Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language and violence.
Beyond a small rural outer layer was a sprawling center castle, towering over the rest of the city. "Keep close to me," Shai said. Gabrielle looked on as both her and Shai walked through the capital. Shai signaled with her hand for her to come closer. "You will get lost easily, there are many people here," she said while the bustling crowds of people that passed by made it hard for Gabrielle to navigate. The dirt road felt soft on Gabrielle’s bare feet, and the crowds smelt like the inside of a barn.
"And all of these people are magic users?" Gabrielle yanked at Shai's soft and silky feeling cloak as she got pushed back by a group of people, a whiff of lavender hits her nose as her head jutted forward as a passerby almost tripped her. The houses of the people here were relatively small, enough to house two or three people, they were nicely made, nicer than what she thought would be a medieval fantasy land, they looked almost modern.
"Yes, magic is incorporated into the daily lives of all of the people here, from transportation to storing petabytes of cooking recipes into a single stone tablet," Shai clarifies while she nodded, almost making Gabrielle's grip on her cloak slip.
"But if there’s so many people who use magic here, why do you need me?" Gabrielle asked, she pulled herself closer to her as to not get knocked away by another passing group of people.
Shai turned her head slowly, and kept one eye on Gabrielle and one eye on the flow of pedestrian traffic. "Everyone has their place. Though, we will not know how much potential you have until we get you to the Mystic."
After finally making it past the large crowds, the two arrived at the doors to the inner city. The two large wooden doors that looked extremely heavy and very hard to open.
Shai broke away from Gabrielle's grip and walked up to the doors, holding her pointer finger up and signals for Gabrielle to wait. She placed her hand on the doors, and white sigils spiraled out from where she touched. The doors groaned as they parted, and she signaled Gabrielle to follow her inside, she ran inside to catch up to her. "Where is this Mystic that you were talking about before?"
"She is in the inner sanctum, trying to figure out what happened."
"What? What happened?"
"The Lords of Darkness just suddenly disappeared. No one knows why, and even the Mystic is having problems figuring out why they suddenly dropped off the map," Shai said, shaking her head.
"This peace that has come from our enemies' overlords randomly vanishing is a suspicious one, I am just worried that something bad is going to come from this. Even though parliament feels at ease like the worst is over. I and the Veil of Light are on high alert, in case whatever may have happened upon them decides to happen upon us," Shai said as she looked away from the towers and walks around Gabrielle.
The sky began to darken, time was starting to run short, she had to get Gabrielle to the Mystic before the sky turned dark, or her entire cycle of when she is supposed to be asleep or awake would be disrupted, her sleep cycle on Earth needed to be perfect or she wouldn’t have enough time in this realm to get anything important done.
"How strong are, or were, the Lords of Darkness?" Gabrielle asked while turning around.
She turned her face towards Gabrielle. "The forces of light and darkness have been warring in this world for thousands of years, and they have taken much of our land as a result. Whatever wiped them out is more powerful than even me, and that terrifies me."
“That only halfway answers my question, how strong were they really?”
Shai pondered for a second. “A single one of the Lords of Darkness is strong enough to take out about ten platoons worth of armed men with little effort, that’s how strong they are.”
The castle's interior was immaculate. Winding staircases with red leather carpeting, a marble checkerboard floor, and golden chandeliers hung from the ceiling. A woman draped in a purple leather dress waved at them, her deep purple side-swept ponytail glistens under the warm light.
"Shai, it's so good to see you," The woman cooed, clutching the skirt of her dress. "And I assume this is the new girl? Lovely. Come here, dear, I need to get a closer look at you." The woman beckoned with a sweet smile.
"Is this her?"
"Don't worry, she can sense how powerful you are by just looking at your aura, nothing complicated," Shai whispered discreetly, patting Gabrielle's shoulder.
"But if I just woke up, doesn't that mean I'm weak?" Gabrielle whispers back, a concerned look on her face. She was willing to help but didn’t think she was capable enough.
Shai turned towards her and shook her head. "This is not just about how much you have now, but how much you can hold. We will not know your potential until we can figure out how much magical power you can store in your body."
Shai lightly pushed Gabrielle towards the Mystic.
