It was evening, warm and breezy. In all the summer nights that had been seen in Cumbria, today was one of the more beautiful ones. The night was perfect for an evening stroll, but yet, the area was deserted, blank as sheet of paper.
Out of the shadows, three dark figures emerged. They walked along the lake, which was shining, silky and quiet. One was a girl, short and curvy, in the middle of the three, then, to the right, a tall, muscular figure, and to the left was a slender figure. A family was enjoying the nice weather. They walked for a while, talking in quiet voices.
As they passed an area, girl jumped, for she thought she heard ruffling and soft whispers in the bushes.
“Mother, Father,” she said anxiously, “I think someone’s in,”
The girl could not finish her sentence, for the next thing she knew, she felt ice cold hands cup her mouth as two sharp teeth sunk into her neck.
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,777 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,
Oooh well that's a very short prologue there albeit one of those rare times where it being as short as it is manages to actually help the piece feel that much more powerful. It does the job of dragging you quite nicely there in the few short paragraphs we get to establish the setting and the way it escalates into that cliffhanger there without any warning really works there to instantly now make you want to know more.
If you dive a bit deeper in there to see if there's a place to make this work a bit more I think perhaps expanding a little more on the detail that's captured by the first paragraph might help there. As it is now, it does work but with a little bit more detail and taking the time to slow that initial pace down just a tiny bit more it could work just that little bit better.
Overall, this definitely works quite well as a prologue and judging by the title and that ending there it seems we've got some form of vampire situation on our hands there and it seems setup to be a bit more unique from the myriad of vampire stories I've run into before so as far as starts are concerned this is a pretty solid one.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Okay, so, I don't think this actually counts as a review, but I just wanted to let you know that so far---if you can make this non-Twilight-y---it sounds very promising. It's interesting and well written. Very good job.
to be honest the concept of the story seems good, and there is a lot of potential, however it lacks description, what are they seeing, feeling, touching, tasting you know use the senses, we want to feel connected to the characters, not just to read about them. go back through it and add more detail, and re-post it, and im sure youll see a significant difference in reviews!
good luck
keep writing
p.s love your name xD
NITPICKS:
OVERALL:
As many others have stated, this is rather short. Now, if it was riveting and what we see developed, you might be able to get away with it. But as the piece is, it's only annoying.
--> Setting. I saw that you tried to give it to us. But I would like details. More. Make the enviornment rich. Your characters are outside - there is so much you can do with the great outdoors. Describe the wind and how it feels on their skin. Describe how chilly the dark night is. Tell us about the dew alredy comsuming the grass beneath their feet.
--> Characters. What can I say? There is barely anything to go off of. I would give you advice about how to develop your MC, but I don't know what you even want her to be. Expand on this piece, is all I can say. Then I'll try to tell you more about this.
--> Plot. You've just begun it. As it goes so far, it's kind of cliche. Girl in the wilderness. Frightened in the dark. Gets bit by vampire. But you did claim that there's going to be a modern twist to it, so I guess I'll wait.
And that's all I have. As I said, there's extremely little to ovserve and tear apart. Just keep writing, and feel free to PM me with questions.
KJ
Hi DrPepper,
I don't want to retread the grounds of earlier critiques, so I'll just agree with them that this is too short and needs more detail, and move on to stuff that I don't see mentioned at a quick skim of this thread.
Your description feels off to me for a range of reasons:
* There's a lot of telling not showing - you tell us that the evening is "one of the more beautiful ones" and "perfect for an evening stroll" without actually telling us why, except that it's "warm and breezy". Try not to rely on straight-out telling us how beautiful it is unless you can back that up with beautiful description.
* You're stacking up too many adjectives together. The lake is "shining, silky and quiet". The girl is "short and curvy", the man "tall and muscular". And so on. Multiple adjectives clutter up a sentence.
* Your adjectives are weak. Some words are punchier than others: it's better for something to be "towering" than just "tall", and "nice" is a wishy-washy nothing word, for example.
* Some descriptors are redundant. It's pretty obvious that the lake is "quiet" when you've told us how deserted the place is (twice). Obviously whispers are "soft".
Finally, starting off with a random NPC being killed by a monster is a bit cliched, imo. There's no characterisation in this piece, which makes it (1) difficult for me to care about the girl getting chomped on and (2) obvious that the girl is about to be chomped on. If you're going to introduce throwaway characters only to kill them, you need to spend time characterising them so we care about them before they die.
