The book of Merlin

[fire power]

This is my second story so tell me what you think (and I know proluge a little short but if you like it i'll continue writing)
[spoilerroluge ]It is a typical morning for Kevin, he was at school listening to the teacher while she was doing whatever teachers do, when he got the strangest feeling that somethings wrong. He didn’t know what it was because everyone is calm, but somewhere in his head he felt it, he felt that something was terribly wrong!
One night something happened and he figured out what was bothering him but it was not something like a little crush or anything, it was much bigger, so big that the fate of the world and every human being and animal depended on him!
But luckely he had a secret weapon, he had the book of Merlin, The ancient magic book written by Merlin himself
and hid it away, only the one that is worthy will find it and unlock the power of magic!
With his very queer trainer and his best friends help will he be able to win the battle against the evil wizard Zartog and his followers and safe the earth?[/spoiler]

Chapter 1 The book of Merlin (Click to View)

The alarm clock goes off at 7:30 am and Kevin a normal 15 year old boy is still sound asleep.
“Wake up Kevin your going to be late for school” Yelled his mother
“Just a few more hours , please.”
“Come down at once or I am getting the water bucket!”
“Coming, I am coming! Ugh school is such a waste of time and pencels.”
Kevin quickly gets dressed and goes down for breakfast just to stare supprised at his breakfast.
“Mom you are so weird who eats soup in the morning?”
“Your father forgot to go to the shop and buy the stuff I put on the list.”
“So why didn’t you go do it then?”
“He came home very late when all of the stores were closed! But hurry up you are going to be late.”
“I honestly don’t see what is the crime in being late for school.”
“Just eat up and go!”
Kevin finishes his breakfast and starts to walk to school, he is soon joined by his best friend Ruben.
“Hey Kev wazzup?”
“My mom is still treating me like a baby, Kevin get up, Kevin get dressed, Kevin did you remember to brush your teeth?”
“whoa whoa back up, if I say wazzup you answer not much, you don’t actually tell me what is up.”
Kevin laughs at his friend. Ruben is an avarge looking guy with brown hair blue eyes and a long shaped face.
“Did you remember to do your maths homework Ruben?”
“Nah, I am just going to borrow your book and do it through break.”
“Ok then… I am out of topics to talk about and you?”
“ Uhm… I got nothing.”
They silently walk to school and get there just before the bell rings.
“Ladies and gentelmen let the torture begin!” Yelled Ruben just when everyone got in class.
Our science teatcher ,Mr. Grey, walked in and yelled.
“Open your books on page 231 and do everything on that page. And if anyone even says peep you are going to write out that whole page 10 times did you hear me!?”
Like a choir the whole class answer “yes sir!”
“ I am going to be in the teachers lounge, Ruben stand in front and write down anyones name who talks or pass notes!”
Mr. Brown quickly marches off to the teacher’s lounge not knowing he made a big mistake putting Ruben in charge.
“Ok who am I know? You will not talk or else I will fricken kill you with paper cuts from all the writing punnishment that I will give you muhahahahaha!”
The whole class burst out in laughter, except me, because I got the strangest feeling that something was wrong! Mr. Grey was on his way to the principal's office,that is very near our classroom, because he forgot to tell him something sport related and heard the noise!
“What is going on here?” The whole class were shocked to see Mr. Grey standing in the door!
“I can’t leave you bunch of baboons alone for a few minutes and then you go wild!
You all will write out I must shut up when Mr. Grey isn’t in the class 200 times before tomorrow or else it is 400 times! Am I understood?”
“Yes sir” the whole class answered automaticly.
When the bell finally rang for break and Ruben finished his homework they decided to sneek out of the school grounds and go to the old abandoned gold mine and return before the bell rings for school to continue.
“This place allways eases my nerves.”Said Ruben
“I know It feels so good to be alone just with my friend. Do you wanna go explore a little deeper today?”
“Sure thing I wonder if we will find some gold?”
As the boys wanders deeper and deeper Kevin notices something on the floor. Just then Ruben says.
“We need to go back now or else we are going to be late.”
“You go, I’ll catch up.”
“Ok see ya”
“Bye”
When Ruben is out Kevin quickly go check out what he saw. When he gets near it he see that heir are pictures on the ground and figures out that where he is standing he should break. He takes out his nuckle duster wich he keeps in his pocket for incase someone attacks him, and hits it.The sirkel where he hit breaks into a thousand pieces and under the pieces lies a …book!
He takes the book and reads the title Ye spells of Merlin but then realizes that the bell is going to ring in 5 minutes
As he ran back he opens the book and reads a spell that caught his eye!

[YoShockray]

Really Good I Must Say And I Can't Wait 1st Chapter So Write It On!
Just One Thing You Should Describe 'Em So We Can Imagine Further Story!

