One naughty word Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm Knight Hardy here on a mission to ensure that all works on YWS has at least two reviews. You will probably never see this but....Imma do this anyway.
First Impression: Hmm...sounds like a really interesting premise if this is in fact turned into a story sometime. I'd love to see where something like this would go. A pretty interesting scene to start things off. The pacing is alright in this one but the flow is a little jittery. Some parts have to be read a few times to get the meanings. I think that's mostly due to a couple of issues with paragraphing and your choice of names but I'll point these out below. The information you give in my opinion is quite enough...I personally would prefer to be kept in the dark about who these people are rather than be given an info dump.
Anyway let's get right to it,
The tavern was full of labourers who had just ‘popped’ in for a quick drink before heading home. In the crowd was a scattering of men dressed in the uniform of the watch. The tavern was closest to the watch house so was the natural hangout of the Watch officers. One mans uniform separated him from the others. Gold lapels showed his rank to any on looking and the way he held himself proved to others that he was better than them.
That last line seems a little too much directly telling the audience. It would be a much better option to show his posture and let us come to the conclusion that he holds himself that way rather than simply telling it directly.
"What do you want, Boy?” Contempt dripped from every word like venom from a cobra’s fang.
That's quite the image right there.
A coughing drew his attention to an old man who was stumbling along the street, a tattered and worn cloak about his shoulders. Araj sighed and knew what he needed to do. Moving towards the old man he took the cloak from the old man, who offered no argument thinking he was being robbed. Taking his oiled cloak Araj draped it across the mans shoulders.
Establishing him as the possibly "good" character so we know who to root for later. That's a good move there.
Both men moved towards it, when they were just mere feet away from it another man leapt from it. He was tall and well built as if a blacksmith. Araj grabbed the Officers arm and threw him into the alley whilst the unknown man delivered a tremendous blow with his fist. As the man fell Araj kicked him in the stomach making him cry out in pain.
Pretty good jump scare there if slightly cliche. Its a little predictable but nonetheless effective.
“I said, Screw you!” Araj punched the man in the face. Araj’s accomplice drew a knife. “I know both of you and who you are. Your posters have been posted everywhere.”
Here's where the confusion begins and the flow breaks apart a little. Here you have to start a new paragraph and assign a dialogue tag to the officer or it takes a couple of reads to figure out who is talking to who.
“Don’t make me hurt you, Strak!” The watch officers eyes widened, these men knew his name. “Skarl here is a whiz with that knife of his. You wanna play about with us then I warn you now. I will cut open your stomach and watch you die.”
You're use of 3rd Person Omniscient is a little bit confusing when you combine the paragraphs like this. For that particular style a good rule of thumb to make sure people can follow the story is to use one character for a single paragraph. Multiple characters in just one paragraph can really mess people up. Also your names are a bit too similar to each other. Its hard to distinguish who is talking and who is not.
Aaand that's about it for this one.
Overall: Besides the issues of the flow the characters are brought out pretty well. Besides knifeman who is really not developed, both Araj and the Strak seem pretty unique. The small one paragraph introductions we got at the start are very useful in that regard so that we know what kind of men the two of them are.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Points: 258487
Reviews: 4122
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