(Hey everyone, just a short I made.)
The clash of swords howled across the plains.
A towering man's silhouette soared between a young man and the sun. The man's shadow scornfully refused sight of his face at the lowly squire.
"Hold your tongue cur! Bastards like you should not even be holding knives let alone swords!," he snarled. The man's pointed his sword towards the squire, his muscular tan figure kissed by the sun's glow. The sun was slowly setting to the east, yet the squire still could not catch a glimpse of the merciless shadow's face.
"Now come forth... nameless squire, or are you too occupied kissing the ground?," The man said with a smirk on his face. The squire slowly stood up, his eyes radiated with fire and his demeanor burning, itching to get into battle. He grasped his short sword's handle and tightened his buckler's grip. "Yaaahhhh!," he roared as he sprinted toward's the shadow, seeming to blaze faster with each step. The knight braced his long sword with both hands, pointing the sword readily at the squire. The squire leaped and slashed fiercely overhead. The knight maintained his poise, waiting for the right moment to strike.
The swords howled across the plains once again.
W...wow, that certainly is a short short.
I don't mean to be harsh, but there's a lack of real substance there, and a good collection of grammatical mistakes, repeated phrases and lackluster storytelling.
Take a look at how many times you wrote "the squire" and "the knight", even just the repetition of "he" and "his" is enough to ruin the flow, to say nothing of the naive sentence structure in the main paragraph.
Try reading a single page from a book you like, particularly from an author you like if applicable, and pay attention to how their writing leads you, each sentence should be something new and should almost push you along to the next, the actual "reading" itself should feel as effortless as just gliding your eyes across the page.
I'm by no means a professional writer or anything, but since this is particularly short, I could hammer out a quick rewriting of it for comparison if you'd like, could be a good practical example of what I mean.
sure, please shoot me a PM! (It was midnight at the time and I was sleepy but still wanted to put it out xD)
General error:
You don't write the sound effects in a story.
It's not a comic book nor a comic book script.
They aren't proper words.
No matter if it's "grr" or "yaaargh" or any noises like those.
There's also a handful of grammar errors, mainly in proper punctuation.
The ellipses is unnecessary and you skipped some commas ("Hold your tongue cur!").
(07-16-2011, 12:30 AM)Proton Wrote: [ -> ]General error:
You don't write the sound effects in a story.
It's not a comic book nor a comic book script.
They aren't proper words.
No matter if it's "grr" or "yaaargh" or any noises like those.
There's also a handful of grammar errors, mainly in proper punctuation.
The ellipses is unnecessary and you skipped some commas ("Hold your tongue cur!").
Ah, well you wouldn't mind sending me a re-write would you?
I don't think that's a good idea. In good writing, your own understanding of grammar and other technical understandings of English is required, before you can bust out all the creative stuff. I reccomend you go through that passage again yourself, reading it out loud (Reading it to someone else; or having them read it out to you is even better!), finding the grammatical mistakes and the awkward sentences.
As for the passage of text itself - as said already it's marred with technical errors. Attention needs to be paid to the use of "man's", both how and where it comes up.
While it's okay for a prose to start
in medias res - just jumping into the action without prior exposition - it means the action needs to imply some exposition. The interaction of these two characters says... almost nothing about them. We know one is a Lowly Squire, and we know there's an angry, shirtless knight and... nothing else. Why are they on the plains? Why does the knight hate the squire? The opening line implies that the plain is often a field of battle, but there are only two people here; is there a war going on?
That initial line of dialogue is very ambiguous, since it's attributed to a 'he'. That line comes close to giving characterisation or context, but it doesn
t go very far.
Hmm, that's the thing though... I get your feedback, but I also want to see what YOU could do with it. Patient was kind enough to send me a rewrite and it was awesome! I don't know, I was really impressed by his rewrite to tell you the truth, so what I'm getting at is I want to take a little bit from everyone and kind of see the cool points of their writing styles. Does make any sense at all? But, I do get what you mean, thanks for the feedback!
(07-18-2011, 06:22 AM)phlashblazer Wrote: [ -> ]but I also want to see what YOU could do with it.
I'd rather see you rewrite it.
Properly, using all this feedback.
You're just "accepting" feedback.
You're not using it.
(07-13-2011, 08:52 AM)phlashblazer Wrote: [ -> ](Hey everyone, just a short I made.)
The clash of swords howled across the plains.
A towering man's silhouette soared between a young man and the sun. The man's shadow scornfully refused sight of his face at the lowly squire.
"Hold your tongue cur! Bastards like you should not even be holding knives let alone swords!," he snarled. The man's pointed his sword towards the squire, his muscular tan figure kissed by the sun's glow. The sun was slowly setting to the east, yet the squire still could not catch a glimpse of the merciless shadow's face.
"Now come forth... nameless squire, or are you too occupied kissing the ground?," The man said with a smirk on his face. The squire slowly stood up, his eyes radiated with fire and his demeanor burning, itching to get into battle. He grasped his short sword's handle and tightened his buckler's grip. "Yaaahhhh!," he roared as he sprinted toward's the shadow, seeming to blaze faster with each step. The knight braced his long sword with both hands, pointing the sword readily at the squire. The squire leaped and slashed fiercely overhead. The knight maintained his poise, waiting for the right moment to strike.
The swords howled across the plains once again.
You know what?...I actually have to say I liked it. It was short (which is great, you don't want to waste alot of your time if it's crap anyway) and the line was clever "...if your done kissing the ground." lol. AND I got the whole point. Vereh nice.
I think you should write more.
(07-18-2011, 10:00 PM)Eagallowglass Wrote: [ -> ] (07-13-2011, 08:52 AM)phlashblazer Wrote: [ -> ](Hey everyone, just a short I made.)
The clash of swords howled across the plains.
A towering man's silhouette soared between a young man and the sun. The man's shadow scornfully refused sight of his face at the lowly squire.
"Hold your tongue cur! Bastards like you should not even be holding knives let alone swords!," he snarled. The man's pointed his sword towards the squire, his muscular tan figure kissed by the sun's glow. The sun was slowly setting to the east, yet the squire still could not catch a glimpse of the merciless shadow's face.
"Now come forth... nameless squire, or are you too occupied kissing the ground?," The man said with a smirk on his face. The squire slowly stood up, his eyes radiated with fire and his demeanor burning, itching to get into battle. He grasped his short sword's handle and tightened his buckler's grip. "Yaaahhhh!," he roared as he sprinted toward's the shadow, seeming to blaze faster with each step. The knight braced his long sword with both hands, pointing the sword readily at the squire. The squire leaped and slashed fiercely overhead. The knight maintained his poise, waiting for the right moment to strike.
The swords howled across the plains once again.
You know what?...I actually have to say I liked it. It was short (which is great, you don't want to waste alot of your time if it's crap anyway) and the line was clever "...if your done kissing the ground." lol. AND I got the whole point. Vereh nice.
I think you should write more.
Hah thanks! Especially for telling me what line ya liked, lol. I'd like to keep onto it if/when I get the time.
