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My Story-Chapter One



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Mon Jan 03, 2011 7:46 am
PiesAreSquared says...



Spoiler! :
this was a dream i had on new years eve, anything not understood in this chapter would be in the next



It was sixty-seven years ago. I was a twenty-three year old. We were spending vacation in the countryside home of a family friend. We were there for three days.
On the evening of the third day, I began to see things. Shaded figures of rivals in business…old friends…enemies… I became paranoid and ran outside, and then I saw it.
The ozone layer suddenly sprouted two holes. And an avalanche of snow and ice descended on the surface of our planet. It began to move, but in only one direction: Towards me. I was stunned. Impossible, I thought. Such a thing never could have happened. Then I turned and ran.
As I ran, I kept looking out for vehicles, if I could get into one, maybe I could speed away. But along the road on which I ran, no car could be seen. I began to despair. My lungs were burning in me. I longed to stop. But my instincts kept me going. Still, the avalanche kept coming. I stopped.
It was still a kilometer away. My scientific mind could not comprehend this. It was too bizarre. I sat down so as to concentrate on my thinking. It came faster and faster. Fifty meter… ten… five… two….one…then I smiled as the avalanche flowed over me.


I woke up in a small holding cell. I realized now. Illusions of illusions. I was meant to be captured. I smashed the door to the cell down. Subterranean. The walls were wet. Slime clung to it. The walls were lit by torches running along the corridor. I crept noiselessly down the corridor. After about a hundred meters, I stopped. A button. I see. Press the button. I pressed the button and fell straight down, into an office filled with computers. Cool.
I was exploring the area when the door opened and I ducked under a table. I could hear them, two of them, shouting at each other about someone called “Mirkov”. I smiled, Mirkov was my alias. After awhile, one of them began to fiddle with a computer. I grabbed the table, and hurled it at the man sitting idly on another table; the man at the computer whirled around and threw a fist towards my head. I ducted, but too slowly. I flew across the table, landing next to a pepper spray can. Jumping up with the can in my hand, I pulled the lever in his face. Too bad, I realized, can’s empty!
I threw the can in his face, knocking him out cold, and then I looked at the computer. The screen began showing equations, which I realized at once to be equations that concerned the mind. Quickly as I could I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down the equations. Folding the paper, I rushed out the door from which the men had entered.
I stopped in my tracks, and looked up into the face of my long time rival. I dashed past him, running up a long flight of stairs with him in pursuit. My breadth began to come in short gasps. I saw his car a hundred meters away, and I made it my goal, my all-consuming obsession.
Increasing my speed to my fastest, I neared my goal. Fifty meter…twenty-five…twelve… five… two…one…I could not slow down. Running straight into the car at the speed of twenty kilometers per hour, I dented the car beyond repair, and fell down the other side. I could hear him coming, closer.
He bent over me and in a low, deliberate voice said, “YOUR TIME IS NOW OVER.” Then I passed out.
Last edited by PiesAreSquared on Tue Jan 04, 2011 9:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. C. S. Lewis

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Mon Jan 03, 2011 3:23 pm
danipower0204 says...



OK. So I would definitely like to read more of this.

My main problem with this was - you are telling, not showing. You could easily expand this I'm sure. Describe it more. It's fast paced, and it's supposed to be, yes. But even then, add a few adjectives in there. It is after all past tense. So take your time a little more. The short sentences - they would be more effective if only a few of them were short - not the entire thing. You are giving us just the actions. Exactly as its happening.

Why don't you tell us the smells, tastes, sounds, what you see in more detail, what the character sees, feels, tastes, hears? It would make it much more interesting, I think.

That was my main nitpick, and I think it's a pretty big one, but one you can fix. So basically tell us more about the place, about the character's feelings. I'm pretty sure it will make it much more interesting to read.

Also: MeterS - not Meter :)


Keep on writing!!!
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Wed Jan 05, 2011 6:00 am
Jashael says...



Hey, ZLYF. Thanks for the request by the way! =) yay! You're next.

Here comes first, of course, the nitpicks:

I was a twenty-three-year-old.

Here, a reader would expect "a twenty-year-old man/woman..." Though there's nothing grammatically wrong with this, it just seems lacking.

ZLYF, I've scanned the whole thing, and well, I began to feel that it's better is I give you an edited version, on how I would edit it, instead of putting out lines and explaining stuffs; because, when I scanned it, I noticed that you weren't inserting new paragraphs in places where a reader would expect a new paragraph. Here it goes:

People ask me, what "¶" mean in my reviews. It means "New paragraph should be inserted right here...", okay? :)

It was sixty-seven years ago. I was a twenty-three [color=#FF0000-[/color]year-old<man or woman>. We were spending vacation in the countryside home of a family friend. We were there for three days.

