For Hollow, Rewritten - 1

Original:
Navarr sat in his study, reading reports and writing messages to various people, mainly to members of The Night's Watch. He was the Lord Commander and it is his duty to run The Night's Watch, and that includes lots of writing. It was just like a normal day, Watchers hunting zombies, helping people, punishing bandits. A normal day, until he heard a knock on his door. Sure, he is a well known hero, a legend even, but out of respect no one knocked on his door. Unless it was something important.
He sighed. "I hope it is important this time," he thought. Navarr climbed down the stairs, pondering what could be happening this time. When he opened the door he saw the newly promoted private Lezalith. "What is it?" Navarr asked. "Lord Commander, there is a group of heavily equipped soldiers outside the wall," he answered. "Their leader requests to see you."
"What side?" asked the Lord Commander. "West". Navarr thought about who these soldiers could be then told Lezalith "I'll come. Go ahead and go." As the private jogged back he Navarr hastily put on some iron armor and strapped a sword to his belt and headed for the west side of the wall. When he got to the wall, he was taken aback.
He expected at most a squad of soldiers in chain armor. He did not expect a battalion with the best gear possible to make, with flying banners decorated with a diamond sword with the corners painted red. But what surprised him most was the leader. One particular aspect of him. He carried a diamond sword.

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- I would recommend going through the entire rewritten story first, then go through separate paragraphs and their notes.
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Rewritten with notes:
The sun was shining. Unusual, considering the fact that lately it's been nothing but clouds and rain above Romero. It may have been weird, but it definitely a nice change. For about two weeks, members of The Night's Watch spent half of their routines by patrolling outside and getting soaking wet while doing so, while the other half was trying to dry said soaking wet clothes.
So, the weather has changed. Some things though, like Navarr behind the table in his office, do not change. After all, he was the Lord Commander, and even thought he'd probably give anything to be able to go out and fight a zombie or two, papers were now part of his daily thoughts and nightly nightmares.
"Injuries during training... Report on accident while repairing the south wall..." He was reading through scrolls that were overflowing on his table, when he was disturbed by a knock on his door. Sure, Navarr may have been a well known legend, but knocks on his door were rare, because recruits respected him too much. Those knocks were about as rare as good news accompanying them. "Come in." Navarr said just loudly enough for the person behind the door to hear it, hoping that this would be something urgent or important. Or both. Actually, was he hoping for that? Papers might be boring, but it beats running in chaos around the war table.

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- You are beginning a new story. You need to give alot of background. Where are we? What kind of place is this? What was this place in the past (Doesn't matter if days or years)? Come up with something creative, something that will catch the interest of the reader at the very beginning, so he has a reason to continue reading.
- "Navarr sat in his study" is not bad, but it doesn't give you alot of place to work with. It sounds like you want to go straight to the plot, which is what you want, I can tell (because that's your main problem, you don't expand/extend the details enough, or at all, in fact).
- You need to remember this, no matter how much I hate it myself, no matter how much you want to continue the plot all the time, you need to give background, details, information to readers about what is happening around. You don't need to write all the details. You need to write enough of them so that readers can think of the rest themselves.
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The doors opened. Lezalith, a private who was promoted to that position not too long ago, entered the room. This alone was enough for giving Navarr the impression that what will follow will not be important. "What is it?" He asked, while Lezalith gave him a quick bow.
"Lord Commander, there is a group of heavily equipped soldiers outside the western wall." Was the answer. This swept all the assumptions Navarr had onto the side and captured his interest. "Their leader requests to see you."
Navarr stood up from his chair and walked in front of his table. "Any idea what they could want?" He asked in a calm voice.
"No idea, sir." The newly promoted private shrugged shoulders. "Judging from their equipment, they want to fight. If they wanted to fight us, I doubt they'd be waiting outside the wall and requesting a meeting."
Navarr nodded his head. "Go ahead and tell them I'll take five minutes." Was the order, to which Lezalith once again slightly bowed and quickly left the room.

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- Dialogues. Oh boy, here we go.
- I am not sure if this is a good way, but it works for me just fine and I stick to it. As long as one person is speaking, you can continue one line. When another person starts to speak, begin a new line. Between the text, you can put actions of the people that are speaking.
EXAMPLE: Navarr stood up. "Really?" He asked. "That surprises me. Tell me more."
"No, that's actually what happened!" Lezalith sweared. "I'm not lying to you!"

-If person A is speaking and action follows that involves person B, you have two options (I will put an example to make it easier to explain).

A: "Person A's words." Person B's action.
"Person B's words following their action."

B: "Person A's words."
Person B's action. "Person B's words following their action."

- So, now you'll be probably asking me, "Lez, what is the better one to use, A or B?"
- Use both of them. That's my answer. Hell, use even more combinations of words and actions! If you'll be doing only one of those, it will repeat itself. Repeating =/= Good things.

