Am I seriously the only one who has the balls to offer Citrinin concrit instead of a fluffy post that doesn't actually mention any specifics about his story? =| WTF, guys. We're supposed to be encouraging good reviewing on PC. At least say something significant about the story instead of, "OMG YOU'RE BACK."
Look. It's Citrinin, yes. That doesn't mean you have to back down from attempting to look at the grammar or find something to point out. If you'd do it for me, there's no reason why you shouldn't do it for him. He's a writer on these forums, and he's asking for concrit. Don't give him the "I'm too scared to look at your grammar" crap because you're failing at delivering what he wants, especially if you actually
are capable of leaving a grammatical review. That and, come on. Stuff
happened in this chapter. Would it kill you to mention some of it to show that you were actually reading past Citrinin's username?
That being said, let me get into my own review. I'm afraid it might be colored by this, but hey.
Let's start off with the nitpicks to get them out of the way. One of the most jarring thing I've found in your work is actually the smallest: the comma. There were several cases where you added in commas that actually weren't needed; many of these resembled this:
a method of escape where one would keep their belly to the ground and use all fours to drag themselves away, before breaking into a sprint with their head lowered.
Because the "before" phrase is functioning as a massive adverb (describing when a particular action is taking place), you want to make sure it's married to the rest of the sentence, so to speak. In other words, inserting a comma before, well,
before causes your sentence to separate.
Putting it a bit clearer, you insert a comma in front of any dependent clause that
doesn't necessarily have to be there. For example, in sentences like these--
Dirt spread even further into her clothes and onto her Pokéballs, which seemed to be the cleanest things on her.
she bounced into action, prepared to take off.
--the comma is kosher because you can remove the phrase and still have a sentence that makes sense. Technically, you could remove a before phrase and have a sentence make grammatical sense as well, but most likely, its content won't be clear without that phrase chiming in to state when something is occurring or what happens right after it.
So, inserting a comma creates a parenthetical – a phrase that doesn't exactly have to be there for the sentence to make sense but adds a few details to round things out. What you have in these cases, however, is a phrase that changes the meaning of the sentence if it's left out. Ergo, yeah, you won't need that extra comma.
You do this a couple of times, hence why I feel like I need to point it out at the beginning. Otherwise, let's take a look at the rest of your prologue.
You could always tell which ones didn’t live around the area at this time,
While technically not grammatically incorrect, it's still not a particularly good practice to mix third-person perspective with second-person pronouns because the "you" in this sentence (i.e., the reader)
can't tell because they aren't actually there, looking at the people. "One" is a slightly better substitute because it serves as a vague pronoun that could mean a lot of things, but that still doesn't stop the sentence itself from having an unfavorable slant.
What I mean by that is probably best explained with a borrowed term. Have you ever heard of the term "god-modding"? It's a phrase in roleplaying circles that can refer to the act of one player forcing another player's characters to take a particular action. For example, if Suzie played Henry's characters without his permission, that would be god-modding. It's the same concept in literature. Rather than present the reader with an image, you're forcing them to process it a certain way. So, instead of letting us come to the conclusion that some of them didn't live around the area by simply showing us a few people displaying nervous tics in a crowd, you're actually forcing us to zoom in on them. Not exactly a comfortable feeling for the reader.
It was at least partially explained by who emerged after the yellow glow from the windows went out.
I don't know. I've read this a few times, and there's something that's simply off about the word "who" here. It feels like you're going to go into the image of someone actually sitting down to explain the curfew, rather than into an image of the reason why the curfew is so worrisome. The reason why is because it's not clear whether "who" is singular or plural. As a singular, it means that you're about to show us one person explaining away the laws of the land. As a plural, it's a bit less jarring to see people actually enforce these laws, rather than someone literally explaining them.
Tl;dr, it might be better if you specified there instead of settled for an ambiguous pronoun. You could go either way, however, because grammatically, it's fine as it is. The problem is more in implicit meaning, which in turn means that some readers will probably be fine if you left it like this.
the sweep of cloaks quietly scraped against the concrete pavements.
First, beware of redundancy. You do this a couple of other times in this chapter, but unlike the commas, that's not something I can just explain away with general tips. In this case, while "concrete" literally refers to the material, it's usually understood as actually
being pavement. This goes especially for the fact that the description refers to what the Spectres are walking along. Your reader will probably assume you mean a floor. I mean, with all seriousness, you could be referring to a wall, but because your readers will automatically assume that the laws of gravity apply to all beings unless otherwise stated, you'd be explaining away anything that wasn't quite right with reality.
Second, unless you have something sewn into the hem, cloaks don't normally scrape.
In one small, not-yet-discovered crime hotspot of the city, a young teenager slept. It was light and restless:
Beware of misplaced modifiers. Right now, you don't specify what "it" actually is, so the phrase will end up referring to the first
noun of the sentence before it. As a result, you're not referring to the girl's sleep. You're actually referring to either the city or the girl herself (the latter with the attached implication that you've used the wrong pronoun).
unsurprisingly, sleeping under a bridge is not exactly living the dream.
