This is the first part of my short story. I might change the name later (what do you think of the one I have now?). Also I may change Gent's name to something else, I'm not sure yet. I don't have a lot yet but I wanted to post what I have so far. The plot hasn't had a chance to show itself but that should change next post; I needed to get some building blocks for it. Thanks in advance for any reviews and enjoy!
The kingdom of Antier is ruled by the beloved King Simon. Antier has the the Yermine Sea to the West and most of the North. Into the Yermine stuck the Horn of Galaland, named after a renowned king of Antier. The Northern part of Antier that wasn't sea bordered the kingdom of Bligtnorn, however huge mountains made travel impossible for all but the smallest of groups and the best guides. To the East lay the recursive kingdom of Grendon. The people of Grendon didn't like to travel, and they didn't enjoy visitors. And to the South is the Empire Yentiti. Yentiti enjoyed a healthy amount of trade with Antier and were good neighbors. Currently Lord Benedict, King Simon's right hand, was returning from Yentiti, where he had attended a party thrown by the Yentiti's emperor.
The sound of wood against wood drew the gaze of Lord Benedict. Two children were fighting with well-worn sticks. Benedict pulled on the rains of his horse slowing the whole procession of guards and attendants. He leaned toward his chief guard and whispered. “Do my eyes deceive me or have I truly laid them upon two great sword fighters? Even at such a young age they would best most of our troops, were it not for the difference in strength between the arms of a full grown man and the arms of a child.”
The guard glanced at the stick fight critically. Benedict had a way of romanticizing things, but his speech had the odd accent it got when he was excited. The children wielded their fake swords with a speed that was hard to follow, but there was a trick in that. The guard couldn't see exactly what it was though.
One of the children yelled triumphantly and with a graceful twist, disarmed the older of the two. “They know a few moves.” The guard admonished, turning away. He turned back when Benedict grabbed his arm. The disarmed child was dodging blows that were still coming from his fighting partner, twisting and leaping like he was possessed by some devil. “Has that child no honor?” The guard asked, laying his hand on his sword as if contemplating teaching the armed child a lesson.
But then the disarmed child slipped through the attacks of the other and threw him to the ground with a simple movement. The younger one was forced to let go of his stick when he rolled away from the older one. Then he was back on his feet with a dagger sized stick that he had pulled out of his sleeve. The older one scooped up the younger one's stick. The two of them faced each other defiantly. Then they simultaneously turned toward Benedict and his company, and bowed.
Benedict's eyes followed the two boys as they ran off laughing. “Write down the time and place,” he said to an attendant. “Then a description of those two children, the direction they ran off in, and everything else you saw here. I want to come back here in two or three cycles. The older looked to be about thirteen or fourteen. I want to recruit them to be defenders of our kingdom!”
One cycle of the seasons later...
Leon and Gent faced each other over locked wooden swords. They pushed each other away. Around them two sides of sword fighters clashed, one under Leon's lead and the other under led by Gent. Both of them had split their concentration between the mock battle and each other.
“I'm getting bored of this,” Gent said. “Always fighting you. I know you so well that none of your attacks can get through my defenses. The same with you knowing me.”
Leon's eyes wandered to the other kids around them. “Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?” Leon asked.
Gent grinned. “We'll see, won't we?” Leon returned the smile and let loose a roar. He attacked Gent with a powerful over head strike that was blocked easily. Then he had to hold his sword vertically in front of him to block Gent's counter attack. Gent was roaring too. The two of them, normally composed sword fighters, had startled the other kids into watching them.
Leon pushed Gent's sword down with his own. Gent went with the move, turning so that he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Leon. Both of them kept spinning so that they were back to back. “Who is ready to have some fun?” Leon asked, laughing.
The other kids looked at each other in confusion. But then, Brendan, one of the better sword fighters asked, “You aren't thinking of taking us all on, are you? I know that either one of you could beat any two of us, but there are eight of us and only two of you! You would have to be crazy!”
“You're right.” Gent said, “We would have to be crazy to fight with odds stacked so heavily against us. And no one has ever accused me of being crazy.”
Leon couldn't see Gent's face, but his words were perfectly level. “Are you sure about that?” He asked. “Because I thought that I called you crazy yesterday. And the day before that. And several times last week,-”
“Leon.”
“-And I'm certain that Brendan called you crazy the time that you jumped out over the-”
“Leon!”
“-water fall. What?”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh, well, in that case.” Leon addressed Brendan and the others. “Are you ready? I know we are.”
It was about two hours later that Gent and Leon managed to get home. Leon was limping and his left eye had a halo of purple. Gent was no better off, with a gash on his forearm. And they both had bruises up and down their arms and chests.
