((Please post any suggestions on my writing))
You're on.
Nervan winced as his knife slipped out of his holster, making a cut in his side. Nothing big, just enough to hurt! "Hold on, will you?" Asked Nervan.
Is it a holding loop sort of thing where the blade is free? Because a knife slipping out of a holster entirely isn't the most likely thing if you want to emphasize your protagonist's adolescence and clumsiness. If he was holding the knife and fumbled it, that'd be a bit more likely and have the same effect.
Grammar-wise, either the comma in the second sentence should be a semicolon or you should add a 'but' after it. Not sure why the exclamation mark was needed. 'Asked' can be decapitalized as it's part of the same sentence as the spoken phrase is.
<size=goddamn huge>Prologue</size>
Why is this here, three sentences deep? And why did it have to be so big? The size indicates that you're trying to aggrandize your story before it even begins, and the odd placement of the word indicates an attempt at the avant-garde without any real justification. Don't try and sell your story on the 'so cool' formatting, sell it on the writing.
"Sure, just hurry it up. We don't want night to fall before we get back to town, then we'll be in it for sure." said his father.
Though you're trying to establish the fear of the night in this post-apocalyptic border town region, having a character say it seems a bit expositiontastic due to how obvious it would be to each character there. Like saying "Don't fall out the plane" to another airplane passenger. The sentiment would be better expressed through narration, probably the same third-person you've been using so far.
Since I'm talking about the setting already, try to not state what it is directly in your topic title. As 'post apocalyptic' rings plenty of trope bells within its pretty played-out genre, the reader comes into the story thinking about those tropes and waiting for you to check them off, never taking it as something unique or original outside the genre-standard stuff. You'd be much better off not listing the setting and then showing it through the writing. If a reader decides what genre something is without being told, you can get by using the standard beats from it without seeming hackneyed, as well as do something different without seeming like you're trying to use a gimmick to differentiate yourself.
Also, the period before 'said his father' should be a comma.
He breathed a sigh of relief as they passed the ten-kilometer mark to the village.
'Nervan' would be a better replacement for 'He.' The first time I read through I thought the kid's name was Tommy due to the next paragraph and a lack of protagonist identification in this one.
Not a lot..But enough to live, to survive.
A space goes after the ellipsis. Whether the next sentence is capitalized or not varies depends on whether it's a continuation of the previous, and in this case it is, so 'But' would be decapitalized as well.
That was the essence of their being-Living from day to day.
A single hyphen implies the two words are stuck together. You should use either a double hyphen and a space ("being-- Living") or one of those long hyphens that I don't know the name of ("being—Living"). Or space-hyphen-space ("being - Living"), though academically I think that's discouraged.
They never progressed, 'scientific' pursuits were a thing of the past. Not like it mattered, this world was too irradiated to even be useful anymore.
Both of these sentences should swap their commas for either semicolons or be cut in half to form separate sentences.
There was little point in existence-Aside from the continuation as a species,
There's that sneaky hyphen again.
...that's all there was. Nothing else. A bleak, white, snow lay on the ground. Like life, he thought.
Suddenly explaining an element of the setting and then using it in simile is a bit cheap. Introducing the element of the setting
within the simile is much better. In this case, "Nothing else. Like the bleak, white, snow that lay on the ground." 'He thought' also isn't really necessary with the external narration set-up so far.
"...We should be there by now." asked one of the men.
Comma replaces the period at the end of the spoken phrase. Incidentally, you should put another line between this paragraph and the one above it.
I think we just missed a turn, now hold..Quiet,
Same ellipsis rule as I mentioned above.
He held his breath-Entire parties vanished without a trace out here in the steppe,
Hyphen slip again, but I should also point out that you don't need to indent if you're leaving line spaces between the paragraphs (sort of a 'one or the other but not both' stylistic choice rule), and that you should never alter the format and suddenly decide to start indenting partway through your story.
He could feel a living being among him, it was not human.
'He could feel a [analog for presence]' phrases usually fit better for creatures that actually
are present - in this case it seems like a cheap way to make your creatures more creepy without yet describing much about them. I'm skeptical Nervan would be able to sense this presence if it was underground so much as sense its arrival. Feeling presences also works better for creatures with emotionally affecting or mentally related features, rather than what you describe shortly after this, which are non-sentient, savage, physical animals.
encircling the party of 20.
This is just a small thing, but generally numbers from 20 and downwards, when not being used mathematically, are better off being written out as the words, ie. 'twenty.' Same goes for multiples of ten up to a hundred after that.
The things were covered in fur, with no eyes and one razor-sharp mouth, they seemed harmless.
If you described a shark to a blind man, ending with describing its full mouth of teeth as 'razor sharp' and then deciding that they were probably harmless, he would slap you.
"You didn't sign up Gerry, ..."
For the proper banter effect you're going for you'll want to parallel the original sentence more and then mark what the difference is more clearly. In this case, add a 'for this' to match the parallel, and an 'at all' to point out the difference. The current sentence was ambiguous enough that I first thought the guy being talked too was being accused of not signing somebody else up to fight.
it's silver metallic material gleaming in the winter light. He held it as his chest
"It's" would be "its" (unlike other possessives, you can't have the apostrophe with "its" like you could for "John's"), and 'as his chest' would probably be 'to his chest,' although depending on what you're trying to convey, 'at his chest' could also work.
His knife was his life, his family had told him. You lose it, you're good as dead. So true, but now was not the time.
