Ok Guardian, what you have here are some really cool concepts, and I can tell that you've spent a lot of time envisioning this world you've created and how everything works in it. Something important to remember when writing a story is to create a good hook, and something I find myself saying a lot lately is that of show versus tell. You definitely do have quite a bit of telling in this story but lets look at the beginning. There is quite a bit of action going on, but as a reader, it's very confusing, without a good hook to get me interested in the characters, I care little for what's going on. Why does this guy want to kill the dragon? Why is the dragon fighting back? Why do I care? Do I want this Dragoon guy to win? Why? At this point I have nothing telling me one way or the other how I should feel about either character in the conflict. You need a hook to bring readers in, and make your protagonists sympathetic.
You might find a creative way to ease the readers in without jumping right into a fight scene and still create tension. You may have the dragon attack the village and have the Dragoon attempt to defend it, and ultimately fail. Thus your Dragoon is sympathetic because he's trying to defend innocents from this dragon's attack, and you've shown through action that the dragon is evil through his actions at the same time. You may also want to consider the motivations of your dragon. Why is he attacking this village? Evil for evil's sake, even for a dragon, is a little boring. You also should consider the avoidance of cliche in your story. The actions of the dragon seem a little cartoony, almost like a japanese anime. I'd consider cutting the "Hehehes" and that kind of stuff. Make your dragon more menacing and less cheesy, so that I'll take him seriously as a threat.
With that in mind, this is totally a style choice, but the fights in general felt like the kind of thing I'd see on Bleach or Naruto. Something I've noticed in anime is that the tension of fight scenes is often broken with a lot of silly taunting, awkward exposition, and posturing. Keep your fight tense, keep the readers in the moment. Treat your fights like mini stories within the story, with their own beginning middle and end. It's unrealistic for there to be much in the way of talking in a fight scene. It should be fast, furious, and in a story like this, brutal. If these dragons and dragoons had to spend so much time preparing and calling out their attack spells, it seems like it'd take too long and one or the other would get squashed pretty quick.
All things to consider. I'd also wonder if a 16-year-old kid without years of Dragoon training would have any success against a dragon the first day he picked up his dragon-slaying sword. You might want to give him some smaller foes to combat before he works his way up to that. But this is a short story and not a longer novel, and it's your world. If this kid can kill a dragon his first day on the job, great. As long as it's believable.
One other thing that struck me. This is a fantasy world you've invented, so keeping that in mind, having a Moby Dick reference right at the beginning took me right out of the world. It needs to be internally consistent.
Now I hope that this isn't discouraging to you. I just want to give you my honest take on what you've got so far. I was struck by the emotion you created between Clovis and his sister. There was definitely a feeling of heartfelt tragedy there. It was well done. In fact as Clovis is your protagonist, I'd strongly recommend you focus the story on him from the get go and get me caring about him right away. He's going to be your strongest and most sympathetic link to the readers. |
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