Too Young To Die

[darkisaac]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 

[Nyangoro]

lol, I remember this one. Good work!

 

[Danica Syer]

GREAT WORD CHOICE! I love this story. I can see why you won. Damn, I wish I was as good as you!

 

[darkisaac]

Thanks, I really appreciate it; and don't sweat it, all it takes to write well is practice, so just write and read as much as you can.

 

[Hidden]

I wanted to bring this year-old story back into the light of the Creative Writing section, because I find it to be a truly excellent sample of writing that hasn't really been replicated since, at least in this style.
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To start with the description, which throughout the story is vivid, but more importantly it is holistic--not just a random assortment of details thrown together, inevitably boring to the reader and only more-or-less informative, but a whole system where the individual descriptions actually hang together, so that what we read of one point of description seems to confirm and continue what we read in another point of description. A block quote of three paragraphs to demonstrate this:

I closed my eyes and reached desperately for cover as the cacophonous roars from outside shook the poorly constructed walls of the room, threatening to bring the unbearable pain from the outside world into my small haven.

The room around me seemed to be spinning; the windows vibrating with ominous force and barely allowing a pale, opalescent shaft of light to enter and penetrate through the dark and dreary gloom. Dust had collected along every surface, giving the place the appearance of having been abandoned for some time; an assumption confirmed by the shredded, dismal appearance of the curtains, the cobwebs which hung flimsily all around, and the presence of a shattered mirror sprawled on the splintering wooden floor.

Another roar. This one more violent and deafening than the last; my ears rang painfully as the windows exploded in a crystalline shower of glistening gems. The dust in the room whipped up with surprising force, and the walls began to crack in defiant protest against the merciless beating they received.

It starts with an explosion, and then as the room slowly stops spinning and comes into focus, it is to reveal to us piece by piece this musty Hades into which the protagonist has fallen as a momentary and desperate shelter. The description serves to draw us further and further down into a place of dark and dreary gloom, of collected dust and abandoned time, of shredded curtains and cobwebs; the walls and windows and dust become recurring characters after being mentioned only twice in three paragraphs.

It is my opinion in most cases that description should cease to seem 'novel' to the reader after the first few lines. You establish the seeds of the image consciously, but after that you want it to seem as though the reader is seeing it directly for themself and that the description serves merely to confirm an image already held in the mind. Here, this has happened by halfway through the second paragraph. Of course I didn't specifically anticipate "a shattered mirror sprawled on the splintering wooden floor", but because I had already so internalized the rest of the image before that, it seemed honestly possible that I did imagine it there. In this kind of description, the reader will not only immediately incorporate details given, but will also imagine things that aren't explicitly there as written. For example:

The enemy soldiers were everywhere. They seemed not like men, but like beastly demons, prowling in the umbra, their eyes shining with a carnal bloodlust; their teeth, like monstrous canines, hungry for the dying flesh of their enemies. I was completely surrounded.

Aside from the beautiful demonization of the enemy soldiers (a difficult thing to do), the entire setting sets itself so perfectly in line with all that we've seen before that, even as it introduces for the first time the setting of an "umbra", we already know the image we're seeing; we know that the only partially metaphorical forest is made up of the same smogs of black and grey as the dust in the abandoned room, while the enemy soldiers prowling through are deeper shades of black, with only their eyes stained a crimson red of soldiers' blood and perhaps a white fang gleaming. Of course, the individual images may vary between readers, but for almost every reader, the effect is that we already 'know' what this scene looks like because we already 'know' what the world it is set in looks like. That is excellent description, and it allows the author a huge degree of freedom.
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Alongside the description, I want to note something about the content as well. There is a sort of categorization that shapes the story. Through the narration there develops a very clear demarcation of two worlds, the internal one where the narrator retreats into his personal thoughts and his memories of home, and the external one where war and violence force themselves upon him. Each even has its own opening line in the story.

1)

I hadn't been ready for it.

Internal world.

2)

The earth shook in blazing anguish.

External world.

