A Light in the Void

[Rukatin]

All right, what would you suggest in it's place?
Edit: Fixed the color font.

[KLSymph]

Remove the formatting/capslocking and put in necessary quotation marks.  Then review the dialogue.  If a quotation doesn't sound very impressive without the font tricks, but the story calls for it to be impressive, then rewrite that quotation to be impressive.

[Arakawa]

I'd second the recommendation of avoiding extra formatting... from the point of view of it being something you need to learn to go without, just as a matter of good writing skills.

If you know how to write well without them, then on the rare occasions when the style calls for coloured text and various kinds of emphases those are easy to add. Contrariwise, if you're used to text decoration, you're going to have a hard time expressing what you want when it turns out you have to go without it. (And coloured text is not something that's anywhere near a standard writer's tool, outside of places like Spacebattles or FIMfiction.)

I have a nasty italics habit myself, so I appreciate how difficult it can be to stop relying on such things.

'How long...?' came a sorrowful thought. 'How long

e.g. luckily in the opening of your prologue, there is actually nothing that the first bit of italics adds to the text. You're using it to indicate that it's the guy thinking, but indicating what is thought vs. what is dialogue and who is thinking/speaking, without using any special formatting, is pretty much an issue of writing 101.

(I remember Brian linking to some kind of parody fic that opens with a reference guide of 12 different kinds of formatting that you supposedly need to disambiguate different types of characters thinking/speaking/holding up signs in different languages. That's an extreme example, but you really want to avoid resorting to that kind of thing.)

And you're doing an adequate job of that in this sentence (you say outright it's someone thinking), so you can just remove the italics here.

An uncertain amount of time passed before the creature returned to the man. This time, a thunderous voice grated into him mind.
FOOLISH MORTAL, WHY DO YOU PERSIST?
Knowing it could hear his thoughts, the man thought back to the eldritch being.'...I can't remember the last time you've spoken to me...'
A CONSEQUENCE OF YOUR ACTIONS. YOU ARE NOT MEANT TO EXIST IN THIS SPACE BETWEEN REALITIES. YOU HAVE PROLONGED YOUR LIFE, AT THE COST OF YOURSELF

Again, italics are completely unnecessary anyways since you convey that information in other means.

For the ELDRITCH CREATURE OF PURE SHOUTING, you may want to play around with different word choices and styles of expressing itself, to hit on something that suggests the type of being you want to evoke. e.g.

"Foolish mortal!" it boomed, splashing up waves of malevolence that threatened to drown him.

...

"Why do you persist?"

...

"That, is a consequence of your actions. You are not meant for existence in this space between the realities; you, a traitor to the laws of Eternity! Having prolonged your life, you have chosen to do it at a grim cost to yourself."

This obviously took about two seconds of experimenting, and the slightly eccentric punctuation choices are a quick and cheap way of suggesting something whose thought process flows a bit differently from a human being. I deliberately made it something different from anything I would actually suggest to use in this case; the point is that you could should play around with a bunch of different options to end up with something that satisfies you.

Haven't gone through the rest of it at the moment; this is just a quick bit of advice to give you an idea of the kind of experimentation you could be doing instead of resorting to formatting.

[Merc]

I'll add a third vote towards what KL and Arakawa have both said.

I'll also add that I think you might have backtracked a bit much after KL's comments on your first entry and are now lacking some details that could help clarify some things. As an example, in the first entry you mentioned how the character is apparently emiting light or something. It wasn't very clear about it, and as KL pointed out back in that segment, there were some ambiguous things about the whole light bit, but at least it was clear at the start, whereas in this segment it seems to have gotten lost a bit and it's now until the character starts getting attacked repeatedly that it gets mentioned now, seemingly from nowhere.

Another odd detail is where he is supposedly half of a man and decides to trick the outsider. It's unclear if this is referring to his body being damaged, or just his memories/soul. If it's his memories/soul, then why did he think that made him half of a man? What made it worth trying to make a deal with the devil to try and get them back or possibly show it an escape?

