Thanks guys!
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On the turn of Eli’s sixteenth summer, they branded him for use in the mines, and shoved him on a caravan headed north. His feet carried him towards Arena, just below the icy peaks of Sorrow’s Shroud, deep into the bowels of the mountain. There were tales from that region that chilled the blood, and weakened the knees. Eli heard them as he grew, prattled about by the kitchen folk. The sounds of weeping children on the wind. Slaves stolen in the night, only blood left behind. Shadows that would drain you of your very soul.
His heart pounded against his ribs, harder and harder with each step, but he would not show fear. If he was an animal, at least he would be a strong one.
Second, the MC is put on a caravan. Reading in to that, I get that he was put on a wagon in a caravan. A simple change of “on” to “in” would clear it up to me.
Lastly, it seems to me that there is a style change between the first and second paragraph. The first comes across as distant, with the second being more personal.
Here it is with some of the fixes:
On the turn of Eli’s sixteenth summer, his master branded him for use in the mines, and shoved him in a caravan headed north. His feet carried him towards Arena, just below the icy peaks of Sorrow’s Shroud, deep into the bowels of the mountain.
There were tales from that region that chilled the blood, and weakened the knees. Eli had heard them as he grew, prattled about by the kitchen folk. The sounds of weeping children on the wind. Slaves stolen in the night, with only blood left behind. Shadows that would drain you of your very soul.
His heart pounded against his ribs, harder and harder with each step, but he would not show fear. If he was an animal, at least he would be a strong one.
I still need to work on the rythem of the last three lines of paragraph one.
[This message has been edited by pixydust (edited December 01, 2005).]
I suggest you identify a specific time and place to start the story. Put us there. Let us know where MC is; who's with him; what's happening in that very moment.
Now, you get a paragraph for background, which is fine; but after that, I'd want to pick a moment, and let the reader experience it.
I'm not strong in grammar, but I don't think you need the last comma in that line. The last phrase lacks a subject (who shoved him), so it is a dependant clause.
Sixteenth summer is rather vague, though I've seen many stories use this method for counting time. In this case, it seems awkward because it refers to a specific, quick, event. This means I don't know if it was at the beginning of the summer, the middle or the end. It probably works, but I thought I'd mentioned it.
It feels like your first two paragraphs lack a character. I'd rather see inside his head a little and get to know him before I have the details of where he is headed. It might also help to have a specific setting, such as the actual branding, to look through his eyes upon. This is sort of a general, vague setting covering the whole trip, it seems. It's harder to see through his eyes if we don't have something specific to see. I think you could start with a form of the last paragraph (line) and then move into the description. Then we can see those events though someone who is strong, who won't let them see his fear, despite his youth.
Another thing you might consider is getting a little deeper into his thoughts sooner, and leaving out some of the details that are almost irrelevant so early in the story. I think of how the scene would be for me, how it would feel to actually be Eli, placed in that situation, with the knowledge that he has at that time. So it would go something like this:
Eli looked down at his feet, there shackles of iron occasionally clashing together causing his sores to reopen and bleed. He stepped on a sharper than normal rock with his already bleeding feet and stifled a cry of pain, knowing it would bring no sympathy, a lesson he had learned with difficulty. His eyes teared up, but not from the pain, but from sweat and grit which constantly got in them. He brought a hand up to his face, attempting to wipe the sweat and dirt away from his eyes. When he had cleared them enough to see he looked up and to the horizon. Far in the distance, but steadily getting closer, a mountain range thrust upward from the desert floor. Icy peaks stood out here and there along the range. He knew the name of those peaks well, Sorrow's Shroud. It's name was known far and wide, tales that haunted and chilled the blood...
Anyway maybe that will help better than trying to tell you. My main point I guess is just let us into the character a bit, let us feel how it would be to be in his shoes,(that means imagining being there yourself) and then once that's done, at least for me, I can more easily accept the other peices of information about his world, because then that information helps me to understand him better, and it's him that I care about enough to read, the information and exposition is only appropriate as it concerns your characters.
I hope I wasn't to presumptious rewriting it a bit, my intentions were not to offend, but to show how it 'feels' to write in character.
Hope that helps