Tom woke up in a dark alley surrounded by garbage, and felt like he was just hit in the head with a brick as hard as someone can possibly strike him. He heard a rumbling and looked overhead to see a giant hovercraft that looked like it could house a few dozen soldiers. It hit him at that moment he realized something was definitely wrong, hovercrafts didn't exist yet. He walked out of the alley expecting a movie with some REALLY good CGI to just be making a hologram or something. Then he saw a few kids his age on what looked like hoverboards, cars taking off and flying away instead of driving down the street, and a police officer who jumped from the hovercraft and tossed what Tom assumed to be an anti gravity device that he landed on, then shot out a window with a gun that blasted an energy pulse. "Where the hell am I?"
"Denver," a little girl maybe five staring up at him said.
"Since when do cars fly?" He asked the little girl.
"Well I'm not the person to ask for that, but probably a few hundred years," she said.
"What's the date?"
"July 25th, 2405"
"Well that explains everything, except how I got here."
"Do you not remember how you got here?" The little girl asked with a confused look on her face.
"Honestly my head feels like it was smashed open by something, but I just know when I was born cars didn't fly. Before waking up in a dark alley nearby, the last thing I remember was having coffee in a shop nearby where I live. That's in Boston, by the way. The year would have been almost three hundred years ago."
"Well you probably have a concussion if not worse, and are developing fake memories," A woman said stepping out of a shop behind the little girl. "You're definitely not older than me, and I'm not even thirty yet."
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140,755 Literary Works • 673,687 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!!
First Impression: Overall, pretty solid prologue here, it has a few things that I couldn't help but nitpick down there, but as far as the essential elements of a prologue goes, this one does appear to have pretty much all of them.
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okayyy...one hand I love how this yeets us readers straight into the middle of confusion and just describes things in the sort of chaotic way that someone that suddenly appeared in the future would be experiencing these things, although I do believe the word hovercraft is wayyy too overused there, its definitely a lovely standout feature, but you might want to use that a tiny bit less, but otherwise I love the overall vibe, you certainly get the feeling of someone thrust into a very strange time and place.
Well, that is definitely the future and pretty darn far in the future too, so well, that's at any rate a pretty fun way to get things revealed but right away two issues here, first of all, why would the girl just mention the year, I mean how many times would you respond to a question like "What's the date?" with like the full year and everything...most people would simply say something like "Its the 25th" so that's a bit weird. On the other hand the appearance of the girl is also very sudden, she seems to come into existence out of thin air. You need to sort of show her arriving or at least mention here presence before she just starts talking out of nowhere.
Okay, this conversation with the little girl is starting to get a bit confusing to me, she's certainly taking all of this very much in stride for someone who should at the very least be confused about who this man is. On the other hand, this is a decent start here, him realizing he has no idea how he got there is certainly going to be a pretty fun going forward I'd say.
Okay...well at least that woman appears to be reacting appropriately to the situation and question this man, I do like seeing that, that makes for a pretty nice ending to this prologue, and of course the feeling of having his head be smashed against something certainly adds a lot to the intrigue here too.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall, this is a pretty decent prologue here. Requires a bit of ironing out but does its job pretty well. I'd certainly love to read more of this story here, it sounds like it could be pretty cool. Accidental time travel is a lot of fun.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
OOOO, I like the PROLOGUE! And quiet frankly I wish you would go ahead and start the story man. But then again I haven't herd or seen you up here for a while. But when ever you come back I hope you write more. I love the beginning of this story. True art.
Okay, Hello! Ryu-Matt-Southbound-Cevenost here to review!
Well, first thing is first, it was an alright prologue, at any rate. The description of the town is vague, and you don't describe the people he is mainly talking to!
Secondly, though part of this is well detailed, a lot of it is not. I'm not trying to be rude or mean, here, so just bear with me!
I think that if you could just add more detail, put more in about the town, it would be alright.
And here is another thought, this would be better as a first chapter. In my opinion the WAY he got their would be a really good way to start a prologue, or what lead up to that moment instead of going strain into this story. If you go strait into the story through the prologue, then it's just another chapter, in my opinion,
But, again, I will say it. This thing needs a lot more detail, needs more drama/spice/flare or spark to get things going. You don't have an attention grabber, something that would just grab a hold of the audience and keep them on the edge of their seats, keep them interested on the story.
In conclusion I think that this could use a bit more, if not a lot more, and that you can easily work on this. If you applied yourself, this might make a really good story.
Here we go again.
Well, let's kick things off with positives. The quick-paced narration works for the environment here, jamming it into the reader's head to give them as big a shock as Tom's is. However, it feels like you're missing a little bit of detail: what the buildings look like, any colors around, the feel of the street and sky, etc. But that could come in later chapters, it's up to you.
Giving straight feedback, Tom seems like a cool character. What I mean by that is that not much fazes him, which could be refreshing in a time-travel novel.
