[1402] Mermaids

Hey, welcome to RDR! Since you're new and making a submission on the shorter side I'll approve this, but I also feel your crit is right on the borderline for meriting a 1.5k post. It's a good start, and does touch on both details and overall impressions, but I'd encourage you to go more in-depth and cover more aspects of the story for your next one. There are some useful guides and critique templates in the "new users" sticky to help there.

First critique on this sub. Please let me know if anything I said was wrong/out of place.

General things I noticed during the read-through

• "Chains" were mentioned twice in the first 3 lines. Try to not repeat words so quickly after one another. In this context "pulled down by the weight" is enough since you already told us that she's chained.
• Using passive voice instead of active voice. "She was pulled down" vs "The chains pulled her down". Active voice is almost always better.
• I'm not sure if people can be heard screaming underwater (but taking your title into consideration I'll assume she can).
• Sentence fragments. They can be a stylistic choice but I feel like there were too many of them. Some of them just shouldn't be sentence fragments (like "Creating a barrier between her and the rest of her room").
• I'm not sure why Little Princess is capitalized.
• I don't like fully capitalized things because I rarely do see things that justify being all caps (no, not even a little girl's scream).
• All right, I laughed when I saw "wanting to end his little girl’s suffering" because the image of the dad mercy killing the little girl because of a stab in the foot is way too funny.
• The king seems awfully self-degrading for some reason. Like it's really not his fault his kid didn't clean up after herself (ok, maybe he didn't educate her well enough, but come on). It's an accident that could've happened to anyone.

Now onto other things.

Your question

I think the transition is fine, with what little dialogue we have in this snippet. I wouldn't use the colon to transition though, just a period is enough. I'm also not sure why you used two quotes in

“I know, I know sweetie. Everything will be alright. It’s not your fault.” "It is mine.".

If it's supposed to show thoughts, just italics is fine.

Hook

We start off with a woman drowning. It's... ok. I'm not particularly invested in a random fictional person and I don't really care why she's dying. We get through a bunch of prose and finally get to the end where it's revealed that she was abused and then she turns into a monster.

It gave me the feeling of those prologues where some random scout or soldier goes and finds some plot point and gets killed for it (like the start of A Game of Thrones). It serves only to set up something in the story that we're supposed to care about later at the expense of the POV character dying. Now, this prologue is short, so it didn't trick me as AGOT did into thinking that these characters were actually going to be important, but at the same time I felt like it took too long to get to the good part (turning into a monster) because there were so many things you're describing, so when it got to the good part my reaction was just "ok, wow, so it's one of those ocean monster legend things."

I think the problem here is that you're telling me things I already know. Yes, obviously there's going to be fish in the ocean, and sharks, and whales, and water, yada yada yada. Is the only difference between your ocean and real world oceans is that yours turn people into monsters? Surely there are other things that stand out, right? Don't tell me the things that are obvious, tell me things I don't know.

Characters

There's a drowned woman, a king, and a princess. All of them felt flat.

The drowned woman I'll give a pass since drowning people tend to not have personalities. The king I'll also give a pass since he showed up for like half a page.

The princess is supposed to be your POV character, but all I got from the chapter was that she's more like a camera for you to show the painting and the setting through. I didn't get any emotions from her, not even when she mentions her sister's death, which given the context should've been a pretty big deal to her.

I can understand if this isn't going to be the first chapter and the character's personality is established elsewhere, but I still think you should make her more human and less like a camera, at least when you talk about her sister's death.

Plot

I'm not sure what the plot is. Nothing substantial happens in the prologue nor the chapter.

Description

Too much description for my taste. A setting by itself isn't interesting. Characters are what makes it interesting. I'm not sure if any of these descriptions really made me care. I guess the painting is supposed to be important but is the scenery really that important?

Remember, when you're writing for someone to read, you're asking them for their time. Don't waste their time with details that don't matter, pull them with interesting things so they keep investing more of their time into your story.