On the evening of the third day, I began to see things. Shaded figures of rivals in business, old friends, enemies… I became paranoid and ran outside, and then I saw it. The ozone layer suddenly sprouted two holes. And an avalanche of snow and ice descended on the surface of our planet. It began to move, but in only one direction: Towards me.

I was stunned. Impossible, I thought. Such a thing never could have happened. Then I turned and ran.

As I ran, I kept looking out for vehicles. If I could get into one, maybe I could speed away. But along the road on which I ran, no car could be seen. I began to despair. My lungs were burning in me. I longed to stop. But my instincts kept me going. Still, the avalanche kept coming. I stopped.

It was still a kilometer away. My scientific mind could not comprehend this. It was too bizarre. I sat down so I could concentrate on my thinking. It came faster and faster. Fifty meters… ten… five… two…<no period>one…<space>Then I smiled as the avalanche flowed over me.




I woke up in a small holding cell. I realized now. Illusions of illusions. I was meant to be captured. I smashed the door to the cell down. Subterranean. The walls were wet. Slime clung to it. The walls were lit by torches running along the corridor. I crept noiselessly down the corridor. After about a hundred meters, I stopped. A button. I see. Press the button. I pressed the button and fell straight down, into an office filled with computers. Cool.<this word seems out-of-place. Too informal, I think.

I was exploring the area when the door opened and I ducked under a table. I could hear them, two of them, shouting at each other about someone called “Mirkov”. I smiled, Mirkov was my alias. After awhile, one of them began to fiddle with a computer. I grabbed the table, and hurled it at the man sitting idly on another table; the man at the computer whirled around and threw a fist towards my head. I ducted, but too slowly. I flew across the table, landing next to a pepper spray can. Jumping up with the can in my hand, I pulled the lever in his face. Too bad, I realized, can’s empty!
I threw the can in his face, knocking him out cold, and then I looked at the computer. The screen began showing equations, which I realized at once to be equations that concerned the mind. Quickly as I could I grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down the equations. Folding the paper, I rushed out the door from which the men had entered.

I stopped in my tracks, and looked up into the face of my long time rival. I dashed past him, running up a long flight of stairs with him in pursuit. My breadth began to come in short gasps. I saw his car a hundred meters away, and I made it my goal, my all-consuming obsession.

Increasing my speed to my fastest, I neared my goal. Fifty meters…twenty-five…twelve…<Be consistent:no space>five…<no space>two…one…I could not slow down.

Running straight into the car at the speed of twenty kilometers per hour, I dented the car beyond repair, and fell down the other side. I could hear him coming, closer.

He bent over me and in a low, deliberate voice said, “YOUR TIME IS NOW OVER.” Then I passed out.


STYLE/STRUCTURE

This is something you should pay attention to: There are run-on sentences here, sometimes too much. It can be style, but too much is plain abusive and irritating to read. If you're not sure what a run-on sentence is, here's one:

As I ran, I kept looking out for vehicles, if I could get into one, maybe I could speed away.


A run-on sentence are two sentences separated with a comma. Grammatically, it's wrong. You can use a semicolon instead, or put a conjunction, or better yet--make a new sentence.

Remember that.

Another issue is your sentence variation, wait, there weren't much sentence variation, that's what. Sometimes it could bore the reader to read this:

I stopped in my tracks, and looked up into the face of my long time rival. I dashed past him, running up a long flight of stairs with him in pursuit. My breadth began to come in short gasps. I saw his car a hundred meters away, and I made it my goal, my all-consuming obsession.


Spice it up. Experiment with sentences: long or short, clauses, etc. so you can excite the reader and keep him reading till the end.

And OVERALL, I still couldn't make out what was happening. Everything was too fast, I think. I know it's action; but you need to slow down a bit, you know?--keep the reader excited, breathless, wanting to read more. Give more details, I guess. Because the pacing was just too fast. And the other problem I have with this is even though we've been through two collapses (I'll take the dream a "pass-out", too. :P), the reader still do not know anything that was happening, at least anything significant to keep him or her going.

What I suggest is, add more drama to the action and this could be a great adventure for the reader. This is the very first chapter, so you have to have the reader hooked. Show why he or she should be reading for more. Add a little hint on what the dream or illusion was about.

Whatever you have in your mind right now, I'll be waiting for that. I know an idea is lingering in your mind right now ready to be disclosed with action-packed prose! Nice job and keep writing, dude!

~ Jash ♥
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen:
not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”


—C.S. LEWIS


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133 Reviews



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Wed Jan 05, 2011 6:28 am
PiesAreSquared says...



Hey Josh, Thanks for the review. Just to tell someone, my chapters are too short, and although i have already posted my next chapter, i would try to combine the others to make it more interesting.

Thanks once again for the review :)
The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. C. S. Lewis

I used to be ZLYF
  





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Points: 13307
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Tue Jan 11, 2011 6:53 am
Jenthura says...



Z, the user up there is Jash, not me...not Josh. :D
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When one is highly alert to language, then nearly everything begs to be a poem.
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