AnAirsickFool - Ruin of Kingdom sub 1, 4014 words (V)

[AnAirSickFool]

This is the prologue to the book which I hope sets up a bit of the world and how things work. As well as make people interested in what comes next.

[Appol PhD they/he]

Overall: Congrats on your first submission, and I’m happy to say it’s one of the stronger ones from writers new to the group that I’ve seen! In particular, I really like that M’s personality is connected to his powers. Not only does his magic make him a killing machine, but it makes the future inevitable so he doesn’t even feel the struggle of battle. So of course his dark thoughts take over.

My main suggestions here are about elements that don’t feel like they help the story much and could potentially be trimmed or cut. There’s a lot of internality that stalls the story with information we mostly already know, and the actual action here feels less important than getting the feel of M’s powers and understanding the inevitability of his destruction. I also think the conversation with S feels nonessential since there’s not a lot of plot weight behind it.

As I go:

Pg 1. I like that we’re starting at an important moment with a character hook in the first sentence. Lots of submissions we get don’t pass that bar!

-My first constructive comment here is that this is quite the monster paragraph. I think this could be a turn-off to someone picking up the book (some books do use long paragraphs for specific reasons but this doesn’t feel like that kind of book).

Pg 3. Because this prologue is so focused on M’s character, I think it’s an issue that we don’t get much motion in his characterization. We get that he’s conflicted about this brutal conquest from the first few sentences and I haven’t gotten much new since.

Pg 5. M calling for surrender is the first time his characterization really matters for the plot. It’s a good moment, and I think it could happen on page 1 or 2.

Pg 7. I’m a bit picky about action scenes so take this with a grain of salt but my engagement slips a bit here. What are the dynamics we’re supposed to focus on? M’s fighting style doesn’t tell me much about him or the world, and neither do the enchantments.

Pg 8. Now the paths of ruin thing is what I was looking for. I think we should be focusing on this instead of the blow by blow action. 

[AnAirSickFool]

Thank you for the response. I will look over what I have and take your feedback into consideration.

 I do see your point about the conversation between M and S.

I want to keep it so I will probably rework it. Maybe instead I will use it to show the difference between how others view who M is and what he had done vs how he views it.

I might modify it to have S to have more of a positive look on what happens as well as liking the empire to contrast M who does not like it and who is only doing this because of loyalty to the king he serves.

I will try a few things out and if none work then maybe cut the scene.

[Appol PhD they/he]

19 hours ago, AnAirSickFool said:

I want to keep it so I will probably rework it. Maybe instead I will use it to show the difference between how others view who M is and what he had done vs how he views it.

I think this does already come through a bit and so I think the issue is less "what does this show" and more "why is this important to see right now". However M's allies see him, it doesn't really affect what happens for the rest of the prologue. I agree that cutting isn't the first option I would necessarily jump to, but I think it could be reworked or moved to when M's interactions with his allies matter a bit more for his short-term goals. 

[Paul SB]

Sorry it took me a while to get to this. I agree that it is strong in terms of setting the scene and making the reader interested in the character, but it has some issues that will absolutely sink it.

What Worked:

I’m guessing the Roman name and naming the sacked city after the capitol of the Persian Empire was intentional. That gives the impression that this story will have something more interesting going on than your typical fantasy novel, and that the author actually thought about theme.

 

The first page makes the reader want to keep reading to find out exactly what the protagonist did and why.

 

Very powerful ending.

 

Not so much:

The very first paragraph is more than a page long, full of run-on sentences and misplaced commas. That, by itself, would be fatal to getting published.

Capitalization is a problem, too.

 

“There he finally said the words he wished to say.” — This is a missed opportunity. No doubt the character is experiencing some major mixed feelings. If you, as the author, leave it at that and don’t do anything to dig into them you make the character distant and unappealing, no matter how noble his motives. Give the reader more of a taste of what he is thinking, and use gesture and proxemics to show what he is feeling. If you don’t have a copy of the Emotion Thesaurus I highly recommend you pick it up. I think the Kindle version is on sale for a good price right now, but I don’t know how long the sale will last.

 

While this sets up an interesting scenario, the grammar and punctuation issues alone will stop any editor after a few paragraphs. It’s probably also about twice as long as it should be, especially given that it’s a prologue. Lot’s of people skip prologues, and lots of publishers just don’t like them. An easy fix, though, is to just label it Chapter 1 and start Chapter 2 with a line like “Twenty-seven years later …”