Prologue:
“Are you sure you want to go ahead with this, my lord?” asked a slightly hunched man to a tall figure with medium length spiky brown hair that stood before him.
The two men were in one of the few underground tunnels of the royal capital of Londarium that were still a secret. It was poorly lit, but it was the perfect place to meet in secret to discuss important matters in private and away from prying eyes or ears.
“Yes,” replied the man,confidently and with an air of superiority.
“If you go through with the plan, my lord, there is no turning back,” pointed out the slightly hunched man. “Might I suggest we wait a little while longer until we amass more support?”
“We already have more than enough support, Xenos,” replied the man. “Now is time to put my grandfather’s plan into action.”
Xenos looked up to his lord and could see the fire, the determination in his lord’s dark brown eyes. There was no way to persuade his master out of doing what he planned to do. All he could do was carry out his master’s orders to the best of his ability.
“I will prepare the men then,” stated Xenos to his master.
“Good,” began Xenos’ master as he began walking off. “Inform me when they are in place. The time for House Malverys to rise from the ashes has arrived.”
Xenos looked at his master for a brief moment as he walked off , leaving him alone. Xenos let out a sigh that echoed throughout the tunnel before limping off in the opposite direction of his master.
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Chapter 1
“Concentrate, Zander, feel the magical energies which surround you and channel it,” instructed an old dark skinned bald man with a thick white coloured beard to a young man who was perhaps in his late teens. The young man had an average physique and was taller than the old man he stood next to. His hand hovered above a bowl of water.
“I can’t do it, master,” muttered Zander, shaking his head.
“Yes you can,” stated the old man adamantly. “Just concentrate, close your eyes and quiet your mind. Let the energy flow through you.”
Zander did what the old master instructed him to do. He closed his dark brown eyes and took in a deep breath. A few moments passed before a blue aura started to form around his outstretched arm.
“You’re doing it my dear boy!”cheered the old man, grinning from ear to ear. “Now just chant the incantation.”
Zander began chanting the words ‘Ezeref Ukeb’, over and over again. His hand began to glow brighter, a ring of energy with runic inscriptions had also formed around it. A thin layer of ice began to form on the surface of the water in the bowl which Zander’s hand hovered over.
“Hohoho, you’re doing it my lad!” rejoiced the old man.
Zander opened his eyes, wanting to see what exactly he was doing. Opening his dark brown eyes, however, caused him to lose his concentration, which in turn caused him to lose his connection to the magical energies that was allowing him to do magic.
“So close Zander, so close,” the old man said as he placed a reassuring hand on his apprentice’s shoulder.
“I could feel it, master, I could feel the magical energy flow through me,” said Zander to the old man.
The door of the room in which Zander and the old man were in practising the magical arts opened. The old man and Zander turned their attention towards the door.Walking into the room was a fairly tall and clean-shaven middle-aged man. He also had short and neat black hair like Zander’s own. The man wore a dark brown leather tunic with gold patterns on it and a pair of dark brown pants that matched.
“King Edmund, what brings you here?” asked the old man, smiling at the man who was walking up to him and Zander.
“I’m here to see how Zander is progressing in his studies.”
“I’m afraid you’re too late my lord,” remarked the old man. “We’re done for the day.”
King Edmund sighed.“What a shame. I wanted to see Zander’s progress.”
“You can come by tomorrow my lord,” stated the old man. “We have a class then.”
“Father,” began Zander. “May I be excused? I want to go to visit the market district before all the shops close.”
“You have to ask Master Felix permission for that, not me,” replied Edmund
“Master Felix? May I leave for the day?” queried Zander, looking to his elderly mage arts instructor.
“Go, go and have fun. We’re done for the day,” answered Master Felix, giving his apprentice permission to leave.
Zander thanked his master and wished farewell to his father before making his way out of the room. The young boy grabbed his short sword that was hanging on the coat hangar located next to the door before exiting the room.
