Prologue to my book
Boosk
Posts: 29
Last time I posted stuff on here, I got some good responses, so am putting up some more writing of mine.
The link brings you to the prologue of a book I've written. Hopefully the first part of a multi-volume epic fantasy.
All comments are appreciated and encouraged, positive and negative, from the smallest to the biggest critiques. I can take it, I promise
http://www.geocities.com/josh_x_b/trade
The link brings you to the prologue of a book I've written. Hopefully the first part of a multi-volume epic fantasy.
All comments are appreciated and encouraged, positive and negative, from the smallest to the biggest critiques. I can take it, I promise
http://www.geocities.com/josh_x_b/trade
A little nonsense now and then, relished by the wisest men
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
keep them coming!
The first criticism I would offer is of the little poem in the beginning. It just sounds a little clunky, I think what you should concentrate on is the sound of the lines, make sure the beat, and number of syllables is cohesive through the couplets.
I think the names in particular are very good. The gods and the characters.
I also think the first thing you should do when you continue to make new drafts is check for colloquialism (no spellcheck here) in one of the opening paragraphs I believe a character said or thought the phrase "I figured" which seemed kind of out of place, and I would give the mage a more austere title than "head mage" like "elder of the order of mages" or something like that, I'm sure you can find something a little more grand eloquent - after all he's trying to impress these people into giving up their son.
About the son, this is completely up to you, but I think despite his being chosen by god, that he is a little too lucid for a 4 year old. I think I would work on his dialogue and thought processes to make them a little more childlike, it just doesn't seem completely believable that he has such adult faculties of speech and thought, but again, if that's the point you want to make there's no problem there either.
I hope this helps, good luck getting published, I have aspirations along the same route.
ETE
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=119073
I think you need to make a technical decision about how you handle the focalisation and voicing of Qwal's consciousness. In the main temporal frame of the story, the narrator's omniscient third person voice renders Qwal's focalised thoughts with some dissonance: Qwal's thoughts are reworded in the past tense and third person. But when Qwal is remembering the past, you can play with the voice here. It can be a bit more like Qwal's spoken voice, even though still in the third person and past tense, and it can register little childlike idioms of the boy Qwal too.
The piece very competently uses English though I would try to vary the pace a bit by showing rather than telling the story through the eyes of the characters. For example, is there another way you might convey this:
"The sudden rush of insolence surprised Elzara. He had not sensed it earlier. Perhaps this was a multifaceted creature he had to be more careful with."
How about describing Elzara's physical response to the insolence - a red face, hairs prickling at the back of the neck, slight shortness of breathing - as a way of using an image to show rather than tell what's happening? And also, how about finding a way of voicing "Perhaps this was a multifaceted creature he had to be more careful with" in a way that's more consonant with Elzara's voice.
Really good stuff. I hope my comments are useful.
As far as Qwal's voice, I think a lot of the problem is that I began with him as an idea instead of a fully-realized character. I think that by the end of my writing I arrived there though, so after editing through it, I'll have to go back to the beginning with an eye toward that.
Thank you.
I look forward to reading more!