Destiny, Chapter 0: The crystals of the nine kingdoms
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The alley echoed with the sound of frantic footsteps on the cobblestone ground. A dark claked man rushed out of the alleyway and into the open street. He rushed across the dark, empty street and positioned himself behind a nearby barrel. He sat down for a moment to catch his breath. i reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a gigantic clear crystal, easily larger than his fist.
"Finally... The last of the crystals..." He whispered under his breath.
"Check in the alleyway!" a stern voice called. The cloaked man looked around the barrel, only to see a groups of heavily armored men in the road. He slowly crept behind the barrel to a small crack between two buildings, only a few feet wide. After entering the small wedge, he leaned against one of the walls, then lifted his legs onto the opposite wall, lifting him of the ground. The cloaked man swiftly moved his arms and legs, crawling up the sides of the buildings, trying not to catch the attention of the nearby men. After reaching the top of the wall, the man crouched as he walked along the rooftops.
"There on the roof!" The cloaked man rose, then sped along the rooftops. A flurry of objects flew at the cloaked man; arrows, spears, even swords. The man continued to run along the roofs, avoiding the thrown objects. The roofs came to a sudden halt, and the cloaked man stopped at the edge of the roof.
"Theres nowhere to run now Razorfern! Theres no where to run now, a fall at that height would kill even you! Just face your death as a man!" A guard yelled from the ground. Razorfern looked over the edge then back at the guards.
"Any last words?" Razorfern pulled off his hood, revealing his black curly hair.
"Good... Men open fire!" The guards fired their weapons up at the rooftop. A spear wooshed through the air and struck Razorfern in his stomach. He gripped his stomach and lifelessly fell off the roof.
"Find his body and get the crystal! The king will have our heads if we lose it" The guards rushed around the corner to the drop point of Razorfern, only to find nothing.
"Where is his body?" A guard asked.
"Forget the body, find the crystal!" another shouted.
"Send the order to close the city gates, no one is to leave the city!" A guard rushed toward the gates. He took a shortcut through a dark alley. As he bolted, a hand reached for him and wrapped him in a head lock.
"Be quiet and i wont kill you." The man whispered in his ear. The man applied pressure to his neck, slowly choking him. After the man lost conscienceness he released his grip and gently placed him on the ground, out of view. The man reached behind a box and pulled up Razorfern and slung him over his shoulder.
"You don't think your cutting it a little close this time?" He asked Razorfern.
"Its just a scratch, I've had worse..." He responded.
"Well, we'll have Brains take a look at it when we reach the hideout." The man rounded the corner and placed Razorfern onto a cart, and covered him with some of the hay. He got in the front and got the cart moving along the cobblestone roads. The cart rolled through the dark city, on its way to the city gates.
Upon approaching the city gates, only 4 guards were posted at the gateway. The cart rolled to a stop at one of the guards.
"We are going to check your cart, dont move." Two guards moved to the back of the cart. One took his spear and brushed the hay. The other hoped onto the back and also searched the hay. The driver slowly pocketed his dagger.
"All clear. Lower the bridge!" The giant brigde slowly fell down, the sound of clinking chains filled the dark night. The driver oredered the horses to move, and gave the guards a friendly wave as he passed them. After crossing the bridge, Razorfern crawled up ad sat next to the driver.
"I was begining to think that you fell off..." The big man said.
"Oh, please, Grunds. You should know me better than that, it wasnt an impossible task to hide under the cart, while they were inspecting the cart." He held the spear-head into place, with
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Hi, Logan! I'm a.mscifi! I read your story here and noticed a few things on your second draft.
The I's in the sentences are not capitalized as well as the begining of each new sentences such as:
"you are certainly losing your touch, kingy."
That should be "You are certainly losing your touch, kingy." Plus, "guard" should be capitalized since it's begining of a new sentence.
Just those minor flaws in your debut story and they're not that bad. Above it all, I like this one. However it's missing the rest of scene. I'm wondering what comes next after the king calls the guards.
That's all for me and hope you have more for chapter 1. Holla!
Well, it's an interesting concept, but there are a few things I can spot.
"30 years ago, the great bandit, Razorfern, raided and stole treasure from all of the nine kingdoms. He was fearful of others attempting to steal his treasure. "
This makes the goal of your story a bit too obvious. Also, if he is so powerful to take this treasure, why would he be afraid of others stealing it?
"In this fear, he built a huge gauntlet to keep all but those who equaled his skill to claim his treasure."
This is irrelevant at this point in time, and doesn't fit in the beginning of your story.