'Now was not the time' rings hollow to me, because if you want to figure out when 'the time' was, 'when you are currently holding the knife to defend yourself' seems damn appropriate. The sentiment you're trying to express seems more about not being he time to think about
anything rather than just not the time to think about the knife, but due to your wording, it reads as the latter. Also, "So true" is a very teenager and non-setting-appropriate thing to say.
Wait for them to attack, dodge the attacks and stab 'em when they smack down!
If one of the guys doesn't know what these things are, implying that the group has never encountered them before, why do they know their attacks involve 'smacking/slamming' down? Also, "dodge 'em" is sufficient; "dodge the attacks" is too obvious and redundant.
Nervan braced himself as one of the beasts slammed itself into the snow-ice,
Is this supposed to be snow
and ice of some kind of special post-apocalyptic hybrid? 'Frost' with some sort of 'tough' descriptor would be a better replacement, either way.
It was impenetrable.. How would they escape?
There's that rascally ellipsis again.
"Retreat! Run! One just burrowed!"
The hell does that mean? They've never encountered these creatures before. Hypothetically they could be getting left alone. They shouldn't know how the creatures behave at all yet. Burrowing shouldn't be recognized as a sign of whatever attack is to come.
but just as their feet hit the ground his vision went back.
Typo: 'back' is 'black.' Also, the space after this paragraph should be three lines, not two.
"Dad, where are you? Gerry? Dad!"
What the hell is he calling for Gerry for? The awkward placement of Gerry's name between the two Dads makes it seem like the dad
is Gerry (I think he's Tommy, yeah?) and confusing the whole name-character association.
He searched around for several hours before finding..It was his father. He was gone. What was the point anymore? His father was dad, he could see his best friend's corpse clear from there! Why was he doomed to this existence, to this life, to this shell? No. No more. He would not live like this, he would destroy these beasts if it was the last thing he did-And it likely would be.
Okay, this is... the stuff leading up to this has been pretty palatable, if a bit awkward, but this paragraph is just brutal.
First of all, you didn't establish in the line preceding this that Nervan was alone (and you ought to throw his name in again somewhere, just to reaffirm it and stop using 'he' over and over), so my first thought was 'Well what the hell is he searching for?' Ellipsis slip again in that first sentence, by the way.
"It was his father. He was gone." does not give any dramatic weight to the death of the protagonist's father. Which it probably should. Especially given that you appear to be (judging by the stuff after this) focusing the entire story around the fact that he's searching alone for the creatures to avenge his father's death.
"His father was dad," is an obvious typo, and especially hilarious given the context
"he could see his best friend's corpse clear from there!" - What? Since when did he have a best friend? Since when was that friend with them? Why was the friend being brought in to the story without a name just in time to be used as Angst Fodder? I thought that the party was a group of men plus the leader's kid. Why are so many kids in the dangerous expedition?
"No. No more. He would not live like this, he would destroy these beasts if it was the last thing he did-And it likely would be." - Okay. Okay. I understand the 'those things killed my father now i the prodigal son will avenge his death' trope. But this seemslike such an unlikely use of it. He knows
absolutely nothing about these creatures. Where they live (possibly in the ground). How much they eat (they left people alive, so who knows what their diet is). How they sense (they don't have eyes - maybe it's a 'tremors in the ground' thing?). The last time he attacked it his knife
bounced off its back. That doesn't scream "avenge his death" to me. That screams "AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa run away." Especially given that the character has already been established as clumsy, young, and not particularly brave (not helped by the fact that his idol is
dad dead).
He grabbed the family sword and shield, and stood up. He would stand for nothing but himself-And for the life of humanity. He understood why he was here. He knew what to do.
Now his knife is the family sword and that little round shield is the family shield?
To be Continued
Like I mentioned with the giant 'Prologue,' this is a cheap way of trying to instill a dramatic vibe into the story. Obviously the segment ends at the bottom of the post. Obviously you're going to continue with it.
Okay, I've pretty much got through the actual writing. I need to tackle the logic at work here.
This scared, clumsy, presumably preteen or young-teen kid, having just lost his father and several other people he knew, decides to dedicate the rest of his life to the useless, revenge-driven hunting and killing monsters that he doesn't understand in the slightest nor know how to wound? Where's the "holy fuck i'm all alone and not ready for this" reaction? If you're telling a coming-of-age story (which by all appearances you seem to be) why is the coming-of-age in a single paragraph at the end of the prologue of the damn story? Where's the character growth? Hell, he's less than ten kilometers to his village. Why doesn't he want to go back there for comfort, backup, supplies, or rest?
What it feels like is that you want to write a story about this chicken-turned-fighter kid in an empty, brutal world who is motivated by revenge and haunted by the death of his father, but you don't want to take the time to build the story to that point and just jumped right in. Story progression is just as important as the 'fun' plot elements. You have to put in the time if you want to reap the rewards. He could easily go on this revenge-seeking mission
after he goes back to the village to gather his thoughts and supplies, and then reluctantly and nervously strike out to kill the things. The jump of mood from "shit everyone's dead" to "i will kill whatever those things were" is inexplicable and just hurts.
That said-- It's a big improvement over your last story. Although you still seem to be restricting yourself to the post-apocalyptic genre, your grammar has improved and your writing's a bit better as well. I got pretty nitpicky here, but don't let me discourage you. If you just take the points I've made to heart on your next installment (please don't go back and edit the first part to accommodate changes suggested, nothing is gained from that), you'll continue to improve, and I'll have less to pick at.
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Topic: Nervan's Story(Post-Apocalyptic Creative Fiction) (Read 1094 times)