Before you read: This was originally intended to be an opening to a graphic novel I am writing. (Hence the various brackets describing "shots and angles". ) Yet, I am battling with the idea of converting this story into novel form for a contest my school is hosting. I am hoping to get opinions on this opening's effectiveness so far, some suggestions for strengthening dialogue and whether or not it would work in novel format. Please be aware that this is a very rough draft. Thank you :)
Under miles of rock and mineral beneath a bare, gray world; sleep the people of the underground. Unknowingly imprisoned for countless centuries with the promise of salvation above the clouds.
A tall boy picks his way carefully across a vast cave, taking special care to not shift any loose pebbles in his path. He wears a tan shawl that drapes over his broad shoulders. An array of digging tools attached to his belt cling against each other softly. His light brown hair is accented by a gray streak that appeared after he was struck in the skull with a falling boulder. His hair is cursed with a constant film of dust. He brushes a strand away from his goggles excitedly when he arrives to his sister. She’s sleeping soundly on the ground, her head rests upon a pillow made of collected moss and tied together with vines. Water drips slowly onto a nearby rock and runs into some buckets drilled from rock.
“Annalise.” He ushers his sister awake and she lifts her head up hazily.
“Jean?” Annalise looks around until fixing her gaze onto Jean who has an excited look on his face. “The worms aren’t even glowing yet. What is so important?” Her face turns to worry. “Was there another cave in?”
“No- wait- yes there was. Just-” he looks around, “No one knows about it.”
Annalise now with a look of confusion and worry “Where was it?”
“Near the Chamber of Monuments.”
Annalise sits up a little. “What were you doing all the way over there?”
Jean places a hand on her shoulder and puts a finger over his mouth. “Shhh! That’s not important.”
“Yes it is! That place is famous for falling rocks! You could have been squashed just like Aller was-”
Jean rolls his eyes, “’Squashed’ what, by rocks? In case you haven’t noticed, that’s just part of existing here.” He gestures to boulders hanging inside the large cavern. “Besides, Aller wasn’t a skilled digger like I am.” He twirls his pic-axe around proudly. “If a rock were to ever attempt to fall on me, I’d just give it a little swing, and-”
“Immediately die.” Annalise replied. They exchange a look.
“Hm, yeah I guess that’s what’d happen.” He nods and looks off sarcastically with his pic-axe in hand. He gives her a mischievous look. “Alright now, come on,” Jean tugs at her arm. “I need to show you something.” He pulls Annalise up to her feet. “Hurry before Gennit wakes up!”
“Wait.” Annalise stops. “I can’t go with you.
I need to help Hura collect Luminroots in the mare…Tuia can
always tell when I haven’t got enough sleepshe
awakes.”
“We’ll be back before the Estrella Worms even stir.” Annalise looks at him skeptically. “Common, you know Hura, she doesn’t flutter an eye until the roots of the Ilum tree start crawling across her body.”
“True, but-” she mutters.
Jean pulls at her arm eagerly. “Once you see what I have to show you, you’ll never have to harvest another luminroot again.” His eyes are intense.
Annalise now appears interested, “This better be good.” Jean lights up and pulls her further across the cavern. They walk underneath a towering mushroom that spreads its roots across the floor. An unearthly blue-green light pulses slowly across its cap, down its stem and runs through its roots.
Luminroots hang on ceilings and walls light up pathways through halls. Jean leads Annalise in the background of a huge cavern, mushrooms and plants glow faintly and light up as they pass. They walk across giant columns of crystals. They carefully pick their way down a rocky slope and crawl through a tight space.
“What are you going to show me?” Annalise asked. “Is this some set up, like do you have a prank in store for me? Because-”
“Stop with your questions already. You’re going to love it.” Jean replies. “It’s going to solve all of our problems,” he says.
“I’m just worried about the walls caving in.” she admits.
“Rocks never fall in the same place twice,” he retorts.
They crawl through a tight tunnel into a huge chamber. A mural of two beasts is on the far wall. Broken statues lead up to it. Rocks lie upon some of the stone beasts.
