Prologue
Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful young girl named Ella. She had golden locks and dazzling blue eyes. She lived a relatively happy life with her parents in their manor until her mother died. Her father soon married a widow who was very elegant but also quite vain. She brought along her two other daughters after they got married. Her father soon died after being mysteriously poisoned, leaving Ella alone with her stepmother and stepsisters.
Her new family became abusive towards Ella after her father died. They made her the servant of the house and called her Cinderella because her face would always be covered in cinders after cleaning out the fireplace. Although in these conditions, she had to stay happy and play along because that was her story, her destiny and she dared not to go astray from it.
One day, her stepmother threw scalding hot tea on to Cinderella’s face because she didn’t make it sweet enough. Cinderella, having enough of the abuse for one day, ran away from her house and into an abandoned barn house. That’s where she met a young boy with auburn hair named Hunter. He was hugging his knees and sobbing softly by the wall.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. He explained that he was supposed to be the huntsman in the ‘Little Red Riding hood’ story but he did not want to kill the wolf as he had become very good friends with him and the wolf saved his life. She told him that she too does not like her story but reassured him that everything will be alright. The two soon became close friends and she would run away from time to time to come and meet him at the barn.
They would talk about anything and everything for hours long. Hunter would sometimes complain how his sister would constantly go into the woods alone and Cinderella would just laugh and make jokes to make him smile. They had a lot of fun times together and knew every little detail about each other. But alas, all good things must come to an end.
Soon the invitation to the ball arrived and then her fairy godmother appears and gives her a dress and a pumpkin carriage and glass slippers. Then she went to the ball and ran away at midnight and left her shoe and then she was found again by the prince, got married and lived happily ever after as her story should be.
But oddly enough, Cinderella felt incomplete. It was as if everything that happened felt surreal and fake. Everything they did was set out perfectly but it wasn’t what she imagined it to be. She spent countless days and nights thinking about it over and over again. Why is it that she couldn’t feel any attraction towards the prince? That was when she realized. She had already fallen in love with someone else; she had fallen in love with Hunter.
Cinderella was devastated. To go beyond your story was a dishonorable crime; to fall in love with someone outside of your story was punishable by death. Cinderella shook off her feelings for Hunter and tried to continue her happily ever after. It all went well until she realized that the Prince only wanted the most beautiful maiden as a wife and since every other princess was taken, she was his only choice.
She was planning to confront him but soon found out he was having an affair with a palace maid. He threatened to send her to prison is she ever went out of the castle or speak of the incident ever again. Cinderella, shocked and heartbroken, decided to call upon her fairy godmother once again to help her escape.
She managed to get out of the castle and find Hunter who had also escaped his destiny and saved the wolf instead. They took refuge in a forest where they built a house together and soon had two daughters; Snow-White, and Rose Red. They lived their own happily ever after and felt that their worries have finally come to an end. Unfortunately what they didn’t know was that the Evil Queen had found out about this and soon many others did as well. It caused people to believe that inter-story relationships were possible and that people could write their own destinies.
The Evil refused to let this happen. She believed that if people knew they could change their stories, then they could over-throw her. She hatched a plot and claimed that if they were to rebel against their story, them their story will be erased along with the people in it.
To make sure that people believed this, she ordered her guards to capture children with inter-story parents to be killed along with their parents and for the people who go astray from their destinies to be executed immediately. This was known as the Autumn Massacre.
It sparked a major civil war where brothers and sisters fought against each other. The Evil Queen then took over the entire world with an iron fist and struck fear into every heart and soul. Thousands were killed in the war and even more after the queen took over.
One unfortunate day, the queen’s guards found the home of Cinderella and she ordered them to capture her and have her executed on the spot. I was only 13 when it happened. My mother hid us in a tree stump and was captured. Supposedly my father was hunting during this time and he did not return.
I remember seeing my mother being shot by the guards, her eyes showed no fear and she was prepared to die. I shielded my little sister’s eyes as she cried in my arms. One shot, one bullet, and one final cry from our loving mother and then came the agonizing silence and the cruel laughter from the guards.
I soon made a quick escape after they left. I remembered my father talking about a place up north where people like us were being protected by the Red Queen and her sister. I took over the role of a mother for my sister and I realized I had to be strong, for my sister.
That was 3 years ago before everything in my world turned to black. My name is Snow white and this is the story of a war that changed my life and destiny forever.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
Heyo cat, Flite here for a very brief review. Since you've already got a pretty powerhouse review there really isn't much left for me to say here. So, this is going to be nice and brief. I want to correct you that this is not a prologue. Read the article[\url], this is information every writer needs to know. You have no idea how many prologues I encounter everyday reviewing works and I can promise, 9 out of 10 are just chapter 1 in disguise.
Another note, try and keep all your numerals under 100 written out in words, it's a convention most writers follow.
I will admit that I had trouble reading this and actually finishing it, not because the idea is bad but the way in which you narrated the story was incredibly mechanical. This is due to several problem, firstly because there was close to no description in here and when there was, there wasn't enough emotion in them. [url=https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/viewtopic.php?t=46916]Learn this skill, you will find it most helpful.
Secondly, you tend to have short sentences starting with pronouns and sequential conjunctions that is more suitable for an academic paper than a story. I'll show you what I mean by just taking a random paragraph out of your story.
Look at the start of your sentences, two out of three it's either a pronoun, article or a conjunction. Your sentence length also remains the same, short, medium or long and then short again. Overtime, this becomes tedious and flat to read. Add some variation into your sentence structure, on top of that try to incorporate what you have here into action or either describe it to us through action or dialogue. So that it isn't as bland.
