jArRaD_fRoM_sUbWaY

Sry about the last topic. I made some paragraphs but I'm in a rush for time right now so I put them in random places. Sry but I g2g. Same stuff as last time.

Prologue

Soon incredible things will happen. I have killed, maimed, tortured, stabbed and even broke the enemy with my own two hands. I have ensured Humanity's survival and saved many hundreds, maybe even thousands of lives.

These acts have granted me the privilege to be part of the Fleet. All the things I have done, they make me feel jaded, incomplete. I have taken lives and by keeping some alive, granted life.

My acts of barbarism weigh heavy on my mind and my acts of heroism help sustain me on the path ahead, but it is my desire for revenge that drives me. I have seen millions of innocent people killed at their hands, yet, I long for one and only one life: Hanna's. The demons of my past still chase me throughout my skull.

At night I have nightmares of what happened when they came to us. The sounds of their screaming, the smell of the rotting flesh and the look on her face...it's more then I could take and stay the same. The things that I have seen and done has turned me into a killer. It is pure cold anger and desire for revenge that drives me.

It made me the soldier I am. My past is a gaping black hole that I tried run away from. I tried to run but that only made it bigger and faster. I can't win the war raging inside my mind so I try to run away from the battles. I bury my past deep inside myself when I am awake, but, it is when I sleep that they surprise me.

I am not happy but who cares? Humanity never asked me to be happy. It only asked me and the others around me to be brilliant because they needed us. Since the war started a lot of people had to be brilliant. A lot of people had to sacrifice themselves because of those who weren't brilliant. Since I joined I have had to be brilliant, I had to be brilliant first and take happiness in small doses as I can manage it. But why?

Why did we even have to be brilliant in the first place? Why couldn't we have been left alone and serve happy, normal lives? We had our act together. We finally stopped fighting amongst each other. We were at peace with ourselves, war no longer existed, famine was killed and poverty destroyed. Then we found it. A substance, who's ability to generate energy was so great that they saw fit to commit xenocide over it.

At first we held our own against them. They didn't know what we could do so they were playing it careful. They never launched any major attacks against us for a few months. Mostly just ship-ship affairs. Only two or three real fleet actions. We were so arrogant that we believed that this was all they had. We were also too naive to believe that they could ever use this time to figure us out.

They figured us out alright. They thought of ways to disrupt our communications, jams our missiles, destroy our ships but most unfortunately they figured out tactics that would out-smart us at nearly every turn. They disappeared for a while but when they came back, they did so with a bang. No explanation offered, no negotiation, no post-it on the fridge. They took us planet after planet. They came and kept coming until they beat us...nearly.

We've had a few victories but nothing that's really helped us. Our worlds that once prospered and served as a home for billions of people outside Sol are now no more then radioactive wastelands incapable of supporting life. Our fleet is gone. What we thought was a collection of weapons with unimaginable destructive power was systematically destroyed by an enemy who's power far exceeded our own.

While their weapons were more powerful and their ships faster, their real power came not in weaponry or in numbers, but in sheer intelligence. We tried to prepare for what they would do next but in the end they came up with things we didn't even imagine. Ships and soldiers are important things to an army. Without them an army cannot exist, but what is it all in the end?

An army cannot function without a leader. With officers and generals to guide the troops. True war is fought by the ones in command of a fleet or an army. True war is fought with a person's mind, not rifles or bombs or starships but with the chemical reactions and neuron flashes inside a skull. Intelligence in a battle can overcome almost any obstacle. Intelligence, if great enough can win any war. In the end, that was the problem.

How can we hope to compete with an enemy that could out-think us? The enemy was ruthless. They would destroy one world and then move to the next. They would destroy our ships and we would pulled them back. They would kill our population and we retreated. They would rape our species of it's right to exist and we retreated. They were simply too intelligent to beat. No more. We drew the line and pushed back.

The enemy is very smart but they didn't expect one thing. They didn't understand that the ruthless rulers or destroyers of history all ended with the same fate. They caused oppression, submissiveness, sadness and fear. They also caused anger, hatred, loathing and desire. Their enemies thought of ways to unseat them.