King Edmund and the old man now were the only people in the room. “So, is he better than I was?” questioned King Edmund, looking to Master Felix who stood in front of him.
Felix looked up to his liege, smiling. “Hoho, much better than you ever were, Edmund. As he actually comes to class and practices.”
“Let’s just say that I wasn’t as interested in studying magic as I was in going hunting and chasing girls at his age,” laughed Edmund. Felix joined him.
“I see great potential in Zander, Edmund,” stated Felix, seriously. “With enough practice, he could be one of the greatest mages in the kingdom.”
“Not only a mage, Felix, but a warrior and leader as well,” added Edmund. Felix nodded his head, agreeing with Edmund’s statement.
“Your Highness, why did you actually come by?” queried Master Felix, looking at King Edmund.
“Why do you think I came here for anything else but to ask how Zander was progressing in his studies?” remarked Edmund.
“Because you have that look in your eye, Your Highness” began Felix, looking up to Edmund who was taller than he was. “The look you get when something troubles you. I saw it the moment you stepped into this room”
“You know me too well, Felix,” chuckled Edmund, confirming what Felix had suspected.
“So what seems to be the problem?” asked Felix, waving his hand to summon two chairs for him and Edmund to sit on.
“I had another vision,” said Edmund, taking a seat on one of the seats Felix had just conjured.
“The same one as before?”
“No,” replied Edmund, shaking his head. “This one was more...catastrophic.”
“Tell me what happened?” asked Felix, leaning in to hear His Highness better.
“The dark clouds from the previous vision were still present,” began Edmund. “But this time, they hovered menacingly over the royal capital, not in the distant like the previous few. They spewed lightning, destroying everything in Londarium. I saw our House banner burn along with the rest of the capital.”
Felix just sat there and listened to Edmund intently as he spoke. Something he has done not only for Edmund but for Edmund’s father as well.
“I fear something calamitous is going to happen to the kingdom,” expressed Edmund. “I can feel it in the air.”
“Those are just visions, your majesty, they are not set in stone,” pointed out Felix.
“But what if it is not?” countered Edmund. Felix could see the fear, the uncertainty in Edmund’s dark brown eyes. He has not seen those eyes ever since Edmund was but a young boy. Edmund was truly frightened.
“Then you’ll face it head-on like the king I know you are,” remarked Felix.
Edmund nodded his head, agreeing with Felix. “What I am more concerned about is for the kids,” expressed Edmund. “If anything happened to them, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“So what are you suggesting, Your Highness?”
“I want you to take Zander to the Lake District to live with his sister,” instructed Edmund. “He’ll be safe there.”
“Is that really necessary?” questioned Felix, furrowing his thick brow.
“Until these visions disappear, yes,” declared Edmund, adamantly.
“But who would want to destroy the kingdom?” questioned Felix. “None of the neighbouring kingdoms, queendoms or republics have anything against us. To add to that, the people of the realm love you.”
“Not everyone in the realm,” countered Edmund. “There are some lords that would love to see me gone for choosing the people over them.”
“But they are just a few, a handful,” Felix pointed out. “And if they did want to start an insurrection, they are hardly strong enough to start one, let alone maintain one.”
“You never know,” replied Edmund. “Anything is possible.”
“That is true,” acknowledged Felix, nodding his head.
“So will you help me take Zander down to the Lake District, Felix?”
“I will, Your Highness. I will do as you say,” acknowledged Felix, seeing how adamant Edmund was.
“Thank you, Felix,” expressed Edmund in gratitude. “You’re a loyal servant to this House. Words cannot express how much your service means to our family.”
“Serving your family, Your Highness, is the highest honour a man like me could have hoped for,” replied Felix, smiling.