-As for the dialogue itself, I'm trying to keep it interesting. I am putting alot of actions between the dialogues, because it doesn't need to be tense. If it was supposed to be tense, there would be less actions and more short questions/answers.
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"Better safe than sorry", as they say. Navarr did not know what do those soldiers want, but he was not going to be caught unprepared. His comfortable robe was for meeting leaders of allied clans, or the few people that were lucky enough they could consider themselves his friends. If there is an army outside the walls, however, he was not going there in his comfortable robe.
He put on a full iron armor that was on the armor stand in his office. Nowadays, it was mostly a decoration, but it was still functional. He then took the sword always had behind his table and placed it together with the sheath onto his belt. He was ready.

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- A bit of a filler.
- You said that Navarr will take 5 minutes. Great, but now you somehow need to fill those "5 minutes". Some interesting, unique details that you come up with, or the story behind some of the actions (Like saying that Navarr's armor is now a decoration. It gives reader a picture -  Navarr hasn't fought for very long), all of that helps you fill this spot where plot "stands still".
- Alternate way what I could've put here was how Lezalith was hurrying back onto the walls, what he is thinking in his head. I decided to go for this because of 2 reasons.

1: It sounds like Navarr is the main character. He is the one on which we focus since the beginning. We should continue that, atleast this early in the story.

2: If I went for the Lezalith option, to not make it too short, I would probably be forced to include dialogue of him talking to the leader. This would force me to give details about the leader and soldiers, and... Oh, where did the hype go?
- Oh, another reason why I wrote what I wrote. It starts the hype, especially the short sentence at the end, "He was ready". Reader will ask himself, ready for what? What's comming? You want him to be asking those questions.
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Even though it would make sense, the full iron battalion of soldiers that were outside the wall certainly didn't meet Navarr's expectations of soldiers with at-most-chain armor. That's what he was expecting from Lezalith's report, but after all, he himself said that it looks like the soldiers are getting ready for a fight. No, that was inaccurate, they already are ready.
Soldiers formed into formations that The Night's Watch could envy them a little bit, banners above their heads showing a diamond sword with corners of the banners painted with solid red. Anybody can paint a banner, the item on it, however, resembled something more.
This something caught Navarr's eye. He was watching every move of soldiers' leader, as he was the one carrying this little something. Little, sharp and glistening something.
The something that was placed on leader's belt was a diamond sword.

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- This is ending of the first part. We know what we're aiming to do with it from the very beginning - We want to hype readers for the next part.
- This is basically what fanfiction writers need to do, I would even say it's one of the most important things they need to do. If the reader is not looking forward to the next part, why would he read it?
- There are many different ways and forms how to make him look forward to the next part. If we were having an emotional moment, let's say dying of a person in a couple, I want to finish it now and leave the person that stayed alive ruined. The reader will ask himself, "What is the person going to do now? There's still war outside, he can't just lie there and cry!"
- Or if there is a battle comming. A duel, let's say. I would want to start a duel, and right after that (Somewhere between the first step torwards the opponent and first swing of a sword) end it, so the reader will say "Wait, you can't do that! Now I know who will win!"
- Of course, it can't be in every single part. Sometimes, the plot ends, and you need to finish it. Then there is no hype needed. But in here, we are looking for hype, so we make it sound mysterious.
- Mystery is what we've been playing with the whole time. Navarr not knowing what the soldiers want, so he gears up after months? Years of not fighting? just to be safe. We want to continue that mystery, not revealing the plot yet (We just started the story), but adding more mystery by saying how well trained they are, what weapons they have. Navarr is a legend, readers will be asking themselves, "An army of trained, well equipped soldiers comes to see one of the legendary people in MineZ? That doesn't happen everyday, what is it about?"
- Finally, you want readers to know that Diamond sword is something very special and obviously it makes the wearer a special person. You need to expand that part, make it so that the reader will go "Whoa..." ! This includes even more hype for the next episode.

- And finally, make paragraphs. Look how I divided the part of the story into subparts, and the division was made where plot allowed me to. I cannot make a new paragraph in the middle of a dialogue or a battle, because things like that need to stay together (Unless they were majorly changed, then it is fitting to divide it at that exact spot)!
- Before you learn to expand the details and text itself, it might look stupid to have few short paragraphs instead of a one pile of text. That pile looks like it contains more content than those 3 paragraphs combined, but let me tell you what, that pile is not organized, ugly and overall gives the reader bad impression.
- By dividing the text into paragraphs, you will have better understanding of your own plot. You will be like "Okay, so this must be together, this must be together, here the scene changes so that is a good place for a new paragraph to begin..." And like so.
It will also make you see which parts are really short, and thus which parts should be the ones you expand.