Their enemies thought of ways to destroy them. They thought of a way to get something better. You can never achieved victory if you dominate totally and you cannot have peace if you rule with an iron hand. Total domination leads to arrogance and arrogance to mistakes. Their great destructive power and will to use that power against us, encouraged us to do the most dangerous thing that could happen: think.

We were beaten. We were corned like some dying animal in the wild. Animals get all the more dangerous the closer they get to extinction. We learnt from the enemy where we were weak and we improved. We learnt where we were strong and we became stronger. We learnt new things from the enemy. Only an enemy can teach you these things. Only the enemy can make you strong. We thought for a long time about things we could use against them.

Things we could use to poison their worlds, kill their people and destroy their empire. We succeeded. But they have also had time to think about things they could use against us. Things they could use to poison more of our worlds, to kill more of our people and in the end exterminate us. It was a quid pro quo. We learn from you but you learn from us.

Only a handful know, but everything we have built, everything we have invented, everything we could think of, is now ready. Ready to strike back. Ready to destroy their worlds, annihilate their fleets and to kill their people. We have an army. We have ships and fighters-all the equipment an army needs.

The one thing that we need to make it all work is people and unfortunately we don't have that. Wait, no, that's not entirely true. We have some people, if you could call them people. What we do need is people to fight. We have our leaders but now we need people whom the leaders can trust. People who will fight and sacrifice themselves as necessary. Not just to win...but to win thoroughly.

bdc256

Just about the entire post you are "Telling" me things. Show me. Unless you wanted to write telling us for style reasons try to show at least some of it.

I also do not like the first paragraph. It feels dry, it to straight forward and does not evoke any emotion in me.

I don't mean to be harsh sorry if I was. One thing you did right was give me some questions, and even though the story somewhat lacked emotion I would have kept reading to find the answers. I also liked the plot.

If I remember I will print your story out tommoro and trie ang give you some better, more specific advice.

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jArRaD_fRoM_sUbWaY

Thanks. I'm looking forward to your analysis. What suggestions do you have to evoke more emotion?

The Man in Black

Hmm, well I've read it and I've got to say, originally I saw where you were coming from the way you did it. As I saw it the reason you were telling and not showing was because this was more of an expository prologue, like one of the Star Wars opening crawls than part of the story, but the problem I have with it is its just too long. You cram so many details in it that it gets too tiresome to read through. That style is interesting and works good for short spurts but almost 1300 words of it just can't keep my two year old attention span interested. Like I said before, I do like the first sentence, but I think it would be much better used if it was said by a villain, and perhaps not by the main hero.

I agree with bdc too, the expository style you chose doesn't convey emotion all that covincingly, so I'd leave some of the more important emotional stuff (like Hannah's death) for flashbacks or reveal it to us through the story. I'll admit, originally for my novel (prologue and now the first chapter are posted up on here) I had written an expository prologue like this, and the one I have now I used for the first chapter. But the more I got to reading it, the more I decided that it didn't work quite as well as revealing the events that shaped the past 200 (or next from our point of view) years through the eyes of characters.

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Hodge

First off, it's a great idea, but all you're doing is telling us stuff. You aren't showing. And there's a lot of repition of certain themes as well. It also has a bunch of stuff that really only bogs down the reader because it's unneeded.

Like this, for example. I'd say that this is a given, not something you need to point out.


Here you need to show us why they haven't helped (i.e. "the victories were too few and too far between").


You mention the importance of intelligence several times throughout, and it doesn't work so well in a structural sense. Keep everything we need to know about intelligence and its role in this conflict in one paragraph.



The above examples are problems that are pretty consistent throughout the piece. Your biggest issue, though, is definitely that you only tell us things and you don't show anything. It has a very monologish feel, and the first few paragraphs are too ambiguous as well (what importance is Hanna? What acts has he commited? Why should we even care?). Keep working on it, though, because it has potential.