“Have you ever wondered who sculpted all this?” Annalise questioned.
“I assumed the rocks just carved themselves if I’m honest,” Jean replied. Annalise stops next to a fallen head of a creature with calm eyes, a flowing mane and horns decorated with jewels and squats down to it.
She appears slightly saddened. Jean walks up behind her, she glances at him and turns back to the head. “We used to climb on these statues, remember?”
“Yeah…You used to be more adventurous.” He gives her a mischievous look.
“I’m still plenty adventurous.” Arms crossed, he looks at her incredulously, “I just don’t like breaking every bone in my body.”
“I don’t believe you. Don’t you remember how many times you shattered your left arm?”
They walk past the chamber until they arrive at a huge pile of recently fallen rocks, there doesn’t appear to be any openings or tunnels around pile.
“Where to next, Jean? There’s nothing here.” Water slides down the rocks before them and Annalise walks up curiously. “Water? But-“
Jean smirks and grabs her arm. “We’re almost there.”
“’Almost there’? There’s nowhere else to go.” Jean pulls her up the pile of rocks. Some animals dig out of the floor and make their way to the pooling water, lapping it up eagerly. They are now halfway up the pile. “Slow down, Jean.” She slips down a few rocks. “Eugh!” Jean quickly tugs her up. At the top of the pile they find a small opening and crawl through. “Honestly, how did you even find this place? Did you hear thousands of tons of rocks crashing down and think, ‘Hey, I should go over there; that sounds like a good idea.’? Because that’s how-” They both stop. Jean’s face is illuminated by a bright white light and the both stare at it transfixed. Annalise’s mouth is hanging open but there is a twinge of apprehension in her eyes. They crawl on their hands and knees looking up at a small hole with light pouring through. Annalise reaches out to touch it but her hand grasps at nothing.
“This color…. It’s not the same as the Luminroots (glow blue)… What is it?” said Annalise.
“I haven’t a clue. At first I thought it was an animal like an Adiro Felle,” Jean stated. “But I sat and watched it for an hour and it never moved.” Jean sharply gestures to the light and scans Annalise’s face awaiting a reaction.
They face each other. “Do you think we should-“
“Find out where it comes from?” Jean exclaims. They share an adventurous smile. Jean pulls out a pick axe and shovel and begins to dig around the light, moving rocks.
Annalise looks back and an Estrella worm glides in front of her face. “Jean-wait- look.” They turn around and look at the illuminated, blinking ceiling. “I don’t have to remind you what happened last time I was late to the harvest.” Jean turns back to the hole and gives a disappointed look. “We can come back after the worms stop glowing. You said this light doesn’t move so it won’t be going anywhere.”
Jean gives her a side glance and then looks down to the hole. “You’re right; there’s no point rushing in headfirst. We don’t know where that light will take us.” He slides his pick axe back onto his belt. “Besides, I know Yuohh and Lixton won’t want to miss out on this discovery.”
“Exactly. Let’s get going.” They walk back past the caverns they did before but at different angles. Thin, feathery worms glide across caverns faintly illuminating Jean and Annalise as they tread past a cluster of glowing mushrooms.
Jean stops by one of these mushrooms and looks around the cavern. “It seems like the Council was right Annalise. The mushrooms are barely giving off any light anymore. We’ll be living in complete darkness if it gets any worse.” She walks up behind him and he looks up to her.
“That’s why we’ve been tearing up so many roots lately.” Annalise runs a hand over some roots draped over the walls in the walk way. “They’re nervous.” The roots sway, blinking softly with pale blue light as she disturbs their stillness.
Jean and Annalise follow a path that cuts through the dense foliage of flashing mushrooms. Estrella worms float carelessly in the empty space above their heads. Some dared to land upon Jean’s shawl, attempting to dodge the endless water dripping from the ceiling. “Look,” Jean spread his arms out showing off the array of starlight carpeting his body. “I told you these worms had a special connection to me.”