It also feels a bit like the details about the character were left out, even when he remembers, and yet typically this would be a good point to explain what sort of man he was, perhaps a few flashes into his life or such. It's hard to really get a feel for the character.

For an eldritch being, it doesn't seem to do a really good job of trying to tempt the main character also. It could have tried to put doubts in him or tried to use his lack of memories against him, but it never really did.

As a reader, I still feel like I didn't really get much out of this (although it's certainly a marked improvement over the first segment), except possibly that this is an OC insert into Familiar of Zero, and the OC had some sort of corruption imparted unknowingly when the eldritch being tried to stop him from escaping.

But if that's the case, I think that as a prologue, it's important to learn a bit more about the OC here, because as has been pointed out, the purpose of a prologue is to serve as the hook, and all we've learned since the first segment, besides 'there is a guy, he exists', is that 'he is a knight of some sort, he's being summoned to be Zero's familiar (maybe)'.

We also have conflicting messages with him being self-sacrificing (he tricked the creature here with himself as bait), but then he's willing to risk it escaping (despite statements that he wouldn't risk that) to get his memories back?

Again, it's a much better step in the right direction, but I think it needs a few more steps forward in the fleshing out aspect.

[Jason_Miao]

@Ara: Was the fic titled "The Key"?  I'd link it, but evidently the searchable FFML archive now returns a 410 error, and I don't know where else it may be found.




Everything everyone else said, I second.  I'll just throw in a few comments in no particular order

A suggestion: trying writing your drafts in a simple text editor (notepad, vi, and the like) and copy what you've written into a word processor once you're ready to proof.  Besides making you work on evocative textual description (since few fancy font tricks are available), it also frees you from visual distraction (no SPELLING ERROR HERE underlining distracting you as you type). 

As a matter of style, I feel as if your descriptions of your dialogue tend to explain what ought to be self-evident from dialogue alone.

e.g
'How long...?' Came a sorrowful thought. 'How long have I been here?'
or
The creature paused as if in shock before shrieking in rage. WHY?! DO YOU NOT CARE FOR YOUR SOUL?!

Wouldn't "How long...how long have I been here?" imply that sort of feeling?  Wouldn't 'The creature paused for a moment at the soul's remark.  "WHY?! DO YOU NOT CARE FOR YOUR SOUL?" ' show that the Outsider is exclaiming (although not necessarily in rage, but is that sort of detail really necessary for this scene?)  If you've written evocative dialogue, you shouldn't have to explain most of your dialogue because it should explain itself.   This should not be taken to detract from what Merc has said - more details of who we are reading about and what is the situation would be great, if you are going to write a prologue, but focusing on giving the reader information necessary to enjoy the story once you've started the story itself may be more fruitful.


Do you even need a prologue?  Sometimes I have the impression that everyone writes a prologue because everyone else is writing a prologue.  Therefore, lots of people write one without really thinking about it.  But a prologue is only the part that sets up the story.  For your case, is there information you need to give the reader but can't be told as part of the story?  If so, a prologue makes sense.  If not, perhaps you might consider starting with chapter 1 instead.  e.g, do you have to introduce the fact that your character banished an invader between universes now?  Or would it work better if you revealed this information as part of the story itself?


None of these are issues you need to change now, but everyone else has covered the important points.

[Merc]

A suggestion: trying writing your drafts in a simple text editor (notepad, vi, and the like) and copy what you've written into a word processor once you're ready to proof.  Besides making you work on evocative textual description (since few fancy font tricks are available), it also frees you from visual distraction (no SPELLING ERROR HERE underlining distracting you as you type).

Seconded. If it looks like it stands on its own on Notepad, it'll stand out anywhere else. The only font trick left to you in Notepad is allcaps.

As a matter of style, I feel as if your descriptions of your dialogue tend to explain what ought to be self-evident from dialogue alone.

e.g
'How long...?' Came a sorrowful thought. 'How long have I been here?'
or
The creature paused as if in shock before shrieking in rage. WHY?! DO YOU NOT CARE FOR YOUR SOUL?!

