Published June 12, 2010
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138,427 Literary Works • 672,118 Reviews
Amazing and a beautiful read.
Teehee! I love stories that are based on dreams... they're so crazy!
Okay! So a few general comments, which hopefully will be useful! ^^
First of all! I think it would be better if the prologue were gone. I really love dream stories and I think you can just plunge into the story (first chapter!) without any real introduction or whatever. And this is mostly because you have a really exciting first chapter and a really slow prologue. I want to get into the excitement sooner!
Instead of the prologue, try incorporating the details in the first chapter and onward. It'll help stretch the story a little bit, which is good!
Speaking of stretching the story!
Right now, I'm really liking that you're getting this written down as quickly as you can. Let's face it... dreams are tricky little rascals and it's good that you're writing the most important details as quickly as you can. However! Right now, it seems like it's going at warp speed! For instance:
This is a good start, but I would really love to see what he looks like more and why she thinks he is kind. When I read this, I was trying to figure out whether I should trust him or not, but you didn't really give any details so that my imagination could run wild! I would really like to bond with your characters too... so be more descriptive. And don't be afraid to slow down! You have an action-packed adventure... it's awesome, really! So you don't need to rush at warp-speed.
See you around!
Hello, Tinkerfee. Welcome to YWS! You know the first thing that struck me was how long this was. I mean it must have been a long dream... But I always have long dreams that span hours...And I'm just rambling. Anyway, On to the story. I really enjoyed this. That's because i love stories about medieval things. I can't say much about editing it because the things I wanted to say have already been said by others. But don't think you're alone on the errors. I went a whole three years not knowing I was supposed to change the line when a character said something.
Hello there tinkerfee and welcome to YWS
Cool avatar. Anyways, you have something promising going on here. I think that your writing has a lot of potential. There are just a few things I noticed that need some attention,
The word in bold should be "could not" instead of "couldn't".
I am not sure if it was intentional but I was kind of bothered by everything being centered (but that's just me
Also, try to separate your quotes from the rest of the story,
I will give an example with this paragraph
It should be like this,
This way the piece is neat and you can tell when and which character it speaking.
One more word of advice is that when you submit your work, try to break it into parts. Like here you submitted three chapters and a prologue, its too much. Maybe next time you can submit only one chapter. This is because smaller work makes it easy to review and spot any mistakes or suggestions the reviewer may want to discuss with you.
I think I'm done here. I love where your story is going. You definitely show some good storytelling and writing skills. So you dreamt all of this? Wow, you have what we call an 'imagination'
I hope I helped a little.
Ziggie
Welcome to YWS!
The first thing that struck me was how long this was. YWS recently added a novel feature where you could make a novel. You can post your novel here, there are directions on how to do it there.
The first thing I read was the prologue. A good prologue is like its own little story. For example the prologue for Lord of the Rings isn't about Frodo or Aragorn, it is the story of the Ring of Power. It looks like you used a prologue to info-dump about the thirteenth princess. You gush about her for the entire prologue and finish it by telling us that she's about to be kidnapped. Which we would have found out if we skipped the prologue and just read chapter one. So, it is redundant and should either be rewritten or deleted.
Chapter one was next:
The nit pick here is that during a new moon, the moon rises at six in the morning and sets at six in the evening. We never see it because the sun is up during that time and we don't see any light from the moon because only the dark side is facing us. In fact, another name for a new moon is a dark moon, because the moon isn't visible at all.
In the darkness of the room, it would be very difficult to make out any detail at all. This changes the way the fight would play out. Also, a bow and arrow would be of limited use in a close quarter fight. The quiver only holds arrows, so it would be very hard to make use of the arrows inside. A knife is a more practical close quarters weapon.
Another thing, a bow is very big, and arrows rattle around the quiver, which is very inconvenient if you are trying to hide them. This scene screams of author interference. Author interference is when the character acts or thinks a certain way, not because it is their character, but because it is convenient for their author. She wouldn't think twice about her journal if she was convinced that she'd be able to escape. And if it was that important to her, then that's all the more reason to keep it out of the hands of her kidnappers. Also, she has a dry voice, which prevents her from screaming out? How convenient.
A more realistic approach would be to have her actually fight her kidnappers. If you can't blow on a horn and you can't scream out, the next best thing is to break stuff. True, you might end up having to smash a family heirloom, but you did so under duress.
A more realistic approach for the kidnappers would be to drug her immediately. If you have to transport a conscious prisoner, you have to watch them constantly, worry about them alerting someone, and you have to fight with them in order to get them to go anywhere or do anything. If you have to transport an unconscious prisoner, it's as easy as carrying a heavy sack of potatoes.
I know there is a lot more, but this is about as far as I got. You might get more comments by using the novel feature.