Critique Request: Novel Prologue: The Well Below the Valley

[ElinIsabel]

I hope I'm doing this right...correct me if I'm not...

I posted in the "stories" section a first draft of a prologue

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26664

I especially need help with four things.

1) I want to establish an Omniscent Narrator right away without being too distant from the character at the center of the scene, but also leaving my option open to pop into other POVs. I think I need some fine tuning in this.

2) I feel like it gets cluttered and messy at points, but I also feel like there is some back story that has to get told. I'm not sure about the pacing or the amount of information that is given. Suggestions?

3) Sentence structure and word choice.

4) I'm not sure about several names; most of them I came up with years ago, and now I realize that one is pretty anachronistic (although phonetically it matches the naming scheme of her people) The other I have an issue with is very close to a place name in LOTR. Thoughts?

Thank you! Man, beginnings are tough! I've re-written this a hundred times and it still sounds all wrong.

 

[Gustaf Hagel]

I´ll not be able to give you much regarding your points since I´m a too soft critic most often.

With that said, I do have one thing that bugs me and that is this Queen. The information about her is spread out well and so but what gets to me is what she would be able to do if Rianna hears her coming. Either I would give it more the feel of a fool's hope or provide a little bit of info as to what this Queen might be able to do to stop the execution.

Aside from that, I do really like this chapter and I felt an urge to know more, read more. I like the setting and I like to know how the story unfolds, Rianna is an interesting character and I could imagine her longing for the open grounds, for freedom and to live as she dreamed—in short, I started to feel for her.

 

[ElinIsabel]

Ohh, first criticism!

Thank you! I want it to be a fool's hope, of a sixteen year old whose head is getting her first jolt out of storyland and into cold reality where "Robin Hood" style rescues don't happen. I'll go back and see how I can make that more clear.

 

[kmtolan]

Elin,

Think how this would work if you had her out there begging and struggling, and through her pleading one learns of her story and her lover's fate. That would be showing rather than the long bouts of narration you provide. The pacing would pick up as well. Much of what you provide is heavy with prose-like description. Might work if this was a fantasy/romance novel, but not sure if it serves purpose other than to distract from the main event. It goes on a bit too long for me.

Most stories really don't need prologues, so you might ask yourself what is so necessary about this scene. I assume this scene is distanced from the main story in both time and place. If not, you probably have yourself a first chapter instead of a prologue.

Your descriptions are eloquent. You do need to work on sentence construction such as the run-on stuff here

Her father, Chieftain Mackerrey, had no sons and too many enemies, and he seized the opportunity when their foreign Overlord from the West, Tanath Lotheloren, was drawn to his youngest daughter’s beauty and, not bound by the customs of the native Tribes, sought to take her as his second wife.

Read your work aloud. If you are running out of breath, you have a problem. If you are using more than two commas - danger danger!

Kerry

 

[ElinIsabel]

Thank you!

Long sentences are either amazing or disastrous; they take so much practice and fine tuning to get right, and the fresh eye is helpful.

I've toyed around with Prologue/No Prologue/Make prologue Chapter One, and although I'm working with it the way it is, I'm still leaving it up in the air for now. I'll give that some thought, though.

Thanks again!

 

[Window Bar]

prologue critique

Hi ElinIsabel --

Again, welcome to the forums. I just finished keying this reply into the Stories section where you first posted it, but here it is again:
**************************************

Hi ElinIsabel--

Two hearty affirmative nods. The prologue works. You have instantly created both a scene and a character that hold our attention and make us care.

Keeping in mind that all critiques are matters of personal opinion, I have taken a go at it, holding my comments to two issues, the first of which is ridiculously easy.

1) Don't double space (double space bar) following periods and commas. This is not an arbitrary rule at all, but a way to ensure that an ugly page doesn't get produced when your text has gone to someone else. As a word-processed file migrates among different programs, formats, printers and (we hope) typesetting machines, some of the double spaces are likely to fall at the end of a line, at which location they can easily be split, thereby creating an unwanted mini-indent at the beginning of the next line. Forget what your typing teacher told you: In word processing you hit the space bar key only once after commas, colons, semi-colons and periods.

... and now the opinion part:

2) Try to tamp and condense your phrasing. If you would like an example, working through just the first several paragraphs, you can PM me. I've already done the edit, so it's no bother; you simply may disagree.

Assuming you want the edit, I have to admit that I have no clue how to do an attachment to one of these comments or to a PM, so I'd be much obliged to know how it's done -- either that or send along your e-mail address so I can e-mail the file back to you.

Once again, the prologue works.