Young Writers Society

Prologue

The ground beneath me is cruel; it slows the tread of my feet, aids those of the beast on my heels...feeds my life to the Gods of Death.
As fire roars behind me once more, and my lungs fight for breath, I curse my foolishness again. For if I had not sought to destroy the very monster trying to kill me, I would not be fighting for survival against the unforgiving earth.
My brazen attempts to prove myself worthy are my downfall, my weakness. Playing hero is something that I can only hate myself for; it brings me nothing but pain and suffering.
The sword at my waist is heavy, it too slows me down. If I discard it, it could mean my life if I have to fight the creature again. If it remains strapped to me, the beast will have the advantage of more speed. Odds that do nothing to ease my panic.
If I survive, I will be forever branded the fool who deserves to die for the risk she imposes on others. If I die, every person at the Academy will consider it a blessing from Adieus; the God of Mercy.
The air around me is strong with the scent of death, of the blood dripping down my back and leg. Both injuries are evidence of the razor sharp dragons claws, and my continuous falling to the ground in my haste to escape.
With a roar of fury, I quicken my pace as the beast gains on me. I have the notion that if I could run any faster I would be flying. I was born a survivor; I will not forget that fact easily.
Feeling the dragon’s breath on my back, I draw my sword from its sheath and turn on my heel, raising it into the air to make a deep gash in the beasts’ jaw.
The sound of its cries slice through my mind, but I endure them through gritted teeth, whirling to continue my race to safety. Luck has it, the dragon pauses in it’s pursuit of my blood to nurse its injured jaw. But any moment it will come after me again, no doubt even angrier than before.
I must get to the gates of the Academy before this creature kills me; there the protective borders surrounding it will keep me safe. The magick that encircles the castle is impenetrable, even the dragon cannot breach its limits.
But for fear of danger to the students...I’m going to have to kill this thing. After all, that is what I set out to do.
In a sudden burst of inspiration, I curve sharply down the trail until I am out of view from the beast. Catching sight of a broken tree to my right, one that has been half destroyed in a recent storm, I race to it, knowing there is little time for planning.
As I begin to climb its base, aiming for a large overhanging branch, the ground beneath me rumbles and shakes as the dragon once again claws its way along the road in thirsty anticipation.
My throat tightens in panic, but I force myself to climb, knowing that it will be my last chance of survival. Sliding along the branch I clutch my sword in hand and poise myself near the very edge, hoisting myself to my feet I balance carefully in wait.
The beast, now unaware of my position on the branch, moves slowly along the road, its talons curling into the dirt as if it needs security on the unfamiliar earth.
Though dragons are naturally airborne, this particular one has been a menace to our vicinity for the past few months; eating our flocks and breathing its fire onto peoples homes. It lost its ability to fly not one hour ago, when five of my arrows made contact with its left wing.
I crouch slightly as the dragon moves closer, my spare hand making a fist to stop from shaking in fear. My will for this dragons death is strong, but still my heart thumps worriedly in my chest; I have never done anything this irrational before. At least I can seek comfort that I came alone, putting no one else in danger by bringing them with me. Although, I have let the dragon chase me towards town...
Waiting for my moment, I clench my teeth and focus my eyes on the place on the dragons back where my sword needs to slice into. If I succeed, the creature will die. If I do not, then I die in utter shame.
Aid me Navitas, I will need you now more than ever. I pray with my thoughts to the God of Ability, hoping he will give me the strength to survive this.
The dragon pauses momentarily, and the beat of my heart falters. Lowering it’s head to the ground it inhales my scent carefully; trying to determine my location. I give myself a short moment to curse silently, before throwing myself into the air.
I land on its back, but I am too early in my leap from the branch and collide painfully on one of the protruding horns alone its spine, catching my previously injured leg on its wing in the same breath.
The beast lets out a roar of anger so loud a ripple of dread creeps across my skin, before it proceeds in trying to throw me off its back, twisting it’s head around to snap its teeth inches from my face. In momentary panic I almost lose grip on my sword, and slide further down the dragons back trying to maintain a hold of it. I am out of reach of its teeth but cannot get the angle needed for my sword to bite into its heart.
Quickly gripping onto one of the horns along its back I begin the process of clambering back into position; not an easy feat considering this creature is a hundred times the size of me and strong enough to crush me with one grip. Plus, it’s doing everything it can to hurl me off.
As hard as it tries I maintain my grip, and in a howl of fury the dragon throws itself into the air in an attempt to gain altitude, too late realising its injured wing will not allow flight, and we both tumble back to the ground awkwardly. The jolt hurls me into just the right position to plunge my sword into the creatures heart.
Then I am falling along with the dragon, its cries of pain clawing into the air. Thrown from its back I tumble to the ground, my arm hitting the hard soil at a bad angle. I hear the snap of my bone breaking before feeling the burst of pain, letting out a sob of agony as the dragon slumps to the ground, finally still.

