Hi Matthew,

Thanks for critiquing my novel. I'm stopping by to return the favor.

You have an exciting and action-filled start here. Because you've called this Chapter 0 I am assuming it is a Prologue of some sort. In that sense, this chapter functions well as an enticer, giving the reader a sense of curiosity about what is to come and the significance of the violence in this chapter. Obviously, Caine's death will be important in a bigger context of the story; however, since he is dead, he can't be the main character. So therefore, I am guessing that the purpose of the prologue is to introduce us to the main antagonist.

One thing to be careful about the antagonist opening up the story is that we aren't immediately introduced to the main characters, which means you'll have to do a good job "selling" them to the reader in the following chapter. I'll be happy to comment on it if you ever decide to write on.

I liked your setting and description and felt that you struck a nice balance between too much and too little.

As far as characterization goes, there isn't much to say. There's a freaky demon dude who sucks out souls and there's Caine, who dies. There isn't a sense of human appeal that will keep the reader reading on; you have to rely on suspense and curiosity to pique interest. Just be aware of that and make pacing and tension your top priority.

The biggest problem that I find in this chapter is grammar, punctuation and usage mistakes.

Just remember: If I have to stop every two words and try to guess what you're trying to say, I'm not going to enjoy.

Take my suggestions with a grain of salt - not everything I say will be applicable to your story. But I sure hope that a good amount of it will.

I noticed that you have problems with run-on sentences. Here are a few examples:

As the sun started to set, candles and fires were lit and the tavern started to boom with activity.[,] Men moseyed in after a hard day's work, and drunken men stumbled out after a day's drinking.

This should be two separate sentences. Also, you're missing a few apostrophes.

A tall man strode in, he had with a stern look on his face strode in.[,] It was obvious he was did come to the clustered tavern to drop a few coins for a drink.

When I read this sentence, all I could think was, "Huh?" "He was did come"? I'm not quite sure what needs to be done here because I can't make out what you're trying to say. Most definitely you need to break it up into two sentences. Try my revisions to the first part of the sentence. I think it'll make more sense that way.

He was a well shaved shaven man.[,] His black hair hung no lower then his thick, plush brows.

Again, this was a run-on. In this particular instance, you could use a semicolon instead of the comma if you wish; in my opinion, I think making it two separate sentences is your best bet. You're also missing a comma and have a small typo - people aren't well shaved, they're well shaven.

He turned to his left and stared at a short fat man with his bright hazel eyes.[,] The fat drunken man paid no attention to this foreign observer;[,] he was too enthralled in his card game.

Here you have an example of a triple run-on. I would fix it by cutting it into two sentences and then connecting the last part with a semicolon.

The ruckus of the tavern came to a halt and a large gust of the cool night air swept threw through the door.[,] The vase of wilted flowers setting sitting at the fat man's tabled swayed in the wind.[,] A couple brown peddles petals detached from the bundled brown stems, they were cared with carried by the wind that broke on the fat man's face.

Okay, there are a lots of grammatical errors here. Let's start first with the fact that you have a triple run-on. There's no easy semicolon fix. You need to make three separate sentences here. You have a lovely image of browned petals striking this fat card-player; however, the spelling errors and grammatical mistakes make the setting hard to appreciate.

I don't like to point out more than five examples of a certain type of mistake; I think it's a bit intimidating. But these definitely aren't the only five. Please go through this carefully and fix the other errors, too.

The other trend I noticed was dialogue punctuation/grammar.

Please be careful with dialogue tags and speaking. Take a look at these examples:

The man's gaze stayed for a couple more seconds as a smile crept on his handsome, sharp face.[,] “Caine, I believe you owe me something,”[,] the man said in a shrill voice.

Again, we have another run-on. Make this two sentences. Also, concerning dialogue - the comma always goes INSIDE the quotation marks.

“I said,” The handsome man began to grow angry with this belated response.[,] “I said, I believe you owe me something Caine, and I do not like to repeat myself.” His eyes flared red before Caine took a large breath and began to respond. “Sorry.... you're absolutely right.[,]” His voice was stricken with fear.[,] “Please forgive me...”

Okay, when you cut a quote in half, the only thing you can have in the middle is a dialogue tag i.e. she said, he asked.

