Prologue - The Beginning

The Ascension of Dimension Legend prologue

In the year 2028, the world does not have war at the current moment. Main reason is because of the U.N. made a rule few years ago. Any countries that start a war will have to pay a large sum of fee as insurance of citizen’s quality of life during war. Oh, before I talk about this era even more, my name is Naoka Hajiura. I am a Japanese immigrant who is living in America with my parents. I am an 18 years old college student. My dream is to be a famous archaeologist who travels around the world to have all sorts of adventures. This career is actually the least favorite due to a weird phenomenon that is occurring on earth. 

 

Around 10 years ago, several mysterious holes like the Siberian Crater had opened up. At that time, people believe the crater are created by methane gas but later was known as a rare type of plasma. Currently, we are able to estimate the scale of the hole and its location few minutes before happening. Though by the time the citizen are notified, it is already too late. Then again, this is more of a common knowledge now. 

One night, I and my four close friends decide to have a party in my room. When is about time, each arrives to my room at different time.

 

The first to show up are two ladies. One of them is someone I know for a long time, Yuuki Fumino. She is a fellow immigrant from Japan. Yuuki is a very small and quiet girl. Together with Yuuki is Amy Markwell. She is a mix of thirteen different ethnicities if I remembered correctly... so many.  One thing about her is that she doesn’t seem like she enjoys hanging out with us but she still does it.

Next one is Jack Mcline, our standard white American guy. I know this makes me sound like a racist person but I can't think of a better way to describe him. Also, the only redeeming feature he has is probably his face.

Last one to arrive is James Fleischer. What is ironic about this guy is he looks like skin and bone even though his surname carries the meaning of "Butcher" in another language.  Another weird thing about this guy is he eats like a pig but still very skinny.

 
I think about my friends a lot. But if I were to compare myself with them, I think I'm a mediocre guy. My only redeem quality is that I am very fit for someone my age. Though enough thinking, since everyone is here, the party is starting.
……

…
After a while, we end up doing Kokkuri when Yuuki and I were talking about it. I really want to stay away from these occult stuff but Yuuki, Jack, and James all want to try it. Amy on the other hand is fine either way so I am being drag into it. After we get everything ready, we start our little chant to call forth a spirit. Since nothing happens right away, Jack decides to move the coin with brute force and we all scream at him. Well, all of us but Yuuki did. 

After a while, when we are about to stop and give up, the coin moves again. We all look at Jack, but he immediately starts shaking his head telling us is not him. All of us notice it is not any of us moving it, so we all focus on the coin and it moves between letters one by one.

 

Kokkuri: “D, O, _, N, O, T, _, L, O, O, K, _, D, O, W, N, _, O, N, _, M, E, !”

 

It says "Do not look down on me!" This gives chills all the way down my spine. However, when I looks at my friends’ faces, everyone but Yuuki looks a bit scared by it. Yuuki on the other hand, looks like she is enjoying this. Then I don't know why but she decides to ask a dangerous question.

 

Yuuki: "Where will the next hole be?"

 

Kokkuri: "H, E, R, E"

 

We all look at Yuuki and then decides to ask “When will this hole open?” but it did not respond to our question. All of us feels really creeped out and decides to call it a day. 

Just when everyone is about to leave my room, ground starts shaking violently. We fall on to the floor but after that, I remembered something. Florida shouldn't have earth quake that feels like is at magnitude of at least 5. I decide to crawl near the window peek out to check. Oh my god, a hole is happening right here right now. What truly scares me is this hole is big enough to swallow the whole campus or at least it looks like it. Then suddenly our surrounding becomes super bright. It is 9 PM right now, where is this light coming from? This light is making me sleepy for some reason, how is it possible? No good… I’m falling… asleep…

Author's Note

I want to know what kind of reviews people will give me first. The type of review I want the most right now is towards my writing style and ideas. Any reviews are welcome, I want to improve my writing.
Note: I am writing this as if it is a light novel so some names and terms may be confusing.

Reviews

[Érenn]

OK, now I am going to give my honest opinions here. Hopefully I m not being too hard here.

I will be frank. I am one of those guys who is magically able to ignore grammatical errors and I gained this ability after I started reading light novels, because a lot of times grammar would go unchecked and me being me, it would spoil the read if I started correcting them, thus to enjoy the story line, i would ignore them. The same case has happened here, but some too glaring to avoid (will notify the errors don't worry)

Now moving on to the Prologue itself, it didn't hook me up that much. I was expecting more. At least until the last lines, I was trying to understand what you were trying to achieve. Because if you were trying to achieve a sense of mystery and intrigue, you weren't that successful or if you wanted it to be fast paced you have failed there as well.

We all need polishing and I am sure as the time passes so will your style of writing become better. It isn't bad please don't misunderstand me. But I feel you try too hard trying to explain everything. For example the line :Her full name is Fumino Yuki. You could have easily avoided it. And written something like:

One of them was someone I knew for some time, Yuuki. Fumino Yuuki, like me was an immigrant from Japan.

