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139,613 Literary Works • 672,625 Reviews
Since I’ve read this story already, I have a good idea what’s going on, but I’m not sure how new readers will take it. I remember the first time through I was confused, and this is an awful lot of stuff to keep track of. Eh, you’re just going to have to get separate opinions for that. I do like how you set it up though, I think it flows well.
I can see people getting confused about who They and Them are and what exactly these Divines are. You can imagine the Divines being gods, but then you show them being banished, which is strange. Then you have Zayn, prince of the dark, being one of the good guys. So these things MIGHT trip people up, but then again it’s impossible to tell
Is it just me, or did you add more violence to his torture session? X) This is the first time I think I’ve ever said it, but it might’ve been a little too much for me. But that might just be because I have a strange thing with whips. Anyways, kudos for actually making my chest hurt in that part. Only, being disturbed to that level is probably not a good thing. Definitely be sure to keep the rating up, and hope that this won’t offend any readers. It’s tough to put a scene like that in the beginning of a novel.
Enough ranting, I thought your writing was much improved. The opening scene was my favorite, it had great romance. And if that beginning hook about fear doesn’t get readers on the edge of their seats, I don’t know what will x)
Let me know if you’ve got questions?
Thanks for all the help you guys
I'll edit as soon as I get to a computer. The only issue that I've had with the iPhone is the inability to do much editing from it.
Awesome! Very compelling and gripping, your description of his pain and dismal situation. I like how you’ve hinted at so many things, yet really told us nothing at all except for who’s right and wrong in this battle.
It really sounds like They have a point though, why is Zayn letting the world fall apart? Is he?
We’ll need some answers to this. If Zayn is merely withholding information because he’s selfish, it’ll be kinda hard to accept him as the hero. The good guy.
Nevertheless, for just this prologue, your approach was good.
My nitpicks below. I hope I don’t make you cry too much.
At first, I wondered if there were too many words in that intro paragraph. But then I began to wonder about something else. What exactly does it have to do with the story? Sure, there’s plenty of fear and all, but unless Fear itself has some spotlight role, I would consider cutting this out.
Also, you slip up a little.
“by it's unforgiving weight.”
In this case, you wish to show Fear’s possession over weight, so normally you would add an apostrophe after the word. However, in the case of ‘its’, you merely leave it alone.
“by its unforgiving weight.”
What you wrote was it’s, and therefore ‘it is’.
“by it is unforgiving weight.”
Doesn’t make much sense.
I would replace ‘A’ with ‘The’, just to give it more importance. It is, after all, the first line of the story, so I think it should be brought out a little more.
Cut the ‘so that’, it really sounds better that way.
This is a fragment, and therefore grammatically incorrect. However, for the style of story you’re writing, it sounds just about right. It’s all your choice: cut or modify?
Technically, your sweat beads at the starting point, then trickles down. Also, that last little ‘despite the cold’ is out of place.
You should list this sweat-journey as so.
Despite the cold – sweat beaded at the forehead – rolled down the bridge of his nose – collected on his upper lip
See?
‘Infection’ and ‘fester’ should be pluralized. Also, I would cut ‘fester’.
‘Boiled’ does not seem to be the right word here. You already spoke about one sort of skin damage, so saying ‘boiled’ instantly conjured the mental image of actual boils. Try replacing that verb.
‘Lashes and gashes’ is redundant. Reduce it to ‘gashes’ and you’re golden.
‘Back, shoulders and chest’ is a lengthy list. I would suggest saying ‘body’ and leaving it at that.
This is what the correct sentence would look like:
“The sting of infections churned in the gashes that marred his body.”
Alternately:
“The stings of infection churned in the gashes that marred his body.”
This is an over-used cliché. One that, I must confess, has entered my own works here and there. Try to bring a sense of claustrophobia with a different set of words, or with an entirely new idea. I’m sure you can do it.
‘Within’ and ‘Inwardly’ are redundant, naming the same thing twice. Likewise, you say ‘chest’ twice.
Also, you slip up with the same old ‘its’ that I mentioned at the beginning.
That last bit seems a little too weak…no pun intended. Seriously, I would consider cutting it.
But I thought he just ‘managed to maintain a calm, quiet countenance, refusing to display his own fear’. How now this silent misery and defeat?
