Thread: Forsaken-Prologue

I think my eyes just imploded. Please do something about proper formatting.

Thank you.

formatting is fine, accept it.
Thank you.

Originally Posted by Red-James

formatting is fine, accept it.
Thank you.

Hi Red-James. It's something of a convention to insert a blank line between paragraphs for ease of on-screen reading for the benefit of the reader. Some readers can be put off by large blocks of text on-screen, which means you miss out on their feedback, which might otherwise have been useful to you. If you check out some of the other posts, you'll see what I mean.

Some notes from a fellow amateur that may or may not be valid.

Your first paragraph I felt was somewhat cliché as a beginning. The impression I got was that you were looking for a platform to launch from and found a weak one. If you are trying to set a mood, I would do it from the perspective of one of your characters. It doesn’t have to be a main character. It could be one of the Elvin guards who is observing the tense atmosphere.

Also, “… swaying their long, thick out reaching arms hypnotically,” is awkward. Try, “… hypnotically swaying their thick, outreaching arms.” This puts “hypnotically” in the right place, and it also takes out a redundant description. Remember, description is fine, but if your reader has to read a sentence twice in order to understand it, it will only frustrate them rather than draw them in.

There are a number of incomplete sentences and other grammatical errors. Yes, your editor will catch them, but you don’t want to make him or her work too hard on simple things like these. These are basic skills that all editors expect a writer to know and practice before it even touches their desk.

“The elf’s keen ears singled out the rapidly impending weapon, a moment to late.” You’ve just gone from describing a quad of elves to talking about one elf without transition. When reading this, I again had to read it twice to make sure you hadn’t previously introduced this one particular elf. I would have written it like this, “One young, blond haired elf pricked his keen ears as they singled out the…” This gives a small transition from one subject (the quad) to the other (the individual elf). This also personalizes him in some small way, which gives his death greater impact.

There are several words which are out of place. For example, “A bitter, pained hollow erupted from his maw…” I think you meant bellow instead of hollow. There are several others too. Look for these and try to replace them with the correct words.

I thought that the dialogue at the end was pointless. I don’t know why Lucifer would tell his hoard to stop, just to throw self-aggrandizement at the elves, then as if he had forgotten why he was there, he says, “Okay, you can kill them now.” I think it would be much more effective in building tension if you main antagonist, especially one as archetypal as Lucifer, didn’t show his face until much later in the book. I don’t think he would be bothering himself with little village of elves if it was for no other reason than extermination. That is was underlings are for.

I will say that I like your premise. I like the thought of portraying Lucifer in his original form of Archangel rather than the bull-horned goat-hoofed creature he is usually depicted as. If you are going to go that route, I would highlight it a little more by imagining him as he once was before his fall. What kinds of features would he carry over into his fallen form?

In summery, I would not consider this the final draft because it really does need more work. But I think that your idea is good enough that you could have a great story if you do the work it takes to make it great.

To start off - the readability is horrible. Personally, I can't stand the font. Added to that there is not enough white space. As an earlier poster mentioned - try indenting the paragraphs, and put blank space between each paragraph.

Now, as for the actual writing - there was too much of an emphasis on describing what was happening. To clarify what I mean, I'm going to quote an earlier poster, "I have to agree with the others that you overuse adjectives and adverbs a bit, or occasionally use one that doesn't fit."

Otherwise, it is good and I am interested.

It's perfectly acceptable to have an acclimation to descriptive writing. The best writers are seasoned enough to merit a slower-pace. However, descriptions need to be honest in order for them to work. Your descriptions in particular are overwrought and flowered. Despite what you think, this draft isn't even a knot away from being tight. It's young, rushed, clumsy.

Rob gave you good advice. I agree with him. You use adverbs in excess and most of them don't make a lot of sense. Verb choice in particular is skewed. Why would stars need to "brave" the "misty void?" They're stars. In all, the writing leaves much more to be desired. Most of the descriptions are either reworked cliches or copied verbatim. Dead silent, misty void, etc...