Prologue: Daley

This is just the prologue to give a taste of what is to come.

Nobody was left. I was officially alone. As I walked down my street occupied by various pieces of rotting flesh clinging onto bones as if clinging onto life, scattered bones chewed by rats, corpses sunken in and shriveled into the largest raisins I have ever seen, and freshly dead cadavers of every size spray painted a gray hither to be known by the people of this Earth, I wondered why I was spared from the wrath of a single virus. The lifeless people were the dandelions that decorated the dead lawns. No matter how many corpses of people were outside, I knew there were far more rotting people shut up inside their empty houses. This was the life I walked out to as I emerged from my abode after a hundred days of hiding. I was alone.

I walked down the forgotten street hoping to find a glimmer of life somewhere among the baron road. The air reeked of the musky, pungent odor of death. The farther down the road I walked, the more dead I saw until I saw the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, a gaunt man with thin slimy hair who was standing beside a dilapidated white picket fence staring at me with a blank face. I mustered all my strength and ran to that beautiful being. As I got closer, the face became recognizable.

Author's Note

Constructive criticism is wanted. Thank you.

Reviews

[Saki Mai]

The only criticism I can offer you at this point is to try to eliminate the helping verbs (am, are, be, been, is, was, were, being). I saw one in each of the first two sentences and it would capture my attention better if they weren't there at all. Once the story got going, you had my attention, but it was a slightly rough start simply because of helping verbs. Annoying little words, aren't they? haha :) What I mean by eliminating them is this: instead of saying "Nobody was left" you could say something like "The disaster left nobody." That's just an example though; you're the author, so you get to choose it :) This is call writing actively. In my example, instead of nobody being left in a passive sense, the disaster actively left no one. Does that make sense? I hope so.

Now that I've some given negative criticism, I'll give you some positive criticism, and I have a lot more of that :) Your vivid descriptions held me captivated. I felt the mood of the prologue send chills down my spine. Your voice was very clear, you showed great talent in showing and not telling, and I loved the tone you chose. It makes me want to hide the page away, and yet I can't stop reading it. That's exactly what you'd want to go for in an apocalypse novel, in my opinion.

My favorite part was when you said the main character saw a beautiful sight, and then went on to describe a man that is anything but beautiful in your readers eyes. With this simple turn of events, you singlehandedly showed us not only the state of the main character's mind, but also the state of the world the main character emerged into. Description like that is among the most powerful you can give. It lets the readers fill in the gaps with their own imaginations, to create a world words couldn't describe. This is some very excellent writing Julia :) It needs a little revising (like eliminating helping verbs), but if you talk to published authors, even their published novels could use a little revising. I think you have some real talent :)

[Stella]

This has great potential and the imagery was amazing! You should definitely write another chapter for sure. I really liked this because I happen to be a huge fan of the genre and type of story you are writing. Well Done!

[Sierra Desmond]

oh my gosh Julia you seriously have talent. You have talent that I will never have in my entire life. Seriously this is amazing...

I know I'm supposed to give constructive criticism but i honestly have nothing bad to day about this.

[Bailey C. Writing]

I love this. I don't even know what else to say besides the fact that I love this. Lol. The imagery was chilling.