posted
My name is Horis, I am a scholar that studies under the Klenn Priests in Rul Helfolea. It is the year 242 of the 8th millennium. The first day of the week of the Nocturn has come upon this land, exactly 3000 years since the coming of the Alchemic Storms. The Sombrenauge have ruled over the Meir islands for a millenium. The Cartamites of Cartmeir, under the rule of the Sombrenuage have recently murdered the twelve judges that rule over the land of Araia. The Sombrenuage have successfully taken rule of every land except the one in which I live, Rul Helfolea. For eight hundred years our sister island Araia has held against the Sombrenauge. Now with Araia’s downfall, I fear the direct siege of Rul Helfolea will soon begin.
--- This novel I am working on is a fantasy novel. I am at 16,000 words, but the finished work will probably be just over 100,000. The 13 lines I posted is part of the prologue of the story, it is taken from the journal of a scholar.
While I am mainly looking for criticism only on these 13 lines, if you are interested in more, I can give you a link to a blog where I have the rest of the prologue, and two chapters of the six I've written.
Please tell me if I have any issues regarding changing between different tenses, or any simple grammatical errors. (I've grown up being ashamed of my writing because of crazy english teachers, so I'm afraid I make rookie mistakes a lot.)
Any criticism (or praise...please?) will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.
This is too info-dumpy for my taste. Furthermore, I feel pummeled by all the names and terms. Besides your character's name and occupation, I know about him or her, certainly nothing to make him or her interesting to me. There's some suspense--he fears a siege--but it's lost in all the encyclopedic info.
posted
For me, first-person, present tense is hard to swallow. I can't immerse.
It sounds like a voice over from a movie, but there are no images. That's why this is an infodump.
1) Who is Horis? What does he feel? What are his morals? Religious tenets? What are his duties? How and Why does he know so much about all these events? 2) What's a Klenn Priest? 3) Where's Rul Helfolea? 4) Who are the Sombrenauge? 5) Where are the Meir Islands? 6) Where is the land of Araia? 7) What are the Cartamites? 8) Where is Cartmeir?
I feel like a need a map and a glossary to get through these two paragraphs.
The first sentence is fine, but I'd add a comma and expose that this is the last free land on the (continent of/peninsula of/island of whatever its name is). IMHO the second sentence should be: I fear the direct siege of Rul Helfolea will soon begin. Who, where, and Badda-bing your hook are taken care of. Then, I want to know details about who Horis is. You can explain how he learned of the Sombrenauge, but while you do, show us what he feels about them, his religion, people's chances, etc.
I hope this helps.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited November 10, 2007).]
posted
Thanks everybody, this confirmed one thing to me. It is a very bad idea to put an uninspired character which you will never see again in the prologue of the book. Why I even wrote this prologue is beyond me, I asked myself while writing it, who is Horis? Who are the klenn priests? Why is their library being infiltrated?
The thing is, is I made a huge mistake in writing this, because neither of these things are important to the story, and you will never see Horis again. The Klenn Priests will never be mentioned and while it introduced a lot of things at once, it was too much too fast.
Thanks for confirming my reluctance in having this as a prologue.
posted
I think depending on the purpose of your prologue, the character doesn't have to be a main character. Hopefully they're interesting, but it depends why you've put in a prologue at all. If your goal is to orient the reader with the proper time and place, then the character you use to fuel that doesn't have to be a main character in the rest of the book.
I'll echo some of the other comments. Lots of names that don't mean anything to me yet. Perhaps make it more personal to the character. This idea that a siege is imminent, perhaps focus more on that. All the other people and places can be dropped in as the story unfolds, but more focus on this character and what they're going through might make for a smoother start. The siege is interesting because it's about to happen to him. His life is in danger, and that's always good stuff to get me interested.
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