Jude.1.

Hi Burrow!

Happy review day!

I am here just as you asked me to be. It might take me a while to get to the second chapter but I wanted to at least review this one for you. Now, this was a pretty good beginning and I like how you begun with the description of the room to make the reader a bit afraid at first. It was a nice effect. We don't really know much about Jude as a character, except that he was always trained as a soldier and sort of had his childhood taken from him for it to happen. Hopefully we will get to know more about him in the future. It was also interesting to see how the people wanted to torture him. I am sure more is going to be explained soon. One thing that you do have a real problem with is grammar and punctuation. I don't do solely nitpicky reviews often, but I will do one here because the advice you have already helps you with content. I think I would be more beneficial focusing on this now.

Walking toward to what used to be a empty cream hall, it is now covered with rusting blood, smothering the grey wall.

Now, you mention 'walking' as in a verb, but you never mention the subject that is walking down the hall, which means this sentence doesn't make sense. You need a subject with the verb. So what this should look like is 'I walked (or I was walking' toward what used to be an (note that it is an instead of a) empty cream hall, but (add this word in there) it is now covered with... etc.

It was left there never, cleaned; they said it added to the torture in a way, it was its own form of cruelty.

There is no need for the first comma you have in there. I would also change the semi colon you have there into a dash instead.

It was hard for him what would come next.

I felt like this sentence could be rearranged so it flows better. How about 'What came next would be hard for him.'

It reminded Jude of his childhood, forced to train for war.

You need the words 'when he was' in the sentence after the comma. They just need to be there for the sentence to be complete and make sense. Don't forget those little words which join up the dots, and don't let the comma there trick you into thinking you don't need it!

They had said before he left for war

Again this is one sentence where I would change the word order so it reads as 'Before he left for war they said.'

In the first scene we get a lot of the word 'torture' repeated over and over again. It gets a bit repetitive and isn't very creative. You can always use a thesaurus to find alternative words that mean the same thing, or you could simply describe a form of torture in some places, or describe it itself. Anything to avoid a repetition!

I don't understand why Jude is being held captive? I suppose we will know soon enough. But I hope the reasoning comes soon! We also need to know if he actually did it or if he is simply being accused, which can help us learn a thing or two about his character as well. So make sure you include that pretty soon, or give us an inkling as to what it might be that people think he has done.

Another thing I would like to see are a bit more of Jude's emotions. Let the story become more personal when it comes to the main character. What's running through his head as he approaches this room where he knows terrible things are going to happen? Fear? Sadness? Surprise? What was he thinking at the time. We really need to get into Jude's head at times like this for these moments to carry the novel through. Emotion is definitely everything in fiction writing.

We will not hesitate to kill you boy.

A comma is needed between the last two words.

Refuse to tell, I am sure you know what comes next".

Don't forget the little connecting words for when the comma is around! You need an 'and' after the comma.

It was now when he was taught to act as a soldier.

The way you make it sound with this sentence makes it seem like he was now taught how to be a soldier. But I think you meant now he began to act like one. In that case this sentence needs an 'he began to' to replace the 'he was taught to'.

He was a part of the S.A.S of E.A.R he wasn't meant to have emotion.

I would put a dash after the E.A.R.

He was here to help the Tronlin, though yet they did not know.

I would move the yet to the end of the sentence, to help with the flow.

At the end Jude suddenly has a knife and is swiping down at the people who help him captive moments before. This is not a good place to scene break, and I would have it done earlier so we can see how he acquired the knife and what he did to free himself for enough freedom to get it. I felt it was a bit sudden, but with a proper explanation it could be good!

Although this was a very technical review, I still hope it was helpful. Keep writing and I will be checking out chapter two soon!

Deanie x

Hey Jude, Flite here for a review. I'm going to point out some technical things as I read along and then move onto the content of the story. If my review comes off as harsh or mean, I apologise for it.

Technical details:

Walking toward to what used to be a empty cream hall, it is now covered with rusting blood, smothering the grey wall.

I'm not great at grammar myself, so I'm not going to go all nazi on you. I will just point out some very basic things. Tense consistency in there, if you're using covered in the past tense then the verb should also be in past tense. 'was' not 'is'.

the Tronlin they like it this way

Unnecessary words here, the Trolin liked it this way would have been the same. Except is not as long-winded, when writing, no matter what is is you're writing. You want to make the writing as succinct as possible for the reader, it's your job to make the reading process easier for the reader.

He tried to whip away the sweat leaking down his already bloodied face, his bruised eyes made it hard to see. The purple and red had joined his olive skin in a contest, first to control Jude's face.