Wouldn't "How long...how long have I been here?" imply that sort of feeling?  Wouldn't 'The creature paused for a moment at the soul's remark.  "WHY?! DO YOU NOT CARE FOR YOUR SOUL?" ' show that the Outsider is exclaiming (although not necessarily in rage, but is that sort of detail really necessary for this scene?)  If you've written evocative dialogue, you shouldn't have to explain most of your dialogue because it should explain itself.   This should not be taken to detract from what Merc has said - more details of who we are reading about and what is the situation would be great, if you are going to write a prologue, but focusing on giving the reader information necessary to enjoy the story once you've started the story itself may be more fruitful.

I'd disagree. It certainly is a stylistic preference to some degree, and I'd rather have it than not. Particularly here where we really don't see much of the characters except the interaction between the Knight and Outsider.

As we know so little about the characters, nothing is self evident. The question about time could have been confused or it could have been introspective, for example. Those are valid feelings as well. Not likely, but certainly valid.

There certainly is a point where too much is...well, too much, but I don't really feel Rukatin's hit that point right here? Others might want to chime in on their own thoughts, I guess.

Do you even need a prologue?  Sometimes I have the impression that everyone writes a prologue because everyone else is writing a prologue.  Therefore, lots of people write one without really thinking about it.  But a prologue is only the part that sets up the story.  For your case, is there information you need to give the reader but can't be told as part of the story?  If so, a prologue makes sense.  If not, perhaps you might consider starting with chapter 1 instead.  e.g, do you have to introduce the fact that your character banished an invader between universes now?  Or would it work better if you revealed this information as part of the story itself?

If his intent was for the first chapter to be entirely from the point of view of the girl summoner, and he was planning to show pre-summon scenes, then it's not a bad idea to break it out as a prologue, or consider it as something revealed in the middle of the story.

If his intent is to roll right into the summon scene, then I'd just put this whole prologue as part of chapter 1, and roll right into the next scene with a scene break.

It also depends on whether this was an original story or a Familiar of Zero story. As an original story, then it'd be up to his own personal preference as an author where to start.

If it is a FoZ story, then having the prologue would probably work in his favor, because starting right at the summon scene is just like starting a Ranma story with the three Tendo daughters learning about a fiancee and being introduced to him, or Naruto undergoing his graduation exam.

In a fanfic, where a reader is likely to already know a decent amount of the story (assuming there haven't been massive AU changes), then starting with the new characters or the differences can be incredibly important in grabbing a potential reader's attention.

[Rukatin]

i'd just like to thank you all again for your input. You've given me many ideas!

[Rukatin]

By the way, you are are correct in thinking this is a Familiar of Zero OC insert.

My goal with the prologue was to give a vague sense of character, (because he himself has that about himself) then the first chapter/snippet will follow Louise in third person limited perspective as she summons and meets Dawnknight.

[Rukatin]

Beginning rewrite/editing.

[Arakawa]

... (Jeoric) Dawnknight.

A question was raised: what is the reasoning behind giving names in the world he comes from? Is that the last name he always had, or did he earn it by belonging to some actual order of knights... or something? Is Louise going to be calling him Jeoric, or Dawnknight like you just did? If the latter, my instinct it sounds a bit more '21st century Internet Forum' than the more medieval/fantasy type feeling I assume you were going for.

[Rukatin]

Jeoric is a variation  in spelling I think of a name that does have a meaning to it, but I forgot which name-meaning database it was on. (the background was black)
But anyways, He technically has two full names, Jeoric Dawn Knight, his true name, and Jerrick Dawnknight, the name he gives out casually. There is meaning to this, and it will be explained eventually.

[Rukatin]

Found the site. The closest Jerrick comes to is Jerrik, meaning 'ever ruler', and Jeoric comes from Oeric, meaning 'Golden'

[Rukatin]

Sorry I haven't had time to work on this, I haven't had much computer access aside from school and I've been busy with homework.