Annalise, who only had a singular worm upon her forehead, stopped to glance at Jean’s overcoat. Pushing past him she called, “worms are attracted to bad smells.” She looked back at him and they shared a mutual smirk.
Jean skipped up to Annalise’s side. They walked silently, stepping over rocks covered with numerous emerald mushrooms and over the rotting logs of rubbery trees. The rocks above their heads released drops of water that splatted, rolled and tumbled off the mushroom caps resting upon the two’s heads.
Jean pushed his digging goggles up into his hair. They left red rectangles around his eyes. “I need to get new goggles,” Jean muttered, rubbing his palm against his eyes.
“If you can catch an armored rat, then I’m sure Guri will make another pair for you.” Jean let out an annoyed groan. “I haven’t even seen one for so long.” Jean rolls his eyes.
“It’s either that or let pebbles get lodged in your eyes.”
“Why are you so mean to me?” Annalise suddenly grabbed Jean’s shoulder stopping him. “What?” He appears slightly annoyed and gives her a questioning look. Annalise eyes are trained to the darkness in front of them.
“I think someone’s in front of us.”
“Great.” Jean whispered. “Who is it?”
“I can’t tell,” she responded.
“Should we hide?”
“It depend on who it is. Councilors hate it when we stray from the schedule.” She crouched behind a large fire mushroom hidden behind lush foliage. Jean crouched next to her and peeked over the side. “I knew we shouldn’t have snuck out again.” She muttered with growing annoyance.
“Relax, Annalise. I think it’s just Yuohh.” He smiled and rose to his feet. Before he could say anything, Annalise pulled him back down.
“I don’t want to take
chances,” she hissed. “If TuiaTrona
found out I snuck out with you past the Chamber of Monuments…” she paused, “…I
don’t even want to know what she’dhe’d
do to us.” Her hands gripped at Jean’s shoulders desperately. Breaths escaped
in quick, erratic bursts.
“Okay, okay.” Jean relaxed and quietly removed her trembling hands off his shoulders. “Just calm down, alright? We’re fine. If we get in trouble, it’s my fault. You understand?” he assured.
They waited ears strained. Pounding footsteps sounded from across the cavern until they were swallowed up by the twilight. Annalise brought her knees up to her chest. She lifted her head up, signaling Jean with a questioning look.
“I think he’s gone.” Jean rose to his feet, “It seems like we aren’t the only ones who like to sneak around before we’re supposed to.”
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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125,008 Literary Works • 672,820 Reviews
Hey, Little here for a review! My last one, for today.
Well, I really like the opening lines of your story... ESPECIALLY the prophecy thing in the very beginning. But, I must say, I think you should reduce the size of the chapter, atleast a bit. It's a bit too long, and my interest began to wane after a while... well, I do not see the point of nitpicking your story after Pan's amazing and ridiculously long review. I can say that your ideas are AMAZING , and that I would love to see more of this! Please do tell me if you write more, but only if it is fantasy, because that is the one genre I really love.
Hi, SergeantRosie! Pan here to review.
First, I'd like to say that this could absolutely be turned into a novel, so I'm going to review it with that objective in mind. The ground work is all there, but there's some issues, particularly in regards to dialogue, that need fixing before it can read properly like a novel. I'll talk about those later. First, I'll do nitpicks, though I'll try not to be too pernickety considering that this is a rough draft.
Nitpicks and Small Comments
This should be a comma rather than a semi-colon. An easy way to check whether a semicolon is appropriate is to substitute it with a full stop, like this:
Under miles of rock and mineral, beneath a bare, gray world. Sleep the people of the underground.
If the sentences still make grammatical sense with a full stop, you're fine to use a semicolon. If they're ungrammatical, as they are in this example, then you need another form of punctuation (most likely a comma).
When I first read this, I was quite confused as to what 'it' referred back to. From piecing it together, I'm guessing you're referencing the pulsing light of the mushroom, but I think you need to make that obvious. Something like 'its spores float endlessly in the air, blinking in the same way that the light does' might be a bit clearer.
Do you mean hollow?
