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125,006 Literary Works • 672,809 Reviews
Here to review!
Oh, this is fascinating! The prologue itself was good enough, but the opening section was very static and descriptive. It might have been better if you kept the descriptions localised, in the room, and not gone outside. Then you could start to change elements of the interior—Rueben yawns, a pen falls off his desk, something in that line.
Spelling and grammar:
Keep the tenses in line. "His head had sunk into his desk," would be a better choice.
"Vigorously" seems unnecessary, and somewhat out of place. Maybe, if you want to use an adverb at all, use "violently". You are missing several commas in the next sentence, and 'splintering' is used incorrectly. I would also suggest breaking it up to change the sentence structure. Here:
"Her nails dug into the wooden floor, clenching her teeth in pain. Splinters penetrated her skin, but she couldn’t keep her grip."
The 'in amusement' is superfluous seeing as he is already laughing. The 'then' is also unnecessary.
I don't know if this was deliberate, but if not, I would suggest "I'll keep you alive, Jasko."
You have several of these sort of mistakes in your piece.
General:
Nice action, not too heavy in information dumps, with fascinating characters and already a moving plot. But beware of your long, winding sentences. Try to keep to at most two conjunctions in a sentence. Remember that short sentences convey action and motion better, but you need to have a balance between long and short sentences.
Be careful with commas. Some places in your sentences need them and they don't have any. Others would do better with a full stop than the current comma. Others don't need anything at all. Just look out for them!
Well done.
Keep the ink flowing!
barefootrunner
Hi,
First for some nit picking,
Jasko Rueben had fallen asleep while researching a magical artifact that a customer had quested for earlier. His head sunk into his desk, many ancient books lay open with pages full of sigils and long forgotten languages around him. His shadow was cast against the wooden walls of his bedroom study. The room was silent but the streets below were filled with howling sirens that darted between the sounds of engines of cars speeding down a nearby motorway.
I think, for an opening sentence in a novel, I felt it was too descriptive and maybe you need to redo it.
Another part was that on a hunch, I felt that some of your sentences where too short, ending in full stops before I could really understand it.
Other then that a good opening statement.
I'm sorry, my review was a little brief as I have to go, but I really enjoyed this story and thought it was very well written!
Thanks
You need something better as a first opening statement. As it is now it’s too complex, too long and gives too much information. Instead you should aim to slowly introduce your story and make your reader comfortable in that first paragraph. You know setting the mood, the settings, the events or actions going on gradually. I think you can just switch around the sentences of that first paragraph and the issue will be fixed.
“Being the middle of winter in Paris, having any windows or doors open was a ludicrous idea.” I suggest getting rid of the first –ing, in general you should be wary of too many -ings.
You tend to go for the complex structures and long sentences, sometimes something short and simple can express your idea or description just as well. I’d also advise reading your dialogue or even narration out loud, it will give you a better feel of your story and help you smooth out the flow. Also you tend to use complex words here and there. Again sometimes you should just go for the less fancy and more simplistic choice, like dismay instead of despondency for example.
When he is locking the door if you prefer to use progressive you should add something to it like “began locking the doors one by one” or the sort. Same for the second part of the sentence, for example “satisfied when they had all clicked” or something. Otherwise the ending of the sentence and the next sentence seem a bit disjointed from the beginning. It also ruins the flow a bit.
Towards the end where you give a glimpse of how he found her you might wish to slow down and elaborate a bit. I don’t mean provide more information, I think what you have is great, just take your time presenting it.
So overall nice beginning. There’s some polishing and revision of the language to do, but that’s normal for first drafts. It seems like a promising story and you managed to establish your characters and the foundations of your world well.
Hey, there! This is Shooting Stars as requested.
Just try to develop the characters a bit more. I don't even know what Jasko or Delilli look like! O___o
You told me to critique you on how interesting this piece is, and I have to say that I wanted to keep reading. It was exciting and full of interest, but I have to say that it moved a little too fast. You didn't have very much time to develop characters, but maybe you wanted it to have action in the first few paragraphs.
There weren't many grammar errors, which is good.
One thing, however is to make sure you have letters capitalized in the right places. I noticed that sometimes the beginning letter of a sentence wasn't capitalized.
I really like this prologue and I think it is a great set-up for a good story. It honestly does make me want to continue!
---Shooting Stars