I need constructive criticism on the short story I'm writing

[mookman22]

This is my third time writing creative and I'm just going to guess and say I'm doing a lot of stuff wrong. I'd like to know what I'm doing wrong and where I can improve. I only have 2 pages written and plan to continue adding on to it for general writing practice.
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[i]There seems to be an endless supply of evil in this world. Always more land to purge, always another demon to slaughter; evil has a way of replenishing itself here. One who seeks to purge the lands of such a force must destroy the source, which in this case is hell itself. Such is how this adventure begins. [/i]

I: In which a fellowship is formed and an adventure is begun
[i]The city of Frostmourne in which darkness never lifts. Evil lurks outside the walls blockading trade. Few dare to venture outside the walls and of the few who do even less return. The city is besieged by the forces of evil.[/i]

A man in heavy armor walked into the inn. Something was different about this man, light seemed to shine from him and an aura of goodness and piety surrounded him. This was no peasant, or simple adventurer; this was a paladin. He sat at a table, ordered a meal and ate in silence, ignoring the many eyes that had begun to look at him in curiosity.
A man in leather armor with short black hair and many a scar arrived at the table. The paladin was expecting this man to arrive. “And you would be Samuel Dantas?” said the paladin? ”That would be correct” said Samuel. “I hear you’re the best mercenary this city has to offer” Said the paladin. “You heard right, and my services don’t come cheap.” The paladin put a full coin purse on the table. The mercenary looked inside and a grin formed on his face. “Let’s get down to business then. Pay like this doesn’t come without a good risk so what’s the mission?” “You’ll find out soon enough but we await one more.” said the paladin.

Several minutes passed. Finally another man sat down at the table. He wore old worn down robes and had long gray hair, he carried no weapons. “Merthen” said the paladin with a smile on his face “Cesios” replied Merthen. “It’s been a long time but we can acquaint ourselves later, right now we have important matters to discuss and I don’t want to bore our company.” Samuel looked up from his mug of mead. “Now to discuss why I’ve brought you here. The forces of evil have been outside the walls of this city for months now, killing anyone who tries to get in or out and blocking trade. This city won’t survive much longer without any trade and when it runs out of food and the soldiers and citizens are starving they’ll invade. I seek to stop this from happening. There is a cave a few leagues of here that stinks of evil and which the demons in the area appear to be coming from, I tried to inspect the cave alone but it nearly resulted in my death. I’d like to go there tomorrow with the help of you two and destroy whatever lurks within, hopefully weakening the forces that lay siege to here. Is our objective clear?” Samuel and Merthen nodded. “Then we shall set out for the cave tomorrow; prepare yourselves, the road ahead will be very dangerous,”

[i]The next day[/i]

Cesios, Merthen, and Samuel met near the city gates. It was morning but still dark as deep night. Cesios carried a sheathed claymore and had a buckler strapped to his arm, Samuel had a buckler strapped to his arm and carried a war hammer in one hand, Merthen brought no weapons and came wearing only his robe. Samuel looked at Merthen “You don’t even bring so much as a dagger?”
“Oh I’m armed to the teeth; my weapons just aren’t visible to the naked eye.” Replied Merthen. “I take it you’re a wizard then?” Merthen nodded “Your kind aren’t taken kindly to in these parts” said Samuel “I’ve already found out the hard way” Merthen said with a grin on his face. “Enough chit-chat let’s make haste and get to that cave” The three set out toward the gate. A guard raised his arm to stop the group at the gate but quickly changed his mindset upon being thrown a small bag of gold coins. “Open the gate!” yelled the guard. The gate slowly opened and the group passed through.

Everything was much darker outside the city gates and it wasn’t long before the group needed to light torches. The road had an eerie feel and the group felt like they were being watched constantly. Half a league down the road Cesios signaled the group to stop. “Something seems off; ready your selves for attack and watch for any movement” Shortly after these words were said there was a rustling in a nearby bush. The group diverted their attention to the area of the noise. Another noise behind them, then from the left, footsteps could be heard but the forest was thick and the darkness deep so the culprits could not be seen. “Prepare your selves” said Cesios. A jet black figure pounced from the woods at Samuel. It looked as if it was once human but was covered in jet black slime and had no facial features other than a mouth full of sharpened teeth. A ball of fire flew from Merthen’s hand to the demon, burning it to a crisp before it could reach Samuel There was no time for thanks for within a few seconds dozens more of the demon’s jumped at the group. Fireballs flew through the air reducing their targets to ash, Cesios cut down the demons left and right with his claymore, Samuels was knocking them out of the air with his war hammer. The battle raged on for what felt like forever to the group until finally, there was silence.

The three stood, covered in blood, over the bodies of the fallen demons. “What the hell are these things?” asked Sam “They look as if they were once human”. “These are the travelers that didn’t make it through here. I believe whatever force is in the cave is turning people into these… things” said Cesios “Let’s continue, it can’t be long until we get to the cave and if we linger here for too long more of them might show up.”

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From reading this my self I feel like my dialogue needs a ton of improvement but I'm not quite sure where to start.

[Karlos]

First off, next time you post, do it without the self-deprecating poll. Voting it decent's a stretch, but it's not 'bad'. How about having good, mediocre and poor?

I fairly enjoyed reading the first part, though the criticism I'd make is that you do a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. Short, clipped sentences as opposed to some length of description; nothing about the inn, the atmosphere or the occupants, 'heavy armor'. Then again, this is more or less my opinion and your writing style as opposed to something you need to 'fix'.

There's loads of grammatical errors.