"This treasure has been called "The treasure of a thousand king's" because of all the great treasures that he stole from each of the nine kingdoms."
This doesn't make sense. Please clarify. ![]()
"A year later he was said to be tortured to death by the king of the Brackton kingdom. He was said to have only two children, but the whereabouts of these children are unknown. He was the creator of the infamous "Black Fang" band of thieves, who still after 10 years believe that he is still alive and search for any word of him. Countless adventurers have attempted to claim his mass amount of treasure, but none have succeeded....."
The information about his children is irrelevant at this point in time. Also, this is a bit much information in this paragraph.
"In the kingdom of Adrougnes, a messenger returns from the kingdom of Brackton."
You need a better transition between this and the previous paragraph. It seems suddenly thrown in there.
""Speak now!!!! Or forever hold your tongue!!!" The messenger looked at him and quickly regained his composure."
This sounds a little unnatural. Try reading it out loud to yourself.
" The messenger pointed toward the king,"The treasure can be found in the islands of Dikini, to the north. The good king, Triem, has sent his finest men in search of the treasure...""
Some information and description would be good here; wouldn't there be rumors flying around about this treasure? What do the theif and the king look like? Where is this taking place?
" "One guard? you are certainly losing your touch, kingy. I take this as a great insult that i, Kalderash, the greatest thief alive!!! could only handle one palace guard." "
This sound unnatural. You can take out the exclamation points and use a comma. Also, there needs to be a reason the King will underestimate Kalderash. Has he been tortured? Is he blind? Details please.
"The guard released him and fell backwards, the king shouted at the top of his lungs,"guards!!!" "
The King shouting "Guards" seems unrealistic. Also, shouldn't
the guards have more skills than that? They are protecting the King
after all. ![]()
The first paragraph reads like a synopsis of a novel, or a narration at the beginning of a fantasy movie. Remember the Golden Rule of fiction writing, "Show, don't tell." It's okay for a first draft, but if you have serious intentions for this story, you would do well to incorporate in real-time in the story somehow. Maybe briefly recount these events in a prologue, or go back in forth between present time and this story occurring in the past, or possibly have it be spoken by a character, a la Gandalf talking to Frodo about the Ring in the Fellowship of the Ring book (which, if you haven't already, I suggest you read as an example of good fantasy writing.)
I think the "real time" story is off to a pretty interesting start. But you have made a few mistakes, which can probably be chalked up to you likely being a relatively inexperienced fiction writer. It's mainly grammar and syntax problems.
You should only use one exclamation point, because no serious writing that I know of uses multiple ex. marks in a finished draft. There are several examples of this in your writing, so I won't point them out individual. But that's an easy, simple thing to fix which isn't a big problem.
You should also avoid using ex. marks in the middle of a line of dialog, such as here
"Speak now!!!! Or forever hold your tongue!!!"
or here
I take this as a great insult that i, Kalderash, the greatest thief alive!!! could only handle one palace guard
It makes it rather confusing to read, and doesn't accurately match how people speak in real life. Just put the marks at the end, and you'll be fine with this.
Speaking of that thief, is his name "Kalderash" or "Kalderasha"? You use the first name on once, in that piece of dialog above, but after that it's always the second one. Probably just a simple accidental omission of an "a" in the first instance of his name, but you'd want to make sure in a second draft that the spelling is consistent throughout. Easily fixable.
Just watch capitalization as others have said, and maybe read your sentences and especially dialog out loud to see if they sound good, as that's usually a good indicator of whether or not it's written well. Also, be sure to watch how and when you use apostrophes. They are never used before an "s" when designating a word as being plural.
The treasure of a thousand king's
This is an example of a misplace apostrophe. You need one there, because kings is plural, and isn't used to indicate possession here (the word "of" does that).
Also, a few times you forget to put apostrophes where they are needed, as an indication of a noun being in a possessive state.
The guard reached for the messengers hands
There should be an apostrophe before the "s" in "messengers".
Wasnt it taking that hefty bounty off of your head
"Wasnt" needs an apostrophe.
Other than that, in its current state your story is off to a pretty good start, and is as good as is expected of the first draft of the (first story?) by a new writer. Writing only gets better with practice, and if you keep with it your stories will only improve as you go along.
Hey Logan!
You left me two great critiques, so I'm just here to return the favor.
My favorite genre to read is fantasy (whoohoo!) so I'm pretty thrilled to be reading your novel.
Anyway, enough pleasantries - I'll just jump right into your first chapter.
