Sorry not a full review or anything but as someone who reads a shit ton of fantasy this is a super generic fantasy opener. The only interesting part of the story is the non western non euro names of things. Everything else was just a pale photocopy of every fantasy opening ever. This is the exact cliche template you went with. Boy does something alone right outside of village-farm-home. Sometimes its hunting or farming or delivering something. This time its herding sheeps. Whatever it is this starter task is always just an empty time filler to give the writer an excuse to dilly dally in the boys head and drop a bunch of info dump world buildy nonsense while the story farts around. Boring yo. Next the boy returns to find village under attack-on fire-destroyed. surprised? me neither bc its been done to death. Do better be more creative and come up with an opening that isnt so been there done that.

My critique isn’t about plot or story, but the writing itself. You have a lot of redundancy in your writing and could really chop it down to clean it up. I would cut the first few paragraphs as they do not really tell us anything that we can’t infer. In fact, you could probably trim a third of the words of the whole piece and you would have much sharper, more impactful prose.

This made me feel too tired to write a critique, even though your writing is fine - good vocab and grasp on gramma - so I was left wondering why this piece wasn't that interesting. You made the comparison to ASOIAF, and the prologue of that story is similar in the way it's a guy walking in the wilderness and strange stuff happens. One main difference is that the guy in ASOIAF was accompanied by two other characters. Second, they had an interesting mission of finding wildlings or 'outlaws' if you will. Your story is about a guy with sheep. The pace is all muddled with him walking the sheep, hating the sheep, and reminiscing about the dreads of taking care of sheep. My tip is to just rewrite something interesting before the big reveal of the sheep attacking him and the village. Maybe  have somene else with him, or give him a little side mission, or give him disaster like losing a limb or something, ok that's too much, but you know what I mean? That's my two cents.

Thank you very much for your helpful feedback! I am going to be posting some additional work in the future and hope to receive similar helpful advice.

Hello!

Firstly, this is my first ever critique, but I love high fantasy and so was interested in your premise. Another commenter on the Google Doc itself has already picked up on some of the points I was going to make, so I won't bother mentioning anything they did. Where I give examples, I'll just go for the first one chronologically.

Generally, I really like how your write. You mix up sentence lengths nicely, and have some solid alliteration even in the first line, which was a pleasure to read. However, I think in places your varying of sentence length etc can make the story jolt a bit, or else stagnate very briefly. For example, in your first paragraph, I found my reading experience was interrupted by the sentences:

>"Another bird called out. Closer this time."

They could easily be one sentence with a comma, which I think would actually build tension. There are also a couple of places where a longer sentence could do with some extra commas to make it more understandable, or you 

I agree with another comment about the super generic opening here. It’s a real barrier to creating a hook and engaging the reader. There was a similar piece on the fantasy writers sub recently, and at first I wasn’t sure if this was the same thing. Farm boy guiding herd back to his farm/village amidst ominous background/undertones. Plus, the ending with zombified village. Again, pretty derivative and lacking something to make it stand out.

The prose itself is quite plodding. There’s very little tension as he gets back to the village. The use of ‘nothing’ to try and inject some fear and uncertainty became tedious and repetitive. 

> Nothing pursued him. 

> Nothing returned to the door.

> Where he expected to smell fat and flesh roasting over the fire, he smelled...nothing.

> He saw nothing. He saw no one.

> Qaeran listened for any sign of life and heard nothing.

> Qaeran squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, willing them to see better in the suffocating darkness. Nothing.


Hello, I left a few comments as Annabel!

**Overall**

I actually think you're a really good action writer, and you did a pretty good job conveying the sense of danger and fear. My advice here changes based on whether or not Qaeran is a main character or this is just a hook- showing us something terrible happening somewhere in the world. If Qaeran is the main character, I actually think you need a totally different first chapter. This can be like the second chapter. You need more time to become invested in Qaeran and his life, his struggles, etc, before we can care about what happens to him in this village. It seems like it will be a kind of classic 'Arcadia' story- idyllic village is destroyed.

Also, people left some good advice about sheep. Might be worth reading some accounts about what a shepherd's life is like in order to make it a little more realistic.

In this genre, I also think it's really important that we know what makes this story different from everyone else's. Why is th

Thank you! This is an incredibly helpful critique. Very much appreciated

# Story

I’ve read the first page or so, and I can’t find the hook. A shepherd is bringing a flock of sheep home, which isn’t interesting. There are some intriguing tidbits, like the bit about “horrid things,” and the allusion to the looter-raider culture, but it’s not enough to keep me interested. If I picked this up in a bookstore, I’d shelve it after a paragraph or two. I’ve already read *Wheel of Time* and *Eragon,* so I recognize the archetypal “simple peasant boy from a small village” opening. It’s a bit cliched, so if you want to stick with this kind of opening, I think you need to do something very different from other books in the genre—something that will make your reader say “huh, I’ve never seen that before.” But I am glad that you didn’t start with a 50+ page description of a giant sheep-shearing event!

There’s a sort-of hook on page 3, where the sheep bites the MC. That’s the first indication the reader has that something is “wrong.” But even that isn’t an especially str

Hey all!

I am working on a fairly large draft of an epic fantasy right now. Currently at over 200,000 words. I bit off a lot more than I could probably chew as a first-time aspiring novelist, but I'm learning a lot through the process. Anyways, below is my first chapter. I'm going for a pretty tight, highly character-driven, third-person feel. Similar to Joe Abercrombie, George R.R. Martin, or John Gwynne. Don't feel bad to tell me like it is! The more-honest the better. I realize my prose and writing isn't on the level of those guys. Haha. But I aspire to give that feel if you will.

My First Chapter

[Fire and Metal](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NB330vxzVjZQXc0TvlpnHagNMhow2W6MhrE_-8dRicM/edit)

&amp;#x200B;

Crique: 

[\[2442\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/voc5i0/2442_let_the_shattered_rot/)

[2113] Epic Fantasy First Chapter