Example:

"I can't help it," she said, "it's out of my control."

"I can't help it," she shrugged her shoulders, "it's out of my control."

The second example is wrong because shrugging one's shoulders is NOT a dialogue tag. The correct way to do it is this:

"I can't help it." She shrugged her shoulders. "It's out of my control."

See the period and the use of a separate sentence in the middle?

“Caine... forgiveness isn't exactly one of my policies.[,]” His eyes began to glow a deeper red.[,] “For your forgetful behavior... I believe I will need to take something dear to you.[,]” The dark red light formed into a beam that shone brightly on Caine.[,] “Caine...” His voice turned to a echoing, ear piercing tone.[,] “You owe me your soul!”

Same remark as before. These are all separate remarks; you MUST use periods to separate them all out.

Whew. I know that was a tough critique, and I didn't even scrape the beginning of the mountain. However, just fixing these few mistakes - especially the run-on sentences - will lend drastic improvement. Feel free to message or reply if you have any questions.

Have a great day.

Hugs,

Natalie

I agree with Natalie; you did a good job of drawing the reader in out of pure curiosity. This scene is exciting, even if we still don’t really know what’s going on.

I think you should break the story up into more paragraphs; pretty much every time something new happens. It just makes it easier to read. For instance, the first paragraph could be all the setting the scene for the bar. Then you could start a new paragraph at “A tall man strode in…” Also, you start a new paragraph every time someone speaks.

In the second paragraph, you definitely need to break it up more, because it has a lot of action.

Natalie has good points about the grammar, especially the run-ons. They were very distracting, but luckily, they are easy to fix. =) Put less commas and more periods, as Natalie showed.

You also have a few spelling errors with words like “here” (should be “hear”) and “peddles” (should be “petals”), both in the first paragraph; make sure you look carefully at things like that.

Also watch possessive nouns. Things like “days” and “mans” that you have in the first paragraph should be “day’s” and “man’s” because they are belonging to the day and man, respectively. I find this page very helpful: http://grammar.uoregon.edu/case/possnouns.html.

 Like Natalie, I am assuming this soul-sucking demon is the antagonist, and perhaps Caine has some relation to the protagonist? I don’t think you will have much of a problem “selling” the protagonist later, though, because this demon guy wasn’t exactly likable. =P If I’m totally wrong and he is the main character, than showing some more human traits of his would do the trick.  

A tall man strode in, he had a stern look on his face, it was obvious he was did come to the clustered tavern to drop a few coins for a drink

The part about “it was obvious he was did come” makes no sense to me. Perhaps “it was obvious he came to the clustered tavern…”

Also, I am not much of a fan of glowing eyes (they seem very “old clichéd horror movie”), so I hope for a good explanation of why they glow later. =) But it’s still too early on to make any real judgments about the clichés; it’s all about developing them away from the typical. Keep writing! =D

 Hello Matthew, I found your story on the Review Queue.  I found a number of spelling and grammatical errors; I'll get to those first, then my overall impressions.

You could hardly here yourself 

Hear.

it was obvious he was did come to the clustered tavern to drop a few coins for a drink. 

It looks like there's a few extra words here.

the vase of wilted flowers setting at the fat mans tabled swayed in the wind, 

Sitting, not setting, place an apostrophe in man's, and no d on table.

they were cared with the wind that broke on the fat mans face

Carried, and again an apostrophe in man's.

 “Sorry.... your absolutely right,”

You're.

He turned his hand up ward 

upward should be one word.

He lay lifeless on the ground while the beams coming from the mans eyes rose

Man's

There was a lot for such a short piece, but it's nothing that can't be fixed with reading a few books.  First, I would recommend 'The Elements of Style' by Strunk and White.  Another excellent book on the fundamentals of writings is 'The Essentials of English' by Hooper, Foote, Gale, and Griffith.  These should help iron out some of the smaller errors in your writing.

If you were to break the text up with paragraphs during dialog and when a new thought begins this would be easier to read.  The wall of text makes it difficult for the eye to really focus on anything.  Proper paragraph usage is also covered in the books I recommended.

As a whole, I think this story has quite a bit of potential, but for the grammatical errors.  I'd love to see what comes next.  Thanks for sharing.