posted
It was dark! It was always dark, ever since we had lost the war. The filth that had spewed from the Rift had blackened our skies, and destroyed our land. I still missed seeing the sunrise. In the fifteen years since my friends and I had screwed up on a grand scale, the world had gone to hell fast. Everything had seemed so simple and clear-cut back then. The war was still fresh and although the enemy harried our forces hard, there was still hope of driving them from the kingdom. Of winning! The mages had formulated a great magic to seal the Rift somewhere in the Merncott mountains. It had spawned these invaders, and our ranger, the Wood elf Marillon, had scouted a path that the enemy did not seem to know. Cut off from the
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited July 06, 2006).]
posted
yep Its a n adult fantasy The first few pages are written to be pacey with short simple sentences to try and draw the reader in the main plot is the heroes blew it big style and the world is overrun. A few fragments of the Steel Vipers have managed a half baked plan to 'fix things' involving magic, time travel. One of the characters jumps back into an earlier version of herself and tries to stop events unfolding but things aren't quite the same And then the spell goes really wrong
The first couple of chapters give an idea of what is happening with the story expanding the back story as it goes.
posted
You appear to have a good idea for a story but I think you are trying to tell the entire story in 13 lines. It reads like the cover of a video game, trying to give me all the information I need without the emotional invovlement of who is talking or why I should care about him/her.
So it's dark - big deal. Why should I care that it is dark all the time? Because the MC (don't know who that is) misses the sunrise. Why should I care that the MC misses the sunrise? - reminded him of home? is that home gone? Did he watch the sunrise as a child or wrapped in a blanket with his wife? Was he a farmer and rose before sunup to milk cows and watched the sunrise as he walked back to the house? I have no reason to care that he misses the sunrise.
Black filth spewed from the Rift and destroyed the land - bummer. I like the tone of this sentance ut it almost seems out of place. The beginning has an undertone of levity to it that this phrase contradicts. The following bit about "screwed up on a grand scale" screams young punk but much of the rest is poetic. What is the tone you are trying to set here?
These thirteen lines could be fleshed out into something much grander but it is your writing and you need to decide what you want to do with it.
I'm all for giving background (concise, with nothing not absolutely needed to understand the scene), but this is a lot, and I don't think you need every last bit of it. How about collapsing it to your 2nd paragraph, and then giving us the specific time, place, character, what he's doing right then and why we care. What you have so far is summary, which is fine for the parts you don't want to show; but the shown part is most of the fun.
posted
Exclamations need to be used in care, especially in the narration. At least, that's what I've been told. I think it might be more powerful without the exclamation: It was dark.
I suspect it was the number of exclamations that gave rise to the question whether this is serious or not. Internally, my inner reader was shouting those sentences. I couldn't help but find humor in it and I'm guessing humor wasn't what was intended.
One person who critted me early on said that one should rarely use exclamation in dialog, and never in the first five pages, and if it has to be used in the narration, no more than once in an entire novel. Perhaps an extreme view, but it helped me question my usage.
posted
Damn. I was just about to go an a rant about exclamation marks, and Chris beat me to it . I would go a stage further. If you started with 'It was always dark, ever since we had lost the war' rather than a random utterance, I feel that immediately pulls me further into the world of the MC, as though I've just dropped into the story in the MC's mid-thought.
Again, I think the other fragments you've used exclamation marks on are superfluous, and my opinion is that you would be better advised to give the reader more credit in reading around the words you write in such situations.
At the very least, if you don't tell me instantly why the characters are going to the Rift, then it leaves me wondering, intrigued, more likely to read on. Are the characters trying to close it, enter it, or something completely different that I hadn't imagined.
Hope that helps.
Teph
[This message has been edited by Tephirax (edited July 06, 2006).]
posted
What is "it"? ("It was dark.") I'm not picking on you, because I've seen that exact statement about 800K times. But, until I read your piece, I'm not sure I ever thought about what "it" is. Now I'm thinking, and I really don't know the answer myself. The sky? The room? Everything? What got me thinking was the fact that you started with "it."
(Well, add the fact that my first posting here was a post-apocolyptic thing about darkness, and the comments I recieved made me dig deeper into my scene, find better descriptors, and be generally more aware of how many different kinds of ways there are to say "It was dark." And how many different things that statement can mean.)
I don't care for the phrase "ever since." It always sounds like slang to me, even if it's not.
You use a lot of repetitions of "had", which could be eliminated with minor tense changes. The piece would read stronger, as well.
I like your idea here, that the narrator admits his/her mistake, and is powerless to fix his/her mistake without a lot of help from other people. I'm intrigued by your later description of the rest of the plot, and I think you've got the makings of a good story.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
. I would go a stage further. If you started with 'It was always dark, ever since we had lost the war' rather than a random utterance, I feel that immediately pulls me further into the world of the MC, as though I've just dropped into the story in the MC's mid-thought.