They had finish dressing their wounds when they heard their father returning. They went out to meet him and saw that he was dragging a deer. Their father took one look at their bruises, shook his head and said, “Help me clean this doe, and then we'll talk about why you two got beaten so badly.”
After they had put the deer in the smoke house and explained that they had challenged every other sword wielding kid in the village, their father started to teach them. “Now when fighting many opponents there are many strategies. But mostly they are based off of two concepts: force them to fight without all their numbers or use them against themselves...”
The lesson lasted long into the night.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
Hey Squirrely!
Really good job here! This was great. I simply cannot wait for more. Unfortunately, everything that has needed to be said has already been said. But I'm going to give you a review anyway!
#0040BF ">First off
Okay, very solid work here! The flow is pretty good, with a few exceptions. I like the characters already, especially Benedict, surprisingly. I am not going to nit pick your grammar, because as far as I saw there were only a few spelling mistakes.
#0000BF ">Story/flow
Good job here. The only true issue was the massive info dump at the beginning of the story, but since you are taking care of that, this part of the story is solid. I'd say put more info about the warring kingdoms and stuff scattered around the story, whenever it is relevant.
#0040BF ">Characters
I like all of your characters so far. The only issue is that the two main characters seem a bit too similar. Find a way to differentiate the two. The fact that one is a better fighter than the other isn't good enough. I would have liked to seen more of the father, because I have a startling sense that he won't be mentioned much in the future of this story. The dialog between the characters is very good! :thumbs up:
#0040BF ">Overall
Excellent! You left the reader wanting more, and that is always good. Work on making your characters more defined and be careful not to info dump. Make sure your pacing stays true the short story format; believe it or not this story right now feels more like a novel. Overall, good work! Please, please, tell me when you post more!
Esther
Thanks for the reviews. I think I fixed all the nitpicks and semicolons. I do need a hook in there, perhaps something to do with Lord Benedict. I want to establish him as more of a mover and shaker plot wise. Mostly what I was trying to do was introduce Leon, Gent, and Benedict and show that Leon and Gent knew each other like the back of their hand. The next part that I put up you should see a lot more character development and some more plot. But before I do that I'll write up an alternate starting for those first two paragraphs. And Hippie I don't use Word, I use Open Office.
Hi Squirrely
There should be only one "the" between has and Yermine. There are more grammar mistakes scattered throughout the piece, but they are few and minor enough to let me know that you know how to write. The characters Gent and Leon were, as I said, relateable, but maybe to much so. Go into more detail about your characters, but be sure to let the reader use ther imagination. I really hope you continue with this.It's always nice to read a story like yours. It has a simple, sweet plotline and a host of relateable characters. There are, however, some things that I must point out.
Happy writing!
~TheManintheHat
Hi there. I said I'd review this so here I am.
I have to admit, my alarm bells went off on the first paragraph. The mistake you make here is telling us a whole heap of information about the kingdom. You introduce a heap of place names in a short space of time, which the reader will then inevitably forget anyway. I don't remember any of the information from the first paragraph because you went through it too fast without attatching importance to them. Cut this paragraph and give us the information when it becomes important, so we'll remember it.
You went a little heavy on the semicolons. I didn't see any in there that should actualy have been semicolons. Only use a semicolon between two complete sentences about the same subject. In general, use a comma, and if Word gives you green squiggly lines then its up to you to decide whether the sentences are closely related enough to have a semicolon, and even then be stingy with them.
I thought the premise was good, and any number of interesting plots could stem from it. However, I think you should develop Leon and Gent a bit more, because at the moment they don't have a lot to set them apart from generic Mary-Sue children, and more importantly to set them apart from each other. Take a look in the knowledge base (under the resources tab) and you'll find a lot of articles about character development. Developing them is only one aspect though. The other is to show these characters traits. Don't say "Jill was good at figuring out what other people were thinking" show us her chain of thought as she interprets the other person's body language, what bits of knowledge does she use etc. And remember, what's going on inside your character's head is equally important as what's going on i nthe outside world, so you'll need to really understand your characters to write them well.
Hi, I'm Earthfire, and I'll be your reviewer today.
This story has a lot of potential. Here are just some nitpicks I found:
I think that "lord" should be capitalized, since it's a proper noun and being specific about someone.
I think it would make more sense if you said, "Do my eyes deceive me...."
Put a comma after "them". Also, what are the two sides? Could you explain that? You also might want to combine these two sentences with a comma after "clashed."
I think you mean "bored."
Put, "Let loose a roar."
Those are all the nitpicks I found. The only suggestion I have for the story as a whole, is, could you put more of a hook at the beginning? Something to catch the reader's interest, and after that, you can put a description of the kingdoms.
I really liked this story. PM me when you post part two!