You see? You cut down on words and at the same time make the read pacy.

A lot of editing needs to be done. You end up mixing up tenses and prepositions too often. It happens when you are writing and thinking at the same time. That's when reviewing your own work is necessary. See the thing is I wasn't able to immerse in your writing, I couldn't feel being in the scene myself. You have to create the ambience for it.

For that you need to cut down on words and more importantly make the write crisp and singing with imagery which is lacking to a certain extent here. Doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your style of writing, it means a lot of tuning needs to be done.

Now for the good parts of the read. You have described your characters well. I was able to visualize them easily. The craters have got me a little interested as to what could be the meaning behind their appearance on earth. And what follows next. I am interested to see how well a job you have done in terms of character development and distinction.

Now this is an advice I will give you, because it helps me when I am writing stories (Yeah i have yet to post them here, but will soon do). You need to look at your work both as a writer and then as a reader. As a writer you need to see whether your idea is coming together. But then as a reader when you read it, does it end up catching your attention? Does it feel pacy? or is it being dragged? Do you want it to be dragged? Or does that mean you messed up?
The fact is when we are writing and it is not just for our reading alone, then we must keep in mind of the audience and write in a manner which will ensure that the readers are hooked up. We are expressing our ideas and philosophies on paper for others to read. So we must ensure that others actually read it. ^^ I am sure you know what I am talking about since we both read light novels ^^.

I am interested to know what's going to be next. Will soon read chapter-01 ^^ Again I am hoping that I didn't sound too harsh.

Regards,
Errenn

[Zoë]

Alright, I'm going to start off by saying that this was good, but I'm not going to touch on that again till the end. For now, I'm going to tell you what I was thinking while I read this, I hope it doesn't come off as mean, I'm just trying to give you my honest opinion.

- Starting off a piece with the whole "The world was at peace" trope, isn't a good idea. That will immediately turn away readers; if the world was really "at peace" then there wouldn't be a story to tell because nothing would really be happening. On top of that, it's a little impossible to imagine peace throughout the entire world. The different peoples of the world never have agreed completely on one topic, and they probably never will (and even if they were to be at peace 2028 seems really close, especially looking at the world today). Besides, there's always going to be groups of people who don't agree with the rest of the world. So we probably never will have peace, which is why you'll want to avoid saying "The world was at peace" even if you do say that there are people who have different ideas of peace.

- You say you live in America, but you don't say where. Normally I wouldn't criticize this, but later you say that the place you live doesn't have earthquakes over a certain magnitude. That's where the 'where' really becomes important. I know you live in America, but I'm not going to look up "places in America that only have small earthquakes" to figure out exactly which state. And, since you specify something about where this is taking place, it would just be better to tell us exactly where, so you should really tell us what state (and or city) this is in.

- It's fine if you're writing in first person pov. but if that's what you're doing you need to stay consistent. Most of these errors are because of slight grammar problems (which I know other people have mentioned this, but none of them have grabbed specific examples; I'm not going to do that right now for the sake of time, but I will if you want me to) but you've also made it harder on yourself by writing in first person present instead of past. With present, you need to constantly use specific words like "says" instead of "said" or "I walk" instead of "I walked". Also, you'll need to change some of your regular sentence structures because they may only work in past tense instead of what you're going for. One last thing on this, is that there are some words that have to be past tense even if your writing in present (bottom line, English is stupidly complicated when writing things like this). If you want a good example you should read The Maze Runner, it's written in first person present most of the time, so it should help with phrasing things.

- I mentioned this earlier, but grammar problems. I can understand exactly what you're trying to say, but sometime you aren't using the right form of the word. For example "The first to show up is are two ladies. One of them is someone I know for some time, Yuuki. Her full name is Yuuki Fumino..." should actually be written as "The first to show up were the two ladies. The first one was Yuuki Fumino, I've known her for the longest time..." This is only one of the many places, which (again) I can pull out all of them and suggest revisions if you want me to.

- As a couple of others have also said, it didn't really grab my attention. It sounds like a very interesting story and I'll probably read the entire thing, but it doesn't pull me into the universe you're creating. With prologues you really want the reader to start asking questions, which you have great at the end, but isn't really existent through the rest. You're too quick to explain things, from this small section alone I already know quite a bit about the five main character, and that's actually a problem. I understand the desire of wanting to set up your characters quickly, but sometimes that isn't what people want to read. I'd rather watcher characters and their personalities unfold with the plot, which this prologue definitely didn't do. In order to keep people reading, don't explain everything right away, drag it out. There's a lot of information in this opener that I fell is unnecessary and can easily be gotten rid of just because it explains things too early. In prologues you should focus entirely on creating questions, not answering them; that's how you grab my attention.

