The Code of Black: Graveyard Revelations

Spoiler

Rated for suicide. Also, if you read this first and then to find 'Graveyard' and can't find it, it's because I'm still typing it up. This piece was alread done, so I just thought 'what the hell'. These characters are from my original story, 'The Code of Black'. Six of the chapters can be found here, but don't expect them to be good. In fact, I should just delete those chapters. Sorry for any confusion you may experiance! P.S: Places, names, and characters are all made up and belong to me.

Gabriella hangs up her coat at the door.
She moves through her empty mansion on the island of Skri Lanka, turning on lights, one at a time. She has just returned from Jamie’s funeral.
Her dress is black and floor length. Gabriella feels like she has been to too many funerals over the last two centuries.
She peels off her lacy black gloves and sets them down carefully on her dresser.
She looks up into the mirror, but past her own perfect, immortal reflection to the two pictures clipped into the frame. One is a black-and-white photo of her and the old gang –Alexander, Jasper cheetah, Solomon, Jasper Allen, Lucas, Cedric, Jamie, Raven, Talia and Josephine. The second picture is a colored photo of herself and Cedric on their wedding day, a century and a half ago.
Gabriella hazes sadly at the photo. She misses seeing the sparkle in Cedric’s electric blue eyes.
Her mind is numb. Solomon used to get so annoyed whenever someone was like that. Solomon and his telepathy are long gone, though, Gabriella reminds herself.
So her mind is numb. She is not quite thinking consciously when she drifts over to her walk-in closet and drags a chest out from the back corner.
She opens it and stares at the contents for a moment. She reaches in and her hand wraps around cold metal.
Gabriella moves slowly to the balcony of her room.
It overlooks the sea.
At the moment, the sun is setting, tingeing the sky orange and streaking the under sides of the clouds pink.
The ocean’s waves lap up against the sand on the shore below in a calm rhythm.
Gabriella closes her eyes and inhales deeply, taking in the salty-ocean smell.
A cool breeze rushes through Gabriella’s hair and ripples through her dress.
Cedric always loved the view from this balcony.
Gabriella opens her eyes again and raises her arm up to her head.
Even as tears blur her vision and trickle down her face, she smiles. She’s going to see them all in a moment. She’s going to be with her friends again –her husband.
As the sun disappears under the horizon, a single shot rings out into the air and an empty bullet case clatters to the ground.

Comments in red.

Gabriella hangs up her coat at the door. #FF0000 ">You can stand to have a more tense beginning. This is flat and, frankly, quite boring..

She moves through her empty mansion on the island of Skri Lanka, turning on lights, one at a time. She has just returned from Jamie’s funeral. #FF0000 ">First of all, I still see no tension. Second, it's beginning to sound like a script. There's no rhythm to the words. It sounds like this: "Here's a sentence. Here's another sentence. Oh and here's what you need to know."

Her dress is black and floor length. #FF0000 ">A good trick with description is to have it interact with the surroundings or something. This lessens the passivity and livens the prose. More on this later. Gabriella feels like she has been to too many funerals over the last two centuries. #FF0000 ">Show me, then. Don't tell me. It's really getting dull here, hearing everything but not really seeing everything. An engaging story teller makes the reader feel as if he's part of the author's world, whether that world is make-believe or based on somewhere true. I feel as if someone is narrating everything to me and I can't really bring myself to care. oo

She peels off her lacy black gloves and sets them down carefully on her dresser.

She looks #FF0000 ">up into the mirror, but past her own perfect, immortal #FF0000 ">You're fond of double adjectives. Also, it's important to note that I already /know/ she's immortal. You told me so when you mentioned two centuries. Once is enough. Perfect is a bit irritating, but I can deal. reflection to the two pictures clipped into the frame. One is a black-and-white photo of her and the old gang –Alexander, Jasper cheetah #FF0000 ">Jasper cheetah? o0 Is the second part of his name? If it's a nickname, enclose it in quotation marks. If it's his surname, then capitalize., Solomon, Jasper Allen, Lucas, Cedric, Jamie, Raven, Talia and Josephine. #FF0000 ">Be aware that I won't particularly remember these names. Too many in too little time. Plus, you don't attach any descriptions. (But even if you did, that wouldn't have accomplished much. There's just too many of them. ._. Also, please note that I expect they will play an important part later. Otherwise, I'm wondering why you didn't just say her friends. The second picture is a colored photo of herself and Cedric on their wedding day, a century and a half ago.