Have fun revising!
Karsten
Hello,
It's a nice idea for an intro but executed poorly. Your ideas portrayed of vampires is way too stereotypical. Creating your own description of vampires would make it your own. Not to say that you can't use already created descriptions but your own is always so much better. I think everyone has hit the nail o the head with this but please SHOW NOT TELL.
Best of luck
Awake
Try: It was a warm and breezy evening.
To many run-ons. Try: In the middle was a girl. She was (add more description than short and curvy). To the right was a tall muscular figure . . . (again, more description). And (I know they tell you to never begin a sentence with and, but go ahead anyways) to the left (and some description).
Try: The girl jumped because she thought she had heard ruffling and a soft whisper coming from the bushes.
Use hyphens when someone was cut off unexpectedly.
Once again, another run-on. Avoid these they are evil and will rot your mind.
Italisized: How does she know it's teeth, does she see it? for all she knows, it could be knives going into her neck. I would try fixing that.
Overall: Horrible, but it can be fixed. Try fixing run-ons and add more description to your characters. Let them tell us how warm and breezy that evening was, tell us what they look like: what's the color of their hair, what they are wearing, how they walk, ect . . . Add some more length to this story. In my opinion it seems like a short prologue. lengthen it out a bit with description.
Anyways, I hope this help. If you have a review request, feel free to PM me.
Signed,
Lethero the Werewolf
well, it's not perfect-but it could be! i mean yeah so its a little choppy and there is like no discription whatsoever, but i kind of like the thilling bang of a vampire. okay when the girl speaks it's like shes a girl from royalty. her sentence is a little weird, i mean does she really call her parents mother, father. "...someone is in." who talks like that? and when they emerged from the dark shadows, i almost thought they were the vampires...actually i thought they were like three best friends and they witches or something and they were on an important mission. then you say they're a family. okay so they're a family, i'm likeing this, but how old is the daughter and what time period does this take place in. if its a teenager then why would she be on a stroll with her parents instead of her friends? i don't want to try and change the story, but try and put more modern into your modern twist.
other than that...I LOVED IT!! sorry i'm a real nitpicker sometime.
~Livi J.
P.S.- if you ever get a chance to read my stories review all you want. go on a rampage if you must...i feel really bad when i critique people...i can already imagine the cryin person sitting in front of the computer srcreen and then chokes themselves over depression...i hate making people cry...then i cry too. sorry i babble a lot.
~Livi J.
(signing off for real this time)
Ugh! Why must you people torment me so? It's like every author has to start their stories with a storm, or a blizzard, or an exceptionally nice or ugly day. I don't care about the weather! And why is the area deserted? So you can make it sound more dramatic? Unless there's an actual reason why no one would be outside on a perfectly nice evening, don't put that in! It only makes sense that someone would be out walking their dog, or gardening, or screaming at their kids.
Oh, dear, not the overally dramatic entrance. I realize that you're trying to start the story with a dramatic bang and use all sorts of cool descriptions, but really? Come on. First of all, countless other writers have already used this description first. Secondly, this seems like a bit too dramatic an entrance for an innocent family. Assassins emerge out of the shadows. Thieves emerge out of the shadows. Rampaging garden gnomes emerge from the shadows. But some random family taking a lovely evening stroll? Please.
Also, would there really be deep shadows at that time? You said it was a summer "evening." Now, I don't know about everyone else, but where I live, it doesn't get dark until at least 9 o clock at my house in the summer. So, depending on whether we're talking early evening or late evening, there probably wouldn't be shadows like that.
The "which was" part sounds very awkward here. I think it would flow better if you said something along the lines of "They walked along the quiet lake, gazing out across the silky water." Or something like that.
Such brief descriptions! Give us some detail. What stands out about each of the figures? Give them a characteristics.
Are we talking about the same three figures as before? You kind of jumped around here.
Talking about what? Give us some more details.
What area? And where the heck did these bushes come from?
"For she thought she heard?" I strongly suggest you show, don't tell. Maybe describe her eyeing the bushes uneasily, or feeling as though she's being watched. Describe the rustling and the snapping of twigs.