I'm not sure about this description. How can something clang softly? Clanging suggests a loud noise. I'd try to pick a verb that suggests a softer noise - clink or jingle might work.
This is a comma splice, which is a fancy name for an error that occurs when you link two independent clauses with a comma rather than a full stop, semicolon, or appropriate coordinator. Becuase 'she's sleeping soundly on the ground' and 'her curly-haired head rests upon a pillow made of collected moss and tied together with vines' could both function as sentences in their own right, it isn't appropriate to connect them with a comma.
I'll do some more examples of comma splices just to help illustrate:
I love cake, it's so sweet and tasty.
Suzy climbed on the horse, she rode sidesaddle.
There were two dogs waiting in the backyard, I fed them some of the leftover mince.
Like with the example from the text, these are comma splices because they connect independent clauses with commas. So, how do you go about fixing them? There are three simple ways. The simplest would be to replace the comma with a full stop, like this:
Suzy climbed on the horse. She rode sidesaddle.
This is a good way to test if you have a comma splice, as well. If you swap a comma out for a full stop and find that the statement still makes grammatical sense, the comma shouldn't be there.
Another way to fix comma splices can be to substitute the comma for a semicolon, like so:
I love cake; it's so sweet and tasty.
However, remember that semicolons should only be used when the two clauses are closely related in meaning. They shouldn't appear too often.
The third way to fix a comma splice would be to add in some kind of coordinating conjunction (or connective, as they're sometimes called):
There were two dogs waiting in the backyard so I fed them some of the leftover mince.
There were two dogs waiting in the backyard and I fed them some of the leftover mince.
There are a few comma splices in this piece, so try to find and fix them yourself. Also, feel free to check out this resource if you're not sure about my explanation. There's this one as well, which includes a fourth strategy for fixing them.
General rule: we should be able to tell from the dialogue itself if a character is being snarky or sarcastic or jokey or whatever else. If you need an adverb to tell us, it's a sign that the dialogue isn't strong enough. In the second quote, the sarcasm would definitely come across without 'sarcastically', so you can easily delete that. I love that bit of dialogue, by the way. It characterises Jean excellently.
I'm not sure the snarkiness in the first quote would come across without 'snark(il)y', though. I think you need to revise the dialogue to make it more obvious that he's being snide.
There will be some bits of dialogue where, try as you might, the sarcasm just won't come across unless you signpost it. That's completely fine. However, always try your hardest to show the attitude of the speaker through the actual dialogue before you fall back on an adverb. It's better if you can do without.
Also, small point, but be careful with your dialogue punctuation. Most of the time you seem okay, but I did spot a few capitalised reporting clauses and instances where you close dialogue with a full stop. Remember that it should follow this formula:
“I assumed the rocks just carved themselves if I’m honest,” he replied.
Even when your dialogue ends with an exclamation mark or question mark, the first letter of the dialogue tag should not be capitalised.
This bit was very hard to follow. Remember that you need a new line every time somebody new speaks.
While the creature is an interesting concept, it feels irrelevant to go off at a tangent describing it. Fantasy settings often feel far more immersive when you don't stop to explain what the characters are talking about. It gives them an air of mystery. You can always have an Adiro Felle show up later in the story and describe it then, after the reader has had time to wonder about it.
Haha! I liked this bit.
This is expressed in an unnecessarily wordy way. You could tighten it up to something like:
Jean pushed his digging goggles up into his hair. They left rectangular red imprints around his eyes.
It's difficult to work out who is speaking here. Include some dialogue tags on the first two lines so we know which ones are Jean's and which are Annalise's.
Overall Thoughts
1) The thing I love best about this piece is the creativity and thought you've put into the setting. It really feels unique. I love the whole idea of luminescent mushrooms and roots, and I'm intrigued as to why the light is depleting and how the community will cope without it (though I suppose Jean's discovery might come in handy in that respect). Even though it's an underground cave system and I'm very much a soft-sofas-and-warm-blankets person, I kind of want to go there. It seems cosy, somehow, but perilous at the same time.
