“Who are you?” I said in a low voice as a black figure lurking in the white space.
She didn’t reply. She just stood there as if waiting for me to figure out the answer. I was in the white space suddenly and I don’t know where I am. I thought I was dreaming, yes I was and I tried to pinch myself to wake up but it had no use. And I was still here. I walked around the white space but there was no way to get out of there. Then, I felt something was behind me and I turned around. The woman was already there, she wore black all the way but it was strange, I couldn’t see her face. No matter how close I walked towards her, her face was still unclear and I only knew she had black long hair to her waist. It was the only thing I liked about her despite her mysterious and ignorance. But wait, she had something in her hands, it was a weapon! A black bow without arrow…
“Don’t afraid” she spoke suddenly, “I will not harm you…” she added, “I need you to help me.”
“Help you? What help do you need?”
“I need you to be stronger…” she answered.
“Stronger? I don’t understand what you mean. Can you explain?”
“You don’t have to understand now, you will know it later. Remember, you have to be stronger…”
Then, she raised her bow and pointed towards me, some black sparkles gathered at the centre of the bow and she pulled the string…
“Wait..!” I shouted as she pulled the bow with full power and the black arrow flew towards me.
I tried to run but the arrow was faster than me and then I fall to the ground. Something pointy was on my back; I turned around and saw the black arrow. Though it did not hurt but the sensation was there. I felt sleepy and my mind went blank…
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139,539 Literary Works • 672,604 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Well this one certainly gets your attention rather quickly here. Its a very mysterious scene that just pops right up on you with no warning whatsoever and I think you do a really nice job of bringing it to life here. On the whole we have quite a neat opening in general, especially with that opening line by this strange person here...cause immediately as you reader you are now curious, think its a great combination to have in a prologue.
Well that wasn't vague and confusing at all lady. Hmm, well it appears we have the rather classic figure that you find in a lot of stories that inform you of something super duper vague and then proceed to sort of vanish and leave you hanging. Its a bit cliche, but I think it makes for a fun opening here, well let's see where this ends.
This is a pretty cool little ending here. I think it is going along rather well there, and the whole arrow being shot thing is actually kind of a unique moment there, usually ladies of this nature just vanish, but hee we've got something a bit more interesting. All in all, I think we've got ourselves quite a solid ending here to this so far pretty well done prologue.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
I liked this. There wasn't much, but what there was, it was pretty interesting.
There is one thing severely lacking in this prolouge.
Emotion
To me, it was all a black void with flat emotion. Even where I outlined above (In purple) was the places where it just felt dead. In that first purple paragraph, I'd think there'd be more of a struggle?
Good luck and keep writing
~Kit
Hey fruityminyi, let me take a crack at your piece.
To be honest, I don't see a point in combing through this line by line, because I think the problems with this piece run far deeper. There's the seeds of an interesting story in this prologue, but it needs to be majorly reworked if you want it to be the best story it can be.
Mechanics: This is the most basic and easily remedied problem. Proper grammar, spelling, and sentence structure are essential if you want to pursue writing seriously. Some people will tell you it doesn't matter if you misplace commas or muddle your tenses so long as you have an interesting story to tell. These people are liars. Or at the very least, they are setting you up for disappointment if you ever try submitting to an agent/publisher. Believe me, when an agent skims over the first paragraph of your piece and sees a grammar error in the very first sentence, it will end up in the slush pile. Doesn't matter how interesting the content might be.
What I'm saying is that you have chosen to work with the English language. Just as a carpenter uses hammers, nails, and saws, we writers use nouns, verbs, prepositions, and the lot. No one will trust a carpenter who doesn't know exactly how to use his hammer. In the same vein, no publisher will pick up a writer who doesn't have a basic grasp of the language. I'm not saying you have to be perfect or even a grammar nazi. You don't have to memorize every rule or every term. Even the best of us complete first drafts that are choked with spelling/grammar errors and awkward phrasings. Your task as a writer is to remove all those pesky grammar mistakes and tighten up all those rambling sentences.
Our Knowledge Base is filled with articles that will help you polish your craft until it is as perfect as it can be.
Tenses: I listed this under "Mechanics" previously, but I need to stress this because it's so egregious. At several points you switch from past tense to present. A lot of people have trouble with tenses. Just try to keep them straight. If the entire piece is in one tense, then every sentence should be in that tense, yeah?
Description: Your descriptions are very vague, even elementary. Words and phrases like "sleepy" and "But wait" and "pointy" and "some black sparkles" will, for better or worse, come across as juvenile. Though you describe enough to give us a picture of what's going on, we the readers aren't feeling very immersed in it because you describe only at the most basic of levels--what's physically going on around the narrator. In fact, you're only describing what the narrator sees. We don't even know what the mysterious woman's voice sounds like. Humans have five senses--employ all them when describing. No, that does not mean listening the sight, smell, sound, taste, and feel of every scene, but that does mean knowing which sense to use when it's appropriate. You could also benefit from increasing your vocabulary somewhat and relying more on figurative language. Look at how your favorite writers do it--read their works not just for entertainment but on the sentence level, to analyze what they do and how that works for them. Don't copy them, but from reading you should get a good idea what writing ought to look like.
