I could feel myself floating- drifting off into the never-ending darkness. A comfortable warmth overcame me as I laid there motionless. I hadn’t the slightest clue where I was, but all I knew was I felt at rest. I felt safe. Am I dead? I thought to myself. I tried to move, but my entire body was numb. Dead. Maybe I was dead. It was like I didn’t even have a body. Like I was just a lost soul floating through space with nowhere to go. Just drifting deeper into the darkness, leaving behind everything I had ever known…
Then all of a sudden, there was light. An immense amount of light, so bright my eyes burned and my head throbbed. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and found myself screaming as I was carried away in someone’s muscular arms. I tried to fight, but my limbs seemed to just melt away. I opened my eyes just enough to see the man who carried me in his strong arms. I gasped at the sight of him. A whitecoat. His expression was tense and focused; his dark hair messy and uncombed.
I was slammed onto a cold table and held down as four more whitecoats approached me carrying lethal-looking tools and instruments. I winced as a needle was jabbed into my skin, and a thick, cold liquid was injected into my veins. I tried to fight as an oxygen mask was placed over my head, but I still couldn’t move. A strong gas burned my lungs as I breathed into the mask. I tried desperately to move, to yank the mask off and throw it across the room. My arms and legs were strapped to the table, though they knew I couldn’t move anyway. My eyelids began to grow heavy and I could feel myself fading rapidly into unconsciousness.
End of chapter
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138,700 Literary Works • 672,249 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,
Hmm, well those are certainly some very intriguing feelings there to get a story started off on, not everyday that you run into a situation like that one...you really do get the feeling that we're seeing the world through perhaps a recently deceased person or something of the like judging by the general vibe of things here. Well, it definitely does its job of getting my attention as a reader.
Oooh, well for a second this was going somewhere in the direction of the afterlife judging by the whole bright white light stuff going on, but then it became a man in a white coat that appears to be carrying this pov character somewhere and I don't think its going to be for anything good judging by the context of things here...it looks our protagonist here was perhaps close to death but is now somehow being taken away for some kind of experimentation or something along those lines.
OKay..well, the way things are being described here, I almost have to wonder if perhaps this person knows the ones who are currently doing this to them...cause this one seems to at least suspect a few things a bit too specifically for this to be people who are totally unknown. Other than that though, this is a powerful end to a prologue here. Definitely leaves you asking a lot of questions which is what exactly what you want to see at the end of a prologue.
Overall, a very solid prologue here, one that checks off most of the boxes expected of a prologue, and one that definitely interests me enough that I would continue to read more 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
Your [url=http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/viewtopic.php?f=188&t=94562]Chapter List[/ur] review coming right up.
Interesting prologue here. There are certainly a lot of questions brought up in this segment. I'm especially curious as to how/why the MC got to where he/she is at the moment. Though, I'm a bit irked that I don't know the MC's gender yet. That makes it really hard to get absorbed into the story; I do hope it is mentioned in the first chapter.
The 'operation' scene was written well. It created a sinister, yet clinical feel and really hooked me in. I just hope that the reader wouldn't be missing out on too much if they skipped the prologue because a surprising amount of readers do as such.
I also liked your descriptions. They were wonderful except for "eyes shut tight" for grammatical reasons. Your descriptions did really well at painting a picture for the reader to see. It really makes for an interesting and enticing introduction to your story.
A side note: I am curious as to why the story is named Subject 47. Though, I guess I shall find out if I keep reading.
Because there's not much that I can comment on with the prologue being short (which is okay), I'll get into grammar.
So the MC is drifting in nothing, but "laid there motionless". Laid isn't really the best verb as it is associated with being on a solid object. It is also mentioned that the location is extremely dark. In such circumstances with the floating, they wouldn't know which way up they were. For all they know, they could be 'standing' on there head.
A more grammatically correct bit of punctuation: "Then all of a sudden, there was light; An immense amount of light, so bright my eyes burned and my head throbbed."
"I squeezed my eyes shut tight" irks me as well. It just doesn't sound natural. Something alone the lines of "I squeezed my eyes tightly shut" is a more natural sounding suggestion.
Also, you don't have to mention the fact that the man who carries him/her out of wherever he/she was has strong arms twice, especially so close to each other in the paragraph. It would be best to leave out the second mentioning.
Really, there's nothing more to mention. Overall, I did enjoy the prologue, though there isn't much more to day about it. Though, I can assure you that as long as the other chapters are longer than the prologue, the reviews will be longer. And as a rile of thumb, the further you go into the story, the more there is to comment on.
- noni >( ==)
Darn it, botched url thingy. it was meant to end up like this: Chapter List
Hmmmm. Okay, you have my full attention. Don't really know what is going on, but somebody is in a real pickle. I can't tell ifthey are alive or dead, but I want to know. Great descroptive writing. Keep it going.