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damien_frosst

It's got a good feel for a prologue. If you intend it as that, I'd be tempted to remove the first person references, and put those in the real chapter 1, when you introduce the main character. If you don't want this to be a prologue, then you'll get a more compelling story by referring to the things here in story, but revealing it over time, and in the right places.

I've only a few gripes about word choices, or the occasional bit of phrasing. None of them are grevious that I can see, so it's probably just style differences.

Keep writing!

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Damien

In my world, there are no heroes, only really polite villians.

bdc256

Sorry it took longer than I said, but I had to install XP SP2.

I have a small list of suggestions for you, and want to know if they help before I give you the rest. You may want to try rewriting it anyway, but I would like to know. Help me help you.

I would change the first paragraph to something like:

"Soon I will do increadible things", I yelled at the creature before me, who hung shakeled at the hands and the feet, as I first thrusted a red hot blade into its fleash and then removed it. "I have Killed!, Maimed!, and Tortured! your kind." I screamed striking the creature with each word. ...

You get the idea.

I would remove many and possibly of lives from:
"I have ensured humanity's survial and saved many, maybe thousands of lives.

For the fourth paragraph about the dreams and nightmares. Breakup the sentences with flashbacks to one.

The paragraph about getting part of the fleet could be said by two other charatures woundering if him controlling a fleet is a good thing, considering his rage. Or mabey he is woundering himself as he tries momentarly to fight of the rage before relapsing into it again.

These are just suggestions though.

One more! If you like yours break up the paragraphs witch is a letter he is writting to someone with him doing something else, tacking a com call answering someone at the door ect..

Let me know if these help, and if so witch ones done. I hope it heps. [/b]

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bdc256

Reading some of the other replys, witch I did not do before. If you were going for the star wars type opening, telling us, then I would definitly go with using a letter, a voicer or holo-log, or something similar. With the paragraphs broken up, he is intruped or does somthing in between them, of course.

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jArRaD_fRoM_sUbWaY

I made what changes I thought were right. I've re-arranged somethings, added some phrases, changed a few words etc but most of it is the same. I haven't shortened it, if anything it's probably a good 50-100 words longer. I made some real paragraphs so I'm sure you'll enjoy that. Your reviews are excellent and really helpful, I hope you can continue. I changed it from first person present to someone telling the story. You could call it an old soldier's nostalgia. I'm also planning on changing it to a third person omniscient perspective after the prologue. Anyone have thoughts on this? Enjoy!

Prologue

I was part of incredible things. Incredible things that still make me proud and incredible things that still haunt me at night. I have killed, maimed, tortured, stabbed and even broke the enemy with my own two hands. I have willingly launched myself into the pit of war and survived. I have ensured Humanity’s survival and helped save thousands. These acts are what had granted me the privilege to be part of the Fleet.

All the things I have done to this point, they still make me feel jaded, incomplete. I have taken lives and by keeping some alive, granted life. My acts of barbarism still weigh heavy on my mind and my acts of heroism helped sustain me on the path ahead, but, it was my desire for revenge that drove me. I had seen millions of innocent people killed at their hands, yet, I long for one and only one life: Hanna‘s.

The demons of my past still chase me throughout my skull. At night I have nightmares of what happened when they came to us: the sounds of their screaming, the smell of the rotting flesh and the look on her face...it’s more then I could take and stay the same. The things that I have seen and done had turned me into a killer. It was cold anger and desire for revenge that drove me. It made me the soldier I am. Was.

My past was a gaping black hole that I tried run away from. I tried to run but that only made it bigger and faster. I couldn’t and sometimes still can’t win the war raging inside my mind, so I tried to run away from the battles. I bury the images of my past deep inside myself when I am awake, but, it is when I sleep that they surprise me.

Sometimes I wake up during the night sweating and sometimes I’ll wake up crying, my eyes puffy and red. Strange dreams still come to me. Sometimes I am the killer sometimes I just stand by and watch, no matter what I do she always dies. The games of my dreams are fixed and it seems as though the only option is death. The war messed with my mind. There is no real way to survive throughout a war and stay sane. The best you can do is acknowledge that insanity and try to live your “normal” life as best you can.