It's as though the account has two separate starting points and trajectories, which slowly converge as the story comes to its inevitable conclusion. Because the placement of these two worlds isn't static--the relationship between them moves and evolves as the story progresses. With the passing of time they're pushed further and irrevocably together. So even while at the beginning it's the house that marks off the boundary between the safe internal world and the destroying external world;

I closed my eyes and reached desperately for cover as the cacophonous roars from outside shook the poorly constructed walls of the room, threatening to bring the unbearable pain from the outside world into my small haven.

with the next blast the windows burst and that internal space is violated as the wind from outside rushes in and "the dust in the room whipped up with surprising force". With each step there is less separating the protagonist's internal and external worlds, and when the enemy soldiers burst fully into this space at last, the narrator is entirely "caught up in [his] own fusion of grief and delirium" such that he can't even fully distinguish the two anymore. The soldiers don't seem entirely real; only the cherry-red armband shines out through the "dark and musky Hades". The rest proceeds almost like a dream caught somewhere between the two worlds: a blast of physical pain; a state of soporific reflection; and then nothingness. This slow collision of two perspectives is really what gives the story movement.
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There are plenty of other things to comment on in this story, but I really just wanted to bring the story itself up again and point out a few things I liked about it. Chocobo_king is also supposed to be doing a critique on the story, so I wouldn't want to monopolize all points of discussion. Hope you all find it an interesting read.

EDIT: the new language filters really wreck havoc on the stories in Creative Writing--"love the Nazis" would be a pertinent example above

 

[darkisaac]

Wow, I'm so glad you read so deeply into my story Hidden, and I am honestly flattered by the attention to detail you exhibit. It's good to see that others see things in the story which wanted them to see - it makes me feel as if I did my work decently because I managed to convey the image that was in my mind to the reader successfully.

I am referring more specifically to the contrasts between the external and internal you mention, as well as the imagery and description. I feel like you really understood everything I was trying to do with the story.

Anyways, thanks for the review - much appreciated. I thought nobody would read this old thing anymore after all this time. After reading it agin myself I feel like I could change a few things, but overall I'm pleased with this story.

PS. Holy crap, the ending looks so idiotic with the language filters...that's just annoying. What's so bad about a few curse words? -_- lol

 

[Annoyance]

I'm going to TRY and get them to listen to me about the censoring in the CW section because it's honestly pissing the... goddammit guys. The shit out of me.

 

[Nyangoro]

That just goes to show you all that you shouldn't have to rely on curse words to get a point or emotion across :3

 

[darkisaac]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 

[Nyangoro]

lol, don't worry about it. I was just making light of the situation. Truth be told, I have a character from one of my stories who does the same thing.

 

[tangerine]

The narrative is wonderful in this story. It's extremely well-written and very nicely held together. Not a single line is a drag-on sentence used as filler, always adding to the text. The whole is generally technically sound and there are a few uses of sentence fragments that are implemented well, which is very nice to see considering they're often misused or poorly inserted or just plainly accidental.

There are a few things that I would like to point out that I think could help you even improve on your narration and writing. (I am aware that this is an old text and you may be able to sort through this yourself at this point, so this is just in case.) These are all pretty small things even though some of the explanations are lengthy. (They're important, too.) I'll also add more comments on the effective style of writing that been used along the way.

The first line would be more effective if you used the word wasn't instead of hadn't been. The reason I suggest this is simply because it would shorten the statement and render its impact more sudden and drastic. It's a stronger hook to pull the reader in. It's very fine as it is, so this is just something to consider when you write in the future. It seems very minimal, but a hook is the most important sentence in a text.

Along with the first sentence, you made very good use of single line paragraphs. They're all very effective in conveying the important feelings and thoughts of the narrator in a time when he only has moments to think for himself. It's impressive that you managed to let the reader know the narrator at this specific time from only these short lines.

I closed my eyes and began thinking of home; I thought of my mother, who had always nurtured my wounds, both mental and physical, my father, who had never been a man of words, but had cried in solitude when I had received the draft notice, and my sister, with whom I’d always pick fights with, but whom I loved dearly.