"Mother?" "Father?" Is this supposed to be a modern story? If it is, why would she call her parents that? Does anyone actually even use those words anymore? When's the last time you said "Hey, Mother, what's for dinner?" No young person uses those words! It's always the casual "Mom" or "Dad" or their first names like "Sarah" or something. Not "Mother."
I agree with Peanutgallery. We need more descriptions! Drag this scene out. Flesh out your characters. Forget this "dark figure" business and give them some names. Add in some dialogue. Make your story come to life, or lose your readers at the first page. I probably wouldn't read on after this. The idea has promise, but without some stronger writing I'm just not going to read it. I'm sure a lot of people are the same way.
Sorry if it seems like I tore this appart. I've been reading limyaael's rants too much, I guess.
Hey Dr. (don’t criticize, its shorter). Peanut made some amazing points but I wanted to help reinforce those points and give some advice.
One thing you always have to remember is that sentences should flow into one another with ease. They lack smooth movement and this can be a definite distraction.
Another thing I should mention is that ‘but yet’ is a double conjunction meaning ‘get rid of one’ and I would recommend just keeping ‘yet.’
And like peanut said, this lacks description as well as the fact that you‘re telling and not showing. Check out CastlesInTheSky’s guide in the Knowledge Base, Show and Tell.
You aren’t giving us enough here. All of the suspense that you want to create at the end is lost in both this paragraph and the one before because of the fact that you tell rather than show. Also, because of a lack of description, there isn’t any emotion connect to these people. All they are, are stick figures on a piece of paper.
“an area” is the worst way to describe something. You want to use far more descriptive prose than ‘an area’. If this area is full of bushes, use something like ‘glades’ a phrase such as: ‘As they passed by the thick underbrush that dusted the outskirts of the forest, the girl…’ or something like that.
The use of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ seem out of place because of a lack of description yet again. We don’t know the atmosphere of Cumbria therefore we can’t judge what the dialogue should be.
This is one of the only real examples of showing and not telling. But this really doesn’t make up for the lack of throughout. Really, what I would recommend is sitting down and reading first. Read books that are of the style you most admire and take note of the way writers write.
Hey
You don't need the "yet" and I'm not too sure about the "blank as a sheet of paper" as I tend to associate that more with people's facial expressions, but that could be me being too picky.This caught my eye
I love how you've described their entrance to the scene, giving an atmosphere of mystery.
Girl? ha ha, I think you meant 'the girl' Maybe break it up a little too, short sharp sentences near the action to draw your reader in. Plus I'm not sure about 'an area' what, exactly, does this area look like? Not sure about 'ruffling' I think it's the wrong word. Try: "As they passed a clump of bushes, the girl jumped. She thought she'd heard rustling and soft whispers amongst the leaves."
Maybe say she paused and her parents got ahead of her, 'cause there's safety in numbers, right?
the comma doesn't really indicate her speech was was interrupted. "I think someone's in-"
Please tell me I'm wrong with my assumptions and this is a werewolf story. Fed up with vampires!
But this was great.
Keep writing
~ EmmaJane ~
Hiyas! Your name is so awesome xD
Why? I read this prologue through about four times, and I think it needs the same thing every time; description! You are literally telling us everything. You might as well be saying "yeah, first she got murdered then the murderer got away, the cops took a long time to find him, but they did, and he ended up being the victims mother and got put in jail forever the end."
(That was an example, but you see what I mean)
Also, Cumbria? Cumbria, where?! Is it real? Made up? Sorry if this is incorporated into the story later on, but this is pretty confusing right now. Not to mention, why was the vampire in Cumbria? Was there any particuar reason for his being there, stalking this girl/ family?
What were they talking about? Was it important? Why or why not? Description please!
Passed what area?! Also, the dialogue you use that gets cut off, it needs to be "I think someone's in-". No comma, just the dash. it makes it clearer that her speech is cut off from there.
How was the weather nice? What family? Were/ are they important to this story? Why? Why not?
Okay, over all, you need much much more description. Work on showing us, not just flat- out telling us. I hate to say this, but if your story continues in this manner it won't be very good. No matter how awesome your plot could be, it won't work if you don't show us anything, show us the details. What do we need to pay attention to? What is important? And you need to do this without just saying "this person is important".
Description= a must. work on it.
Telling= a must NOT.
showing= work on it
~April