I’m not happy, but who cares? Humanity never asked me to be happy. It only asked me and the others that were with me to be brilliant because they needed us. Since the start of the war a lot of people had to be brilliant. A lot of people had to sacrifice themselves because of those who weren’t brilliant. When I was picked, I had to be brilliant. I had to be brilliant first and take happiness in small doses as I can manage it. Happiness was something that came along very rarely. Before it all set into motion, it was brutal. Some people even died. They needed the ones that could survive. In the end, it was really just the lucky ones.

But why? Now in the end the people around me start to ask why did we even have to be brilliant in the first place? Why couldn’t we have been left alone and serve happy, normal lives?

We had our act together. We finally stopped fighting amongst each other. We were at peace with ourselves, war no longer existed, famine was killed and poverty destroyed. Then we found it. A substance, who’s ability to generate energy was so great that they saw fit to commit xenocide over it.

At first we held our own against them. They didn’t know what we could do so they were playing it careful. They never launched any major attacks against us, mostly just ship-ship affairs. Only three or four real fleet actions. We were to arrogant to think that they could have had more. We were also too naive to believe that they could ever use this time to figure us out. They figured us out alright.

They disappeared for a while but when they came back, they did so with a bang. No explanation offered, no negotiation, no post-it on the fridge. They had ways to disrupt our communications, jams our missiles, destroy our ships and kill our crews, but, most unfortunately, they had figured out tactics that would out-smart us at nearly every turn. They took us planet after planet. They came and kept coming until they beat us...nearly. We’ve had a few victories but they were too far and few between to make any real difference.

The worlds that had once prospered and served as a home for billions of people outside Sol, are now no more then radioactive wastelands incapable of supporting life. Sol and even Earth felt the destruction that this war wrought. Our fleet was gone. What we thought was a collection of weapons with unimaginable destructive power was systematically destroyed by an enemy who’s power far exceeded our own. While their weapons were more powerful and their ships faster, their real power came not in weaponry or in numbers, but in sheer intelligence.

We tried to prepare for what they would do next but in the end they came up with things we didn’t even imagine. Ships and soldiers are important things to an army. Without them an army cannot exist. In the end it’s not whoever has the greatest amount of troops or the most ammo. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter who can replace their losses the quickest. It all comes down to who has better leaders. An army cannot function without leaders. Without officers and generals to guide the troops. We weren’t stupid, just out-classed.

True war is fought by the ones in command of a fleet or an army. True war is fought with a person’s mind. Not rifles or bombs or starships but with the chemical reactions and neuron flashes inside a skull. Intelligence in a battle can overcome almost any obstacle. Intelligence, if great enough can win any war. In the end, that was the problem. How can we hope to compete with an enemy that could out-think us?

The enemy was ruthless. They would destroy one world and then move to the next. They would destroy our ships and we would pulled them back. They would kill our population and we retreated. They would rape our species of it’s right to exist and we would simply pull our forces back more and more often. They were simply too intelligent to beat. No more. We drew the line and pushed back...hard.

The enemy was very smart but they didn’t expect one thing. They didn’t understand that the ruthless rulers or destroyers of history all ended with the same fate. The Third Reich with Hitler, the revolutions in Soviet Russia, the fall of Rome, the coup against Fulgencio Batista when Castro and the population revolted against him and even the assassination of Julius Caesar. While these might all be seemingly different cases they do have one thing in common: they all caused oppression, submissiveness, sadness and fear. They also caused anger, hatred, loathing and desire. Their enemies thought of ways to unseat them. When it all comes down to the last word, they thought of a way to get something better. You can never achieved victory if you dominate totally and you cannot have peace if you rule with an iron hand. Total domination leads to arrogance and arrogance to mistakes.

Their great destructive power and will to use that power against us, forced us to do the most dangerous thing that could happen: think.

