Power Pros Forum

For those who don't know, I am working on my first novel. I decided to release a preview of my work on the site Genius.com. As of about a minute ago, I am now a verified user on the site and can explain all of my work!

You can check out the prologue at this page.

I'll use this thread to post updates on my work as well as anytime I decide to post another piece of it (chapter one should be coming soon!). Until then, feel free to leave any comments! I'm open to all feedback!

EDIT: And, of course, what's a piece of writing without an eloquent, descriptive tweet to accompany it?

Not enough character building from my first little glimpse at the prologue, without any explanation of the protagonist and his life/name he's immediately thrown out, same with Bryan, there's no elaboration on who he is or his story or anything like that, otherwise it's pretty good.

Edit: Though this is always something you can go over in a different chapter, if you're bringing the main character and his friend into the picture in the prologue then there should be at least a little bit of buildup.

That's basically the exact comment I got on Genius.

There's actually an entire prequel in the works that explains his life prior to these events, so yeah. I have ideas, but haven't actually written anything yet.

But anyhow, thanks for the feedback! I totally understand what you mean.

I don't write prologues, I write pro-logs.

Welp, 'scuse me while I summon all my years of English classes and go into full-on editor mode where hopefully I know what I'm talking about. *AHEM*

I have to agree that what this is missing is the character development. If we're gonna be following him around a whole novel, we need to know who he is. Personally, I'd recommend describing how he feels more. Let us into his head. What does he think of his conversation with his mother, the very first thing we see him doing? Is he pleasant with her or annoyed by her restrictiveness? Does he want to teach his brother guitar or or does he feel like his brother's bothering him? These are little details, but the snippets of emotion you give us are how we understand this person and relate to him. Same with other characters like Bryan. You can show us how he reacts to losing the race to his brother, for instance, or give us a quick conversation between him and the narrator to show how they interact.

Right now most of the story is PLOT PLOT PLOT PLOT PLOT. This happened, that happened, just sequences of events. In fact the first three sentences in the first full paragraph begin with "I [past tense verb]." I ran. I took. I went. It feels a bit mundane and monotonous. Unless that's the kind of feel you're going for, try changing up the syntax a bit. Rearrange words so the sentence structure is varied. Throwing in those characterization moments will help break things up too. And one more thing: The first time I read this part I barely even noticed something was happening. C'mon man, gimme some of that prosaic description! Make me feel the shock and denial when things start going wrong! The confusion and disbelief at what's happening! Unless this is the kind of guy who stays calm in a crisis, in which case you can still demonstrate that, show his logical thought process as he tries to figure out what's happening. Whatever works best for whoever you want this character to be.

Well, that might have been a bit overboard, but I hope it helps! Good luck on this story, Agent!

Thanks for all of this!

To answer your questions, he just wants to have some freedom, he does get along well with Chase and does want to teach him guitar, and yes, he seems to be very calm through everything. For example, going full-circle now, the convo with his mom. Getting inside his head, one can see that he wishes simply to walk to Bryan's house, while his overprotective mom wants him to stay home or at least let her drive him over there. Despite an urge to just go and do whatever he wants, he stays calm and poised and thus, avoids conflict with his mom. Furthermore, he wasn't really thinking at the time, since he had gone unconscious. All/most of this will be reflected via annotations here in a few minutes.

Finally, no, you did not go overboard. Any and all help is greatly appreciated, so again thank you.

I have officially finished writing Wizard24! My first thought was, of course, to begin writing the sequel! As of having posted this, I have written two words of the sequel.

You may now carry on with whatever you normally do at 12:16 AM CDT.

Chapter One has now been posted! You may find the link here.

I was originally planning to post it after I finished chapter one of the sequel, but decided I couldn't wait any longer. Enjoy!

Has anyone read this yet? Does anyone have any feedback or questions? I know I posted it at an odd time but still...

I read it before church. It's interesting enough to read. I'm not a big writing critic so I'm not gonna add anything else.

It is probably the dullest chapter of the book, so that's understandable.

Things actually start happening toward the end of chapter two

I hate reading...

I might give it a look if I get bored though.

For those wondering, I'm still working on this; it's just been hard to do much of anything with school just having started.

I'm planning on putting chapter two up sometime soon; despite planning to post each chapter as its corresponding part of the sequel gets done, I've found myself, as stated before, unable to work at the quick pace I would prefer, and I want to keep new material coming to keep everyone interested!

Chapter Two has now been posted!

Please read and give any feedback or comments below, it would be much appreciated!

Decided I would bump this to announce that I now plan on releasing this on December 20th of this year. I fulfilled my goal of writing the whole thing within a year, but am now taking it a step further to go out and publish it!

I'm almost certainly going to be publishing via Lulu, which is an online website that allows people like me to self-publish their books. It'll probably be available in both a paperback and ebook format as ebooks are free and therefore why not?

Anyhow, if you have any questions, ask 'em here, via PM, or email me at [email protected]

Thanks!