Nitpicks:
"as hard as someone can possibly strike him" As hard as someone could possibly strike him.
"Honestly my head feels like it was smashed open by something, but I just know when I was born cars didn't fly." A) Replace "something" with a better descriptive word, please. B) Place commas after honestly and born.
"'Denver,' a little girl maybe five staring up at him said." A little girl, maybe five, staring up at him said.
That's all, really. I'm looking forward to the rest. Cheers.
-Chaser
Well imagine being transported randomly hundreds of years forward in time, or on the flip side that you have memories from hundreds of years ago but none in the current time. You would have so much to take in at once nothing would phase you because you would not know how to react to so much at one time.
I always leave out some details because I don't want to much to soon, as this is a prologue it shouldn't have to many details explanations or descriptions. Given that Tom felt like a stranger in a foreign land surrounded by things he never saw before, he would not be perceiving things in great detail or description yet. As for buildings appearance, what do most buildings with a dark alley on the side look like. Brick, reddish colors and burgundy colors in the bricks, again it just seems like you're asking to describe something that is common sense. A forest is full of trees and plants, a building in the city is usually made of brick or stone. Those are common sense and shouldn't need to be described. If I wanted a forest to have azure trees, or trees with ruby color trunks or something like that I would be describing the trees, just like if I wanted a building made of some metal from another planet I would describe a building. As these architecture in 3 or 4 centuries will never have much of a change between any point of time I don't feel like describing a building is very important. They are buildings, buildings in a business area of a city are made of stone and or brick, bricks are usually just one color, do you really want that in a story? I would add something unique about a building if I felt it was necessary, but I really don't think every single thing mentioned in a story needs to be described. It just seems wasteful, and useless to describe every single thing.
Overall I quite like the pace/snappiness here, but part of me thinks a few more little details would help.
) ? Does Tom have any habits he makes when experiencing emotions? - it's clear he's confused and has questions but beyond that I'm not getting much of a sense of how he's feeling?
!
Your first paragraph is great - the sense of this being a futuristic world is established quickly with no dawdling around. Although I feel like your very first sentence is a bit lengthy and less punchy compared to the rest. You might also want to consider exchanging some commas for semi-colons or full-stops (or periods? I write in UK English but I hope I've got the right term.) I also felt a little bit more detail about his immediate surroundings would be useful - I felt a little lost towards the end when a shop is mentioned.
Your dialogue also delivers information pretty rapidly, and although this works I felt some of the speech could be made to sound more natural. I also felt you could've utilised this more to display some of Tom's character. It's clear from his initial thoughts and first outburst that he's a fairly young man (?) , yet some of his speech later feels a bit lacking.
e.g. "What is the date?" doesn't feel like it quite fits, it feels somewhat forced. At the very least shortening it to "What's the date?" would make it read like more natural speech.
I would've also liked to have seen some little details about how your characters are saying these things. What's their tone of voice? Are they doing any actions whilst talking (guaranteed a five year old girl wouldn't stand completely static for a whole conversation
There's a part of me that does question a little bit whether a little girl would know the exact date, and I feel that bringing up the year when asked is also a little unnatural. If Tom had to ask just a few more questions to get the answers, I feel like it would show more of a challenge and allow you to demonstrate more of his confusion?
I liked the little touch of humour towards the end with the women commenting on her age
I'm not sure if that was the effect you were after, but if you were planning on adding a touch of humour to this I feel like making your characters more expressive would also help with this.
I'd be interested to see where you go with this, I'm aware it's just the prologue but there's a few promising glimpses, it just needs a few touches. Hope that helps oAo;
Yeah punctuation is my weak area, and I don't think I ever understood semi-colons, I only understand the periods and commas because they're the only two common forms of punctuation. The rest of punctuating I don't understand at all. I don't think UK English is much different in terms on punctuation as much as choice or words and flow, but the accent is really nice.
Descriptions are also one of my weak areas too, I have never been good at describing very much. I will definitely take your opinion on the speech into consideration and try to improve that area later as much as I can. I think waking up in the future would probably lead to so many emotions getting mixed around he would be too confused to know how to feel. Character habits probably won't be too obvious in any prologue, I don't think things like that ever show in one.
I don't see why a little girl wouldn't know the exact date, although you will see a reason why in chapter one. She did actually have a reason too know it, and a good reason. As for asking the year, in Tom's past hovercrafts and such things didn't exist. So asking the year would be normal in his case, although to the person be asked it would be very odd yes.
I wasn't expecting commenting on her age to be funny, but I'm glad you liked that. Whatever makes the readers happy, that's what an author tries to focus on most.
My area of expertise in a story is mostly in conversational parts, so most of my stories are dialogue because it's the area I'm best. I suck at describing things, so I try to do it through character dialogue same as anything else I'm bad at because it helps make it easier for me.