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Argeus the Paladin -> RE: To Be a Hero Discussion (10/10/2011 9:33:42)
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First thing first: Your work is remarkably well written as far as technicalities go. However, there are still a number of things you can improve upon, in my opinion.
1) Formatting: A rule of thumb of dialogue formatting is that each speaker's dialogue needs its own paragraph break. This is the professional norm, and in most parts makes your dialogue that much easier to read and appreciate. For instance: This part
quote:
It was getting increasingly difficult to chase it because after all, it was a shadow, and it's maneuverability was extraordinary. Arthur also had to look out for any stray arrows flying close to him. 'Eldrangier.', he said, ' Watch out below, will you?' The dragon grunted in reply, the long and tiring chase was taking its toll on the beast. As they looked on, a flash of light appeared suddenly on the forest floor and shot skywards striking the shadow in the middle causing it to plummet down. 'What was that?', the Dragonlord behind Arthur shouted. 'Artix's paladins, those were the elites with the ability to launch light spears.', Arthur shouted back. Suddenly, Eldrangier was thrown off balance and something pulled him downwards, Arthur saw to his horror, it was a black chain and it's source was the already plummeting shadow. 'It wants a fight. Arthur, get off, jump off me.', Eldrangier shouted angrily, his raspy, ancient voice filled with force. 'NO!! Eld don't.', Arthur shouted but it was too late, Eldrangier twisted in the air and Arthur was thrown off him, he started to fall, but as he did, Eldrangier's massive body fell faster than him disappearing into the shadows of the forest, Arthur however, was scooped up by large clawed hands, it was the other Dragonlord. 'Desmond, take me down, now.', Arthur commanded. The other Dragonlord nodded and his dragon dived for the forest floor.
should be reformatted as:
quote:
It was getting increasingly difficult to chase it because after all, it was a shadow, and it's maneuverability was extraordinary. Arthur also had to look out for any stray arrows flying close to him.
'Eldrangier,' he said, ' Watch out below, will you?'
The dragon grunted in reply, the long and tiring chase was taking its toll on the beast. As they looked on, a flash of light appeared suddenly on the forest floor and shot skywards striking the shadow in the middle causing it to plummet down.
'What was that?' the Dragonlord behind Arthur shouted.
'Artix's paladins, those were the elites with the ability to launch light spears,' Arthur shouted back.
Suddenly, Eldrangier was thrown off balance and something pulled him downwards, Arthur saw to his horror, it was a black chain and it's source was the already plummeting shadow.
'It wants a fight. Arthur, get off, jump off me,' Eldrangier shouted angrily, his raspy, ancient voice filled with force.
'NO!! Eld don't!' Arthur shouted but it was too late, Eldrangier twisted in the air and Arthur was thrown off him, he started to fall, but as he did, Eldrangier's massive body fell faster than him disappearing into the shadows of the forest, Arthur however, was scooped up by large clawed hands, it was the other Dragonlord.
'Desmond, take me down, now,' Arthur commanded. The other Dragonlord nodded and his dragon dived for the forest floor.
A minor error I've taken the liberty to mend in that last paragraph was the parenthesis punctuation - a comma is supposed to precede a closing quotation mark rather than after. It's best to clarify this by another example:
quote:
'Eldrangier.', he said, ' Watch out below, will you?'
should be:
quote:
'Eldrangier,' he said, ' Watch out below, will you?'
2) Pacing issues: From your first chapter, I realized that your pacing, quite frankly, needs some work. This is mostly caused by your cramming too many events into too few words in one single chapter. Let me clarify this a little more - just in the first chapter alone, the following events happened:
The hero, his dragon, a fellow dragon lord and Artix's paladins are chasing a shadow dragon.
The dragon broke from the hero and engaged in one-on-one combat with the shadow dragon and was apparently lost in combat.
The shadow dragon was captured but the hero's dragon was nowhere to be found, to which he grieved and was comforted by friends and comrades.
The hero's dragon was found a short while later.
You literally have the material for one entire story arc crammed into at most a thousand words. There's an opening, a conflict, a climax and a closing, each of which could be so much expanded upon to further flesh out your characters, your setting, your plot, your everything. That you did not expand upon these premises have multiple unfortunate consequences. First, the characters' emotions were unclear, vague, shallow, if not one-dimensional and fake. Secondly, the fact that owing to the limited words, you had to resort to telling, for example, "Arthur panicked" did not help at all. Third, it is still unclear what the point of the entire conflict arc was about. What is the point of having the dragon being separated from the hero if he's about to be reunited with him literally a few hundred words later? What is the point of trying to make the hero's loss of the dragon (which, as mentioned above, didn't really happen) touching and pronounced, when it is not going to have any long-term impact on the plot? Unless these questions are answered, the development of your story, at least as far as the first chapter went, is quite... may I say random?
To compound on the already heavy pacing issues, you also happened to be using a lot of exposition where they are not needed from a plot perspective. For instance, why did the hero have to tell the dragon lord that it's Artix's paladins, when from an in-character perspective the dragon lord is more than likely to know about these elite men (Because, you know, that's THE Artix von Krieger we're talking about here)? This exposition cuts away from the story's flow, makes it unnecessarily clunky and, most of all, does not add anything meaningful to the flow.
My suggestion to mend this is, quite simply, to write more on that chapter. Elaborate on the situation with more description. Flesh out the hero's reaction to seemingly losing his dragon and build his personality from that basis. Slow down the entire chapter. In my opinion, you don't need to proceed that quickly at the expense of the flaws I mentioned above.
Overall, as I said, this piece is decently written as far as technicalities go - there are few grammar/spelling errors, though you might still have to watch out for punctuation and capitalization. However, there are a lot of things you might want to edit in order to improve this piece, in my opinion. In a nutshell, slow down, describe more, flesh out your characters and cut down on the exposition and you'd be on your way to create a compelling first chapter.
Good luck, and battle on!
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