He was about to call out for his best friend ________, but just in time he remembered where he was and decided a shout might not be his best option. He whispered instead.

“________.” No answer.

He decided to try opening his eyes again. This time he was able to keep them open, but he had to force them to focus in the dim light. An almost extinguished torch lay on the ground about three feet from his head, and his sword a little ways from his right hand.
The blade of the sword was covered in blood, and that worried _________, especially since he still could not see his companion anywhere.

---->

1. Names are very important. Leaving the blanks is disorienting for me, but more importantly it should be disorienting for you. Names help clarify wh oa character is, we identify with them. One of the first things you should figure out about a character is his or her name.
2. "...but just in time he remembered where he was..." I know you say you're about to tell us, but that doesn't matter. The point of view character remembered right there, in that sentence. The information is prominent in his mind and you have witheld it from us. You don't have to give away your plot, or how it was he had gotten there, but something as simple as, "...jus then he remembered that he was in Lord Valdemort's tower. A shout might not..." (Sorry for borrowing Harry Potter's villian. )

The second paragraph was worded a bit awkward, for me:

"He was about to call out for his best friend ________, but just in time he remembered where he was and decided a shout might not be his best option. He whispered instead."

Two issues with that section: 1) If he remembered where he was, where was he? 2) let me see it happen in sequence at bit more. (And IMHO...but I don't care if the dude's his best friend - I'll figure that out in time).

1) since his eyes are closed how did he *suddenly* remember where he was? A thought occoured to him? He heard things? Smelled something? What triggered his memory? Maybe nothing, but even if that's the case, what did he remember? "he suddenly remembered he was in the dark tower....", whatever.

2) This will fix itself when you take care of the first issue. Basically, something along the lines of: "He was about to call out for Jack. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped. He remembered -- he was in the dark tower, it'd be foolishness to speak too loudly." then a new paragraph: "Bill," he whispered. THEN a new paragraph again: No answer.

I could be wrong on that last part, but to me the lack of response deserves the same gramaticaly attention a real response would - a new paragraph (effectively dialogue). So:

"Bill," he whispered.

No response.

yadda yadda....

(You can quote me on that last part).

The only other thing I would say would be lose the word "seemed" in sentence three. It makes the sentence weak.

This helped the tremendous pain...

A good POV character name right off the bat really does help enormously in establishing your setting. Ditto for the name of the best friend. We all have a lot of experience that comes out of our name and how it fits into the culture each of us inhabits. The same is true of good fictional characters.

-->

All right, I have taken comments in stride and decided to start from a little earlier back. This is what I have written for a new hook.
-->

Crispin could not believe just how big the actual mouth of the cave was. Several times on their journey of hundreds of miles, he and Myanth had thought they were finally at their destination, only to discover they were passing through a narrow pass in the mountains, or some other strange rock formations.

Myanth whistled and found words. “I bet my father will wish he had come instead of sending us in his place.”

I wonder if the King really would have liked to come in our stead. I know I wanted to stay in Falorn. There is no place like home… But when the King commands, you do.
And so here I am with Myanth… the Prince of Falorn.

“What do you think Myanth? Should we go in?”

Crispin shook himself from his thoughts. “Yeah, why not.” There might only be giant drooling monsters inside.

--->

Between these two events is a fight of some kind. Here is the old hook with the names I have put in and some minor changes.

-->

Crispin opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. Tight. This seemed to help the tremendous pain he felt right behind his eyes. The worst part about it was he could not remember what had happened that could have rendered him unconscious, and given him this brutal headache.

He was about to call out for the prince but just in time he remembered the vicious attack and decided a shout might not be his best option. He whispered instead.

“Myanth.”

No answer.

He decided to try opening his eyes again. This time he was able to keep them open, but had to force them to focus in the dim light. An almost extinguished torch lay on the ground about three feet from his head, and his sword a little ways from his right hand. The blade of the sword was covered in blood, and that worried him especially since he still could not see his companion anywhere.

-->

Sorry for the length of the post. Thanks for you help though.

The rewrite of the first opener looks pretty good, with the exception of the word 'vicious'. It doesn't really add anything, we can figure out on our own that the attack was severe enough that Crispen was rendered unconscious. And it kind of sends the reader off on a tangent of wondering what particularly made the attack 'vicious' rather than 'violent' or 'sudden' or...see?

The alternative opening just doesn't work. First, don't say he couldn't believe how big the 'actual' mouth of the cave was. There is no reasonable alternative to the actual mouth of the cave that would come to mind, and thus you infer that there was some non-actual mouth of the cave that was either a more believeable size or that the non-actual mouth of a cave could be expected to be so large, but of course the actual mouth would not be believed should it be as large as the non-actual mouth might be expected to be. Since we still have no idea what this 'non-actual' mouth of the cave might be, all you've done is confuse us with a nonsensical implication (this is why they say not to overuse adverbs--whenever you use an adverb, you naturally imply that the sentence would have meant something different without the adverb, and when the only alternative meanings are just foolish...).

quote:

---

"Jerry, who are 'they'?"

"W..uh, I don't know. That's why they call them 'they'...and, 'them'."

---

Larger criticism at this point, so far, this is just a big cave, possibly full of giant drooling monsters. Why exactly do they want to find this cave? This is not hard to reveal or at least hint at in the first thirteen lines (Even Chuckles can do it ).

I don't have a serious problem with inlining POV thoughts like you do here as long as the POV is clearly established and consistently maintained. Some people don't like it, some do, most use italics for a direct mental quote like that, others avoid the direct mental quote with a third person phrase. OSC goes to town on all established methods of doing the internal narrative (I believe he does this in lieu of going to town on potato chips--which explains how he's getting thinner while his books get fatter ).

A more serious, though hopefully more easily decided issue, you have Crispin say something to Myanth (unless Myanth is talking to himself, which would rouse me from any other reflections pretty darn quick, but I don't think it's what you want to say), and then shake himself from his own thoughts and answer his own question.

If this is suppose to read "What do you think Crispin?” rather than "What do you think Myanth?” well, the problem is solved that easily. Otherwise something is very odd and not right about at least one of those two...aside from the fact that one is eager to enter a cave where the other believes there are probably worse things than " giant drooling monsters inside."

“Are we going to go in?”

Crispin thought a few moments. Visions of drooling creatures with large teeth danced through his imagination. He shivered.

“What’s wrong?”

“Crispin?”

Crispin looked over at Myanth. “Yes?”

“Are we going to go in?”

Crispin thought a few moments. Visions of drooling creatures with large teeth danced through his imagination. He shivered.

“What’s wrong?”