Robin and company made it to Loxley town unscathed. A massive crowd of villagers outside the city gates awaiting the new arrivals, blew away their hopes of a quiet arrival. The voices of the crowd join together to make the somewhat audible noise of,
“Lord Loxley! Lord Loxley!” along with some cheering and clapping. Robin winced at the sound pounding in his ears. Robin froze, his travels back from the war had been mostly in forest, only the cook went into town to get the food they needed. The noise was too much for Robin, too much like the screams of the dyeing and wounded. Too much for Robin, the sound dragged in him into the past of horrors and nightmares. No one noticed, but one, and one is all one needs at times.
Much pulled his horse next to Robin’s and put his hand on Robin’s shoulder. Robin flinched at the touch but stayed in the past.
“Robin,” Much said softy. “You are not there, come back to me. The war is over, you are safe.” Much’s voice and warmth struck though the darkness and Robin was pulled back into the present.
“Thank you.” Robin said, “Again.” Robin took a deep breathe and waved at the crowd. Throughout the travel home different sensations would trigger Robin's ‘episodes', as they would call it. It was always Much that noticed and always Much that saved him from his past, with kind words and warmth.
They rode though the crowd, which had lined up all the way from the town gates to the Loxley manor, everyone wanted to see the war hero who was also their kind lord. Everyone needs a hero, especially the helpless.
Robin was happy to be back to his people. It had been years since the last time he was home. Born in Loxley, he spent every day of his life in Loxley, he made friends, played in the woods. His childhood had been happy and prosperous, until the day his parents died. Robin has always thought he would die in Loxley too.
The manner looked a little under kept, but the same large door, carved with the adventures worthy of kings, the ivy on the walls, the wildflowers out front and the large maple tree that Robin hid in as a boy, reminded Robin of his childhood.
As a young child, Robin and his mother sat on the door steps together whale waiting for Robin’s father to come home from a trip. Robin would tell his mother stories about kings while they waited. This was his home and it was good to be back.
Walking though the front door of the manor Robin breathed a sigh of relief, he final felt like he was home. The pressure of the war melted away as he sighed, he could relax now that the war had ended.
In the main room of the manor the servants waited for their master. A majority of the servants cared for as a chid. They were like family to Robin. Robin then noticed Much staring at him, a sly smile on his face.
"What?" Robin grunted, Much shrugged meting Robin’s eyes.
"Oh, nothing. I just saw you smile." Robin instantly corrected his expression.
"I don't know what you are talking about." Robin said, but Much knew that there was a smile tugging at Robin's lips. The servants had been with Ronin on the day his parents died, and they have supported and treated him with nothing less than kindness and raised him. Without the staff Robin's childhood would have a lonely one.
"Lord Robin," A maid with red hair interrupted Robin's thoughts. "Would you like to eat now?" she asked. Robin did not often care for eating, in war, the meals were often bland and flavorless. Nothing like the meals made by his cook.
"Yes." Robin answered actually looking forward to the meal. The girl bowed.
“This way.” She gestured for Robin to follow her. Something about this girl distracted Robin from his thoughts of food, something.. something that made him shudder.
“What is your position?” Robin asked, but the girl knew that he meant something more like, spill your guts. Robin did not recognize her. She was not part of the staff when he left Loxley.
“I am the head cook, I also am the head of the staff. I was hired about two months after you left, Sir. Gisborne did not like the cook, fired him and hired me.” The all of the meals in the manor had been cook by an man named Kenny. Suddenly, eating did not seem irresistible to Robin anymore.
“Where is the cook now?” Robin asked.
“He could not pay his taxes and was dragged off to London.” Robin nodded at her explanation, and said no more as they walked though the hall. Robin examined the walls in the silence, he noticed that all of the family paintings had been removed. Robin wondered why they would have been taken down.
Robin followed the servant to dinning room, deep in thought. He bumped into a dark and big man, Robin looked up into a harsh, dark face, a main of messy dark hair, crowned his head, falling down past his shoulders.
“Guy of Gisborne.” Robin said, completely emotionless. Gisborne looked down on Robin with a scowl. Long ago Robin and Gisborne fought and he dislike for each other had grown stronger though out the years. Robin had told Gisborne to never to come to Loxley again. Robin had know Gisborne for as long as he could remember, and they never liked each other.
“Robin of Loxley.” Robin said nothing to the tall man. Under Robin’s questing glare Gisborne felt compelled to say something. “I was given the responsibility of looking over Loxley while you were gone. I see you met the head cook” Robin narrowed his eyes.
“The sheriff dose not have that authority to undermine my decision of who my Stewart will be.” Robin said, in a low dangerous voice, ignoring Gisborne's last comment about the cook, she was of no importance to Robin.