‘Heartbeats’, one word. Also, this whole sentence seems a bit wordy. Find some way to get rid of one ‘as’ and to cut unnecessary prepositional phrases.
Also, I would cut that first ‘Even’.
Again, as I suggested at the beginning. You should replace ‘A’ with ‘The’, just to emboss it a little.
His pupils or eyeballs would have been illuminated, not his eyelids. Unless you mean that his eyes were closed and that he could see the red glow of his blood through the eyelids. You know what I mean? Like when you close your eyes and look at the sun.
Oh…wait. “…as though he was staring directly into the sun”
I see.
Read that again slowly. See something wrong? No? Read again.
Reminds me a lot of what Eragon goes through, setting up ‘mind barriers’.
But he’s feeling these consciences, right? Also, why would he be thinking about comfort, satisfaction and paradise with all this darkness and pain around him?
You need a space between ice, and ‘While.
‘Worlds’ should be ‘world’s’
‘The all’ sounds strange. Unless ‘all’ is an object, person or place, then you should cut the ‘the’.
‘Us’ should be ‘is’, and, while we’re at it, isn’t “My patience is wearing thin” one of the most clichéd things for a villain to say?
Also, you need a space between word, and ‘I.
‘A’ guttural ‘cry’ is singular. For something to be ‘in unison’ there must be two of those happenings or objects. Therefore, you should have said, “…and guttural cries sounded in unison.”
‘Wrought’ should be ‘brought’
Also, you need a space between back, and ‘The.
You need a space between menacingly, and ‘I’ll.
You need a space between face, and ‘And.
‘Chaos’ seems a little out of place right there at the end.
Sheesh, this guy likes to talk a lot.
I think ‘owns’ should be changed to ‘has’, or something similar.
You need a space between tense, and ‘No.
“You leave me no choice,” is probably more cliché than “My patience is running thin,” Your villain here is really pulling out all the stops.
Also, you need a space between Voice, and ‘We.
Comma between ‘spoke’ and ‘a’.
‘Zayn’ is mentioned at the end of one sentence and then picked up at the start of the next. That close of a redundancy screams to me.
What retracted? You got me confused with your pronouns here. Is it Zayn’s strangled cry or the cold steel blade?
This ‘others’ is apart from They, and yet they are ‘no better than those who held him captive now’. Who are the ‘others’? This part serves to thoroughly confuse me. I know you may not want a solid, all-questions-answered prologue, but this is no longer mysterious; it’s bewildering.
So, I hope that it wasn’t too much (5 pages!) but you should expect that for all the rest of your chapters…sometime soon…maybe.
Once again, you’re doing a great job with this. I love your voice in it, short and full of action, very pulling. Good for a prologue, but not for the whole novel.
Here if you need me,
Jenth
Hey Bel, how are you? Sorry I am a bit late. But I'll try to make up for it.
Use something to separate your list from the later part of the sentence. Maybe a semi-colon, or else it'd look confusing.
Spoiler
For the first line(rather word), and the one that followed I was totally hooked on. I seriously liked the beginning. I am a little confused on if I liked your constant repetition of the word 'fear'. In a way it was nice to have the word again and then ee its different dimensions but the last time you used this word, I seriously didn't like it. You should remove the word from the last part of the first paragraph-it's ruining the fun. You might want to check out those typos you had in here. Just read this again, and you'll be able to find out.
My biggest problem would be that in the beginning there was 'he' a lot. We were so exposed to his fear, his state that at a point I became disinterested. I know you have to show all this-don't delete any of it, but what I'd suggest you to do would be to in between bring on the atmosphere, what all he could see. Just show from his 'eyes' a bit. Because one kind of description can seriously pull off your readers. Even though, I have to say that these descriptions were not repetitive but I can't say if the reader would like to read them in one block of text. A little bit of distraction to other insignificant, but attractive things would make readers' attention span at one place. So don't go on with that, too, just use it to break off the continuous mention of his state. It'd ease up your writing a bit, and give readers a break.
