Young Writers Society

Nicely done. You left the reader gueesing to what just happened and you gave only the info you needed. Keep righting

rosethorn wrote:Unless it is absolutely necessary for the story, you should name your characters. It is agitating for them to only differ between "young" man and "old" man. Seeing that you give a name to the younger one at the end, keeping the name from the reader at the beginning seems to serve no purpose.

Dialogue is great to start with because the reader automatically tunes in to what they are saying. I really liked your dialogue because it's very real and demonstrates character.

Good not to tell the reader who is speaking each and every time. Because, as they've said, it gets irritating.

“When will I know why?” the youngster persisted.

“You might not ever know.”

“Where are you taking him? He is my friend.”

“Somewhere he will be safe. Do not worry yourself. Everything is set in motion. All that is left is for the pieces to fall into place. Give it time. These matters do not concern you any longer.”

The man turned from the boy.

At the beginning of this text, I am already envisioning the older man walking away and the younger one pursuing him. Eh?

That's about it. Vague beginning but it serves its purpose.

As always,

Miss POKE

Unless it is absolutely necessary for the story, you should name your characters. It is agitating for them to only differ between "young" man and "old" man. Seeing that you give a name to the younger one at the end, keeping the name from the reader at the beginning seems to serve no purpose.

Dialogue is great to start with because the reader automatically tunes in to what they are saying. I really liked your dialogue because it's very real and demonstrates character.

Good not to tell the reader who is speaking each and every time. Because, as they've said, it gets irritating.

“When will I know why?” the youngster persisted.

“You might not ever know.”

“Where are you taking him? He is my friend.”

“Somewhere he will be safe. Do not worry yourself. Everything is set in motion. All that is left is for the pieces to fall into place. Give it time. These matters do not concern you any longer.”

The man turned from the boy.

Fantasy of You wrote:I'm sorry if I repeat what anyone else has said. Time is against me at the moment.

“Why?” the young boy said weakly.

Here's a rule for you. Never, ever describe your tags. Ever - especially with adjectives. If you have to spell out to me how someone is speaking for me to understand them, you'st lost. If I know how the person is speaking because I know the situation, you've won.

Like I said, never. There are not a lot of things I'd actually say 'never' to. But this would be one of them.


The beginning throws me a little. I don't like dialogue without characters. And basically, that's what you have. The opening begs for some telegraphing of who these people are, where they are. Something to transform the dialogue into speech. A simple 'x stood there and...' is fine. It's basic, but it's fine.


Also, meanwhile and sixteen years later should go. Lose them. Rip them up and throw them into the fire. You don't need them. You're good enough of a writer to let me know what's going on without shouting it into my ear.

*** = time change.

And lose the meanwhile all together. It's understandable without.

Hope I helped, loved the concept.

-Fantasy

I'm sorry if I repeat what anyone else has said. Time is against me at the moment.

“Why?” the young boy said weakly.

Here's a rule for you. Never, ever describe your tags. Ever - especially with adjectives. If you have to spell out to me how someone is speaking for me to understand them, you'st lost. If I know how the person is speaking because I know the situation, you've won.

Like I said, never. There are not a lot of things I'd actually say 'never' to. But this would be one of them.


The beginning throws me a little. I don't like dialogue without characters. And basically, that's what you have. The opening begs for some telegraphing of who these people are, where they are. Something to transform the dialogue into speech. A simple 'x stood there and...' is fine. It's basic, but it's fine.


Also, meanwhile and sixteen years later should go. Lose them. Rip them up and throw them into the fire. You don't need them. You're good enough of a writer to let me know what's going on without shouting it into my ear.

*** = time change.

And lose the meanwhile all together. It's understandable without.

Hope I helped, loved the concept.

-Fantasy

writergirl007 wrote:Pretty good. Put more. Add detail. People like to have a background in order to understand the setting. Tell what's happening. But, I think you have a great start and a wonderful idea.

There is hardly anything there to base any constructive criticism on, but if you add more to the plot and characters, you could get a lot more help.

RR*

Ah!
Firstly, great title. I look forward to watching this story live up to it! I'm a sucker for come-hither titles; yours was the reason I started reading this.
First, I agree with Aero, way up there^. This would be a really good 'teaser' sort of thing; right now it's kind of oddly broken up for a prologue.
Second, just two little things. One, the bit where he calls Tyson's complete disappearance 'the cherry on top of his guilt' is distracting. Cherries->sundaes->good things! (Or at least I think so.) It would work better if Stephen was being presented as the cynical sort of character who would say such a thing, and at this point, he doesn't seem like that kind of person. Just something to look at.
Also, where you say 'the old man Stephen had met had kept his promise to Stephen', 'Stephen had met' is unnecessary.