I really don't think someone can whip away the sweat. XD, I think you meant wipe here. Your second sentence is phrased awkwardly, I get what you're trying to say, that the bruises are basically all over Jude's face trying to see which colour can dominate it. But the way you put it is incoherent. Which I think may be the words you're using, saying that purple and red had joined his skin isn't exactly the best description. Joining? What do you mean by that? I get this blurry imagery of two colours literally joining his skin. Then the latter part of the sentence didn't make sense on its own. I think it'd been better if you had worded it some other way, perhaps. 'The purple and red competed on his olive skin, each vying to dominate his face.' Or something down those lines.

"Jude, we know who you are. We will not hesitate to kill you boy.

A comma between 'you' and 'boy'.

Content, language, the gist:

So, I'm going to be brutally honest here. I didn't think it was that great, I think you can do better but it's not great. Before you get annoyed at why this stranger is being so pedantic about everything, I will explain.

1) The first thing that nagged at me was the lack of continuity in your chapter. You used scene breaks to separate them, but even within each scene they didn't make much sense. Say in the first scene, where Jude was in the cream hall and I'm assuming that's where they tortured people. But it was hard to figure it out because the descriptions were so short, and the sentences were abrupt and didn't link much with other. Take the first and last sentence for example. One moment he's in the cream hall, the next he's saying whatever coming next will be hard for him. That jump in emotion is really too fast, you could have used that chance to give us some insight into Jude's personal view on torture. Or perhaps even a slightly more detailed description on the hall, because right now cream hall is just this place (where they served cream) and there is blood on the walls.Then you suddenly jumped to that Jude was forced into the room, when previously there was no one behind him.

You get my point. Then there is the second last scene, which to be honest accelerated far too quickly for it to make sense. The torture scene was too swift and I felt like someone had shoved that information into my face then taken it away in the next. Also, you need to flesh out your content a bit more. You said it was like his old life replaying, what was that like? Don't just state something and leave it like that, you can flesh that out a lot more.

So, the basic problem here is that when your sentences or your character's thoughts don't join up with each other coherently. The entire story sounds extremely fragmented and disorientated, now if you were doing this for a character whom has recently woken from an explosion or dream. Perhaps that would work, but I don't think that's what you're aiming for here.

2) Not enough showing

Because your chapter is short, this won't really affect it as much if it was a longer piece of writing. But there isn't that much of description in your chapter, which makes it really hard for the readers to conjure up a mental image of what's happening, the surroundings, etc. This could also lead onto a lack of character development, the tone of your writing. You need to vary your syntax a bit, such as varying your sentence beginning and length.

I will give you a couple examples to show you what I mean.

It was spraying everywhere, leaking out the side of his mouth as he breathed out.

It was now when he was taught to act as a soldier.

This was quoted from the ending paragraphs, the two paragraphs lacked a coherent linking. As in the two thoughts don't flow from one to the other logically. In the previous paragraph, Jude was punched by someone then suddenly in the next, he was thinking about being a soldier with no transitional period in between. It could be the wording of it as well. 'now when he was taught to act as a soldier' makes no grammatical sense.


Overall impression:

Ok, so I'm not going to ramble on too much about this chapter, since is the first and is short. I think you can probably go quite far with this idea, but you really need to work out fleshing out your character's thoughts and actually linking the content of the chapter together. Otherwise, is too disjointed for the reader to actually understand anything. Also, work on varying your syntax as well as describing your surroundings. That's all, if you have any questions, feel free to send me a PM.

-Flite

Hello Jack! I made it!

This story reminds me of one of my friends here on YWS who's in the army, actually... not entirely sure why it reminded me, but oh well. In any case I found myself feeling oddly connected to your piece, even though this wasn't something that someone would normally connect easily too... just thought I'd let you know!

I can't say I really enjoyed this all that much, but that because I'm just not a huge fan of war, and torture! :-p I thought you did a great job describing the blood and injuries though.

the sweat leaking down his already bloodied up face,

This is just a stylistic kind of matter, but I think it would flow a bit better if you removed the 'up'.

The purple and red had joined his olive skin in a contest, first to control Jude's face.

This is a very confusing line, sadly. I understand you trying to use a idiom ( or what ever they call it ) for this, because I'm always using things like that too... the sad thing is, it makes it too hard for the reader to comprehend what you're trying to say. If they can't understand what you're trying to say, than they lose interest. :/ I would suggest to try to avoid them for the future ( deep down inside, I do like that way of saying it though, that it was a contest! ).

either which way we will find it.

I think this would flow better if you did something like: either way, we will find it.

as blood slowly dripped out of his mouth splattering on the already bloodied up floor.

This is a lovely example of your great description! I love it! You did rate it, but I think a higher rating might fit this better, for violence anyway... maybe a 16+? I'm not sure. Perhaps 12+ is good, but I don't know.

In any case, awesome work! Keep up the writing!!!

-Socks