Pacing

Again nothing substantial happens. Is the princess stabbing her foot supposed to be a big plot point? I don't really see how it would play into the story later unless she got infected and needed the whole leg amputated or something. As a result the story drags.

Overall

I'm sorry, but I can't say this was interesting to me, mostly because nothing happens. I'm not sure what the flashback chapter is supposed to be getting at. Perhaps it'll be better with some context, but I have none.

Let me start by saying I do like you descriptions for the most part. Particularly in the prologue. I struggle with creating vivid images myself, so I enjoy when someone is able to paint one that I see in my own head.

To address your concern about switching from narration to dialogue, I don't see much issue with how you've formatted it. You even do a decent job of incorporating dialogue without tags, which can be tough. Usually I get lost with who is saying what, but it is pretty clear in Chapter X when the girl is speaking vs. her father. The thing you may want to look into is how to format internal dialogue. I've seen it as just italicized font without quotations before. The way you write it, I imagine actual speech, but with emphasis. Maybe consider treating it like speech as far as formatting, just removing the quotation marks and italicizing. The only place where I'm unsure is when you have the reflection on what the father said. Technically that is happening in her head, but is also speech. You may have the proper formatting there.

One thing I struggle with immediately is how little you use actual names. The only named character is Mary, but you don't reveal this until much later in Chapter X. This leads to quite a bit of confusion, considering you also introduce her sisters. Any time I see the word "she" I cannot be sure who exactly "she" is. The way you avoid naming her makes me feel like you are purposely avoiding it, so that it's this great reveal when the king comes in and says, "Mary!" But I'm unsure if this is what you're going for because there is little context and I'm not sure at what point in the story you have this chapter. In addition, because the identity is ambiguous, am I supposed to assume/expect a particular relationship between the young woman in the prologue and the girl in Chapter X? This may only be happening because I am reading one right after the other, but nothing is telling me the are/are not the same person. Though this is a good segue into my next issue.

You state that Chapter X is a flashback scene. By this, do you mean the entire chapter is a flashback? Because you also have the girl reflecting on a previous experience, which could mean only that is a flashback and the rest of the chapter is happening in real time. If the entire chapter is a flashback, it would make a little bit more sense for Mary to be the woman in the prologue. Or maybe I'm just overthinking what you plan to do in the larger story. If you have no intention of doing any of the things I've described above, maybe you don't need to be so ambiguous. In this case, I'd recommend naming the characters as early as possible. This way you can say "Mary" instead of "she." You should also name her sisters and probably her father. It just makes things clearer.

I skimmed a previous comment, and do agree that I'm unsure where this chapter belongs in the greater plot. It feels like you're trying to introduce characters like the little girl and her father, but beyond that I don't sense forward movement with the story. The breakdown of events are that a girl is in bed, decides she wants to open the window, cuts her foot while walking, and her father/the king takes her to the infirmary. Maybe the reader's attention is drawn to the wrong things. I imagine you plan on revealing how the sister died, which is related to why her father acts so oddly and is so protective. I imagine there is some prophetic connection with the dream she had and got painted on the ceiling (although the only reason I think there might be magic/fantasy themes in this story is because of the title. Technically, everything else could be based on the metaphysics of our world). Is there a way you can spend more time with the father? Maybe dialogue between the two of them can show what's important in the story and what's important to the characters.

It appears you're a pantser, writing as you go. The positive is that you can write when and what you want. The drawback though is how a reader will see it when there isn't a finished product. The reader doesn't know what is important and where the chapter is in the greater context of the story, partially because it doesn't seem like you know (yet) where it belongs in the story. This makes me wonder if you could benefit from outlining the story before writing the chapters. Then you will know what content is actually relevant, and there will be no wasted words. Just a thought, but it may be a decent exercise. You can always jump around between what full chapters you write once you have the outline.

Hope this helps.