Gabriella #FF0000 ">gazes sadly at the photo. She misses seeing the sparkle in Cedric’s electric blue eyes.

Her mind is numb. Solomon used to get so annoyed whenever someone was like that. Solomon and his telepathy are long gone, though, Gabriella reminds herself. #FF0000 ">Names, names. No emotions. I don't feel anything. You're just tossing names and tidbits of information at me and I don't really care. Neither can I bring myself to care, actually. It's impossible. I don't see Gabriella's personality and even her emotions are denied me.

So her mind is numb. #FF0000 ">You already told me. Sometimes repetition works, but not here. She is not quite thinking consciously #FF0000 ">You mean to say she's doing it automatically, by instinct. You might want to rephrase that since it sounds awkward and clunky. when she drifts #FF0000 ">over to her walk-in closet and drags a chest out from the back corner.

She opens it and stares at the contents for a moment. She reaches in and her hand wraps around cold metal. #FF0000 ">A gun, no doubt. I really don't have much patience at this point because I can't feel anything, and it's probably not the numb you're trying to go for.

Gabriella moves slowly to the balcony of her room.

It overlooks the sea.

At the moment, the sun is setting, tingeing the sky orange and streaking the under sides of the clouds pink. #FF0000 ">Personally, to cut words, I'd rephrase it to, "The sun sets, tingeing the sky orange and streaking the under sides of the clouds pink." Also, maybe underbelly is the word you're looking for?

The ocean’s waves lap #FF0000 ">up against the sand on the shore below in a calm rhythm.

Gabriella closes her eyes and inhales deeply, taking in the salty-ocean smell.

A cool breeze rushes through Gabriella’s hair and ripples through her dress. #FF0000 ">I can't really imagine the breeze rippling through her dress, but I can imagine a dress rippling. oo I think that's what you're trying to say, right?

Cedric always loved the view from this balcony.

Gabriella opens her eyes again and raises her arm up to her head. #FF0000 ">No use trying to be coy. Cold metal gave you away so at this point, trying to be coy just annoys the reader. With a story like this, you can't really afford to let me feel emotionless. oo

Even as tears blur her vision and trickle down her face, she smiles. She’s going to see them all in a moment. She’s going to be with her friends again –her husband.

As the sun disappears under the horizon, a single shot rings out into the air and an empty bullet case clatters to the ground.

The last sentence is actually pretty good, in my opinion. It avoids being cheesy but has a certain gravity to it. I suggest keeping it, but rewriting the rest.

See, you have one consistent problem throughout this story - the lack of emotion. I understand she's feeling numb but you're going to have to give us more than that. The readers can't grieve with Gabriella if we can't fathom why she'd grieve. If you read novels where someone is dead before the beginning of the story, the authors will consistently put in tidbits about said dead character every now and then until she feels tangible to the readers. The dead character might never feel as full-rounded as the characters we're following, but the dead character is most certainly there. The readers feel as if they know him/her because of all the little memories the author puts in, all the reminders. It's a nagging feeling - she used to live.

Same here. You're going to have to make the reader realize that Cedric and Jamie aren't just some words planted into the story to make your heroine's backstory tragic. You need to make us grieve with her. If she's in the house she shared with Cedric, mention how she can still smell the whiff of his clothes from the closet. If not, then maybe have her smile a little when she sees a trinket Cedric gave her. As for Jamie, note how he'd breeze through the house and crash into everything or something. Or maybe, given his nickname I'm going to assume he's a speedster, how he used to prevent everything from crashing. Or how he's a show-off. Anything to give him some semblance of reality.

Also, realize that when you feel numb it's not really numb as in empty numb. When grieving people are numb, it's numb with grief. The grief is still present and it's eaten all their other emotions. Make us feel her grief, okay? But this doesn't mean letting her go bawling. Sometimes, silence is louder than an outcry. Silence possesses a certain weight outbursts don't necessarily have.

On descriptions -

When you want to mention how something is there, you'll want to have it interact so you can avoid the be verbs. Be verbs kill your prose faster than a bullet in the temple does a man. Too many of them make your piece sound dreary and monotonous. You'll want to keep your sentence active. The key is to avoid passive sentences. Let me show you an example.

Her dress is black and floor length.

You could change it to "Her black dress trailed along the floor." It'd be active then.