You start off pretty quickly into the story, informing us that about the great bandit Razorfern and his treasure. That paragraph is important because you're establishing us a basic plotline, allowing the reader to see where the story could potentially lead. However, it was more "telling" that "showing" - the narrator speaking directly to the reader. I feel that it would function better as a prologue, perhaps a short blurb in italics told in narrative style.
I can see that you've put some thought into this world and what you're going to create - the weakest portion of this chapter is the grammar, and that's where I'll focus.
I hate to over-analyze with the line-by-lines, so I'll just choose three areas that I think are most important to focus on.
Dialogue Grammar
Merely improving your dialogue punctuation will make this piece five times better. Your dialogue is fast-paced and drives the action. As it is right now, I can't focus on the words because of the grammatical mistakes.
"My liege. I bring news of the treasure of a thousand kings!!" The messenger kneeled over, panting after his exuberant journey.
Okay, the "t" should be capitalized - kneeling isn't a dialogue tag, so you need to start a new independent sentence.
The messenger pointed toward the king.[,]"The treasure can be found in the islands of Dikini, to the north. The good king, Triem, has sent his finest men in search of the treasure..."
Again, pointing isn't a dialogue tag. Pointing doesn't describe the way you said something, so there should be a period, not a comma here.
"You have done well, my loyal subject." The king turned to face the guard on his right side.[,]space"Prepare my horses,
iI want to be gone on the morrow-"
You can't just leave dialogue tags hanging. There MUST be some sort of punctuation mark before you close with quotation marks. And you have to have a space between punctuation marks.
"Ahh yes.... your reward. Wasn't it taking that hefty bounty off of your head, am
iI right?"Tthe king replied sarcastically.
Now, on the contrary, "replied" IS a dialogue tag. So therefore, you shouldn't start a brand new sentence - the t in "the" shouldn't be capitalized. Also watch the other minor grammatical errors - the apostrophes in conjunctions and capitalizing "i".
"You are under arrest for the bounty on your head." The guard spoke sternly while still holding his arm behind his back.
Same comment. You have to use punctuation before the quotation marks.
The guard released him and fell backwards.[,] The king shouted at the top of his lungs,space"guards!!!"
Same comment about the space - you need to put a space between the comma and the quotation mark. This is also a run on sentence. Try breaking it up into two.
Overusing exclamation marks
Publishers don't accept it except in very infrequent doses - maybe once or twice in the span of an entire novel. Cut back on your exclamation marks. Just using one suffices - more than that looks childish.
"One guard? you are certainly losing your touch, kingy. I take this as a great insult that I
i, Kalderash, the greatest thief alive,!!!could only handle one palace guard."
Never use exclamation marks in the middle of sentences. It's tacky and grammatically incorrect.
Other general grammatical remarks
I'll just note the first five grammatical mistakes outside of the ones I've already commented on.
"The treasure of a thousand king
's"
No apostrophe. And the "t" in "the" shouldn't be capitalized unless you plan on doing the capitalization for the entire phrase - The Treasure of a Thousand Kings - which I think would be appropriate.
"Well then,
iI believe that you will get what's coming to you..."
Two of your most common mistakes - not capitalizing I and not using apostrophes correctly. There should be an apostrophe here because "what's" a conjunction for "what is".
The guard approached the messenger.
You have to capitalize the first letter of every sentence. This is elementary stuff - you just need to proofread more carefully.
The guard reached for the messenger's hands and grabbed one of them, putting it behind his back.
Again, watch those apostrophes! There should be an apostrophe here because it's a possessive. You're also missing a comma.
The messenger looked up at the king and shook his head disappointedly
disapointedly.
Watch your spelling.
I hope this helps! Grammar is the easiest part of the story to fix, Logan. Just work on cleaning this up and it'll really shine. Remember, without proper mechanics, people can't enjoy a story even if it's really good.
Good luck!
Hugs,
Natalie



Hello, Logan Eggert. Thanks for informing me about the first work that you have ever done on scribophile. This is a great work, so keep on going. I have found just two tiny looking errors in your work and they are not all that bad. The first one was that in some of your quotations, you have the first word in your sentence not capitalized. Remember that English rule that you have to capitalize the first word in your sentence. Another error that I found when reading over your story was that you had a certain kind of word misspelled, so here it is
The word "aresst" should not be spelled this way. You should spell it like arrest instead. If you are not sure on how to spell a word, then maybe you should plan on copying an pasting some of your works to Miscrosoft Word or Microsoft Word Processor, because both programs can find any spelling errors. All in all, this was a great story but will be even greater when 1) All of the errors that I talked to you about are omitted and 2) When you flesh out this piece. Ciao