"There isn't much time, step forward dear," the Mystic said, motioning Gabrielle to come closer. Stepping forward, Gabrielle stood in silence, clutching the collar of her dress. Awkwardness prickled at her body, she was feeling inadequate, but didn’t want to say anything. The Mystic looked at her with her deep brown eyes, a gust of wind through an open window jostled the chandeliers, making the lights dance on both of their faces. The Mystic's eyes quickly widened in shock. "I don't see an end to it!" The Mystic leaned closer, squinting her eyes. "I don't believe it, her aura depth is endless, and she's sucking up energy from the atmosphere around her like a magnet and converting it into light magic, I've never seen this before in my entire life." The Mystic relaxed her eyes and folded her arms. "There mustn't be any other place or title for her but Light Maiden, I'm sure of it."
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
I wonder how you will be able to make our protagonist be really important. After all if your character has magic. What's the point of everyone else having magic. Unless the character can use their magic very well. Another possibility would be if the character has a weird sounding type of magic. Lightning magic for example. That would be something unexpected due to the fact that when most people think of magic they think of the four elements. If this doesn't work you could have the character's magic reflect this. An example would be someone with water magic basically being a hippie. The final solution to this little nitpick that I feel I am over exaggerating is make the character be well written. You have already done this so far. So the point of me doing this is.......Basically I got annoyed of reading this cheesy young adult novel on another website that featured this thing as well. And I got tired when I saw this. That author actually didn't know how to write a well written character. Oh god. Now to review the rest. How does the magic work. Does the magic come from within them. Or does the magic have to be learned. Oh and can you explain the way aura works. Sorry for my way too huge nitpick. You are truly inspiring and an ungodly writer rivaled only by full fledged famous writers. If anyone else has something to add that isn't grammar errors. Please comment
You're being unreasonably mean about this, if you don't like it, don't read it.
I am sorry that you felt I was being mean about this. In all honesty I love this.
On your request (I am referring to the PM's you gave to me
), I will give you some commenting.
Instead of Gabrielle saying this place is huge, I think you better make it a paragraph clean of dialogue. Rewriting it into indirect style like Gabrielle is petrified looking at all the awesome buildings around her. Describe everything alongside the road here in this paragraph.I think you can put the
strikedsentence on the first. Yeah, it is better to clean the paragraph with dialogues that is limited to dialogues only.Make it another paragraph and add more details as much as you want.
I think you better show some examples on how magic is incorporated.
Make it another paragraph.
Put that dialogues elsewhere. This is a pause that I mentioned earlier. Stop putting dialogues like 5 or 6 or more paragraphs in A ROW. It annoys.
You can write "Just a second" in another way but in dialogue form. Make it indirect, it could be better because of the same reason above. And separate that "Gabrielle" calling part.
I don't think you should describe like totally EVERYTHING. Keep the extra details out unless they mean more than that. Save your wordcounts for something better. Same like the two paragraph after this.
Put the details in another paragraph and add describe more on that.
Spoiler
Now pay me 5$ for this.Bye-bye.
zzzzz
I changed some stuff, hope it worked out.
Nice changes, I think it would look great in a novel sized page. XD
I'm still constantly editing things, so check back once in a while to re-read and make any suggestions.
Hello, AneiDoru! I apologize in advance if my review isn't helpful.
As I suspected I would before reading this, I'm falling in love with the world that you've created. It's setting itself up to be pretty unique, and I love all the little details that you're including. I'll talk about some of my thoughts on specific parts of the story later on in my review, but I just wanted to address the grammar, characters and descriptions you use before I do that.
My thoughts on the grammar for this are the same as the ones I had for the previous chapter, so just check out the review I left on that for advice relating to it!
As other reviewers have said, the reader still doesn't know too much about Gabrielle. Is she overwhelmed by what's going on? Or is she thrilled to be a part of something so big? Knowing her thoughts on the situation, and even a little bit about her life before this moment could really help the reader understand her more.
Though your descriptions weren't as beautiful as they were in the previous chapter, they still are amazing! I love how easy it is to visualize what is going on in the story. I feel like this chapter had the perfect amount of description.
Now I'll move onto my specific thoughts for this chapter!