WOW! Good job, i LOVED it!!! Its amazing!!! Keep going because your work is really good. Good job and i cant wait to see some more <3

WOW! Good job, i LOVED it!!! Its amazing!!! Keep going because your work is really good. Good job and i cant wait to see some more <3

Hey! You knew to YWS? Cool that you've posted something already
First of all, wow. This was really good!!! I got gripped from the first line and you kept me gripped for the rest of it. I loved how you started with some action and also I really like your writing style - you weave in some description while still holding your audience's interest, Your character developement was quick and effective. I was listening to some really dramatic full orchestra stuff while I was reading the epilogue so it made the fight seem even more epic Well done and I look forward to reading more
Now for some suggestions/nit-picks:
Firstly, I think you could've posted the epilogue and chapter 1 separately, which is what most YWSers do. This makes it slightly easier to review, you know? Also, you called the first part the epilogue, but did you mean the prologue, which comes before as opposed to the epilogue which comes after the story? Now for some nit-picking/grammar correcting:

The blood dripping down my back, a wound from the claw of the beast, and my leg, from the continuous tripping and falling to ground, makes the air around me strong with the scent of death that is soon to be. My my death.

The last part is quite abrupt: "soon to be. My death." I think it would be better if you made that one sentence.

air to make a deep gash in the beasts’ beast's jaw.

pauses in it’s (should be "its", possessive) pursuit of my blood to

same here

Lowering it’s head to the ground

even the dragon cannot breech breach its limits.

Aid me Navitas, I will need you now more than ever.

This isn't a mistake, it's just that I always find it more effective to put the character's thoughts in italics, especially in first person POV so that the reader can sort of differentiate between what the character is thinking and what they are doing.

the dying dragon laying should be "lying" beside me.

Now just to point out some stuff I like:

“Lotta! Get your stupid arse through this gate so I can tan your reckless hide!” My informal instructor Fredrich Jameson, who is forever spouting his Irish wisdom at me, is my first official welcome.

I like the way you very quickly give us an idea of his character, and his relationship with the MC.

Fredrich is a handsome old man, his leathery skin worn well with his age. Solidly in his early fifties, my trusted mentor is a rusty old bachelor with greying black hair and a penchant for making the extra training I have with him infinitely harder. He just loves to knock me down a fair few pegs.

More great character development, and some good decription.
I also like the world you have created; the Academy, these Gods, it's all very intriguing and I want to know more.
Overall, great job! I would've liked to do a longer review but my mom's calling me, haha. Great job, really well done and i hope my suggestions helped. There really isn't much you need to change

Wow! Thank you SOOOOO much!
I honestly didn't expect such amazing feedback!
I've got loads more of the story written, so I'll definitely post some more! Great tips, exactly the sort of comments I was hoping for, I'm used to constructive critism (I'm at art college so it's pretty much a given) so thank you very much!
I've only ever written as a hobby, as something I do when I've got some time to myself and a story keeps niggling at me! If it's in my head, it's on my computer! So basically, I haven't much idea of how to properly structure the sentences for a story, so any feedback is much appreciated!
So yeah, thank you again!
Might spy on your work too
x

Aww that's sweet of you I liked it very much and I'm glad my comments helped! Art college! That's awesome! And I think you're writing's great, a pleasure to read and review

Hey! The title reminded me of Death Note so I thought I'd review ^_^

The ground beneath my feet is cruel; it slows the tread of my feet, aids those of the beast on my heels...feeds my life to the Gods of Death.

picky comment, but I didn’t like how you said ‘feet’ twice in this first sentence. I’d rewrite it as ‘The ground beneath me is cruel; it slows the tread of my feet and aids those of the beast on my heels, feeding my life to the Gods of Death.’

The blood dripping down my back, a wound from the claw of the beast, and my leg, from the continuous tripping and falling to ground, makes the air around me strong with the scent of death that is soon to be. My death.

This was a rather long sentence and felt like a mouthful to read. I’d separate it into a few sentences. ‘Blood drips down my back from a wound given by the claw of the beast.’
To be honest, I don’t know what you were trying to say by ‘and my leg, from the continuous tripping, makes the air strong with the scent of death.’ So you’re on your own there.

I’ve noticed that you seem to have an issue with commas. I’m really not a grammar Nazi, but these mistakes are frequent and halfway through the chapter became distracting. More often than not, you have extra commas sprinkled in your writing that really don’t need to be there. It creates unnecessary pauses and makes the chapter more difficult to get through. I wasn’t going to go through and point out every single instance, but if you read through this again, I think you’ll notice them.

