Prologue

by Mackattack

Published April 19, 2014

E - Everyone

In The Secrets Of the World

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A long time ago the world broke. The sun flickered away sending the world into a cold eternal darkness.Wars were more brutal as unions fought for food, shelter, light and warmth. This time is what we call the forbidden era, because everything was only available for those who could afford it. Back then the government was formed in a way that you had to pay for your rights, and sometimes it wasn't even given to you when you did pay. But that all ended many decades ago. Now the world is spit into two to parts, the Underlivings and the Upsiders. No one knows why but both sides HATE one another. The Upsiders live on the world crust and get their warmth from an animatronic sun. While I live with the Underlivings, we get our heat and electricity from the magma chamber in the center of the earth. Unfortunately our seclusion is short lived, and this is what happens when they mix.

Comments & reviews · 8
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kaitlyn
Review
kaitlyn wrote a review Review · Jul 11, 2021

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,

A long time ago the world broke. The sun flickered away sending the world into a cold eternal darkness.Wars were more brutal as unions fought for food, shelter, light and warmth. This time is what we call the forbidden era, because everything was only available for those who could afford it. Back then the government was formed in a way that you had to pay for your rights, and sometimes it wasn't even given to you when you did pay. But that all ended many decades ago. Now the world is spit into two to parts, the Underlivings and the Upsiders. No one knows why but both sides HATE one another. The Upsiders live on the world crust and get their warmth from an animatronic sun. While I live with the Underlivings, we get our heat and electricity from the magma chamber in the center of the earth. Unfortunately our seclusion is short lived, and this is what happens when they mix.


As someone who's read an unreasonable amount of things about situations like this I have to say that sadly its probably going to be quite impossible for any sort of humans to survive if the sun just decided to vanish one day...while the whole magma chamber thing is quite accurate if you harness the geothermal energy at the core of the planet...it won't sustain things too well...although I suppose if they can build their own sun...which sounds pretty difficult cause to do so one would need more energy than the sun itself...and that would mean they'd need to harvest a sun to have enough energy...but yeah...anyway that's my little bit of nerding out about the science behind the premise here....anyway...onto talking more about the actual story itself now.

As for that, well, this is a pretty interesting premise here. We've got a very sci fi setting with lots of potential for some pretty cool technology which I always love and on top of that we've got a bit of a war situation and all in all, this makes for quite an intriguing premise here. It looks like humanity has split into factions that ended up hating each other and now its time for everyone to mix somehow..at any rate, this seems like a story I'd certainly read after running into this particular prologue here. :D

Aaaaand that's it for this one.

As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.

Stay Safe
Harry

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Noelle
Review
Noelle wrote a review Review · May 25, 2014

Hi there! Noelle here for a Review Day review!

I was reading the first chapter of this novel, but then I realized there was a prologue! So here I am to give you a nice little review of your prologue. It's awful short, but as you read on in my review you will soon realize that I'm a huge fan of these kind of prologues :)

No one knows why but both sides HATE one another

Meh. I don't like when writers use all caps. I understand that you are trying to get a point across, trying to tell us that the two sides really, really, really hate each other. But there are other ways to do this. For instance, you could use the saying 'truly despise' or maybe suggest a reason why the two hate each other. For example, you could say something about the Underlivings being jealous of the Upsiders getting the light of the sun. And then go along to say how the jealousy has grown over the years and now each new Underliving born seems to be born with hatred inside of them, hatred of the Upsiders. Get what I'm saying? There's always a way to use words to describe intense emotion.

Next, we have a character. We're not sure exactly who they are yet (well I do, but only because I peeked ^_^) and that's totally how it should be. Unless your prologue is some completely specific story to the character, we don't need to know them. It's completely fine to keep that a secret for a while.

Now, onto the length of the prologue. Despite what anyone else says, I think this is a perfect size for a prologue. It may be short, yes, but it doesn't need to be any longer. We're getting some great information here and it's just enough that we'll have to go into the first chapter. I like when prologues are short because then they don't drag on and end up feeling like a first chapter. Yours here is most definitely a prologue and it's really needed. Now you won't have to feel forced to add this information in later on in your novel.

Alrighty then, I'll go back to reading your first chapter.