- I can see the draw to use kokkuri as a way to advance the plot, but it doesn't really fit in the story. You start off by saying that "of some reason we ended up doing" it, which isn't really a good reason to bring "spirits" into your story. For me, there needs to be more information behind playing that just "oh, we decided to do it, I don't really know why" because that won't interest your readers. Continuing with that, from this I can't tell what kind of story you're setting up. Originally I was going to go with apocalyptic because of the holes in the earth, but then you brought in kokkuri, so now I'm trying to figure out if it's actually a paranormal story. I'm being draw between two different types of stories and I can't tell which is more likely, can you see how that's confusing? I have no idea where this story is going to go, but not in a good way. A prologue should be the start of introducing your readers to the universe you have created. In that case, you want to clarify pretty early on what type of story it will be (either apocalyptic or paranormal) by dropping at least one hint (for example: Paranormal, add in ghosts and exorcists, Apocalyptic, make the craters a bigger deal and leave out contacting the dead).

Um, I think that's about all I had on this. Like I said, generally it was very good. I'm definitely going to read more because I want to see where you take this. Which means that even if it doesn't have a great draw you're still picking up readers, which is fantastic :)
I don't generally talk about things people did well on in my reviews, so I hope this helped. And if there's anything specific you want me to look at or pull out just let me know and I'll do my best to help! Like I said earlier, I hope none of this came off as too mean, I don't intend for any of it to be, these are just my honest opinions.

[Autonomous]

You sent me a read request for chapter 13 which I didn't read for obvious reasons. As for the prologue, it has a is a slow start but a good read. I will continue to read every now and then when I have the time, so keep up the good work.

[Eisho Shu]

Sorry, I must have misclicked since I was in a rush. Anyways, thanks for reading and giving me a feedback.

[Aventicus]

It's an interesting start. It's a little slow and doesn't wholly present that intense action feel that you appear to have been going for. When it comes to character introduction, you want to list a few physical attributes that gives the readers an idea of who they are imagining, but it is more important to list personality attributes, for these play an important role for developing them as they go on and also for shaping the plot. I like what you have done so far, but you just need a little more. As for the plot setup, it goes with what I said earlier, it needs a little more structure than the one you've given it. This story does have a lot of potential and I'm excited to get into it.

[Eisho Shu]

Alright, I think I know how I'm going to revise this prologue now. Thanks for the review.

[Aventicus]

No problem.

[Meeks]

Can't say I like your idea or where this is going, but I'm not really an accurate judge of public opinion. Yes, I dislike the Hunger Games, and Star Wars VII wasn't as good as it could be, yet they seem to be incredibly popular...

Archeologists don't have adventures.

The opening is weak. Instead of describing all of these characters and giving us exact weights and measurements, give them personalities. So that we get to actually 'known' them a bit more.
But don't describe the personality, show us how these people interact with each other and let us figure it out.

Overall, you put your words together well, but bad technique. Good luck!

[Eisho Shu]

I'm sorry if this sounds like it is going at the direction of Hunger Games and Star Wars VII. I am not trying to make it that direction. As for the archaeologist, I'm pretty sure they do. Some have to go from places to places just to reach new finding. In a sense, that can be quite a adventure.

I have to agree with you on the opening but the style I'm going for really doesn't allow me to do much more. I am trying write this as if I am the protagonist and telling the story in first person real time. This is not a popular English style writing I believe. Though I guess I do have some unnecessary elements in there. Thanks a lot for the review.

[Tsubaki Kuro]

Interesting. I heard of those Siberian Craters on Tv. try adding more concrete details.

[yuriko]

This is a good Prologue. But there are many spelling errors and grammar that need to be fixed.But overall it keeps the readers attention that you feel that something is about to happened it's very thrilling.:) My suggestion would be that you maybe get a beta reader to help with the editing.

[Eisho Shu]

I just fixed quite a few grammar problems but I didn't find spelling error. We might be using different type of English. English is a complicated language after all. For now, I think I just need to take more time to edit my chapters.

[Aventicus]

I wouldn't just say complicated, I would also add incredibly and annoyingly nuanced. I have heard that Hungarian may be the hardest.

[Eisho Shu]

Hahaha well, it's mostly opinion as well.

[Solar]

Just a suggestion - make the prologue shorter - to hold and draw the reader into the story.

As it stands all the ingredients are there to promise a thrilling read.

[Eisho Shu]

I can see why you say that. I guess this is a little lengthy, it have almost 900 words. Thanks for the review, I'll work on it.

[Dante Abvrasian]

I think the setup for the story is good. We're introduced to most, if not all, of the characters early on with pretty good descriptions of them and their possible personalities. This kind of makes me feel like it'll take a futuristic turn to stories like Indiana Jones filled with supernatural phenomena and adventure. Overall I think this is an interesting way to start the story.

[Eisho Shu]

Prologue for most cases from what I read is really an introduction to the setting and characters. I also think it is probably one of the best chance to introduce the characters that will have quite a bit to do with my story later on. I got crazy amount of idea lined up already. Anyways, thanks for the review.