I am speechless now. I don't have much to suggest here since your piece is great. Your descriptions and words were excellent, and the way you narrated was also captivating. The words were good, but sometimes I just felt that in between some easy or simple sentence you were trying to put something extravagant. It might be good or bad-I am not sure, but keep in mind not to confuse your readers by whatever you decide to do-not that you confused us. What I felt, maybe it's just me though, that you were just going on and on with his pain in the first part i.e. before Voice entered, but then as he hit Zayn with the whip, there wasn't much of physical pain evolved. I think that whatever you described was good, but maybe you should cut it down a bit before and add in after the lashes scene. The reason is that in the beginning the readers would be content in knowing that the person was suffering badly, but it is more essential to know his pain after he's been lashed. Maybe you need not cut anything, just add in more, but then that depends on you.
My other critique would be that you used a lot of ellipsis in your dialog, which I can't say about others but they were definitely quite distracting to me. So you should cut them out, because else it'd look completely weird. You need not have so many pauses in your dialog, so maybe slowing down would help. Other thing that I am not sure of, and is more of a question is that did you hide this Voice's personality, descriptions on purpose or you just didn't get on with it? Anyways, I am not sure what you have in mind so it is best to wait until next part.
The one thing that I'd surely say is that you had a brilliant advantage of third person POV, and you could have used this fact more brilliantly. For me, this could have been better. In the first half, you could have gone around explaining what all was there around more because it's not Zayn's POV, for if it had been then maybe you would have been a bit restrained to go on this way. Partly because his condition wasn't such that he could describe and notice every bit of detain. So since it's not that case, I'd like you to notice thispoint and probably work on it. Also, you could have added on the magic third person narration creates.
Best of luck, and I hope I was of help.
~Shrubbery
Wow just wow. From the first paragraph you had me hooked. I really loved your descriptions and how we don't even konw who these people really are yet but I was already thinking to myself 'NOOOOOO WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE!' I also like how you slowly brought the reader into the story. Over all, I can't come up with anything bad to say with out repeating what other people have said. I'm going to race to the next chapter now.
Hi there!
comma after shoulders. Maybe you should say infectionS and festerS? The sentence seems a bit long.
Just a suggestion, but maybe you could italicize a word for added effect?
“I will break you…” or
“I will break you…”
However you thought it sounded in your head.
Wow, this is great. The mood you set for this scene was beautifully dark and violent, and I thought it was a great take on the ‘hero undergoing torture’ scenario. Most people make the mistake of adding in a lot of heroic dialogue and such, but you really let the descriptions speak here, which I loved. ‘The Voice’ seems truly sadistic, and he certainly seems to be evil enough to be a good villain.
So definitely keep it up. Great descriptions, and great introduction of characters. The only thing I thought you could change would be having quotation mark for their speech, but that wasn't really a big distraction for me.
Let me know if you’re posting more!
Thanks for the read.
Hey there, AllyGrLxOx here for a review!
I'll start the review by saying that the way you began this chapter utterly blew me away! I LOVED the way you described fear.
This piece was so intriguing, the whole thing had a dark, dangerous and painful feeling.
It was like I could feel your MC's pain when the Voice was taunting him about killing her. (Even though us readers don't know who her is yet! xD)
You also have some, gruesome, yet wonderful descriptions!
That was one of them!
You tended to use alot of ellipsis throughout your dialogue, I'd try using more periods instead and only use an ellipsis every now and then.
I didn't think that this sentence flowed very well, some editing maybe?
There were also some sentences that I didn't think flowed correctly however that can be easily fixed with some quick revisions!
It might've been just me but whenever the Voice spoke to him in that manner I couldn't help but think of the Devil telling someone they're worthless and to give up?
Was that the feel you were going for?
This was a magnificent way to end the chapter, it helps to leave the reader gawking at what just went on between Zayn and the Voice!
Overall this whole thing was amazing to read, so I'd appreciate it if you'd PM me when the next chapter is up!
Any questions?
Feel free to PM me(:
Hi there!
Can I say, wow? I liked this a lot, and am surprised that no one else has oogled over it yet. Your descriptions are powerful, and the MC draws the reader in. Your diction sets a good, dark, dangerous tone, as well. I love a good hero story, and Zayn is a fantastic hero. My only suggestion to you would be to cut out some of the ellipses in this piece. Other than in dialogue, ellipses can distract from the flow of the narrative instead of enhancing it. Thank you so much for sharing this piece! I really loved it.