Ehhhh, this ending is somewhat anti-climatic. It's not exactly very entrancing or make me want to read on, I'm interested but not that interested. This is what I'd expect out of a talk show, or some dramatic TV series.
'Hi, my name is _____, and this is the story of my life.'
Hmmm, not that interesting. There are better ways to convey that message, don't be so blunt and honest with everything. Learn to be subtle, learn to imply and foreshadow certain things, keep the readers guessing, you have a right to do that.
I hope I've helped in some ways, if you have any questions, please let me know. Last of all, I want you to know that with every writers there are always problems to be fixed. Don't let this discourage you, I've heard your idea and I think it can go places but the writing could be trimmed. As it is with all of us.
Best of luck.
-Flite
Thank you so much for the review! ^^ Got to be honest, I over-thought a little during the writing I think because I was scared that I revealed too much in this prologue because there's a secret here that is really important in the future. At the same time I was afraid of showing too little and not writing enough info for some of the things. I was quite happy to read reviews like yours and pan. They may be harsh, but they really tell me what I'm doing wrong.
:)(::)(::)(::)
Thank you again for such an honest review ^^ and I hope the next chapter would be less terrible.
On a side note:
Have a cookie
xD, I'm glad you could take it. I'll be sure to review future works. *noms cookie*
Hey! I'm Pan, and I'll be delighted to review your work today.
I do have a tendency to ramble in my critiques, so I'll try and keep to three main tips for improvement. Before that, however, I must give my compliments.
I really like the idea. It's original and engaging, definitely something that you could run with, and it will give you a lot of scope to develop and reform aspects of existing fairy tales, which should be fun. You set it up in a way that made me keep reading, too, which is the most important thing. As for the writing, it's clean and simple, but, as far as I could see, mostly devoid of typos and spelling mistakes. Good job on that.
Now for my three tips:
Tip 1: Sentence Structure
I like the ease of your writing and its simplicity, but I feel that it would benefit from being a little more adventurous with sentence length and structure. Right now, it's a bit stilted, almost like bullet points, so it doesn't flow as it should. All you need to do to solve this is make use of a couple of connectives and commas, just so that the narrative isn't disrupted. Here's what I mean. Let's look at this quote:
It feels a little stoppy-starty to me. With the addition of a few commas and such, it could read more like this:
'Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful young girl named Ella. She had golden locks, dazzling blue eyes, and lived a relatively happy life with her parents in their manor until her mother died. Soon after, her father married a widow who was very elegant but also quite vain, who brought along her two other daughters. Her father soon died after being mysteriously poisoned, leaving Ella alone with her stepmother and stepsisters.'
Only subtle changes, and I'm sure you could do better than me if you dedicated more time to it, but you see what I mean. If you read your work aloud, which is something I always do, it should give you and idea of whether the rhythm and length of your sentences is suitable.
Step 2: Tenses
Sometimes you slip into the wrong tense or use an incorrect verb. I only noticed it once or twice, but it's something you have to be mindful of.
Instead of 'appears' and 'gives', it should be 'appeared' and 'gave'.
Instead of 'speak', put 'spoke'. Also, I believe that you meant to say 'if she ever went out' rather than 'is'. Just a typo.
Step 3: Revealing Too Much at Once
In writing, you mustn't be afraid to hide things from the reader and spring it on them later. Personally - and this is just my opinion; you don't have to agree with it - I feel that this prologue would be more effective if it wasn't so detailed, as less is sometimes more. If you were to only take some of the elements - just describing the massacre, perhaps, and being vaguer about why it was caused - then the mystery presented may entice the reader further and make it a more mysterious read. By all means, you could discuss the life that Cinderella and Hunter had, and go into greater detail about the laws of the world and the pressure to conform to your tale, but spread it out over the novel so that the reader would come to a gradual understanding. Whilst your ideas are good, it feels like you're fighting to get them into the open at the moment, so as to plant the reader onto an even playing field as soon as possible. That's not as exciting as a slow discovery.
Again, just food for thought.
Anyway, it's nearly midnight and I can barely keep my eyes open, so I'm going to have to conclude my review here. Good work - I love the idea; it just needs a little refinement.
Keep writing!
~Pan
Thank you so much for the detailed review ^^ I'll be honest, I was so scared to read it, but there was a lot of helpful criticism. I was always taught that detail and description was key to the story and well, I just followed what they taught me but at the same time I was afraid it might not move the story along as smoothly. The "revealing things too much" don't worry, there's so much I'm hiding in this prologue that you'll find out in the future
. I'll try to polish the next chapter a little more and I hope you'd like it 
Thank you again.
You're welcome! I hope you continue with this.
I like what you did there. Disney crap is just a reused happily ever after cliche. Disney reuses the cliche more than a rechargeable battery gets reused in the 90s. You made the stories used more interesting so I like what you did here. Would love to see where you go from here. Disney just makes repetitive garbage that you can predict in the first ten minutes of a movie. Your story is just awesome and I look forward to seeing it through.
Haha thanks. I personally love all the dark Alice in Wonderlands stories. It's just sooo cool! Thanks for the review ^^ I have more on the way but maybe a bit different than you think.
Still better than disney. You don't have to try to write better than disney. But you're really good, haven't read many dark versions of Disney stories, I have read a few that weren't really too my taste. But to be as bad as Disney takes effort. You did a good job of taking crap stories, putting an interesting spin on them, and keeping it interesting.