Keep writing!
**Noelle**

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Elinor565
Comment
Elinor565 commented Comment · May 20, 2014

Hi.
First of all, I'd like to say well done for not making your prologue ramble to much. The first line really had me hooked. Unfortunately, I found the way that you dumped a load of facts from your story on us rather questionable. Perhaps, instead of telling us everything in one go, you could have told us bit by bit, in the storyline? It seemed like you were 'rushing' with this prologue. Anyway, it's still good, and I'll be reading this story

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Wolfi
Review
Wolfi wrote a review Review · Apr 19, 2014

My favorite thing about this prologue is its size. Most people (including myself... :( ) tend to write really long prologues. This one is perfect! There are two obvious errors that I can see, and one is the "spit into two to parts." You probably didn't mean to put that extra "to" there. Another is "While I live with Underlivings, we get our heat and electricity from the magma chamber in the center of the earth." The beginning (before the comma) is a little awkward. It should be reworded to something like "My fellow Underlivings and I..." or something along that line. I like the names for the two sides. The Upsiders sound like they're arrogant to me, at least just from the name, but you probably named them that because of a geographical position. Keep up the good work! ;)

Thanks for the review and the extra to was an accident, I was trying to put in something else ,but I changed my mind and didn't delete the rest of it by mistake.

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birk
Review
birk wrote a review Review · Apr 19, 2014

Hey Mack!

Welcome to YWS! I hope you enjoy yourself here ;)

Alright, I'll quickly go through this prologue for your story. It's pretty short though, so there's not too much I can comment on.

I'm usually very thorough, so I'll also include an edit for your description here, as I'll definately have room:

Edit

This is a prologue to my upcoming story, I hope you like it. Two worlds have been separated for a long time, but soon their seclusion will end.
A short typo. And always remember to capitalize first person pronoun.

It's really cool that you've begun writing a novel! However, the plot you have is quite unoriginal though. I've seen it many times. But it's an interesting one that will hopefully keep you writing and devoloping your skills even further.

Edit
The sun flickered away, sending the world into a cold eternal darkness.
Could use a comma here.

darkness.Wars were more brutal as unions

Forgot a space between these lines.

Edit
Now the world is split into two to parts,


No one knows why but both sides HATE one another.

Wouldn't the Underlivings hate the Upsiders because they were forced underground? From the way you wrote this, that seemed obvious. But you may have other plans.

Aside from this, I guess I could say that I don't think this needed to be a prologue. The function of a prologue is to inform the reader of things that wouldn't naturally come up in the chapters themselves. This could easily have been brought up in your early chapters.

Okay, that's pretty much all I got. I'm sure you can come up with some awesome ideas for this, and now that you found your way to YWS, your writing will only become better and better. Looking forward to future chapters!

Keep it up! :D


Cheers
Birkhoff

Thanks for the error fixes, i was watching YouTube at the time soooo....... Also for your last fix, the reason why they hate each other will be explained later.

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Iggy
Review
Iggy wrote a review Review · Apr 19, 2014

Hey Mack! Welcome to YWS. ^^

Okay, so wow. Short prologue, but it packs a lot of amazing hooks. You seem to have a pretty awesome idea going here! I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more. =]

Although, you do have a couple of errors in this. Let's see...

A long time ago the world broke.


Include a comma after "ago".

The sun flickered away sending the world into a cold eternal darkness.Wars were more brutal as unions fought for food


You need a comma after "away" and you also need a space between the two sentences.

Now the world is spit into two to parts,


Cut out the indicated word. Also, I suggest you swap the comma for a colon.

The Upsiders live on the world crust


Should be world's crust*


Get those simple nitpicks fixed and this should run a lot more smoother. ^^

But honestly, you're off to a wonderful start. You haven't given a whole lot to work with, so this makes my review really short <_< But with what you did give was give us a brief summary of the past and an introduction to this society and how it functions. You introduced the two parts of the world and where the main character resides. I feel a bit of confidence, as I don't think I'll be too confused when moving on to chapter one.

Overall, this looks good so far! I look forward to seeing how this will turn out, so do let me know when chapter one comes out. I like what I've read so far and would love to see more. ^^

Thanks , I do have a lot of errors here, but in my defense i was distracted by YouTube.......

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cleverclogs
Review
cleverclogs wrote a review Review · Apr 19, 2014

Your premise sounds interesting, but your writing could use some revision.

Unfortunately our seclusion is short lived, and this is what happens when they mix.

This sentence, for example, could use a comma after the word "unfortunately". Instead of using they, you could put the noun in its place, and say, "the two sides" or whatever you think would fit.
You could also go into more detail about the crisis, how the world split up, and details like that. I like the idea of the story, but you should proofread for grammar errors and give us a bit more detail. Readers don't like being flooded with detail, but we want some!
I'm interested in what happens next!

Wolfi replied · Apr 19, 2014

Can someone tell me how you insert the quote things in reviews? Thanks!

You do this, but without the any of the spaces:
[ quote ] text here [ /quote ]

And you get this!

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Mackattack
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Mackattack commented Comment · Apr 19, 2014

I like it...........



If fortis was here, we could have a teal party
— Pompadour