The Face in the Wave
August 31, 2008 10:53 PM Subscribe
The Face in the Wave
Two young girls run away from their village to see the ocean for the first time. While at the beach, they see a massive marble tomb with a golden roof. They go to check it out, and things go very wrong for them. Looking for comments and honest criticism. My goal with this story is to make something that feels minimal and sparse and dark. I'm going for a Hemingway meets Ico kind of feel, sparse, dark, emotional. Please have a look and tell me what you think.
Two young girls run away from their village to see the ocean for the first time. While at the beach, they see a massive marble tomb with a golden roof. They go to check it out, and things go very wrong for them. Looking for comments and honest criticism. My goal with this story is to make something that feels minimal and sparse and dark. I'm going for a Hemingway meets Ico kind of feel, sparse, dark, emotional. Please have a look and tell me what you think.
I enjoyed reading your story, I liked the premise of it and you did a good job making it feel dark and otherworldly. I have a few suggestions though.
For one, the story could use some proof-reading/editing for typos and grammar. There were just a few errors I noticed, but you don't want silly things like misplaced capitals or inconsistent verb tense (errors we all make in the first drafts) taking your readers' attention from your story.
Secondly, it's a little hard to feel sad or afraid for characters when they aren't given much character. I know you wanted to write this with a sparse feel to it, but you need to find a way to subtly add humanity to your characters or else there is no possibility for emotional attachment.
Last, I noticed quite a few little cliches in your descriptions. For example: "stopped them dead," "beheld it for all its splendor," and "recoil in horror." Like I said, just minor cliches, but still cliche enough to make your writing feel like it's not all yours. For many authors, their greatness lies in taking the things that we have all seen and making us see them again for the first time, or taking the things that have been described a million times and showing them to us new. Cliches are boring and make the author seem lazy - which I am sure you are not.
Like I said, I enjoyed the story. I would not have spent my lunch break reading it and composing this comment to you if I didn't! Keep writing (and re-writing, and re-writing...). MeMail me if you want to talk about your story.
posted by arcticwoman at 11:45 AM on September 9, 2008
For one, the story could use some proof-reading/editing for typos and grammar. There were just a few errors I noticed, but you don't want silly things like misplaced capitals or inconsistent verb tense (errors we all make in the first drafts) taking your readers' attention from your story.
Secondly, it's a little hard to feel sad or afraid for characters when they aren't given much character. I know you wanted to write this with a sparse feel to it, but you need to find a way to subtly add humanity to your characters or else there is no possibility for emotional attachment.
Last, I noticed quite a few little cliches in your descriptions. For example: "stopped them dead," "beheld it for all its splendor," and "recoil in horror." Like I said, just minor cliches, but still cliche enough to make your writing feel like it's not all yours. For many authors, their greatness lies in taking the things that we have all seen and making us see them again for the first time, or taking the things that have been described a million times and showing them to us new. Cliches are boring and make the author seem lazy - which I am sure you are not.
Like I said, I enjoyed the story. I would not have spent my lunch break reading it and composing this comment to you if I didn't! Keep writing (and re-writing, and re-writing...). MeMail me if you want to talk about your story.
posted by arcticwoman at 11:45 AM on September 9, 2008
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posted by tylerfulltilt at 3:37 PM on September 2, 2008