[Feedback] The Zero Point - Prologue [1,400 words]

Overall as an intro, it serves the purpose, though it would appear you have killed the hero before the story starts.

You set the scene well and give the backstory well. This needs lots of editing and there are some bad habits I see here.

For starters, keep it simple. Just call him Tadd...his full formal name matters not.

Punctuation: internal dialogue is italics, no quotes. And you can skip most speech tags if it's only him.

When someone knows something, they know it, thus you state it as fact.

"Logically he knew he had no choice" woah, too wordy.

"He had no choice."

It wouldn’t be long before his neighbor came outside to walk the dog and finding him here, hiding between the hedges, his bones shivering in the cold of the morning dew through the remaining tattered clothes he was wearing would be a little difficult to explain.

Massive run-on sentence that is hard to read and much too passive.

"It was six in the morning and he was freezing--hiding in the bushes, his clothes in tatters--his neighbor Lee would soon be out walking her dog and she would find him and god knows what she would do."

His whole body was shaking and briskly rubbing his arms didn’t help.

The flowery 'chills harassing his spine does not do it for me....it's overwrought. He's cold, say that. Those extra words are not needed to let the reader know that.

Again, don't say "he knew that"....he knows that already.

crawling through the caverns was more of a near death experience than he had expected. Rivers of bat guano covered in millions of cockroaches living off the feces made his skin crawl. He remembered seeing

Stop right there....he did not see this, he crawled through this right? SHOW us that....

"He dragged himself as the pain was searing--roaches were biting every inch of exposed skin and they were in his shirt---he was sliding on a putrid river of batshit. The thought made his skin crawl and every inch of his skin burned, but he made it out, alive."

Then there were the drones and the agents..... no, that's passive, telling....SHOW us what they did.....

"The drones were shooting and the agents were too--he ducked behind rocks and fortunately the weather changed--a storm kicked up so he was able to esape...barely"

Don't say "he was hungry". If his stomach is growling and he has only eaten berries, the reader knows that.

We know it's only him, so drop the speech tag 'he reminded himself'

The whole sunglasses thing....don't need to explain all about how they work...too much information....but infrared would not let him see what was inside, they would need to be thermal imagers. But I digress...just say "He switched on the thermal imager in his glasses and scanned the house closely---all clear"

His frown showed he was not convinced.....no. Just show us he's not convinced This is too damn easy--this must be a trap

/r/shutupandwrite Thread