something similar) is definitely a hook, so I can easily see readers being keen to read more of the story to find out what's going on!
That said, there's an awful lot going on here in a very short space. I would definitely recommend slowing down a bit - go into a bit more detail about what the narrator can see, hear and feel around them, and describe how their feelings are, so that your readers can really picture the scene. This will make the piece quite a bit longer, but it will be much more appropriately paced, and your readers won't feel quite as overwhelmed with action. (Sometimes it's good to have action in a story, but you'll do better to help the reader visualise it rather than just throwing "this happened and this and this" at them.)
On a slightly more technical note, which will especially be relevant as the piece gets longer, you could stand to introduce a few more line breaks into this piece. In general, it's a good idea to start a new paragraph when you change time, place or focus - so, if you skip ahead a few days, if you move from one room to the next, or if you change from talking about Bob's dancing to Jenny's thoughts while she watches him. This includes dialogue - if a new person starts talking, you should start a new line. [On a side note, I know there's a bug with the site that's making some people unable to put line breaks into their work. If this has happened to you, please do message me with a link to the original in WriterFeedPad or something similar, and I'll edit the paragraphs in for you.]
Again on a technical side, you seem to be tense-hopping in this piece. Tense-hopping is where you skip between tenses - past, present and future. Here, you begin with "I felt...", which is past, and then move to "...the room...is shaking...", which is present. To avoid confusing the reader, you should pick one tense and stick to it, unless you have a clearly-marked flashback, dream sequence or similar scene. (Obviously this doesn't apply to dialogue!)
Other than that, I don't think I've anything to say about this. If you've got questions about anything I've said, or if you'd like me to do a spelling-and-grammar check on this, or if you just want to chat, feel free to send me a message. Otherwise, happy writing, and I look forward to reading more of Myrath:Destiny!
Cadi x
Thanks so much! You have really helped me a lot!
You're welcome! Happy to help!
Welcome to YWS, vewrites!
I noticed that this seems to be filed under fanfiction, but I'm not sure what it is based off of. Is that a mistake, or is it a fanfic of something with a completely different name?
I like this prologue, but I think it needs to be stretched out a bit. At the moment it is too fast and brief. Slow it down, describe things, show the character's feelings, break it into paragraphs, etc. It has potential, but at the moment isn't as good as it could be if elaborated on.
One thing I noticed was tense. You started out in past tense, but a few sentences in there were present. For example:
So, you started out with this in past.
Am in is in present tense; that should be was in.
Are is also present; that should be were.
And then it goes back to the original tense, past.
This is present again.
This goes back to past, and the rest of the story stays that way. So, just change a couple of sentences to past and you should be good.
Another thing I noticed was the writing style didn't have much variety; all the sentences were similar lengths and structured similar. Try to add variety by combining and rewording sentences. For instance:
...could be something like...
Or something like that. Add more variety to make it more interesting to read.
There are also a few grammatical corrections I would suggest. For instance:
This needs a comma after "go."
This needs a comma after "in."
All caps generally isn't a very good idea. I think just an exclamation mark will suffice.
This needs a comma after "child."
This needs a comma after "tired." Also, I don't really understand why the character is thinking this. What, exactly, are they doing that they can't believe?
This needs a comma after "spinning."
This needs a comma after "pillow."
Well, that's all. I like this, and I think it has a lot of potential; however, I think you need to slow it down and give more time for the reader to process what is happening. Good luck with the rest of the novel!
Thanks so much! I always have a little trouble trying to my stories in right tense.