[fire power]

I actually didn't describe them on purpose just to make it more of a mystery so you are gonna have to read the whole story if you wanna know who is who and what are their personalities

[MnM]

This is going good. I think it lacks description. What i feel is that u need to explain his feeling. Also "listening to the teacher while she was doing whatever teachers do," i feel that it is odd. And, i think u shouldn't have mentioned The Book Of Merlin at prologue though... Other than that , what is the something? I am waiting for it!!.

[Silverthorn]

Watch your grammar. You've been switching from present to past with like every alternating verb. Casual way of talking might be okay, but personally, I like a more mature approach to writing. Just a personal preference.
Also, try avoiding one-sentence-paragraphs. Exceptions are okay, but overdo them. In this particular case, you should try elaborating a little more.

"But luckely he had a secret weapon, he had the book of Merlin."
Explain a little more. The book of Merlin might be nice to mention but in order to guide the reader, you might want to tell where it came from, how the protagonist acquired it, and so on.

Generally, I can only recommend to read, read, and even more reading. The more you read, the better your writing skills will be (assuming you do not fully rely on studying twitter-messages for the next 2 months ). Analyze how others convey their messages, learn from them, and finally create your own style. It'll come with time

[Alblaka]

Copypaste all the grammar and writing style criticsm here

@story content: This rather sounds like the short description of a random movie then a prologue (and exspecially not a story chapter).
Or like the description on the backside of a book (but that isn't called a prologue, either).

[fire power]

Chapter 1 is out!! Hope I Don't dissapoint
and Alblaka when I wrote it it did seem like a movie description to me as well I'll change it later

[Alblaka]

Hmmm, in all honesty: I roughly understood 50% of the stories content. And i'm going to claim the cause is NOT my mediocre capability of understanding English.


The mass of direct speech turns the entire story into a single, giant dialog. In fact, it seems like there are solely some (two?) people talking, without anything real happening inbetween (because setting a single sentence between direct speeches is (usually) only used to give a short information before continuing the dialog.

Then we got the (already mentioned) problem with the time forms, again. You're randomly switching between present and past, which turns some sentences in the story upside down.
(F.e. in the middle part strictly the classteacher entered the classroom before the protagonist even got up. (Latter thing is written in Present, the teacher part in Past. Of course, most people will still understand what you actually wanted to write)

Then we got a general abuse of the English language with random slang words ("wazzup") and random misspellings ("stairs" instead of "stares").
First one wouldn't be used by any proper author, though for some characters it's ned. Don't think it does really apply here, though.
Latter one is either a typo or some lacking dictionary-check :P

The last part of the chapter is, sorry for honesty, complete crap. I ned to read the story 3 times to (at least i think so) understand what is actually going on.
Next problem, you're saying he spots something and... MÖP, Nullpointer-Error, please further define WHAT he did spot.
As well, why is he supposed to break the floor? Most readers would surely like to know that.
Some funny thing i noticed: Why is a random guy, still living at home (age?) he's 15 ~ Reaper, completely giving in to whatever nonsense his mother does (soup) carrying a freakin nuckle duster (don't know whether that's actually spelled right)? "To defend himself". WhoTF needs to defend himself with a nuckle duster at school? XD (Probably a Slums School, but then again, the protagonists character doesn't to fit into Slums).
Still trying to figure out the meaning of "sirkel".




Advices:
- Improve your understanding of English sentence construction, tenses and overall grammar.
- Give some more information about the characters. Atm "Kevin" seems to be a 10 years old psycho with a nuckle duster. Protagonists should be well-described and sub-characters should at least be mentioned (which you actually did on Ruben. In fact, the reader gets far more information about Ruben...)
- Description. Good storys don't necessaryly need great plots, awesome characters and insane grammar knowledge. Stories live from good and fitting descriptions, giving the reader the ability to imagine what's going on in his head. As everyone knows, this is strongly related to pictures, therefore describing the look of the entire story-scenery vastly improves the story itself. (In your story we got exactly 0 discription of the locations. You barely know the story is taking place "at Kevins Home" (actually, this even isn't sure) / "a school" .
- Plot the story beforehand. I've got the feeling you're just writing sentence for sentence and randomly adding events without any real plot. (Besides this Merlin book thingy)



Sorry if this sounds harsh, but there's no use in telling you "That's a good story", because it plainly isn't. I wouldn't even call it "good for being your first one".
Hope you can use my critique to improve your writing style ^^


edit, 2 days later:
I think i killed him... sorry XD

Reaper edited this post 02-09-2011 03:15 PM because:

Oh come on... Writing these kind of posts is my job! What am I supposed to do now? Feeling useless already :P Anyway, I didn't find it quite as hard to understand (except for the last part). However it definitely lacks descriptions. I ain't a fan of "young boy defeats evil" stories either, but a teenager with a book full of magic spells could do quite some interesting stuff. I hope you can use alblaka's tips to write some nice new chapters.