Some of you might have read my novel 'snow' monthsago. Well this is a revision. Yes, it's about snow white ;)
Prologue-
The beautiful baby lay in it's cradle, cooing quietly. Black curls were spread across a porcelain forehead, and rose lips were pursed in a happy baby smile. Her parents were sitting side by side, looking down at their one day old daughter. The mother, who was just as beautiful as her young daughter, with white skin and ruby lips clasped her hands and looked to her husband. "She's beautiful."
"Just as beautiful as you, my love." The King replied, his golden beard twitching as he grinned at his wife and baby. The Queen blushed, and smiled at her husband. "You charmer, you."
"Guilty as charged." The King whispered, taking his wife's hand. "What shall we name her?"
The Queen stood and picked up her baby, cradling her in her arms. Dressed in blue silk, the baby looked like a tiny angel. Her eyes fluttered sleepily as she felt her mother's warmth, and soon she was sleeping.
Before either the King or the Queen could suggest names to each other, the doors to the room were thrown wide, and a woman seemed to fly in, carrying a large silver hand mirror in her left hand. She was a striking woman, but had sharper features than the lovely queen. She had a narrow heart shaped face, and dark hair. Her eyes looked like amber and shone from her pale face with bright intelligence. "Greetings." The woman said, her voice was hoarse and cracked, like she hadn't drank water in days.
The King stood up, stepping in front of his wife and child. The woman laughed coldly and fixed them both with a calculating expression. "Don't worry, I haven't come to kill your child..." She left the sentence hanging in the air, as if she was about to say 'yet'. The King didn't move. "Who are you?"
"I'm Mordrid, cold queen of the North."
The King visibly paled. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm here to tell you a secret." The woman whispered, her voice lowering dangerously.
The Queen stood, slowly lowering her child into her bassinet. "What secret."
"Not just any secret, Alainnya. A prophecy. That concerns your daughter." The King and Queen exchanged looks, and he reached for her hand. Mordrid held up the heavy silver mirror, and the Queen gasped as a face peered out of it. But it wasn't her face, and it wasn't the King's face. The face had dark skin, almost black. it's eyes were a chocolate brown that shone with malice. "Hello." Said the thing inside, it's voice smooth, low and melodic. "I'm the magic mirror."
The Queen thought she might faint. Her face paled even more, and she swooned against her husband, who settled her back into her chair. Spinning around he looked at Mordrid with a cold glare. "You've come here, and upset my wife! Now tell me why you're here or leave!" He thundered.
"Now, now, Marquit. No need to get violent." Said the mirror. "I'll state my business, if your so hasty."
"Thank you." The King spat, falling into the chair beside his wife.
"Your baby, with ruby lips and skin as white as snow. She lays there, unmoving and helpless. Her coal black curls are spread across her silk pillow. She truly is a beauty. But what would the helpless king do if someone took his precious daughter away?"
The King face was pale under his blonde beard, and he jumped up. "You will not touch a hair on her head, Mordrid!"
"Oh, I never said anything about me harming a hair on her head." Mordrid whispered. "It's the mirror talking."
"The mirror is about to be smashed." The King took a step forward. A high cold laugh issued from the mirror and the thing's eyes seemed to spark. "You will do no such thing. Freeze."
And it was like the King lost control of his body parts. He couldn't step back, he couldn't lift his hand, he couldn't even speak. If he had been able to move, his eyebrows would have shot up in surprise and fear, but instead he was frozen. The only parts of him that seemed to be working was his beating heart that was rising to his throat and his hearing.
"Now, listen carefully, King, or you'll find yourself dead with your wife and daughter by your side." The mirror hissed. The King was forced to listen as the thing continued it's horrible speech. "To keep the baby safe, the mother is sacrificed, and you will marry The cold queen of the north. And she will have complete control over your daughter until she reaches her eighteenth birthday... And until then, you will be on sea journeys. You must sacrifice your wife and yourself to keep your baby safe. And maybe, if Mordrid is feeling generous, she will allow you to come home from your never ending sea journey and let your baby live. She promises not to touch a hair on her head till her sixteenth birthday... Then it will be up to fate to decide what happens to the child."
The King slowly felt himself regain control over his limbs. He ran at Mordrid, ready to kill her before she had a chance to hurt his daughter or his wife.
It was over in an instant. A volt of lightning struck down, and his wife fell off her chair, limp. The King cried and fell to his knees, the pain of one thousand heartbreaks weighing on his shoulders in one second.
"Fine." He spat at Mordrid. "I will do anything to keep my daughter safe."
