Young Writers Society

Hey! So overall, great imagery, but there are some grammatical errors I'd suggest fixing:
First off, the "in" in "in this moment" would sound a whole lot smoother if it were to be changed to an "at" (just sounds way better, and grammatically correct. This is a super nit-picky thing, though.)
The "was" in "I wish I was dead" should be changed to a "were." (Subjunctive form is used in sentences expressing a wish, demand, or suggestion.)
In "For a split second, I don't remember all the bad things that has happened." The "has" should be switched out with "have," because it's in the past tense.
Altogether, a good start to a story, and I'm looking forward to seeing more!

Hey DepressedCat! Here with a quick review.

This prologue is a bit short, so I won't have too much to say about plot/characters until your first chapter is out. I'll start with nit-picks and critique, then finish with what I liked about it.

First off, the only things that I think could be improved in this are the flow of a couple sentences and description.

I actually really like the mystery and the fact that you've only revealed enough information to catch the reader's attention, but I do think you should have at least a little sensory details and description of the setting. I like your descriptions of the metallic taste of blood, the feeling of blood tickling the main character's nose, and the silence, but you don't ever describe where exactly the character is. You could add just a few words to make this more clear by saying that the setting is a dark grove of trees- or that MC is lying on a cold tiled kitchen floor.

You could also add more detail by saying something like "the ropes dug into my wrists and I could feel the cold barrel of the gun on the back of my head". I'd maybe add in that they could hear the men cussing at them, and add a bit of their dialogue. You could reveal the main character's gender through the men's dialogue also, which would help give the reader a better picture of who this story is about.

That's the biggest thing I noticed about this prologue, so the rest of my critique is just nitpicks or small things that bothered me about specific sentences.

Other than the lack of sensory details, a couple of sentences and word choices stuck out to me. You use the word "taste" twice in the sentence "The taste of blood spreads in my mouth, and it tastes like I have a piece of metal in there, threatening to choke me", which messes with the flow of the writing. I'd change "tastes" to "feels" or just reword the sentence so that each noun/verb is only used once.

You also switch from present to past tense a couple times throughout the prologue, so you might want to go back and make sure the tense stays consistent.

There's one tiny typo in the sentence "For a split second, I don't remember all the bad things that has happened". I think you meant to write "have".

Now that's over with, here's some praise

Overall, I really liked this. It almost feels like something I'd write, since I love first person, a bit (okay, a lot) of angst, and putting focus on what the main character thinks and feels. I like how you immediately dive into the action instead of starting this story with an infodump. The lack of huge paragraphs and walls of text, as well as the exciting first line, is what caught my attention and made me keep reading.

Even without a ton of sensory details, you did a good job of drawing me into the story and making me interested in the situation. I like the mystery and have a ton of questions that I want to find the answers to- which is good. The fact that the main character feels they deserve the punishment and wants to die is intriguing to me as well.

Hope this helps, and good luck writing!
Aly

The emotion in this piece was absolutely incredible. Your descriptions are perfect and really capture the theme. I wish there was something that I could critique, but this story is perfect just the way that it is. I would really like to read a prequel to this to see how the character got to this point. Amazing work on this story!