2) The relationship between Jean and Annalise is also good. There's a nice rapport between them, and while they make a great sibling unit, they also feel like distinct characters in their own right.
3) For the most part, the content of your dialogue is fine, but you have a strange way of representing it. Example:
You've got a strange, script-like format going on, but it's not consistent, and you often combine it with traditional he said/she said dialogue clauses. You need to standardise it. If you want to write this as a novel, do away with this format and swap it out for the more typical dialogue representation, with speech marks and dialogue tags and suchlike.
As I mentioned in the nitpicks section, you also need to watch out for when your dialogue gets difficult to follow. It's sometimes hard to tell who is saying what because you skimp on dialogue tags, or you mention a character directly after the dialogue even though they aren't the one speaking. It's not a major problem, but look out for it in redrafting.
4) You also have a habit of missing out commas prior to subordinate clauses. Here's what I mean:
It isn't an error you always make, but you periodically struggle a bit with these kind of 'ing' clauses. They should look like this:
Its spores float endlessly in the air, blinking in the same way [the light] does
Jean spread his arms out, showing off the array of starlight
Thin, feathery worms glide across caverns, faintly illuminating Jean and Annalise
If you want the 'ing' clause to modify the subject of the entire clause, you generally need a comma. If you don't put that comma in, the 'ing' clause looks like it's modifying a different part of the sentence. I'll try to make this clearer with some examples.
The light hit the statue shining on the mantelpiece.
If we dissect the meaning of this sentence, we can see that it means the light hit the statue that was shining on the mantelpiece. 'Shining on the mantelpiece' modifies the statue, because it tells us what the statue is doing.
The light hit the statue, shining on the mantelpiece.
However, if we dissect the meaning of this sentence, we can see that it means the light hit the statue and was shining on the mantelpiece. In this instance, 'shining on the mantelpiece' modifies the light, not the statue, because it says what the light is doing.
Because you often forget the comma, it makes it look like your 'ing' clauses are modifying the wrong thing. This makes them confusing to read. It's an easily fixed issue, but one I wanted to explain in proper detail.
In order to work out whether you need a comma before an 'ing' clause or not, ask yourself what that 'ing' clause is providing extra information about. If it's modifying the subject, then you'll need a comma. If it's modifying the object, you don't need a comma.
I'm sorry if that explanation was really confusing! It's difficult to break it down simply without using technical terms. If there's anything that isn't clear, feel free to ask me. Google is your friend, too.
5) Your writing style is a little slapdash in places. I sometimes feel like you reach for the simplest descriptors and imagery rather than finding a unique, original perspective to take on what you're describing. Your expression can be overly-wordy and a tad haphazard, as well. Nevertheless, I think that's only because this is a very early draft, so I won't labour the point. It's better to get your ideas roughed out and organised before you fuss too much about metaphors and description.
6) For my last point, I'd say that this is intriguing as an opening, but I don't think it's best to start with two paragraphs of description. You captured my interest fully when Jean came to wake Annalise up, so it might be better to start with that and then integrate the description of the mushroom a little while after, just so you don't lose the reader's interest. Other than that, this held my attention all the way through; the pacing was good, and you managed the tricky balance between worldbuilding, characterisation and plot development. Once you've ironed this out, I think you'll be onto something great.
I'll call the review here. Sorry if I rambled at any point! If you want me to explain anything in more detail or give my opinion on something I didn't mention, please let me know. Also, can you tag me if you post more of this? I'd like to know what happens next.
Keep writing!
~Pan
Thank you very much for the useful information!
I agree with you that my descriptions were not very good. I suppose I just wrote something to help me remember what the settings are supposed to look like when I go to draw them.
Also, I apologize for the dialogue when it was unclear who was speaking. At first all I had was dialogue (who was saying it: "Jean:...") and a few descriptors sprinkled in here and graphic novels don't outright say who is speaking or how they say it (Speech bubbles/expressions). I struggled with trying to convert it to read like a novel and I let a few silly mistakes pass! :O
I appreciate the time you spent your review! Thanks again!