[quote=mookman22]“And you would be Samuel Dantas?” said the paladin? ”That would be correct” said Samuel.[/quote]

I take it you can see what's wrong with this. Rewritten as an example, though personally i'd word it differently; (the question mark's out of place, the paladin knows who Dantas is. Furthermore, 'said the paladin' implies it was a statement, not a question).

[quote=mookman22]"And you would be Samuel Dantas?" said the paladin. "That would be correct," Samuel replied.[/quote]

This example applies to most of the dialogue in the story. Dialogue needs punctuation before the last quotation mark.

There are some other things worth mentioning but I think there's potential, and I enjoyed what you came up with.

[Croix]

Only reason anyone does polls like that is because they hope that people will go all "no you're not bad you're good!"

They never do. So don't make polls like that. And get better self confidence while you're at it.

[mookman22]

[QUOTE=Croix;29091621]Only reason anyone does polls like that is because they hope that people will go all "no you're not bad you're good!"

They never do. So don't make polls like that. And get better self confidence while you're at it.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, I should have read the constructive criticism guide before posting this. And the reason I made a poll like that is more that I honestly have no idea what my writing looks like from another perspective. As in the people who write terrible twilight fan fics probably think what they wrote is good too.

[Hana-San]

Would be nice to maybe add some more character to the characters. Samual, who is suppose to be some tough guy as a mercenary seems to be very submissive.

[onlyJiC]

you went overboard on the evil

[Potanis]

Well, the dialoge seems a bit rushed. slow it down a little, make it more natural. If you want the characters to be rushing it, then make sure you stress that. you could make one of them try to make small talk, but the other cuts him off, or at least mention that they are all about business. I write short stories myself, could I post some on here so people could see them? (we could turn this into a short-story thread)

[editline]11th April 2011[/editline]

also your scenes need more development before you get to the fun parts. (like setting, describe the landscape, etc.)
you've probably noticed published author have a way of drawing things out without making it seem odd, you'll want to catch on to that. (I have a ways to go as well)

[Azaer]

[QUOTE=Karlos;29077871]First off, next time you post, do it without the self-deprecating poll. Voting it decent's a stretch, but it's not 'bad'. How about having good, mediocre and poor?

[/QUOTE]

Its a bad habit of writers, me and my friend joined a class and we regularly tell each other we thought our pieces were horrible when in reality we're being told our stories were great (freshmen and lazy seniors make the competition pretty slack)

Anyways, onto the critique:
One suggestion I have is taking every italicized word, cut it out, and try and use normal paragraphs to convey the message you put into those lines. What you're doing with the italicized words is taking the easy way out on descriptions, as if you were writing up a stage script rather than a short story.

Also about your first paragraph:
[QUOTE] A man in heavy armor walked into the inn. Something was different about this man, light seemed to shine from him and an aura of goodness and piety surrounded him. This was no peasant, or simple adventurer; this was a paladin. He sat at a table, ordered a meal and ate in silence, ignoring the many eyes that had begun to look at him in curiosity.
A man in leather armor with short black hair and many a scar arrived at the table. The paladin was expecting this man to arrive. “And you would be Samuel Dantas?” said the paladin? ”That would be correct” said Samuel. “I hear you’re the best mercenary this city has to offer” Said the paladin. “You heard right, and my services don’t come cheap.” The paladin put a full coin purse on the table. The mercenary looked inside and a grin formed on his face. “Let’s get down to business then. Pay like this doesn’t come without a good risk so what’s the mission?” “You’ll find out soon enough but we await one more.” said the paladin. [/QUOTE]

The problem I have with this part is that I have no idea where he is- sure, I know he's in a pub and all, but who's in the pub? What is showing outside the windows? Is it day? How upscale is the pub? Is it lurid, clean, infested, new old?

Another mistake I see you making is falling into something of a pitfall in fantasy writing: Forgetting to keep you characters as characters. Since you made good/evil your main way of describing people and places, they become symbols rather than people. There aren't any thoughts to hear, or any personality to learn: We already know who "The Paladin" is, and you can make that work, of course, just warning you that it can be dangerous to lend too much to vague alignments.

And like its been said before, you didn't let the story ripen and jumped too fast to the juicy stuff.

Just my feelings as a reader, and good luck since it took me a while before I could get my head around how to craft a basic story... No mortal eye deserves to witness my first few attempts :ohdear:

[TH89]

I just scrolled through the thread and read a sentence at random:
[quote]Something was different about this man, light seemed to shine from him and an aura of goodness and piety surrounded him.[/quote]
This is a comma splice, which is a type of run on sentence. You have two sentences with a comma in the middle instead of a period. So, try to work on your grammar and proofreading. Give everything a once- or twice-over. :)

[Ruski]

It seems too... amateur I guess. Your descriptions are often short and rushed (not to mention the dialogue). You introduce characters too quickly and therefore embue them with zero personality. Take a chapter or a half to introduce characters. Improve your writing skills and remember, for the love of god, writing a book is not a frikking race. Take your time, re-read and improve.

[mako_]

Honestly I would say you're too green to start seeking criticism for your writing. Your prose betrays lack of the fundamental rules and structure of writing, and you need to build your story within these for it to be readable, let alone enjoyable. I suggest you read a few books before you trying writing again, and pay attention to paragraphing, how sentences are formed, how dialogue is broken and punctuated to be pleasing to read, what the author does that you don't like, what he/she avoids doing that you appreciate him/her for. Note methods of description and story arcs - gain some inspiration for your story AND your style and ability. At the moment it reads like some kid is trying to romanticise some run-of-the-mill quest from Oblivion into fanfiction. I won't say you don't have it in you, but you're certainly not well enough prepared to write anything decent .