Hi there, FallenAngel!
I see you already have a few comments, and no wonder! This is a very interesting work! I'm just going to lift out bits of your piece and comment on them.
"I squeezed my eyes shut tight and found myself screaming as I was carried away in someone’s muscular arms. I tried to fight, but my limbs seemed to just melt away. I opened my eyes just enough to see the man who carried me in his strong arms. I gasped at the sight of him. A whitecoat. His expression was tense and focused; his dark hair messy and uncombed."
Perhaps you should invert the word order of "shut tight", but that is personal preference. You used "just" twice in succession, in the second and third sentences. Try a substitute for one. Also, be wary of the words "fight" and "struggle". I'll show you why in the next bit. Oh, and I love it that you describe the whitecoat's expression!
"I was slammed onto a cold table and held down as four more whitecoats approached me carrying lethal-looking tools and instruments. I winced as a needle was jabbed into my skin, and a thick, cold liquid was injected into my veins. I tried to fight as an oxygen mask was placed over my head, but I still couldn’t move. A strong gas burned my lungs as I breathed into the mask. I tried desperately to move, to yank the mask off and throw it across the room. My arms and legs were strapped to the table, though they knew I couldn’t move anyway. My eyelids began to grow heavy and I could feel myself fading rapidly into unconsciousness."
The "I was slammed" could be replaced by "The man slammed me" and "held me down", but this is, once again, a case of personal preference. To me it just gives the action a more engaged and personal feel. The "veins" could be replaced with "vein" to make it more realistic.
Now: you say "I tried to fight" again. Used once, this does no damage, but it gets a bit repetitive when you use it here again. Get creative! "I tried to bite the hands that held me, but..." or any other more descriptive struggle adds creative flavour.
The sentence construction of these:
" I winced as a needle was jabbed into my skin, and a thick, cold liquid was injected into my veins. I tried to fight as an oxygen mask was placed over my head, but I still couldn’t move. A strong gas burned my lungs as I breathed into the mask."
Do you see that they all use "as"? Vary the sentence construction a bit.
These are very fine nitpicks: it cannot be an oxygen mask if it administers a different gas. Perhaps it should be a gas mask? And (this is just an idea,) maybe the character should try holding her breath until she has to gulp some air? It could add more variety to her struggles.
Overall, the piece is striking and excites curiosity. A good opening statement. Well written!
Hey, it's Mith here! Since this is rather short I can review it as I'd like to start doing for Poems and such.
Here goes!
First of all, I have to say... WOW! I just read it through to get a feel of it and... wow! I got to the end and had to shut my mouth because I was that intrigued (my word of the day!) and confused that I hadn't realized it was hanging open!
Now to critique:
SPELLING AND GRAMMAR
"...overcame me as I laid there motionless." - this would sound better as, "lay there motionless" I think
Other than that I see nothing wrong with your spelling and grammar, nice work!
WORD USAGE
The words you've used really suited the style and and the piece. You had great description of surroundings and everything worked word-wise.
FLOW AND UNDERSTANDABILITY
Okay, here's where I got a little confused. After the light is turned on, everything gets a little jutted and ideas jump everywhere. My main nit-pick would be, "... and found myself screaming as I was carried away in someone's muscular arms." This was a bit of a surprise because I was kind-of like, "Where did the guy come from? When did he pick her up?" I understand that your character is meant to be confused and things probably are meant to seem like they're happening too fast for them to keep up with, but a little clarification here would make me feel better. Other than that, you had really good flow and I could understand most of what was going on!
OVERALL OPINION
As I said before... wow. I have a lot of questions now about this story and I'd love to read more so that I can understand more about it. Your writing style is easy to understand and your use of imagery was really effective. One thing I noticed only as I was reading this though, is your character a boy or a girl? I felt like it was a girl, but, in my review, I went to write 'she' only just realizing I didn't know this about them. I now want to read more so that I can truly find out who this nameless, genderless, confused person is.
Congratulations! You've piked my curiosity and you've written a really good prologue for what sounds like it will be, a really good book!
P.S. I love the name of the book. It subtly seems to give away information that even the character doesn't yet know.
I'm not much of a writer, more of a person who wants to become one. I do, however read a lot of books (almost one a day) so all I can really offer is what it felt like to me personally when I read it.
The storytelling does not seem awkward or slow, I found myself getting sucked straight into the world that had been set. It starts well and ends well, and has a good mixture of emotions and senses which fit into how the character is feeling.
There is only one small thing that I would change, which is to remove the word "I" from the sentence "but I still couldn't move" it seemed to read strangely and does not really add anything other than establishing the fact that it is still the main character talking. Overall though, and especially for your age the use of language and writing style is great, keep it up!
This is good
thanks
This is really cool! You should definitely continue this!!!
thanks
and I will!