Emotional Investment: Stories are all about manipulating our emotions. That is not necessarily a bad thing. We get emotionally attached to characters and we follow them through their trials and tribulations until we get satisfactory closure on their journey. But we won't want to follow them if we're not invested in them in the first place. You have to make us like your characters, view them as human, as people just like us. You could have a fascinating plot and it wouldn't matter if your characters are boring. Right now, I don't know enough about your characters to make a judgment on them. But I will say that it's a red flag when the story is written in first person POV, yet I still feel as though I know nothing about the narrator by the time I'm done. First person is the perspective that brings us closest to the narrator. If third person limited is an imp sitting on the narrator's shoulder, then first person is the imp sitting inside the narrator's head. We should know all of the main character's thoughts, feelings, and motivations, just as though we were them. So far you've given us not much insight into your narrator's thought process. I don't even know if they're a boy or a girl. The only thing we learn about them is that they like the mysterious woman's hair.
Don't dump everything about the character on us at once. But don't withhold everything, either. Right now your main character is such a cipher I wonder why you bothered with first person--it seems that third person would work just as well, though even then you'd have to bring us closer than we are to the main character. I don't like the feeling of being at arms' length from the person relaying the tale. I want to be right up next to them, or inside their head.
Overall: There's promise in here, a sense of mystery, some interesting images (a black figure in a white room, for instance, and the sparkly black arrow). But I agree with the other reviewers who said that you should lengthen this. Right now it's so short that it's devoid of tension and emotion. Right now we feel no investment with the main character. This is the bare bones of a scene, an outline even (in fact, it looks a lot like the basic synopsis-outlines I make of every scene in the novels I plan). Add flesh and blood, brush up on your mechanics, and you'll have a compelling hook.
PM me if you have any questions, and good luck with your writing.
Hey fruity! I'm here to review!
Now I don't want to seem harsh or anything, but since it's only been 2 months you're on YWS, I thought I'd give you a deeper review for this. I know that's what helped me when I first joined, to have people really tell me what's good and bad. So here I go!
Okay, there's two ways of putting this. Either you could say "I said in a low voice at a black figure..." or you could say "...as a black figure lurked in the white space", but right now this doesn't really work
That's a big thing you'll have to look out for; staying in the same tense. As per many - and me personally - it's easier to write in the past tense than the present one
Okay. This one here is a little tougher. Here the MC realizes that she's dreaming. This realization must be put differently because it's not exactly in the same train of thought. I know that might sound confusing, but I'd suggest for you to use "-". Then it would be "I thought I was dreaming - yes, I was - and I tried to pinch myself to wake up but it was no use."
Here I would change the comma for a ";"
Usually, we'd say "long black hair"
I don't feel that the periods are necessary here; only "Wait!" would be good also
See, here you used though and but. However, you only need to use one of them. So either "Though it did not hurt, the sensation was there" or "It did not hurt but the sensation was there"
Okay, I'm done with the nit-picking now. That aside, I don't feel this as a real prologue. A prologue is usually something we most know before the story begins, something apart; usually it is the history of the character's story, or the explanation of a prophecy and so on. The fact that I don't know where you're story is going stops me from saying if this really should be a prologue. So I won't tell you it's not. However, if you choose to leave it the way it is, I suggest you add a little more depth to your prologue. I know this must be aggravating to hear (or read), but I was told the same thing many times as well, and have come to realize over time that it's good advice.
Now I know that's a lot to take in, but I hope it's helped you. As per the story itself, it seems quite interesting, and I'd be willing to read the rest of it if you'd like. You can PM me for the next chapters, I'll be happy to review them for you
"fall" in "I fall to the ground" is supposed to be "fell". Other than that, great prologue.
I really like the suspense and mystery you've created in this prologue. Especially the ending:
This makes it so that the reader wants to hear more background of the story, how the story has gotten to this point etc.
Their are several grammatical errors however and the language is a bit choppy. Revise it a couple of times perhaps. Other than that this is a brilliant and gripping prologue. Nice work!
This is good. I like the mystery of it.
I agree with Esther Sylvester; there's not a lot to review because it's a prologue.
Perhaps go more into the main character's thought process rather than just talking about what she's doing.
Oh and one thing I thought I'd point out- you change tense a lot throughout the piece. It goes from past to present tense a lot. For example:
"I tried to run but the arrows was faster than me" is in past tense, but "then I fall to the ground." is in present tense. Keep an eye out for that.
This is my first review on here. Hope I helped!
Hi there!
First off, the title cracked me up a little because I thought you literally meant you were writing an imaginary prologue. In the title, put a ":" in between imaginary and prologue to clear things up.
Good job! I liked this! Lot's of mystery, but it has a nice heroic feel to it.
One thing you should note is your comma use. You use the comma too much or too little throughout this. I think you should look this over and fix the comma errors. There are many articles about comma use out there if you get confused.
Because this is a prologue, there isn't much to review. I think you could stand to get into the mind of the MC, so we know what she is feeling. That's the thing with first person: If you don't concentrate on what the character feels and percieves, you don't need to have a first person POV in the first place. Keep her emotions more apparent.
Toodles,
Esther