Edmund gave his mentor and advisor a weak smile in return and thanked him for his ever attentive ear before leaving the room to carry out his kingly duties for the day. As soon as Edmund had left the room, Felix walked over to one of the windows of the room which overlooked the courtyard of the Royal Palace. He peered out of it and took in the wondrous view of the courtyard below and the city. It was a bright and sunny day with not a cloud in the sky. He could never imagine the royal capital being destroyed or burning. In his mind, it was not possible.
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,742 Reviews
Hi, Felistia here with a review for you on this wonderful day.
Now while I appreciate you describing the characters, I wouldn't go into such detail so soon. Maybe write it something like this When describing something you want to use only one or two words to describe that thing at any given time. So in this case you used about four words to describe this figure. Try to shorten it to about one. Include this information later on when it's a bit more relevant. Right now the characters are standing in a dark underground tunnel, so I'm sure that big spiky hair isn't what we'd want to know first, since it's dark. Saying the figure is tall does feel relevant and saying that the man talking is hunched is also quite important. Maybe include the hair later on in the prologue.Okay so since this is two separate chapters, I'm going to review them separately. So on with the prologue.
Nit-picks
You tend to use very long sentences that strung together with "ands" and "so" and things like that. I suggest that you try to shorten these sentences, since it will make reading more fluent. Try to vary your sentences by having long ones, short one and medium ones in the same paragraph.
There's no need to point out that the man is hunched again, we know that already from before. Maybe write it or something like that.
You also tend to repeat a few words like "master" try to use a specific word like that only once in every three or so paragraphs. It will prevent your writing from sounding repetitive.
Another thing that you tend to do is use a lot of long dialogue tags like here for instance. The word "confidently" would have done and if you wanted to show the reader that he has a feeling of superiority then show don't tell. Maybe write it something like this Now that really was a terrible example, but I'm sure that you'll get my meaning.
Overall thoughts
Chapter plot: Okay so while this does get the reader interested, I felt like it ended way to soon to build up the right amount of anticipation. It was only about 272 words long. I'd try to expand it just a bit. Try to build up the anticipation. Maybe have the two man talk a bit more or include more description of the tunnels. Maybe there's water dripping some way off. Maybe there was a span of silence in the conversation where you could hear people walking far above. Just think of a few ways to build up the mood. I'd say that it needs to be at least 500 words to get the reader into the mood.
Characters: This is the other problem with there being to little words, the characters didn't really get any room to show any of their personality. What is the guys master like? Should the reader fear him or are we to root for him? What's he like? Just things like this that make the characters a bit more that words on a page. There's nothing wrong with the writing, I'm just saying that there isn't enough to create a story. Think of the prologue as a separate piece of writing from the first chapter. Each chapter needs to have a story and you should feel like it's like a short story.
Description: Your description for the most part was good, but there just wasn't enough of it. This of course (I know I sound like a broken record) because of the shortness of the chapter. You did tend to over do it on the dialogue tags, but I've covered that further on
Okay now onto the first chapter.
Nit-picks
This dialogue feels rather robotic. I think that is was this area in particular that made it feel none realistic Maybe rewrite it something like this?
This is another example of you over doing the description. I'm sure that I explained it enough above though, so I'll just point it out from now one.
I think you could include a bit of description between these two sentences. What does it feel like? Does he get a chill down his back or maybe he starts to feel heat in the bottom of his hand?
[/quote][/quote] Okay so this was the exact same description you gave for his eyes just three paragraphs ago. In this close a proximity it feels very repetitive. In this case I'd not include the description or include a different description. Maybe his eyes sparkle or something like that?
Overall thoughts
Chapter plot: This was an overall interesting plot for the first chapter. I liked how you introduced the magic with out being blunt about it. This whole visions thing is also quite interesting and I look forward to finding out what that it.
Overall this was a much better chapter and I look forward to the next one. Never stop writing and I hope you have a great day\night.
Your friend, Felistia.
Hi there! Here as requested.