If you need extra help on commas, I could point you towards a few tutorials that have really helped me out. There are some really good ones in the Writing Resource section here on YWS.

To be honest, all the grammar errors kind of kept me from enjoying this chapter. Not only were there a lot of commas mistakes, there were a few misspelled words toward the end. Easy stuff that could’ve been fixed by a simple spell check on MSWord. And I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t go back and edit some of the mistakes that were pointed out by another reviewer.

The action was alright, but none of your vocabulary or descriptions were very impressive. I didn’t understand some of the stuff you were saying in the beginning about smelling death and Gods of Death and whatnot.

So I think there is still a lot of editing that could be done to make this chapter better. If you have any questions about this or anything, let me know! I’d be glad to help. Sorry if this review was too harsh,

Thanks for the review!
No offense taken, honestly its fine I prefer constructive critisism rather than someone telling me its good when its not.
So I know what you mean in the first sentence, its just ive read it so many times that I don't notice these things any more, but I'd like it if you could read a little bit more that I've written, I think it gets better but I'm not sure.
I've got a lot of passion for this story so I hope you didn't think it was too rubbish!
Erm the sentence with the 'tripping' and stuff, I'm a little iffy with that every time i read it, so I'm sort of glad you pointed it out. I'll change it And the blood, well blood...death? The M.C is trying to say that the fact she's bleeding so much and the smell of it in the air is making her think of death. Maybe that wasn't clear.
And the commas? When I write something I try to write it like I'm reading it. I want it to be dramatic and let the reader really get involved in the story. I know I use them too much, its something I'm working on, I'm always going back and deleting them thinking 'god why did I put one there!?' haha.
Something I thought was a tiny bit harsh was the descriptions I put in, and vocabulary? Was it really not that good? Because I didn't think they were that bad. Just saying.
And the words that are misspelled? Well I write really fast as well, so more often than not the third time i read things I'll notice and change them.
If you thought it was that bad, sorry. My sister loves it, and she's 24. But oh well.
Thanks again.

And what spelling mistakes did you notice? I only thought of 'magick', but in my story thats how I'm spelling it.
Help me out?
Thanks.

Alright, I'm giving this another look trying to spot more spelling mistakes

As hard as it tries I maintain my grip, and in a howl of fury the dragon throws itself into the air in an attempt to gain altitude, too late realising its injured wing will not allow flight, and we both tumble back to the ground awkwardly. The jolt hurls me into just the right position to plunge my sword into the creatures heart.

realizing
creature's
hm, whaddya know that's really the only one I could locate x) In fact, I think most of the mistakes were actually possessive errors that somehow registered a spelling mistakes to me.

The beast lets out a roar of anger so loud a ripple of dread creeps across my skin, before it proceeds in trying to throw me off its back, twisting it’s head around to snap its teeth inches from my face.

its

remember that the only time you use it's (with an apostrophe) is when you mean "It is". Otherwise, you use its.

The dragon pauses momentarily, and the beat of my heart falters. Lowering it’s head to the ground it inhales my scent carefully; trying to determine my location. I give myself a short moment to curse silently, before throwing myself into the air.

here it is again

My will for this dragons death is strong, but still my heart thumps worriedly in my chest; I have never done anything this irrational before.

dragon's (the dragon's death. needs apostrophe)

Though dragons are naturally airborne, this particular one has been a menace to our vicinity for the past few months; eating our flocks and breathing its fire onto peoples homes.

people's

The sound of its cries slice through my mind, but I endure them through gritted teeth, whirling to continue my race to safety.

should be slices, since you are writing in present tense.

. Both injuries are evidence of the razor sharp dragons claws, and my continuous falling to the ground in my haste to escape.

dragon's


And I used to have the same problem with commas, to be honest x) I just used too many of them! But it really pays off to learn how to use them. Here's a good place to go for tutorials: forum151.html


Well, there really was nothing wrong with how you described things. But you know when sometimes you read a really good book and there are always a few words or phrases that really jump out at you and you just think 'genius!'. I guess I just would like a few of those x) There was nothing that really made your way of telling things stand out.

Hope that helped! And for the record, I didn't think it was bad at all. Just felt like it still needed a lot of work xP

Leave me a message when the next part's up, you're obviously working hard on this!

Hey again!

Thanks for the clarification about mistakes, was a little confused! It really helped, because I'm really addicted to this story and just want it to be the best it can be.
I'll definitely look at the tutorials, I'll bet they will really help.
And I figured out, having recently had to re-boot my computer, that my version of word had turned off spell checker for some reason :/ but it's back now! So hopefully all should be well.
And I have the first and second chapter up already, plus there's lots more on the way. Should get to reviewing really, oh dear.
But thanks again, hope you enjoy the rest!

x