“Things changed while you were off at war. Adjustments were made and your choice was claimed unreasonable, and a new sheriff appointed. You were gone for five years” Gisborne brushed past leaving Robin when he finished not wanting to be the victim of Robin's glare any longer. Robin had changed and Gisborne did not like it.
Robin stood in the hallway considering what Gisborne had said. A new sheriff... what happened to Sheriff Edward of Sherwood? Edward of Sherwood was liked by the people and liked by the nobles, Robin did not understand what could have changed their opinions about him.
"The older staff said that you talked a lot and were a cheerful person, you are not now." The girl said from across the hallway. Robin's gaze sifted to her. What kind of person was she, to gain the favor of someone like Gisborne, but as Robin stared at her, she met his gaze unwavering. Not a hit of discomfort. "Guess that war changed you." Robin said nothing, her green eyes unmovable, however she did start to blush, her face was the color of a tomato by the time she looked away. She was right though. Robin never liked to think about how much he had changed, for he did not know if it was for the better or worse.
"Well? Are you coming?" The girl asked. Robin nodded and followed her to the dinning room.
The dining room was full by the time Robin got there. He had taken his time, not rushing anything. Robin had slowed down durning the war. Much and Hilhara were already at their seats to the right of Robin's seat at the head of the table. An older gentleman sat to the left of the seat of honour, and a younger yellow haired man to the left of older gentleman.
"Robin." The blonde man said, a warm smile on his face, they locked arms and Robin nodded.
“Will." Will Scarlet, Robin's cousin, and best friend. As one of the most trustworthy men Robin knew, he appointed Will to be Loxley’s Stewart. Connor the older man to Robin"s left, an old friend and the head of the house. Connor rose from his chair and bowed.
"My Lord, I am glad for your safe return to Loxley." Robin patted the old man's back and helped him back into his chair.
"Thank you." Robin responded. Then Robin took seat. Awkward silence filled the room as they pondered the events of the past five years. Connor and Will exchanged looks of uneasiness, but that was before the war, the Robin they knew liked to talk and led most conversations. The changed and more serine Robin said nothing, so they sat in silence.
The servant girl studied the silence between the old friends, she couldn't help but comment.“Friends like you have not seen each other in five years and you just sit in silence?” The serving girl said, shattering the silence. “Were are your stories and feelings of loneliness in the other’s absence? Or maybe you can discuss the dire state of Loxley. Out town is in poverty and the we have tyrant for a sheriff, and their is no conversation.”
The men fixed their eyes on the girl, Hilhara just ignored her. Connor wondered why Lord Gisborne has employed her. He had heard about her tendency to speak out. Connor couldn't imagine how this bold servant lasted with Gisborne's fiery temper.
Connor looked to Robin, expecting him to reprehend the girl. But Robin admired her courage to speak to a lord the way that she did. It amused him.
“What do you think we should convert about?" Robin asked, curious on how far this girl would go. Most servants never talked to a Lord, never mind get angry with them.
"Oh I don't know maybe you should discuss ways to rebuild Loxley!" the sarcasm in her words was unmistakable. "your subjects are starving." Robin nodded. He motioned to a chair.
"Sit." He said. Addylinne shook her head.
"It is not my place.This is duty of those sworn to protect them. I have done no such thing, but taking the place of Lord, you have. And I am to return home for the day." the girl bowed, walked to the door and closed the door without looking back.
Much turned to Connor.
"Is she always like that? So dramatically blunt."
"Yes, and for some reason Gisborne liked it. She would always tell him what she thought, I am unsure what he never terminated her servitude her. I'll take care of it at once.” Robin shook his head.
"No, I like her." Robin eyed the door for a moment, he had a feeling that she would show him many truths.
"So, what are we going to do?" Hilhara questioned looking at Robin.
"What happened after we left?" Much asked looking concerned. "Loxley was a lovely place to live. Most of her citizens did well and many merchants came here to trade, the streets were filled and the people were happy." Much had came to loxley because of all of the about the land.
"After you left and Prince John was made steward of the kingdom he made changes. He sent an ambassador with the new sheriff, Thomas Langstrum. The ambassador was in charge of inspecting the Shire changed many things."Will explained.
"The ambassador said that Sheriff Edward was too old to carry out the job to it's full capacity and he replaced Lord Edward with his man Langstrum." Connor continued. “ The sheriff tightened his on the lords, the man is a knave."
"Then the sheriff replaced me with Gisborne. The sheriff dose what ever Gisborne tells him. And frankly, that man has destroyed the shire, but Gisborne has done a remarkably good job keeping Loxley together. Evan with Gisborne monitor him, the sheriff still dose a terrible job."