The major things that stood out to me were:
- POV
- Showing vs telling
- Over-describing
- Too many names all the time
PROLOGUE
I don't have strong feelings about prologues. Whether you start with a prologue or a first chapter, the only thing I care about is how engaging and important the content is. Your prologue... can probably go.
But Megrim, you say, it's important to see the baddies plotting! But is it? Do we REALLY learn anything? The scene is so vague, it's not like it actually informs us. Of course baddies are going to cause something to happen, or else there wouldn't be a story. The prologue doesn't give us much that's concrete, other than Xenos's name and the fact there's a master-servant relationship. If you want to keep the prologue, it needs to do more work for you--tell us some relevant specifics of the plan, highlight character traits, do some worldbuilding, etc. As is, it can be removed without harming the story.
POV & NAMES EVERYWHERE
These go hand-in-hand, because solving the first will solve the second. Try reading some paragraphs out loud and you'll see what I mean about the names. You could use a lot more pronouns than you do. Having the names thrown at us constantly is kind of disconcerting and hard to follow (counterintuitively).
What does this have to do with POV? Establishing a POV character makes this a LOT easier, because then everything gets filtered through their perspective. This appears to be written in omniscient (an outside narrator), rather than angled through a POVC (which is called "limited"). Omniscient is hard, old-fashioned, and not really recommended. For most popular fiction, having a defined POVC makes the story a lot stronger, especially because fiction these days is a lot more character-oriented than it used to be, on average.
What makes this NOT limited POV is that we don't see anything *how the characters see it.* It's all quite objective. If anything, Felix is the POVC, because he's the one present through the whole scene, while the other two come and do. But we don't get a whole lot in the way of his thoughts, opinions, judgments, prejudices, memories, etc etc. The narrative is distant. If you're interested in hearing more on the subject, try searching "narrative depth in writing."
SHOWING VS TELLING
You're probably familiar with the old adage "show don't tell." You do what I like to call a "show and tell." Things are shown, and then ALSO told. A good way to identify telling is when you're explaining something. In your case, often times the dialogue is quite clear, but then you add extra explanations to make sure we understand tone & meaning. I know it's the opposite of what they teach in school, but good dialogue can stand completely on its own, without context or explanations or dialogue tags, and the reader should still be able to hear the tone of voice and understand meaning. For the most part, I think your dialogue conveys what you want it to. You DON'T need to add things like, "chuckled Edmund, confirming what Felix had suspected" or "acknowledged Felix, seeing how adamant Edmund was."
While we're on the topic of dialogue, as I'm looking back over this I'm seeing a lot of said bookisms. You don't use "said" very often, and instead replace it with a lot of fancy, distracting alternatives. Try to stick to "said" or "asked" as much as possible, because those are "invisible" to the reader and allow us to focus on the dialogue itself.
OVER-DESCRIBING
While you're not too too off the deep end on this one, the biggest area I noticed too much description was with characters' physical appearances. 1) We don't need to know exactly what characters look like the moment they come on screen. 2) We'll immediately forget what you said anyway. 3) Readers don't care as much as you think they do, and will often picture their own thing anyway.
The only way to make description stick is to make it memorable and weave it throughout the narrative. That's a complicated topic, so I'll leave you with this simple advice: MINIMIZE the amount of character description you include. Spread it out, and don't worry about bombarding us with a bunch of details all in one breath right when the character walks on stage.
The first sentence is probably the biggest offender ("instructed an old dark skinned bald man with a thick white coloured beard to a young man who was perhaps in his late teens.") Try to stick to only one or two salient points per sentence... or paragraph, even.
Onto the next chapter sometime soon!
Alrighty, I do apologize for this being such a late review. You asked for this 20 days ago! I've just been busy. However, without further ado, let's get right into this. I will be harsh and thorough. Please don't take it personally; all of this is meant to help you out or provide some discussion on certain parts.
So, from reading this, I get a feeling that this story just seems rigid in its writing, and not well developed.
