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Post by Rikuseroth on Sept 22, 2015 1:53:07 GMT
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2015 12:06:15 GMT
There's not much to say when it's a very short passage with little to no context. It seems to be some kind of in medias res prologue, and unfortunately, there's not much intrigue, since the whole idea of a great personal tragedy being caused by some random mcguffin is not exactly new. Not that such a story wouldn't work, but I am saying that in medias res needs more backbone to his hook. The reader doesn't really care about any of the characters yet, and they don't know anything about the world of your story. In my opinion I feel this kind of hook works best when you smash the reader's idea of 'normal', or what they expect, as soon as possible, which will make them want to read on as you explain the events leading up to that point later on. Examples include having the world end in a completely ridiculous way. One book I know of has the world consumed by carnivorous, man-eating jam for example, though you since you're going for a more serious tone, you probably wouldn't want to go something like that. You could have a stereotypical hero character, who you build as the protagonist, die immediately. You could have a kindly old mentor figure kill someone. They're perhaps not things I would do, but all those are just off the top of my head.
I'm sure you have an idea where you want your story to go, so think of the most unique element of your story, and don't hide that from the reader in your opening. Display it for all the world to see, without removing their reason to continue.
As for the actual prose itself... use of the words 'darkness' or 'dark' need to be reconsidered, as it frankly started to get comical to me to read those words repeatedly after a while. You tried some variety with 'blackness' towards the end, although that didn't really help. Try to think of some similes or metaphors or new words to describe the darkness. The darkness in the passage itself seems to be a metaphor for some kind of non-specific evil, so if you have any idea as to what that evil is, perhaps you could instead drop hints to the evil's true nature whenever you have to refer to it, instead of repeatedly establishing the fact that it is, indeed, akin to darkness or has dark qualities. You describe its skeletal hand, and it's blade- what other qualities does it possess?
In the second sentence you changed the tense from past, as it was in the previous sentence and the rest of the passage, to the present tense. You need to be mindful of a consistent tense. Actually, in the first sentence, your use of the word 'is' rather than 'was' also changes the tense from past to present over the course of a single sentence. It feels somewhat clunky in places. Sentence structure is fairly simplistic, and word choice is strange in some places: 'It is then made apparent', 'against all the odds', 'steadily, slowly walking towards it'. It could probably use a few revisions.
Your voice is fairly dry, largely just narrating events as they happen. You get inside your characters head at the second paragraph, but even that was described fairly dryly. What perspective are you writing from? How does your character, or narrator, see the world? How does he filter it, make sense of it? Darkness seems to be the aesthetic, along with some anime shonenisms, but there's not much in the way of theming. The various actions the character takes, as well as some of his thoughts, gives us some insight into how he's feeling, but it feels like there's more that could be done. He thinks of the darkness as 'necessary' why? What does he think of the fact that he has energy swords? What does he think of his opponent? About the darkness in his heart? You don't need to go into great detail, but perhaps some extra adjectives, descriptions, and bias added on to each action could help develop his character more, without having to spell it out to the audience.
I don't know how much of that you'll use, but I had little to go on, and I was mostly just rambling and throwing anything out there. Hope I helped in some respect.
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Post by Rikuseroth on Sept 22, 2015 15:39:55 GMT
Taking Al's thoughts into consideration, I decided to edit it, so if anyone looks at it right now, they will find it rather incomplete looking even more so than before.
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