"One more thing to add," Will said. He leaned in. "From what I can gather, there is something is stirring up trouble in the castle. Prince John has changed." Prince John. The king's older brother, he was the crown prince until Richard as born and then he was denied the rights. Normally that would have caused the prince to be angry, but the prince held no grudges and the brothers had a good relationship. Prince John creating complication would surprise many people. Robin had served with the king in the war, and he knew that the king cared for his brother.
“There is something amiss, something bad.” Hilhara said. Robin meat Hilhara's eyes, and he knew that something was about to go terribly wrong.
End of chapter
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140,533 Literary Works • 673,403 Reviews
Just a quick note on this one: this is part of the same story as that Chapter 3 I just read, right? Because although Robin's present, it mostly doesn't feel like it. King Richard sort of comes out of nowhere in the third chapter, as do the shadowy beasts. A lot of what the first two chapters do is to set up backstory about Robin & Co. Honestly, I feel like future drafts could start off with chapter 3 and fill in a lot of this backstory later on - that chapter gave us a lot of insight into the characters, and I never got lost in what was going on, even though I hadn't read these chapters.
Tag me when you post more!
Thank you for your insight. I agree that Chapter 3 comes out of nowhere, I will have to rethink his introduction, the shadow beast are suppose to come out of nowhere, I will have to think about them more. Thank you for reading and for your thoughts, they really help! I hope you continue to read my story and review!
~Iris Rose
Hey iris! Here again.
Alright, so much of what I said in my previous review--grammar--does apply. Pan did talk about it quite a bit, so I'll be talking about other things here. Just remember to examine each word individually to check any misspellings, weird word choices, and grammar errors. Be alert to comma splices and dialogue punctuation as well.
As much as I understand that the serving girl is "dramatically blunt", I feel as if she's too much. Saying that outright to somebody who doesn't know her can be offensive sometimes. For example, I imagine Robin would be annoyed that she'd indirectly rebuke Robin Hood and Will Scarlet for just looking at each other instead of talking. That was how I felt, though others may feel differently.
I'm pretty interested to know the interactions between the servant girl and Gisborne. I'm curious to understand HOW they can get along with each other even when what she says might kick her out of her job. Something else?? I'd love to see how they interact, even though I can barely see how they talk to each other, how she receives any orders from him.
I would like to see more characterization here. The characters feel like they need to be fleshed out now. Other than this interesting servant, the others seem to be "nice" if they're on Robin's side and "do bad things" if they're on King John's side. But I'm enjoying the conflict that you're bringing out here, especially the last line--it sounds like there's something more to come. Maybe that thing that will end up "terribly wrong" might be inciting incident!
Hope my quick ramble helped~
-Ink
Thank you I need all the help I can get! I understand your thoughts on Robin and the servant girl, thank you for pointing it out. I will have to put some more thought into that part! And as for the servant girl and Gisborne, *smirks evilly* I have plans for them. I will try to add in more characterization, thank you for your comments! I really need them! I hope you continue to review my work... and maybe enjoy my story! Thanks,
~Iris Rose
Hi, Irislillygray! I'm Pan. I read chapter one of this story a little while ago but never got around to doing a review, so I thought I'd pop in to critique this one.
In some ways I think this chapter is stronger than the first and in other ways I think it's weaker. The strengths lie in the better pacing and stronger sense of setting; the weaknesses lie in the abundant spelling mistakes, typos and comma splices, which I imagine result from a lack of proofreading. As is the case with the first chapter, your dialogue and grasp on showing and telling needs a bit of work. I'll talk more about those later in the review.
Because there are a lot of recurring problems in this piece, I'm going to focus on general issues rather than just looking for nitpicks. Here we go:
1) Comma splices. A comma splice is when two independent clauses are separated by a comma rather than the appropriate full stop or semi-colon. I'll take an example from the chapter:
This one's actually a triple shot. All three parts of this quote can stand as sentences in their own right. Look here:
Robin froze.
His travels back from the war had mostly been in the forest.
Only the cook went into town to get the food they needed.
They all make sense on their own. This means that you can't stick them together as one sentence with only commas separating them; it doesn't make sense. Let's take another example:
Again, 'Edward of Sherwood was liked by the people and liked by the nobles' and 'Robin did not understand what could have changed their opinions about him' are both independent clauses which can stand alone. The easiest way to identify a comma splice is to take the comma and replace it with a full stop. If both of the sentences can make sense on their own, you shouldn't have a comma between them.
As far as fixing them, the simplest way is to replace the comma with a full stop:
Edward of Sherwood was liked by the people and liked by the nobles. Robin did not understand what could have changed their opinions about him.
But you can also use a semi-colon in cases where the two sentences are closely linked:
Edward of Sherwood was liked by the people and liked by the nobles; Robin did not understand what could have changed their opinions about him.