I'll elaborate. The dialogue here is fine, although overused. However, we get that it's a question from the question mark. Instead of saying "asked", you could take this time to give the reader a bit of what's going on here. You might hear me say this multiple times throughout this review, but I'm a big stickler on "show, don't tell." This is basically a tl;dr of a longer concept. There are some times where exposition is good, but with too much exposition and info-dumping, your story begins to feel like a rough draft.
Any point you have exposition, you can give this exposition while also having details and imagery. Don't flat out give the reader descriptions. Instead of telling us that this man is slightly hunched, let us see it or hear it through a click... clackclick... clack of a hobble.
Here's an example of re-working your intro sentence.
^This is hastily written, but already it's a good example of re-writing and expanding your work. I've taken one sentence and made it into a paragraph, while re-working the bland description about the hunched man and the taller man into a scene that you can visualize.
Also, using details like "medium length hair" is bad imagery. You should not use this in an actual story basically at all. It's clunky and it drags me out of the story extremely fast. This is description that I would use in a character template that's only for my eyes.
Again, this is info dumping in its purest form. In my beliefs, any information that the reader doesn't need right now, either for what's going on in this scene or for some form of foreshadowing, DO NOT PUT IT IN. I don't need to know that they're in secret underground tunnels right now in a city that I'll forget about in three paragraphs. Show us they're in a tunnel. My re-written passage above already states that it's dimly lit without straight out telling the reading so. Basically, you want the reader to use intuition. Don't straight up tell us things. We're smart. We can use our imagination to understand that they're here to discuss something important. This paragraph isn't needed.
You also need to look this over just so you don't have simple errors like the one above.
I'm beginning to sound like a broken record at this point, but this description added onto the dialogue is somewhat unneeded at this point. However, at this point I think the best idea is to not add any description. Lack of detail can be just as effective as an entire paragraph worth of detail.
So just saying "Yes" here and adding nothing else can put a lot of tension and suspense in this part that I think could improve this part quite a bit.
You said this not even a hundred words again. Come on.
So, a couple of things. First, you said "lord" twice in two sentences, then "master" twice in the next two sentences. You can use pronouns here. Also, what a terrible job at persuading this guy. He said literally two sentences and gave up.
Secondly, you're poorly using omniscient POV. With omniscient, the narrator and the reader can read every person's thoughts and how they're describing the scene. This is a tricky POV to pull off well, and I don't think you've done it here. It gets clunky and we don't need to see what everyone's thinking of. I would stick to reading the hunched man's thoughts or the lord's thoughts. Not both. It's easier and works a lot better in most situations.
Pronouns are your friend. Please use them.
Again, this is an unneeded amount of description, and to put it bluntly, hard to read because it's boring. If you don't know what I do on this site, basically, I run and participate in Storybooks. In these stories, we each create a character and make a character template, which is pretty self-explanatory. It's a base of our character that we and the other participants use as a template to write that character. In these templates, the descriptions of how someone looks sounds an awful lot like how you describe this person here. It's meant to be basic and only provide the minimal amount of information you need.
Don't tell us that he's an old dark-skinned man with a white colored beard and another man in his late teens with an average physique. Show this through their actions. Tell me that the other man is slow in his actions, and his beard glows in the firelight. Tell us that Zander's voice cracks with youthfulness.
You said Zander opened his eyes twice. Also, you're telling us that his eyes are dark brown again. Unless they magically changed color in the time they were closed, I don't need this information and I don't want to read it again. We can induce that the magic broke apart once he lost his concentration.
Another instance of repeating information.
Again, we understand that Edmund just confirmed that. No need to reiterate that.
This felt weak for an ending, like you were just giving something vague to add suspense. It didn't work for me.
Maybe something like "He had hoped this skyline would never have to experience the tragedy of war." It's along the same lines but doesn't paint Felix as naive.