When you describe, you should let your character interact with her surroundings if possible. So maybe instead of just saying a vase is sitting on the table you could have her accidentally knock it over. Or maybe you could have her stare at it and reach out to touch it because it's something one of her friends gave her.

This doesn't only apply to description, though. It applies to all sentences. Note that eliminating the "be" verbs makes the sentence feel alive. Here's another example.

Active:

Jane eats a sandwich.

Passive:

The sandwich is eaten by Jane.

The second just doesn't have quite the same punch. You want to eliminate sentences in which the subject is not performing the action (passive sentences), or at least keep them down to a bare minimum.

Also, try not to use adjectives too much, all right? You don't seem to abuse them too badly, but you did use two adjectives for a single noun at more than one point. You'll want to avoid that. ^^"

On your character Gabriella, I didn't see much of a personality. You can stand to show a bit more of her. Little tidbits are as good as entire scenes when you know how to use them. Maybe have her toss her gloves aside to show how haphazard she is, or, inversely, arrange the flowers despite her grief to show how careful she is. Something. Anything. oo But I guess I could forgive a little lack of characterization. Your main goal right now is to show us grief. Concentrate on that first.

I hope this review helped. <3 PM me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Octave

P.S.

I didn't read the spoiler before reviewing this because I don't like explanations and I want the story to stand on its own. Going back, I read it and realize this is part of a bigger piece. My advice still stands, and I hope you can use it in your novel as well.

Heya, ScratchMan!

You've already gotten an awesome review form Octave, but considering you only have one review, I thought I'd drop by and see if I could be any help. Once I'm finished, if you have any questions or anything regarding my review, let me know because I'll be more than happy to answer them.

Although this was a short piece, I like what you did with it. Without literally telling us what happened at the end, you made it clear what happened to Gabriella. I like the idea of this story as well, although I would like to know some more background details, but I'll go into that later. Your grammar and such was very well done when it comes to punctuation. I don't think I spotted any problems actually, although grammar isn't exactly my strong point. As a whole, I think this story has a lot of potential and it could shape into something really good.

Before I begin, I want to say that I haven't read the story these characters are originally from, so I may not be the best to critique this, so I apologise if I say something stupid because I haven't read the full story. I'd probably say something stupid even if I had, but that's beside the point.

My first nit-pick is about the ending. Like Octave, I loved your last line, but I wasn't keen on the way the lines before it were structured. Eight of the lines in the ending were single sentences, but also paragraphs. Basically, you had eight paragraphs that contained only one sentence. It's okay to have the occasional paragraph that consists of only one sentence, but having a large number of them can be distracting and take away the effect you may be trying to create. In fact, the majority of your paragraphs were unusually short, so I would recommend thinking about that.

I agree with Octave on what she said about the emotions in this. You need to express them far more. I like the idea of Gabriella being numb, therefore, her emotions may not seem as strong as they might for others, but nonetheless, we need to at least feel something when she dies. We also need to feel something for the people she knows that have died. Really express the pain she's in to us, show us how emotional these people dying has made her, even if she is mostly numb. Make us feel sorry for her, I suppose. If you can manage to make us readers feel sad when she decides to pull the trigger, then you know that you've done a good job with her emotions. Even if it means making this story ten pages long or something, I think you should consider expressing the emotions in far more detail.

Octave's already gone over this in a lot of detail, so I don't want to repeat everything she's said. I definitely agree with what she's said though, so I do think you should take her advice into consideration and maybe edit this with the help of that advice. Expressing emotions of your characters can be difficult, and making your readers feel those emotions is even harder, but with some practice, anyone can achieve it.

Overall, I think you just need to add in some details. I know this is part of something bigger, but nonetheless, if you want this story to stand on its own, you still need to make sure there are plenty of details in it. Even if all of the details are mentioned in the bigger story, you still need those details in this one. I'd like to know more about Gabriella and her life, for example. Who are all of those people in her photo? I don't expect a detailed explanation on each one, but I'd like some information at least. I think you could add in some more descriptions too maybe. Build up to the suicide rather than have it happen suddenly at the end. Make her seem suicidal through her actions, thoughts, and through your descriptions.

With some careful editing, I think this has the potential to be a really great short story. Suicide is an interesting subject, and I'm always very intrigued about subjects like that in fictional writing. Clean this up a bit and I really do think this could be a story full of deep emotion.

Keep writing,

xoxo Skins