Once Gabrielle starts meeting the other people of this world, I'm excited to see how they incorporate magic into their everyday lives! Seeing magic used so casually in a story is one of my favorite things.
I love this line because it gave me some background on the world while also showing that Shai is pretty powerful. I can't wait to see her in action! It would be nice to learn more about the history of the world, but I'm sure that Gabrielle - and the reader - will learn more about it as the story progresses.
Ooh! I love how you described Gabrielle's aura here, and how you introduced the name of the book! I wonder what being that could possibly entail.
I really enjoyed reading your work, and I'm sorry if any part of my review seemed harsh. Also, please feel free to PM me if something I said doesn't make sense. I'd be happy to explain it to you. Keep up the great work - which I doubt you'll have trouble with - and good luck on your writing endeavors! I hope you have a wonderful day/night!
No, you reviewed perfectly, I said capitol instead of capital, thank you for helping me out with that. I hope my edits are to you liking, have a great day!
You're welcome! I do like how you've been editing your story. (I did see your wall post about holding off on edits until you're done, which works too!)
But now I have to change present tense to past tense :/
Oh.
Hello Anei!
Yes, I am back for more and ready to review this as suggested. You're my first review this #RevMo , so congrats!
Nitpicky Reminders
You have some problems in this chapter as you did in the last, as far as the grammatical errors and incorrect wording. So here's just a couple reminders I'll shoot at you:
As I stated previously, if a certain character says something, then does something, and says something again, you do not need to finish their ending statement with "*insert name* says". We already know you're talking about Shai, so switch her name out with a pronoun.
Also, remember to split up dialogue between two people talking, so it's in separate paragraphs and not all combined together. Or even a character doing something, and another character talking, like here:
I thought Shai was talking at first, but it was the mystic. I suggest separating her action from the dialogue, so as not to confuse anyone.
A Few Thoughts
It's understandable Gabrielle would be full of questions; like, this is totally new to her. But I was wondering why Shai didn't answer her first question there. She wouldn't have had to give a full answer, she could have just smiled mysteriously. But did she even have a reaction to that?
This ate at me a bit, because Shai didn't answer Gabrielle's question. She told her how long the forces had been fighting, what they'd done and how suspicious it was they'd disappeared but she did not say how strong they were. Was there a reason for that? Why wasn't Gabrielle all, "But how strong are they?!"
I noticed in the next chapter you refer to the Mystic as "the mystic" but here, it's with a capital M, as in the Mystic. You should stick with one. "the mystic" sounds sort of vague, like that's a mere description, but "the Mystic" sounds official, like a title. Like, that is what she is actually called.
Aaand Some More Thoughts...
The problem I'm having with this story is there seems to be quite a few things lacking. As I mentioned before, there's not a lot of emotion in here. With Gabrielle as our Main Character, we don't know her very well at all. What's she feel about all of this? What's the feeling she's getting from meeting the Mystic? Does she intimidate Gabrielle?
I didn't read your first chapter but I'm curious about Gabrielle's history. She has to have a family. Does she miss them? Does anything remind her of them? Was there a person in the crowd that sent a jolt of surprise through her, like, wait a minute... that looks like my dad. Is there anything??
You're telling us this story; you're not showing it to us through her emotions and senses. What does this look like through Gabrielle's eyes? How do certain things (like Shai's cloak, for example) feel? And this might be a weird one, but how does it smell? Is the city dirty and stinky and she can smell the odors coming off of these sweaty people? Or is it clean and lovely and pristine? Writing about the senses really helps bring life to a story.
And speaking of the senses and descriptions, I wasn't very satisfied with the setting. They're in the city walking to a castle and there are a ton of people. That's as much setting as you gave us. What else can you tell us? Is the road they're walking paved or dirt? Are people shoving Gabrielle in the ribs and tripping her? You're lacking in descriptions here, and I'd like to see more, if that's alright.
Overall
Overall, I'm a little confused about the plot of this story. I understand Gabrielle will be a Light Maiden; and people are freaked out about the Lords of Darkness disappearing, but I'm wondering how you'll tie it all together. Like, is Gabrielle going to help find them? And discover what made them disappear? Will she be our bold heroine?! (note: it'll be hard for us to admire her as the heroine though, if we don't know her)
I know the story of Light and Darkness clashing is pretty classic and original, but I still like it. Just like I still like stories of bad guys and superheroes clashing because I know the superhero will win.
