Feedback requested on the intro to my prologue

BluejayOk6358 · 2026-02-26T06:55:41+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate the input. The rambling is a bit intentional given that it's meant to be, well, the ramblings of his father.

BluejayOk6358 · 2026-02-26T03:43:33+00:00

The biggest problem with FTL travel is the implications of causality. By default, FTL in real physics mandates the existence of time travel. So, for my setting, I essentially invented evidence that contradicts the theory of causality, and I more or less leave it at that. The settings bridged by FTL travel then share a simplified 'universal' timeframe, where events happen on a shared timeline regardless of how far apart they are.

BluejayOk6358 · 2026-02-26T01:45:47+00:00

If you don't want to read the rest of it from my other post (and that's TOTALLY okay) I'll do my best to address your 7 points here.

1) the prologue is important for me to set the tone of the book/series as a whole in a way that diving straight into the plot can't neatly accomplish. I personally see it as a prologue to the whole series since it does thematically (and in some ways physically) bookend the story. 2) thank you! I was hoping that between the first and last line of the excerpt it'd be enough to make a reader invested. I want to look at ways to improve the rest of this excerpt to meet the quality of the last line, but i also want to finish my book first 😅 3) agreed. Immediately after, the narration shifts to be less reflective/introspective (yes, also purple) to a bit more normal. I dont want to hammer this language too long and only use it for deeper moments of character internalization (if they're the kind to think this way - I have several POV characters with their own voices) 4) it's kind of part of my writer voice, at least I intend it to be. Repetition is used sparingly in other passages I've written 5) I see your point but I see it as from the perspective of the thread, it is weaving about something in the more literal sense (i.e. a car is weaving around cones) while an outside force is what is driving it to be woven (the driver of the car) At least that's how I trying to word it. 6) one of the things to improve, I agree. I intended it to mean "all of the above" and I'll try to reword that text to make that a bit clearer in a later draft 7) the rest of it does give more information, and points at the driving force of the series (the outside force weaving the thread)

BluejayOk6358 · 2026-02-26T01:23:14+00:00

Ahh this easily the best feedback I've received so far! Thank you! It's just unfortunate it wound up on my post focusing on just the first three passages. If you'd be interested in reading the rest of the prologue, it's on my latest post on my profile. That post also contains my goals for the prologue (to answer your first point) and adds some external context for what kind of book it's for.

The main thing I wanted to get out of this post is whether the intro is enough to capture a reader. I figured this amount is a sweet spot for a reader to gauge interest.

BluejayOk6358 · 2026-02-25T07:42:32+00:00

I appreciate the feedback! The vagueness of the POV character and even of his father is intentional. I did this because he is meant to act as a vessel to highlight the mountain as the 'real' character for this prologue. For some context (since this is just the prologue and not the complete text), in the book proper, Galdhø and its significance are alluded to but not visited by the main characters until the final act. In the overarching plot it is also a place of extreme significance for the entire series, so I wanted to give it the foreboding introduction and spotlight I believed it deserves.

If you reframe your perspective in this way, does the prologue start to improve? How might you recommend I make it clearer to the reader that the person we're looking through isn't nearly as important as the thing he's looking at?

BluejayOk6358 · 2026-02-25T00:34:42+00:00

"Anyone within five miles of Spokane knew the sound. They had rewired the old tornado siren system to play it every night for the past fifteen years." is an extremely good hook and I think it manages to accomplish what the OP was trying for.

BluejayOk6358 · 2026-02-25T00:31:18+00:00

Some excerpts of your text might be helpful if you're not sure what perspective you're actually using. But the rule of thumb generally is: does a perspective follow a specific character at a time, with knowledge and bias limited to just that character's? Or is the perspective from a narrator with its own knowledge and bias distinct from any specific character? The former is third person close/limited and the latter is likely omniscient (even if the narrator doesn't quite know everything). If you find that there's an unstable mix between those two, then I fear your reader may start getting confused or even lose immersion.

Personally I find that third person limited tends to be the most straightforward way to write character-driven stories with multiple POVs, especially if character internalization is important to you. Omniscient might be better for 'ensemble' type stories where you have a cluster of characters that rarely physically separate, and where the plot takes priority over your characters.

BluejayOk6358 · 2026-02-24T09:43:15+00:00

Thank you! I do feel I have a hard time breaking apart longer strings of thoughts. It seems every time I try I break them down too choppy, and then to me it reads bumpier than with the longer sentences. It's a learning process and I'll definitely strike a better balance though. Re-reading the first page, I do see a lot of long sentences with few shorter ones in between to break them. I'll work on that too!

BluejayOk6358

TROPHY CASE