We were beaten. We were corned like some dying animal in the wild. Animals get all the more dangerous the closer they get to extinction. We learnt from the enemy where we were weak and we improved. We learnt where we were strong and we became stronger. We learnt new things from the enemy. Only an enemy can teach you these things. Only the enemy can make you strong. We thought for a long time about things we could use against them. Things we could use to poison their worlds, kill their people and destroy their empire. We succeeded. But they have also had time to think about things they could use against us. Things they could use to poison more of our worlds, to kill more of our people and in the end...exterminate us. It was a quid pro quo. We learn from you but you learn from us.

Only a handful knew at the time, but everything we had built, everything we had invented, everything we could think of, was ready. Ready to strike back. Ready to destroy their worlds, annihilate their fleets and to kill their people. We had an army. We had ships and fighters-all the equipment an army needs. The one thing that we needed to make it all work is people and unfortunately we didn’t have that just yet. Wait, no, that’s not entirely true. We had some people. If you could call them people. What we did need was people to fight. We had our leaders but then we needed people whom the leaders could trust. People who would fight and win and sacrifice themselves as necessary.

Not just to win...but to win thoroughly.

bdc256

Your still telling us. Is that what you want to do. If not try adding action. refer to my second post where he is tourturing one of them, while still saying the first paragraph.

If you want to tell us. I think you should make it a letter or such, as I mentioned above.

{First Paragraph}

I turned of the holopad. {Does something like take a call on the com system, answer someone who walks by the door ect.}

The parts in brackets are not literal.

These two our the prologue could simply be the letter itself. In witch case I think it would be best to format it as such.

I am still not sure where you are going with this, what style . Telling us that would allow us to help you much better.

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jArRaD_fRoM_sUbWaY

What I'm trying to do with this prologue is set a mood/atmosphere for the story to proceed in. I'm not trying to put in any action. That's the last things I want. I want this prologue to give the reader questions to be answered, intrigue them to read more, give them some overview etc. I'm not sure yet on what format I'm putting this in but my mind keeps drifting to him (protagonist) finally telling his family what happened during the war or maybe writting about the war or something.

bdc256

In that case I would recommend, as I have before, to put it in letter format. so people know it is a letter. You could instead, show him writting the letter, but breaking it up with some type of action. Let me explain that the action is trival or not plot related and simply ment to give the reader a break between reading the rest. I just think that would make it easier to read. Are you objectable to this . Whatever you do just remeber that if the start is to boring or flat you will lose readers there. WHy don't you write down all the questions you think the reader should have after reading this, and I will write the ones I have. Then We can compare and see if any are not getting communicated. I will also note if I see anyting that might be changed to give another question.

I don't have the time now however I will get to it soon.

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bdc256

Heres that list. I sat down and wrote it after each paragraph.

Who is the main characture?
Who is he working for?
Who is the enemy?
Who is Hanna?
What happened to him?
Why isn't he happy?
Does it have to do with Hanna?
In What way did they have to be brilliant?
How was he picked?
what is the substance?
What type of power dos it give?
Where did the enemy go?
What were they going to do?

I know I missed some. I was not looking to hard at the end, there were so many. After making this list your story looks a lot better. There is a lot more to it than I origionaly got out of reading it. Never mind making a list of all the questions you tried to raise, you have got enought.

The main problem is that it lacks emotion. It is also a bit to long. That is why I think it needs to be broken up, I said this before no need to explain again. I think you should move on and write more chapters, mabey the whole story or half of it. Then rewrite the beggining. I think this will make it much better. You also don't want to get stuck here forever. You never have a perfect begining.

Hope this helps

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jArRaD_fRoM_sUbWaY

Thank you very to everyone who has responded to this topic, especially to you bdc256. You have given me great feedback. I want to get my prologue as perfect as I can because I plan to use it as my "hook". I have thought of a way to help put in action to my prologue. I don't want to give it away but I'll give you a hint: memoirs. You have given some much appreciated and great help and I thank you for it, however, I fear that I will not post anything further on the forums unless I am having particular difficulty with a scene. Please do not take it as an insult but I wish to see my what own "style" of writing is without it being changed too much by outside opinions. If I ever have any trouble with something you can be sure that I will post it here, in this forum. Thank you all once again.

bdc256

Good Luck

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