You can also use a comma plus a conjunction, like this:
Edward of Sherwood was liked by the people and liked by the nobles, so Robin did not understand what could have changed their opinions about him.
These kind of mistakes are rampant in your writing at the moment, so I'd recommend you comb thoroughly through the piece and fix every comma splice you can find. Look for typos and tense switches at the same time, because those are also very common - I saw 'whale' instead of 'while' at one point, 'convert' instead of 'converse', and 'meat' instead of 'met' in the last line. Run your work through some kind of spelling/grammar checker before you post it up and make sure you read it aloud. You won't catch everything, but it will dramatically improve the polish of the piece.
(Read this YWS topic if you want a more succinct explanation about comma splices).
2) Your dialogue needs some tweaking. One issue is grammatical. You have a tendency to close dialogue with full stops rather than commas, as in:
The correct way to write this would be:
“There is something amiss, something bad,” Hilhara said.
The only time you close dialogue with a full stop is when there is no dialogue tag, for instance:
“There is something amiss, something bad.”
However, whenever you follow dialogue with 'he said', 'she said', 'John said', etc. you know you're in comma territory. It's pretty common for writers to struggle with dialogue punctuation because it is so arbitrary and picky, but it's better to learn the rules sooner rather than later. If you're ever unsure, look at some dialogue in a published book and compare yours against it - I learnt a lot about structure and speech just by reading. Once you get used to the rules, it soon becomes automatic.
The other issue with your dialogue is it sometimes feels stilted. Take this bit:
I think part of the problem is that your writing is riddled with typos, which can make it hard to make sense of what your characters are saying. However, the issue here is that it's what I call For The Audience dialogue. It only exists to inform the reader that Loxley used to be a nice place. Much wouldn't say it because he's in a room of people who know what Loxley used to be like - they can remember it for themselves.
When you're writing dialogue, make sure you read it aloud like you would a script. Put in intonation and expression as if you were acting it; see if it sounds like something a person would really say. Always remember the context too. Remember that the characters should be talking to each other and no one else. The moment they act aware of the reader, the immersion shatters.
3) You may well have heard of showing and telling, but I'll do a run through of what it is just in case. Showing and telling are two types of writing techniques. The latter involves explicitly stating what is happening (e.g. 'the girl had been stabbed') whereas the former involves implying what is happening and letting the reader work it out (e.g. 'the girl clutched her stomach with shaking hands, blood pooling through cracks in her fingers'). Both techniques have their place in writing, but you have to find a balance and understand when each is appropriate. Like a lot of novice writers, showing is where you struggle most. Let's look at this:
This paragraph is littered with pockets of telling. You tell us the silence is awkward rather than letting us work it out from the context. You tell us why they're being silent. You tell us that the look Connor and Will exchange is uneasy. You tell us that Robin is serene rather than letting us work it out from his body language.
I'll toy with the paragraph a bit to see how it could look with less telling:
Heavy silence fell. Within it, Robin knew, waited hundreds of questions; questions about the war, about Loxley, about everything. Connor and Will glanced briefly to Robin, then to each other. Robin leaned back against his chair and looked down at his hands.
The first hurdle to showing is relinquishing control over how the reader interprets the story. When you communicate the precise reason for every look and glance and silence, your writing is bogged down with exposition and leaves no gaps for the reader to fill in. You need to leave ambiguity and resist the urge to clarify. If you don't, the reader will feel like they're having the story spoonfed to them.
On my long, long road to improving my showing technique, I've found that one of the best ways to make myself show is to just describe the scene. Describe actions, not reasons. If a character rubs the back of their neck, don't say it's because they're nervous. If a character looks down at their wine glass and swills the liquid around, don't say it's because they're avoiding an awkward subject. As far as you can, describe what a character does, not why they do it. You'll be surprised to find that the reader can often work out the rest for themselves.
Showing and telling isn't something anybody can master overnight. It takes years upon years to find the balance, but it's something even inexperienced writers should try to be aware of. This excellent article can tell you more about the subject. It delves into the distinction between the two techniques and goes into more detail than I have, complete with examples and comparisons and all sorts. It's definitely worth reading.
I'm going to call the review here. All in all, the story itself is interesting and has real potential to breathe new life into the Robin Hood tale. You just need to develop your proofreading and editing skills to give it more coherence and polish, as well as thinking keenly about how to show more in your writing.
I hope this helped! If you've any questions about what I said in the review, don't hesitate to ask.
Keep writing!
~Pan
Wow, thanks for all the help. I hope you will be willing to review my future chapters. I will try hard to apply your advice to my writing. Thanks for the review!
I'll be keeping an eye out for future chapters!
Awesome! Make sure to inform me when chapter 3 is out. I'm looking forward to more
Ok! Thanks for the support!