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 Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:51 pm
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Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2015 3:05 am
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The third link says permission is needed in order to read it, by the way, so I haven't had a chance to look at it.
There's definitely enough descriptors there in the two other stories for me to visualize the scene, which is nice, but I have to admit, I had a hard time really getting caught up with the feel of each story due to getting hung up on the grammar at times, and phrases like "a flurry of feet and buttocks" I just can't take seriously sweatdrop
It would be hard for me to break down all the exact things that I got the most hung up on without going through and practically rewriting both stories. My main question would be: are these first drafts? They certainly read like first drafts or at least early drafts, in which case I would very much like to see you revisit them and see if you can do better. In my early days of writing, I pretty much considered all of my first drafts as the final product and it wasn't until much later down the line that I learned how much stories can be improved when you revisit them and better hammer out the details of what you're trying to convey.
If they're not first drafts, is this the first time you've had someone else read them? What kind of feedback do you need or would find the most helpful in order to make them better?
I know it isn't the most productive to spend too much time rehashing old stories instead of writing new ones, but I think at least looking over them and thinking about how you could have done things differently helps the creative process a bit.
As for posting my own story, I was thinking of just copying and pasting one of my old ones, but after getting this far into posting, I decided I'd rather come up with something new, so I'll need a day or two to pull something together as it's late enough as it is. {Should've gone to bed hours ago, but I'm kind of a night owl...}
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Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 2:50 pm
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Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 3:04 pm
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Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 7:57 am
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General anime tropes probably had a hand in it somewhere, though not by intentional design. A lot of people just have a tendency to be influenced by things they like and I'm no exception. Game wise, I had EverQuest in mind. I don't know the game's lore perfectly, but there are things that I certainly take from the parts of it that I do know such as dark elves and high elves and the two races {for the most part} not getting along, as well as character classes {i.e. rogue, shaman, enchanter}.
The first draft I had originally written as a minor anecdote from my characters' history for a roleplay so it was pretty rough due to the roleplay being casual and took a bit of thinking to make it read more like a formal short story. Also, since I had been playing Tes and Mir for a while already when I wrote it, a certain level of understanding of who those characters were was assumed in the first draft as well.
iTankz I wrote those for me, not really anyone else way before I wanted to make a thread.... I never reread them because I'm not trying to get published or anything.
You don't have to have the intention of getting published to want to improve. It just feels good to refine your skills. Even if you're writing for your own amusement or just to vent or whatever, when others take an interest in it and enjoy it as well, it makes it that much more satisfying to write. So I'd say to definitely write for yourself above all, but part of writing for yourself is to nurture that creativity so that it's more enjoyable to do.
Writing without concerning yourself about grammar, punctuation, spelling, and so forth is perfect for first drafts and outlines, so don't stop doing that. It's actually more productive to just get your ideas down in the initial stages as spending too much time on the mechanics can easily cause a loss of motivation or degradation of the original concept. I should know because it happens to me all the time stressed But after you get it down, don't just walk away and consider it done. Go back and read it later. Consider how things could be phrased differently to better portray the concept you're trying to get across. Sometimes this could even result in the story evolving into something completely different than it originally was as your imagination starts firing off ideas drawn from the first draft.
The first story, "The Other Side", had a rather abrupt end with no closure or wind down. Not every story needs these things and it can be an interesting story telling mechanic in certain situations, but in this one, it just makes the story feel incomplete. Does he ever catch up to the goblin? What would he do if he did? What would he do if he didn't? I would have ended by extending it out at least to answer those questions, and if I wanted to leave on a cliff hanger, it would depend on how I decided to handle those questions on what exactly the cliff hanger is. For instance, let's say he does catch up to the goblin. He tries to subdue him and succeeds, then returns home and reports the incident. Exhausted from it all, he plops down on the couch and nods off while he awaits authorities and another creature appears, also coveting his eyeball. Or another route is there was already another creature there when he returned home. Or he could have been ambushed when he caught up to the goblin, they take his eye(s), and he's left out there, now having to somehow find a way to get help without knowing where he is. This last scenario, with a clever enough use of metaphors and symbolism, the reader could potentially be left wondering if he merely passes out from blood loss, that the entire incident was a dream, or if he actually dies in the end, though that could take some work to really pull off {not sure I could really do it myself even though I can see the potential.}
"The Affliction" I would consider a complete story. It has all the traditional story telling aspects: the introduction, build up, climax, and wind down. Aside from the technical problems such as spelling, grammar etc., I would say all this one's really missing is finesse. Things that I personally would have done differently to try to add that finesse would have been, first off, to spread out and maybe even pare down the character descriptions. This might just be a personal preference of mine, but when an author loads up the beginning of a story with too many descriptions, it feels like it's holding back the actual story. More often than not, I also end up imagining the characters however I want despite the descriptions anyway, but they can still help paint a better picture when used appropriately.
I'd also change up the order of events slightly. So my outline would look something like this:
Start out with briefly describing the ballroom and introduce the woman first {since she was apparently there before the man}. The man enters, tucking a piece of paper into his tux and exchanges glances with her, then goes to place a phone call, getting lost in the scenery outside as he listens to it ring or waits to be connected to the operator {whichever way you want to go with that since I'm not entirely sure what time period you were aiming for}. Just as it connects, the woman approaches and pulls him away, leaving the receiver hanging.
They dance, so completely enamored with each other that they don't notice how time flies away around them nor does he feel the paper from earlier slide out from beneath his coat as he accidentally bumps into a busboy. And they continue on dancing and enjoying each others company without a care in the world well after the party ends.
The officers are then introduced and peer into the window, the senior officer theorizing this guy might be a junkie when he sees he's dancing alone in this broken down movie theatre. {On a side note: People don't typically describe what they're seeing out loud to a person next to them who can literally see the same thing, so I wouldn't recommend the use of dialogue set up a scene} The man then stumbles and his illusion begins to shatter, lights dimming, air turning cold, the woman falling away from him and his hand passing right through her as he reaches out for her.
Back in reality and recognizing his sordid surroundings and personal state, he falls to his knees and cries.
The senior officer then makes his cautious approach and finds the man fiddling with his coat, sobbing heavily. He and the rookie soon see a glint from the metal revolver the man had brought with him and the next few moments, time seems to stop, the rookie beginning to duck for cover while the senior officer moves to grab his side arm. Before they know it, the man has shot himself and falls limp to the floor and time returns to normal. Speechless, the senior officer just stands there, staring at the man's corpse. The rookie runs in, gun drawn, and immediately asks if the senior officer is okay, noticing his face splattered with blood. The senior officer snaps out of his daze and wipes it away, then drapes his coat over the man's corpse and tells the rookie to call it in.
The rookie officer puts away his gun and starts to reach for his radio when he notices a paper on the floor, which he then picks up. Upon inspection, he finds its a picture of a man and a woman at a ball and on the back is a message. The officers conclude the man in the picture must have been this homeless man in front of him, and the woman his recently deceased wife.
Only major plot detail that I would change is the message on the back of the picture. The dates were a bit confusing to me as I wasn't sure if 1937 was supposed to be the year she was born or the year the picture was taken. If it was the latter, then the homeless man would have had to have been over 106 years old given he was described as in his 30s that night at the ball. I also would have used this as his suicide note of sorts, with a message more along the lines of, "To my beloved wife, may we meet again in the next life."
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