So, this story feels cliché. You haven't given me anything that's really intriguing enough to push through the feeling of this being done many, many times. There's a plethora of awkward details and info-dumping. I think this could be a good start to your story with some extensive editing. Every scene that you describe someone, there's room to paint a scene with your words using imagery and strong descriptions.
I'm a sucker for magic done well, so I hope this has a lot of magic and cool magic at that. However, there's not much character development here, and both of the scenes that happened here, I have seen before in at least two other fantasy stories.
I hope this helps!
-Omnom
Hello.
Before I begin, I find it necessary to state that I ... generally tend to disapprove of prologues, mostly because they're unneeded and exist merely to up the hook factor in most novels. Even if you /do/ manage to hook your reader in the prologue, your first chapter will have to be equally as gripping, seeing as A] it sets the basis for the main storyline, and B] most readers tend to skip prologues anyway. I'm a bit iffy with the prologue in this piece, because although it foreshadows possible events and paints a scene that is somewhat-disconnected from the main storyline, it is--in simple words--boring. (For more on prologues, you may find this article helpful.
The main issue that I saw, overall, in both the prologue /and/ the first chapter is the amount of tropes you've incorporated. While not all clichés fall under the category of inherently ''bad'', it does make your writing predictable and transparent. I was reminded of both Star Wars and Eragon as I read through this--you have the young teen-in-training, whose prowess exceeds that of all other teens his age and who is hinted at being some kind of ''chosen one''. Then you have a father-figure/teacher, a serene man with a long-ish white beard who has a tendency to laugh every time he opens his mouth to say anything--and that anything is always wise, because wisdom is this father-figure's defining trait.
Now, because these characters are so typical, it becomes difficult to become engrossed in their world--to /feel/ anything for them. I've fallen into the pit of circus tropes and lack of aesthetic often enough--and I still do! but one of the things that we always try to work on, as writers, is character-depth and development. It's an ongoing process, always, and as it stands right now, your characters are rather flat. What are their motives? How do they interact with their environment? Even subtle gestures like rubbing your face with your hand can imply exhaustion or stress, and this helps your prose acquire a necessary vividness. An example is of when Zander is trying to conjure the blue aura--how does he feel at that moment? Nervous? Excited? Calm? What are the stakes of failure? of success? Is sweat streaming from his brow? does he hold his breath with expectation? Paint the world for us--allow us to connect with your characters instead of having them filter across the page and just deliver dialogues like they're running a pantomime.
On a similar note, some sensory description would be nice here! I'd like to be able to see this world better and it would also smooth out your pacing. Sight, smell, sound, touch, etc.--because reading is as much a journey of sensations as a movie is a visual and emotional journey; let us into the world you've crafted.
Nitpick: I noticed you tend to use a variety of dialogue tags and I would advise against that! because it distracts from the actual dialogue and may be seen as a lazy way to create variation. Remember, 'said' is your best friend.
Overall, I'd say that as always, there's tons of potential to be explored, so keep writing! Work on fleshing this out. I hope to see more character development in later instalments--which I'll try to get to by tonight.
I hope this helped, and good luck! Keep writing; keep it up~
~Pomp
This seems like a cool start! I love how you introduced magic right off the bat. I always love a good magic system and can't wait to see the different rules and limitations that come with using magic. Your characters seem pretty nice, you've got the just king, wise mentor and young hero. I'm excited to see if you reinvent those stereotypes or if you give us a good ol' classic fantasy. I love both so for me you can't go wrong.
It seems there are a lot of expectations for Zander, he has to rule, fight AND use magic. I'm sure it's overwhelming. You'll have some great internal conflict for that character. You unnamed villain is a blank slate at the moment, other then having an evil plan that is. It'll be really cool to see how you shape him and if he'll become as sympathetic to the reader as the protagonists will.
Overall this seems like a nice little start to a cool story!
(Also sometimes you use the name "Thomas" sometimes, I think you might have been referring to Zander, but I don't really know.)