Well.
Those are my thoughts, AneiDoru! I hope you have a fantastic day and always remember to keep up your writing.
cheers!
-rosette
I guess I didn't fix the Ms in the last chapter on here, please note that I have multiple places that I post, also it may have been updated by the time you already read it. You can go over it again.
I added a few descriptions and edited things accordingly, I hope it's to your liking.
I see what you did there with the Lords of Darkness strength
that's great, keep up the good work!
This chapter is better than the previous original vers. and I am quite happy that I can follow the flow of this story. First of all, I know that this may be not your writing style and probably, you do this on purpose, but I have to comment about it. Separate the dialogues from the paragraph. You can refer this to any published novels... I think. I don't believe you don't read many novels because of your (good) way of storytelling this. I don't think I should elaborate much on this, so moving on.
The flow is a little bit abrupt when you put too much dialogues after dialogues like there is no pauses. There are pauses indeed, but being mute and enjoy thinking is better. I meant try to balance it out. This problem manifests because you are using the limited third point of view. I know you don't want to change it into omni-third-point of view (which the narrator knows everything from the darkest of your heart and the mind of the cat meowing), but try to tell feeling sometimes. I know showing is better than telling (like you describe the eyes widened of shock) but telling has its own advantages.
Next, your way of describing and vocabularies are still good indeed (like I am writing an essay for my teacher XD). And please CAP the 'm' in mystic please, if you referring to a person or any big thing (like you capping the Light Maiden). Yeah, I kinda understand the concept of magic in fantasy story, but don't you think that is boring? Try to be more creative in thinking concept but don't too complicated.
Seriously, I think this story is a bit cliche, but this is just beginning. I hope you wrote some fresh materials for me to read.
Lastly, try to be more specific. (Don't ask me this, figure it out yourself. zzzz)
zzzz
telling me to figure something out for myself about being more specific isn't really helping me and makes me really stressed out about my work.
the don't stressed out. writing is not about it (except for deadline.)
I added more descriptions and was more specific in certain areas (someone else pointed it out to me) hope it's better than it was
Also I did the spacing thing everyone was wanting me to do. I hope that makes it easier for you to read.
Yeah, glad to hear that. It takes a lot of practices to fully mastering it, but you will do just fine.
And because of this chapter got a bunch of talking, there is a common problem aroused like too many dialogues tags which is basically dialogues tags are something that you or any other writer will want to avoid overusing it.
Btw, dialogues tags are something like after the ("blablabla,"), you will use dialogues tags like (she says, or she cries, or she screams) to indicate whoever that is talking that scripts. That is the main purpose of dialogues tags and there is no more reason to use the tags if the readers know who is talking now.
Example:
...................................................
"Nicol, I think I love you," Anei said, her pink cheeks blushing.
"I don't believe you."I don't put the tag, "Nicol replied to her" because well, logically, we know that she is talking to Nicol, so why would I put the useless tag now.
OR (there is another case like)
"Hey," she blunts out.
"Hey too," the boy says.
"May I ask a question?" The girl braves herself.
"Throw it." you don't put the tags because well, obviously it is the boy's turn to speak.
"Do you know me?" Same here
The boy looks carefully at her face; the girl has widened his eyes.
"No," he replied. "Or... no way you are her, she is dead."
....................................................
If you can master this technique, you can avoid putting many nuisances words for your readers, and believe me, your readers will be happy. It makes the dialogues to be easier to understand (like reading a script) and organized. In your case, you did put many (unnecessary) dialogues tags along with descriptions of what the character is doing when she talks. Blatantly, I hate this kind of style if it is too much. My advice, you can put as many as descriptions you want AFTER you had done your interview (I meant the series of dialogues.)
I see you require rewriting, but finish the novel first and then edit what is necessary (of course, except you had finished writing the novel.)
I hope this helps, and yeah, you have the right to disagree as I am not a god or anyone that is always right.
zzzz
I always have them doing something though, I don't understand why you still have a problem with this. Please point out to me the exact unnecessary dialogue tags so I can see them, because I looked over it and didn't see any.