First, it seems a little jarring that you spend the entirety of the prologue in the past tense, but this sentence is in the present. While it's generally a given (although there's some examples that might say otherwise about this kind of culture), you'll want to remain in the past tense for the sake of consistency.
Second, you'll want to avoid slang terminology like "living the dream." It causes your narration to have a kind of slant that implies that the narrator is actually a character in the story because you're giving it a voice. It's not an objective bystander but rather, in this case, sardonic. In some cases, things like this might be slightly narmy because you're trying to make the reader focus on the action of the scene, rather than feel as if they're being
told the story by another character. That and the tone this kind of thing evokes is usually in instances where the story isn't meant to be full of serious business in the first place.
Something, somewhere nearby, had moved.
Another instance of commas where you don't need them. In this case, they cause your sentence to gain a choppy feel, like it's William Shatner narrating.
Cutting short the crawling phase, she bounced into action, prepared to take off. A wise plan, were it not for the sudden immobilisation of her legs.
Wouldn't she fall over, considering she was abruptly paralyzed just as she was attempting to bound away?
The other dark figure was a faceless, hooded cloak dancing with the occupying body’s cool, calm movements forward.
First, if you just describe it as a cloak, your readers actually won't need the word "faceless." The reason why is because the readers will only see the inanimate object,
not the human within it.
In general, yes. There's such a thing as adding too many descriptors. Be careful with your word choice and think carefully about what you have in your mind to figure out the minimum number of words that would be necessary to describe it. Never put down a word that doesn't absolutely have to be in a scene. It will stick out, no matter what else happens in the fic.
Second... is pretty much the same point as the first but about the words "cool" and "calm." While it's a cliché to describe someone's demeanor as cool and calm, they actually just mean the same thing.
The Mean Look attack explained why her legs failed when she tried to flee. But not why she found both her hands firmly rooted to the spot.
While it only marginally heightens suspense to separate this into two sentences, it also feels a lot like the reader is hitting a brick wall as they're going into the second sentence. That is, the second sentence isn't just any ordinary fragment. It's a fragment that needs the first sentence to make sense. Otherwise, by itself, it really means nothing.
What I'm saying is that it would make more sense and improve the flow of this paragraph if you dropped the first period. You actually won't be sacrificing much in terms of suspense because, well, she's immobilized, so you can't get much more suspenseful than that anyway. That and if it functions as its own paragraph, you get pretty much the same effect.
Partly because his voice seemed muffled by something; partly because it seemed devoid of emotion.
Comma, not a semicolon. Put it this way: if you replace the semicolon with a period, will you get two separate sentences as a result? Semicolons are mostly used to marry two independent clauses that are closely related; fragments aren't these.
Crobat’s wings moved at blink-and-you-miss-it speed, mustering up another razor-sharp burst of wind, and Gengar jumped into the air.
Don't be too dependent on using the comma-dependent technique to add more to a sentence. In some cases (like this one), attempting to add a dependent clause just before the conjunction of a compound sentence causes the second independent clause to seem out of place. As in, you spend all that time talking about half of the sentence, and right when the reader expects a period, you go on to talk about something else.
Quickly, it rose again, ready to deliver a counterattack, but was stopped by a monstrous growl behind.
First tip here is you'll want an "it" after "but." While I realize the "ready to deliver a counterattack" is another parenthetical, the comma that comes after it implies that you're leading into another compound sentence. (Alternatively, you could drop the parenthetical to avoid having to use commas.)
Second, you'll need another "it" at the end. While I'm not too picky about the entire "don't end a sentence with a preposition" rule (because that's how most people speak and write anyway), there's some prepositions that just need something after it to answer whatever question it's posing. In this case, that question would be, "Behind
what?"
“Hydro Pump!”
“Stupid girl.”
Several things happened in a short space of time. A newly materialised Blastoise lowered its shoulder-cannons and sent an incredible volume of water at Gengar.
Ironically, while your descriptions of attacks aren't that bad, your battles could use a little work. I say "ironically" because your problem here is like the opposite version of what I usually see happening with young writers. That is, most of the time, I deal with authors whose problem is the other way around: they have the names of the characters involved but absolutely no attack description.
Repetition aside, the problem here is that while we can sort of see what's going on, there's a cloud of confusion miring it. As far as we're concerned, only two Pokémon were being used in the battle. Because of the fact that you don't show us the girl attempting to reach for another Poké Ball (Yes, she reaches for one at first, but that's when she was stopped. She doesn't obviously reach for one in the middle of the battle, and considering Gengar got only two moves in, we've got no reason to assume she would continue to use Crobat instead of grab for backup when we're not looking.)