You've got me intrigued in this story. Keep at it, and feel free to PM me if you've got any questions.

Pretty good. Put more. Add detail. People like to have a background in order to understand the setting. Tell what's happening. But, I think you have a great start and a wonderful idea.

Oh my gosh.

There's a reason why it doesn't make sense. For some reason the computer I was using hiccupped and cut off half of the prologue! *dies*

I'll put the rest up right now.

School computers. What's a girl to do?

Edit: Fixed. I would have checked it at school but I was late and in a rush.

Add more, there's hardly anything there.

Elaborate!

Overall, I actually like the idea you have going, but you really need to elaborate (you don't have much yet). I realize and acknowledge what other people have said. If you made this a 'teaser' this would actually be kind of cool. Lots of writers, ex: Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen King, use teasers as their prologues which work very well. In case you're not sure what I mean by a teaser I'll give you a short definition. A teaser is a scene that will actually happen later on in the story. It's kind of like giving the reader a glimpse into the future so they are hooked and have a reason to read on, which I think is a very cool concept. I'm not sure if this is how you meant it, because I'm not sure where you're going, but if this is how you meant it, then I think it has potential.

So lets go on with ways it can be improved, shall we? First of all, I'm not sure what to think of these characters. You don't show us a setting, or really the characters for that matter. Your dialogue is good, but you don't really show us anything but dialogue. So as you can see there is a problem. Dialogue itself cannot really give an amazing effect. It's the stuff that surrounds dialogue, the beats, combined with the dialogue that give it the whole effect. Now, you may be asking what a beat is. Well, a beat is little tidbits of action between the dialogue that give you senses of emotion, character, and action. Cool things? Definitely. Here is a rough example...(Making this up off the top of my head.)

"Oh," John said, "I thought you said seven-thirty not six-thirty. I'm so sorry Delila."

"Its-" Delila sniffed, "okay." She brushed back the tears revealing her big green eyes.
"I just," she paused blowing into her satin kerchief, "I just was so hoping for a wonderful night," she leaned forward touching his hand gently, "we haven't had one in a long time, John."

(this was a very short example) As you can see I bolded the beats so you could pick them out. The beats in this short example reveal a tadbit about these quick characters I made up. I didn't reveal a whole lot about John, but I did reveal that Delila is more of an emotional woman and cherishes these times she gets with John. In three tiny paragraphs I have revealed a bit about her character, her emotion, and brought action/movement to the scene. Of course, this isn't the best example since it's off the top of my head. But I'm sure you can grab any novel and pick out the beats now.

I would suggest you go through editing this and think of ways of how you can show the characters through the beats around the dialogue. You may have to slow down the pace a bit by doing this (maybe even add a little narrative summary, Caution if you do), but I believe it may put forth a better draft. Find ways of bringing in action that will show emotion, the tense air, things like that. It will really bring the prologue to life.

I can feel a great prologue just itching to break out here for some reason and I really want you to succeed with it. If you edit correctly, and I think you're capable of doing that it will be very good. Good luck!

~Aero

Ok, this is quite an odd intro to a story. Firstly it is greatly lacking description, describing the place, time, and weather can add some extra emphasis on emotion and the actions of the people (for this im seeing alleyway, late evening, setting sun, light breeze, around fall?). It all depends where you are wanting to go with this; and with what you have written i'm left quite in the dark. Not very grabbing for a prologue, i suggest you work on that (add more description, and change up the dialouge a bit). Also a more definite age would help explain/dictate the boy's actions/words, rather than young one, because that is mainly just a point of veiw. Just some suggestions i thought might be helpfull.

-DQ

Well, I changed it, so this is more or less of a bump, which I'm totally ashamed of.

Well, thanks for what you guys had to say.

I actually think I'm going to scrap the whole prologue and write a new one, because I came up with a better idea for one today. I couldn't figure out how I could fuse this with the first chapter- the first chapter goes off on a completely different tangent and introduces a different character- so I'm going to spend the next few days writing and re-writing a new prologue and I'll post it when I'm done. Probably by Friday or so.

Thanks again guys/girls (/too lazy to check). Your comments were honestly helpful.

Hmm... I'm not quite sure about this as a prologue. Usually, the prologues I like are those that are stories within the stories. For instance, let's take a look at something inside YWS, shall we?

viewtopic.php?t=5436&highlight=

One of the things that makes this prologue so good is that chapter one immediately goes into Io Tenti's story. This is just a side story.

So consider expanding this to your first chapter, okay? ^_^ Prologues are not an excuse to have vague conflict, lol.

A frigid wind blew viciously around Tyson, making his jet-black hair dance to its own rhythm.