The Adventures of Nall Wolf
Chapter 1: The Norm
“There's too many of them!” said a gray wolf. He was standing in the middle of a dark, large room, surrounded by silhouettes of random furs with different weapons. They started to charge at him one-by-one swinging their weapons in an attempt to kill him. He was surprisingly able to fight off about 50 of them, sending most of them flying across the room. All of a sudden, an unknown young girl's voice came from seemingly everywhere around him.
“It's time to wake up, Wolfy!” A large fur started running toward the wolf wielding a huge sledge hammer, there was no time to react. As the hammer made contact with the wolf's face, everything went black...
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This is the story of Nall Wolf, a 22-year old gray wolf living in a little town that nobody has heard of called Furkins, somewhere in the USA. He lives in a small, three-bedroom, one-story blue house with his parents. His Dad is also a Grey Wolf, but his Mom is a cat of some sort, he wasn't sure of the exact species. Nall didn't inherit any feline features, but he did purr every once in a while when happy. He worked for a game shop, fixing their broken systems. The money wasn't great, but he liked doing it and he got to work out of his home.
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Nall quickly sat up in bed as the song "Sugar, We're Going Down Swingin'" by Fall Out Boy played through his surround sound speakers at a low volume. He normally listened to music while he slept.
“What a crazy dream...” he said as he lay back down in bed listening to the song. He wondered what time it was, so he grabbed the Blackberry next to his pillow to check. It said 8:00 AM.
"Of course..." thought Nall. He had been waking up at 8:00 AM for the past month for no reason, it's not like he had to go somewhere. He wanted to go back to sleep but he knew it was useless, either he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep, or he'd wake up with pain in his head or back. As he slipped out of bed and put some shorts on, he thought about what he needed to do today as his tail swished back and forth. The only thing that came to mind was the box of broken consoles to fix in the other room.
After a few minutes of just listening to the music to wake up more, he went off to use the bathroom and brush his teeth, just like every other day. His parents had already left for work, leaving him home alone once again. As soon as he got back to his room, he turned up the bass on his surround sound and cranked up the volume until the floor shook, which didn't take much in the old house. Nall spent the morning listening to music, surfing the web, and chatting over IRC with his PSP homebrew scene friends. Before long, it was 12:30.
"I think I'll go for a walk." Nall muttered aloud. He changed into some pants, a short-sleeve shirt, and put on his wrist band. He also grabbed his Blackberry, his PSP Go, and headphones for music. He put the headphones on and played the song "Speed of Sound", threw on his jacket, and walked out the door.
As he walked along the county road that lay between his house and the railroad tracks, he took in his familiar surroundings. First passing by a couple of big trees that used to stand in front of an abandoned house before they tore it down, now they stand in front of a pile of debris. Then the old grain storage place that looked like five large garages next to each other, along with a broken down weigh-station that stood on the corner where his road met another county road. As he turned left down the new road, he looked at the barn in the field to his right while the song in his ear changed. He kept going on this road, passing by a few trailers until he reached his turnaround point, a big ditch that ran under the road via three huge culverts.
Nall swiveled his open ear expecting to hear the sound of water. Normally, this ditch has a lot of water running through it. It usually sounds like one of those sound machines set to "river" or "babbling brook", but not today, it was silent. When he didn't hear anything, he took a look.
"Well that's odd..." There was barely any water at all, just a couple puddles here and there. "I wonder where the water went?" Nall said to himself jokingly. He seemed to be talking to himself a lot lately... He decided not to worry about it and continue his walk as the song in his ear changed again. The rest of his walk was uneventful, going back and forth between the front of his house and the now puddle-littered ditch until an hour had passed.
He went back to his room to find "Crawling" by Linkin Park blasting through the speakers, seems he forgot to turn the music off before he left. The rest of the afternoon was spent working on a few Xbox 360s that had the RRoD while listening to music and cursing under his breath when re-attaching the x-clamps to the 360 boards.
Before he knew it, both his parents were back home and his Mom had started dinner. Afterward, he decided to watch a little TV and chat over IRC until he was tired enough to fall asleep. He made sure the volume and bass were turned down, then he put on "Anywhere But Here" by Mayday Parade, stripped down, and crawled into bed.
Nall's life had always been this boring - everything was always ordinary, and Nall hated it. He wished SOMETHING would change, ANYTHING to change this monotonous life that caused him to feel depressed every time he thought about it. If only he knew how soon that wish would come true...
Next Time: Chapter 2: The Awakening
You do too much telling, which means stopping the action in its tracks to explain details that could otherwise be shown to the reader by just narrating the actions of the story. You really should work on your exposition skills so the narrative is not so clunky. There were a lot of lines that just didn't need to be in the story at all, just because they stopped the action of the plot in its track to let the reader know about things in a very awkward fashion. Whenever you catch yourself telling things to the reader "He had this, this always happened, " without doing anything conducive for the story, stop and ask yourself whether or not it is really neccessary for the story. Good writers are merciless with what they keep and don't keep in their stories.
You described a completely normal day, when I think the story really should have began later, probably in chapter 2. The reason for this is it is not neccessary for the reader to know Nall's routine. They can use their own life experience to kind of feel this in; so although this chapter was kind of enjoyable and cute, the story really should have began later when the problem actually starts.
Your prose isn't bad, and I think your story reads well on a grammatical level. The tone of the story is very enjoyable, and your protagonist seems very lovable. I just think you need to really brush up on your exposition skills. When you think something needs to be said to the reader, do it in a way that moves the story forward: describe some sort of action. Most of the time what you think needs to be said to the reader doesn't need to be said at all. Work on focusing more on plot and less on details, and I think you should be fine for a while.
I did a normal day chapter to show that Nall's life is boring and how much he wants a change. The story really does technically start with Ch.2, that's the way I planned it when I came up with it. I do think it starts off slower than most stories, and if I ever do a re-write of the story that's something I want to change.
Please read the newer chapters and let me know what you think. I'll take your information to heart when I write future chapters :D