In other words, it's important to identify what the
trainers are doing in the middle of the battle, not just what the Pokémon are doing. This goes doubly for this one, considering it's the first battle and considering a third party ninjas his way into the shot right after Gengar is taken out. (That part felt a bit strange as well, by the way. If the newcomer didn't want the girl to get tortured and whatnot, why didn't he actually come in to defend her while the battle was happening? I mean, considering the fact that the girl had the cloaked figure and the Gengar distracted as it was, it probably would have been the perfect time to strike, which would presumably leave the Gengar confused and without a trainer. Or distracted long enough for the girl to leave a finishing blow. Assuming, at least, that this would follow a logical sequence of events.)
take whatever they wanted from you
Because the list is actually in the
present tense (and assuming they're not capturing this kid and torturing her for a reason that they have
before doing so), this part will need to be in the present tense as well.
To be honest, while I have to admit I might be biased by how annoyed I am by your other reviewers, I'm going to have to admit up front that this was only all right for me. You set up decent background, although you expect us just to swallow that there's a curfew here without really establishing the fact that the government is completely different compared to that of the Pokémon world we're used to seeing. (While I was an off-and-on follower of the first version of your fic, from the perspective of a new reader, it makes it feel like there's generic "this is a dystopia fic for no apparent reason" vibe to it. In other words, it feels like there's really no background to the piece, which makes the entire point about secret police and a curfew lose its power slightly. Sure, you might go into it later, but without starting off with some form of solid proof that we're looking at
1984 and not Sweden, it just makes the prologue feel a little weak because the newbie reader really doesn't have a reason to feel concerned that it's past curfew other than the fact that there's apparently a risk that a secret police will just go around and brutally attack the homeless without warning or regard to proper police policy.)
That aside, you have action. The problem there, though, is that it really falls short of describing itself fully. Aside from the ambiguity I've mentioned not too long ago, there's also the fact that you seem to shy away from explaining
why attacks are painful. For example, Psychic is a telekinetic attack that hurls its target into objects. You have Crobat stop short in midair without explaining why it's squealing in pain. (Twisting innards? A feeling similar to hitting a brick wall? A telepathic assault on its mind?) Likewise, Air Cutter. It whips up a blade made out of wind (yeah, I know) to slice into the opponent. Your description, I'd hate to say it, makes it feel like the wind Crobat kicks up could just as easily be a shot of air from an ordinary fan. You don't really describe it as a blade, and you don't get visceral with your battles. Considering you've given yourself an M rating, this should give you the freedom to describe the crap out of your battles. Take advantage of that because it's moments like this, a scene that makes up the meat of your prologue, that should be functioning to grab the reader's attention. To make things extraordinarily blunt, you talk about immersing yourself in literature. This is why you need to step up and get into your battles. I'm not talking about being gratuitously violent. I'm talking about describing as much as possible the levels of violence these Pokémon are going through in order to help the reader imagine the kinds of pain and reactions they're experiencing.
As for the plot itself, it's a decent attention-grabber. Compared to the first version, I'd have to say it's not quite as exciting, in part because of the above and in part because the first version invoked a lot of mystery. I mean, you had legendaries going at it, Cyrus popping out of Distortion World, and characters getting intimidated for no as-of-then stated reasons. That left a reader feeling like something big was going on and that something intense was going to happen later on in the fic. While this does as well, the only thing I was left thinking at the end is, "Who let the dementors out of Azkaban
again?" Not to be snarky, but what I'm saying is that as far as we're concerned, the only worry this girl has is that a bunch of psychopaths in black cloaks would happily pick her up off the streets and torture her for an undefined "whatever they wanted." (This could just as easily be read as "for the funzies.") It doesn't really leave as much of an impact as the entire legendary/mystery intimidation thing in the first version.
However, compared to itself, it's readable, and it does the job. Personally, I'd have to say that it's not the best or most exciting prologue I've ever read (That honor for this month would go to 7fEATHERS, for the sake of explaining to anyone reading this that, yes, I
am capable of giving completely positive reviews to awesome writers.), but what makes it decent for me isn't so much the battling or what transpires in this prologue as it is the characters. You provide enough characterization as is expected for a first leg of a fic, but it's enough to establish that something is going on. The girl is competent and cautious, someone who functions on instinct and who's seen pretty rough times (considering she's sleeping under a bridge and all). This would mean she'd be an interesting character to follow through a political intrigue story. Meanwhile, the other guy's a ****ing ninja.
Literally a ****ing ninja. That's all that really needs to be said about him to make him interesting. As for
Organization XIII the black cloaks who are not Spectres, as far as a reader can tell, they're at least psychotic. The question is how psychotic and how organized are they going to be if they're going to be our main villains? It's a question that could potentially satisfy a sadistic reader (read: me).
In other words, while the rest might need polishing and while the plot has yet to unfold, what's gotten me curious enough to read on? The characters.
Long story short, it was all right in my view but not quite as exciting as I'd hoped, sorry to say. And I'm sorry I'm not your other reviewers, but I'm certain you've been around the FF&W long enough to know I hate it when reviewers BS an author (even if that author is me, incidentally).