Young Writers Society

Prologue:

She stood, motionless, in the large, arched window of the old stone castle. She looked like she was alone, but on closer inspection; a young man was cowering in the shadows. She spoke, breaking the empty silence;
“It happens every time I send you out. You fail me,” she sighed dramatically.
“I’m sorry, General,” whimpered the man, coming into the light of the full moon.
“It’s not just a case of saying sorry and it all being over and done with. I must find him.” She yelled, throwing a blue and white vase across the room. The man ducked and the vase hit the wall above his head. Moments earlier, it had been priceless. She was calmer now.
"Where have you been looking for him?” she asked.
“All over your island, my lady. But there is no sign of him,” the man replied.
She walked to the glassless window and said, her voice dripping with deadly poison,
“Of course, you never thought to look on his island, did you?”
“He has an island? Where is it?” The man asked, genuine confusion in his voice.
“Right next to my island, you moron! Honestly, go and look out the window!”
The man rushed to the arch, not wanting to upset the woman further.
“Well, now that you have some sense drilled into that puny brain, you can continue your search, can’t you?” the woman whispered
“But my lady…” the man hesitated to ask the question that he had been dreading the whole evening.
“Can’t you?” the woman repeated, harder this time, and the man ran down the stairs, a faint,
“Yes, my lady,” echoing up the winding stairs.
The woman smiled; she had him now.

It looks like you've copied and pasted this right out of word or works. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. However, your indentations, for whatever reason, don't register when you post it. So right now it looks like one big, huge, gob of words. To make it easier to read, I suggest double spacing the paragrpahs, like so:

She stood, motionless, in the large, arched window of the old stone castle. She looked like she was alone, but on closer inspection; a young man was cowering in the shadows. She spoke, breaking the empty silence; "It happens every time I send you out. You fail me,” she sighed dramatically.

“I’m sorry, General,” whimpered the man,
coming into the light of the full moon.

etc.

That said, I found this (rather short) piece amusing. It reminds me of one of my stories, actrually. The incompetent subordinate, the raging Superior...it's all very fun.

Have you more?

First of all, the grammar is kind of weird. If you have a cool English teacher, you might want to ask about using punctuation, where to put periods, and everything of that sort. I'm sure that your teacher will be thrilled with your questions. Also, there might be others who help you here, but I don't want to get bogged down with the grammar aspect, okay?

I find this an interesting story. There's a female general (you don't see those everyday!) and her presence on the man is pretty cool, at least to my feminist mind. The main thing to work on, besides the grammar, is work on describing. You're describing in between the dialogue, which is really good, but I think you can get away with describing a little bit more. So instead of describing the way they say their words, you can say how they're moving, what they're looking at, etc.

Hope that helps!

Yes, I would cut down on the "he replied", "she sighed". Most of the time this isn't even necessary because the words themselves describe how they say them.

The story is interesting. There's not much to go on, but it's a prologue, so that is natural.

It's a really nice start! Way to draw people in!

The general being a woman is really nice because it's not what people would generally expect. I'm glad that you don't mention the specifics on who she is looking for. It keeps the reader hooked.

I agree with Snoink. More description would do it well. I, myself, love to know a little bit about what the character looks like. Even just something like age or body type gives some great visuals, without being too controling as far as imagination goes. Unless it's absolutely nessesary to keep your characters in the dark as far as that goes, I'd give them a little description. (However, finding the right place to put that description can be challenging.)

As always,

POKE

Thanks for all those comments, guys. I did just paste it out of word (I couldn't be bothered to type it all out again!)

I always think it's a bit sexist that all the Generals are males, so i thought it would be an interesting twist to add a female General.

I have more of this story coming, but i'm still editing it so it will be up in the next few days. I have lots of other stuff as well so keep watching!


Thanks for looking!

RR*

hi this is actually my story and my dream the person who uploaded it is helping me make it a good story (just so you know)

hmmm it's nice but your grammars very odd please post more!!

hi its a good story line (i say that because we both came up with it) but you really need to work on your grammar but other than that its a great start to something good (love Jack)

what more can i say i dreamed it i made it into a script then you came and made it a whole lot better thanks so much i owe alot to you roxanner

Well i wanna read more! It seems to be the beginning of a very interesting story. Post more!

don't worry the story will be update very shortly as we are both working on it as we speak

The woman's character and the other main boy (who hasn't yet been introduced) are both based on us, but it has been hard to add more charactoristics so that they are not reconisable as us.

But don't worry, more will be up by, at the latest, the end of November.

But we'll keep you on tenterhooks for a while *Laughs evily!*

RR*

There's an overuse of words such as 'said' - apart from the first two times (to set down who is speaking), these aren't needed unless you want to convey a change in the way the person is speaking (eg. they start shouting).

Could probably also do with some more description. Although, as a prologue, you may be leaving that out on purpose.

One line I really liked: 'she sighed dramatically'. I don't know, but it really rings with me .

Keep on writing .

Thanks for that, Sureal. Yeh, we don't want to give too much away, considering it is just the prologue, but if you think it needs more description...

RR*