This sentence is wordy and the punctuation is a little off.

I closed my eyes and began thinking of home: I thought of my mother, who had always nurtured my wounds, both mental and physical; my father, who had never been a man of words, but had cried in solitude when I had received the draft notice; and my sister, with whom I’d always pick fights with, but whom I loved dearly.

Where you inserted the first semicolon you should have used a colon. This is because semicolons are used to separate different clauses that are still related, whereas here you were introducing the narrators thoughts. I then replaced some of the commas with semicolons because they are used to separate different but similar ideas. This is an enumeration of thoughts, so it's fine to use commas sometimes, but with lengthy thoughts that also incorporate commas it's best to distinctly separate them. (Using semicolons in enumerations doesn't always work, by the way. It's strange, but semicolons can only be used in enumerations if there are three things or more.) I also put the two withs in red because one is redundant, so whichever one you think doesn't fit in as well with the sentence should be removed. This is probably just an oversight.

My chest convulsed and my mouth filled with blood, the pain was...

There should be a period in place of the comma.

I didn’t hear the soldier’s voices...

Soldiers should be pluralised.

My last comment has to do with the beginning and the end of the story. The main narrative begins with "until now", which implies that the narrator is retelling this story in his present. However, you end the story while still narrating the past. This is strange because the narrator is dead at the end. How is he retelling the story if he's already dead? The last paragraph should be told in the present tense for that bit to make any sense. It's an easy thing to miss because it was just two words at the beginning of a text that is completely told in the past tense, but it's still there.



It's a very good text overall and, again, it's narrated superbly. If you've written anything else or will be writing, I'd love to see it. I also hope that my comments help. :}

 

[darkisaac]

I fully appreciate your feedback on my story, and I find your comments both helpful and well thought out.

I was actually thinking of editing this story after re-reading it, as I wasn't pleased with some sentences and other small details which I thought could use a bit of cleaning up. I realize I might've had some grammatical errors, and that's also something I discovered after reading this thing after so long. Like you mentioned, it's an old piece and I made a lot of little mistakes I didn't notice at the time but I'm definitely going to fix them when I have the time - and your comments are definitely going to be taken into account when I edit this thing.

The one thing about the ending - you're completely right about the tense in which the story is written, after all, it doesn't make much sense to have the character narrate when he's already dead. But to tell you the truth, this is something I noticed while writing the piece and it didn't trouble me much because as far as I'm concerned, a dead narrator retelling his story isn't too farfetched when one takes into account that the majority of stories use a third person, omniscient narrator. I mean think about it, most stories are narrated by some abstract presence which can see everything, transcending not only space and time, but also the human psyche (as these narrators can also see into the thoughts of any given character).

Plus, I don't know if you've seen the movie Kick Ass, but the main chracter makes a point in saying that just because he's narrating the story doesn't guarantee that he lives through the events one is currently watching, proceeding then to list a number of movies whose stories are told by dead narrators, i.e. American Beauty.

I have a few short stories I've written and hopefully I'll be posting them soon, and hopefully I'll edit this one soon as well. Anyways, I thank you again for all your comments, as they've definitely been helpful.

 

[tangerine]

It's definitely fine for the narrator to be dead as he retells the story, so in that case I'll change my suggestion a little: I would recommend simply omitting those two words. It's technically fine as it is now that the narrator's position is clear, but that's after it's been pointed out. I would just remove those two words to avoid confusion as it is in the introduction.

I actually noticed two more minor oversights just now. I hope this isn't annoying!

But now I realized I had set up illusory barriers, hopeful mirages, in order to detach myself from the world.

The word but is a coordinator, and as such it shouldn't be used to start a sentence. It would be fine to just take that out and start the sentence with the word now. If you're looking to keep it as a part of the narrator's thought process then I suggest joining this bit together with the previous sentence. You also start this sentence in the present tense and the verb that follows, "realized", is in the past tense where it shouldn't be.

Again, it's a very good text overall. :> I'm looking forward to reading more of your works, so it would be great for you to post them!

 

[darkisaac]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa