Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for violence.
I'm going to try my hardest at correcting errors, but this is my first draft of this series. I hope you all enjoy!! Massive thanks to my friend, Kamila❤
Warning: will contain strong language and violence throughout the series.
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Prologue
"We leave the Gold brothers be," Michael decided, a hand coming away from his forehead. He and his group had been discussing it for at least an hour; any action they took would have consequences. The men eyed each other.
"And if they see that as an advantage?" Phillip raised a brow. The others agreed. "Michael, we don't mean to question that... decision, but - "
"As soon as we show acts of violence to them, they will retaliate. If we leave peace between us, they have nothing against us."
"What if they act? What if we have to retaliate?" Ludovic asked.
"They will know the dangers. From what Blue and I know, Marcus Gold is the mature one of the three. He'll act rationally and try to reason with his brothers. Maricale tries to join with the crowd, with doubts. The only brother we really need to question is Lawrence. The extremes he'd go to - " A scream cut Michael off, and he shut his notebooks.
"The Hell?" Vite breathed, following Michael out of the room. "Kelsi?" Vite yelled. The two ran up the steps, pushing a door open.
The tall brunette was stood, her mouth covered with her hands. She hesitantly pointed to the bed, where Michael already crouched.
"Who did this," he demanded, and Kelsi shook her head. Vite hugged her. "She's gone." Vite then pulled from Kelsi, to join Michael. "Oh, God," Michael murmured, going pale. Vite checked for a pulse on the woman in the bed, to find nothing.
"What, who suggested we leave the brothers be?" Phillip asked.
"If only it were the Gold brothers," Blue sighed, "Michael - "
"Bury her," he said, getting up.
"Where are you going?" Michael shook his head, grabbing a necklace off the desk.
"Bury her. Mention the child. I have to do... something. Blue, Ludovic, Phillip, Vite. You're in control."
"Of?" Kelsi whispered, leaning on Ludovic.
"They know," Michael replied, running downstairs.
"The King can't just leave!" Samantha hissed, following him. "She's dead! But we all loved her, too!"
"Sam, it's more than that, and you know it." She flung her arms around him, and he held her.
"Promise me - promise you'll stay safe. Stay safe and come home."
"I can't promise it'll be anytime soon, Sam," he cooed, stroking her hair, "but I will come home. For all of you. For her."
"I will miss you both." He nodded.
"I'll come back. No matter what, I'll be back. Never forget."
Thank you for reading! I would really appreciate feedback, giving places on where to improve :) *If this popped up twice it's because I was sorting folders out. Sorry.*
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,008 Literary Works • 672,827 Reviews
Salutations!
As with any prologue, there is a sense of obscurity and mystery surrounding this work, which is good! You want a prologue to be intriguing, but without giving away too much.
Having said that, I feel like you rushed through this far too quickly. It starts out fine, but because all the paragraphs save one start with dialogue, the pace is accelerated. I recommend cutting out unnecessary dialogue and instead replacing it with more narration. Not only will this slow the pace down, but showing us some of the focal character's thoughts will help give us as readers more insight into what is happening. And even if your narrator is third person limited and not third person omniscient, spending more time on describing the perceptible mood of the group and each individual's body language will help convey the atmosphere and their feelings better.
But to get back to the pacing, I started flight-reading about halfway through. I don't usually do this, as it causes you to skip many details that really ought to be read with more attention, but I couldn't help it; your writing simply felt too... I want to say frantic? So to pick up on what I mentioned in the previous paragraph, you want to include more intermittent narration to interrupt the dialogue. Context helps, but pacing - that's the main thing.
I like how creative you were with some of your descriptions, but overall, I find it a bit bland. It's like a dish you can see is delicious, but it needs more seasoning, you know? You could use more colourful diction, sure, but a little bit of imagery can go a long way. For example, we don't even know the time of day. I get the feeling it's either evening or dusk, but I can't tell for certain.
Finally, your prologue lacks cohesion. It's difficult to see how everything ties together, and that's not owing to the nature of prologues. Your sentence structure supports this in places. I suggest slowing down and thinking about what it is you're writing. What do you want to convey to the reader? Is that indeed what you're communicating? If not, why not? Consider these questions while you write, and you should see immediate improvement.
Good luck with your novel! I hope you finish it and get the feedback you want.
Hello and thank you! As this is draft one, I will definitely take your points and Shota's points into consideration for draft two of the prologue and chapter one. I think I might introduce less characters in the prologue, too - I thought about it last night. I easily found ways to fit the other ones mentioned here.
I will definitely start using more imagery - that's clearly one of my downfalls.
Thank you for your honesty and I hope to finish it well
I'm glad the review was useful. ^_^
Hello! Jut going to do a quick review. Feel free to ask any questions you may have, I will do my best to be helpful in this. Also I want to encourage you to make sure you are rereading your won work after you write. There are some basic errors scattered throughout that I think you could catch if you edited it a bit yourself.
I'd get rid of the "be" here, it's odd and doesn't belong and the sentence makes more sense without it.
Also the comment about his forehead is odd because we don't know why his hand is there, and without that detail I t seems like a strange thing to say. Is he wiping sweat away, is he massaging away a Headache? The detail communicates the action and we are missing it.
This is a similar issue to the above thing we talked about. Generally the raising of a brow implies question, confusion, and such. We have a question mark at the end of the sentence which lends to this, but the brow seems random. I'd connect it to the sentence with the question so saying something like, "Phillip raised a brow in question." Something like this connects his action to what he is saying, and not only does it emphasize the fact it is a question, but it also lets us know why he is raising a brow. So instead of just seeing him raise a brow, we also see a questioning look on his face, a more vivid picture is now painted.
This seems like a very disjointed sentence. We don't know who Maricale is, and the word "tries" implies it is happening now, when I think you are trying to describe something? Anyways it is weird and I am thinking maybe it goes somewhere else?
Show be notebook
Was needs to be taken out, and he sentence restructured.
Cooed is an odd word choice to describe the emotions of this scene in my opinion. There is a lot of raw emotions, someone is dead, and though cooed is a great descriptive word I think it detracts from the emotions you are trying to convey.
Couple more things...
As a prologue this allows you to be vague about certain details since most of the information we seek will unfold in the story to come. That is okay, so thoughts like the baby you mentioned, who the woman in the bed is, why they call him the King. These are things that wet your audiences taste buds for what is to come. I wouldn't mind a little more on the woman, what did she look like, how was she killed, how did no one here someone come in and kill her? Also who is the baby, was the woman pregnant? Because if she was I am ten times more pissed at the killer. It's important to sift through details and thoughts like those and just give us enough to make us want to come back for more. I'd add a little more personally, but overall you did a great job.
Also you did phenomenal on the length of this. I struggle to write prologues that are... prologues, they get long, bogged down in detail, and eventually become the first chapter lol, you did a marvelous job of keeping it short, interesting, and clipping right along.
My only other area of critique would be in the names. You introduced 10 different a,es in this tiny prologue and my mind was reeling from all of them and it was a struggle to keep them all in order. I'd cut at last half of them out, to help with the flow. I understand the desire to introduce future characters, but first chapters can be for that. Prologues are just to give us a taste for what is to come.
Overall good overall and start! If you have any other questions let me know and thanks for allowing us to read your work!
Thank you for the honesty!! I have always struggled with writing prologues, so I knew there'd be downfalls instantly. Now that I see someone else explain the weaknesses, I understand things more.
For example, with the woman and the baby, I now realise how vague it is since you asked the questions. I think my problem is that I can see things visually, but I struggle more to explain it. One of your points on "how did no one hear someone come in and kill her?" made me think also because that is meant to be revealed towards the end of the series.
I feel like I need to be more vivid on things I write - because yes, the woman was pregnant. And later on in the novel, 'Michael' reflects his emotions about it all to the main character.
I am stuck between rewriting it and adding in more information, or writing chapter one and considering all of them points to add in. But, because it is my first draft, I might carry on and consider. By draft two, I'll definitely *hopefully* see an improvement.
Thank you for reviewing it!
Of course, you got a great start for a first draft!