Riddled by pain, the poor man didn't see what a mistake he was making... I can get out of this, he told himself. I can find a way out of a never ending sea journey in sixteen years.
"I'm glad you came around," The queen whispered, walking over to him and putting her lips near his ear. "And we'll name the child Snow White, for her skin is the color of milk. But hope for her sake she isn't as beautiful a young woman as she is a baby." And the evil queen waved her hand over the broken King, and his eyes turned glassy. "We will be married so no one wonders why the cold queen of the north is suddenly the queen of Highclear." She continued. "And then you will leave on your journey. And sadly meet your demise on the roaring waters of the South Ocean."
And then Mordrid stood up, and her crimson skirt followed her out of the wide room. The baby's bassinet, as if on it's own accord rolled out after her, and the doors slammed shut behind the evil witch and the innocent baby.
Drama! Omg FAIRYTALE
I. NITPICKS
Remember: he's, she's, it's and his, her, its. See the pattern? Apostrophes for "He is, she is, it is" but none for "belonging to him, belonging to her, belonging to it."
Medical nitpick, babies don't show their first social smile until about six weeks. So it might be smiling, but not... happily? xD
Okay, you need to fix your dialogue punctuation. Demeter has a great article in the database which I usually link but I'll try to explain it here. Essentially, when you say, "he said" "she said" "he whispered" "the man shouted" etc. that is called a "speech tag." It tags onto the speech- and therefore it's just an extension of the sentence, rather than a whole new sentence by itself. That is why:
"Greetings." The woman said.
doesn't make any sense, because "The woman said" is not a sentence by itself. Imagine reading that in a book. "The woman said." But no words that she said. So you see, they can't be two separate sentences. Instead, you get:
"Greetings," the woman said.
All one sentence. Understand? Never a full stop (although question marks and exclamation marks are allowed) and never a capital letter unless it's a name. Does that make sense? Have a look in whatever novel you have nearest to hand and it should do.
Then why wouldn't they call her Milk-White
II. OVERALL
Oh, I love a good fairytale retelling, and I'm looking forward to this one! I have a few issues though. Mostly, it's with the King's indifference to his wife. If you have a choice between your wife and your daughter it's not going to be that easy. You're going to question it, you're going to deliberate. So that really annoyed me. Don't dispose of the Queen quite so quickly. Then when the Queen is struck by lightning, I'd like to see just a little more emotion from the King.
A few things need clarification- the purpose of the mirror, for one, and the whole sixteen/eighteen thing, that was confusing.
But overall, I can't WAIT to read more of this!
Hope I helped, drop me a note if you need anything!
-Stella x
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
I'll be honest and say that I came to this work not expecting much (not to be rude, this type of work just doesn't usually help thoughts stay afloat in my cup of tea), but in the end I was very excited with the work and hope to see possible future revisions.
What caught my attention so quickly was the use of detail, especially in the first few paragraphs of the story. I'm a type of reader who's almost always annoyed when I'm told and not shown things about the character and settings of a story. It just seems like a lazy way out of writing and usually doesn't do anything for the story. Luckily, within the confines of this story there were many things that helps the reader see the setting and characters in their mind instead of just giving them a faint description of the events.
A good novel is never without good dialogue, and this prologue helps support that point. Much of the time when writers place spoken words within their stories the dialogue between characters reads more like a collection of one-liners that would look good in films instead of actual conversations. That wasn't the case here. I even took the time to reread the story through the dialogue only and everything came across as real and true. In fact I feel that this may be the best trait the story has at the moment. Keep working on this towards your advantage.
The other great strength of this story is the fact that it gives a surprise. Quite a few people in the Western World are already told or shown the story of Snow White before they're over the age of five so quite a few things aren't really surprises anymore, just things that are expected when the stories are retold again. Instead of letting this hurt the reading of the story, you seemed to use it towards your own advantage in a glamorous way. While the plot of the prologue is still something that most people already know, it's presented in a fashion that make the scene fresh and elegant within our minds again.
Alas, no great work is without faults, and this work has a few of its own.
The most glaring one that seemed to stab me throughout the reading of the story was the fact that there were no spaces between paragraphs. I realize that the aspect of the writing may possibly intentional, but it still doesn't help with the flow of the story. There were some instances where it seemed like one paragraph went on far too long simply because it was actually two different ones that seemed to be squeezed together.
Now the next thing which I saw that stayed in my mind as I read the text was the fact that there were a few grammatical mistakes throughout the next. None of them were that big really, simply a few misplaced commas and one or two unneeded capitalizations. Other then those few mistakes (and they were nothing, really) this was an incredibly enjoyable read.
Keep up the good work!
Ben Dietz.