The Wizard

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Raised by soft hands, shown the secret scrolls of life by those who themselves did not fully comprehend their value, he learned.

I think this should be split into two separate thoughts. "He was raised by soft hands and shown the secret of life" and "The ones who taught them did not comprehend their value" (I'm shortening what you had, but you understand my point.) Together, they only confuse.

Any one of his creations would well have rendered even his superiors awestruck, but the Wizard was overcome by his personal desire, unable to see now that he was powerful at all, and had come to think of himself as a failure and as worthless for not attaining the unattainable.

this is a really good example of how you are putting too much into just one sentence. You should break things up, and if they are their own, important statements, then they should be statements on their own. These long sentences look pretty, but are harder to read/understand. You should write everything as simply as possible, no point in confusing the reader.

Darkness came over the Wizard, over his soul, yet in his craft he remained bound, unable to, at any waking moment, put it out of mind.

here is another example, you use commas to make up for it. Doesn't over use commas like this. instead, write it "Darkness came over the Wizard, over his soul. Yet, in his craft he remained bound and unable to put out of his mind." I would take out at any waking moment, we already understand he is obsessed, so it just makes it harder to read by adding in another side note.

and wished they had known him while he yet lived

While he yet lived? Take out 'yet'

Saddened, they buried him, and when others learned the greatness of the Wizard, they too were sad, and wished they had known him while he yet lived, and wished he had not fallen to such a dark fate, that his power might have blessed the world further. But their wishes were too late.

again, too many commas and too many ideas stated in one sentence. And then you have that 6 word sentence at the end? You should try to balance more.

The story was good, I loved the morals, but it was very boring. All you do is tell us he did this, and tell us he did that. And you tell us he was like this and wanted to do that. You are writing this like what it is, a tale. But if you want us to read it you have to write it like a piece of fiction, a real story, and not a tale. All it is is telling, if I haven't already got that through to you. It really needs to be fixed because it slows the whole story down and makes it feel very passive and lumbering. It is a good story, but only when you hear what it is about. Actually reading it is impossible. If you would change the telling, and instead just write the story, it would end up being much, much better I am sure. That was the only problem, but it is a major one. So, good luck! If you want any more on how to fix this problem (since I know I didn't say too much, but maybe you will figure it out on your own?) you can PM me and I'll try to further explain/help.

I have no more to add to Claudette's Crit. I agree about the commas. There are to many and it can get confusing. I love the morales. This would be a great fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm.

I think that telling is fine for somethings and this is one of those things. If you wrote like total story full of dialouge and action it would take a way from the morale value. I like it better this way. It's like a prolouge almost. I bewt you could expand a novel out of this if you wanted too. (I could, but isee everything as a novel.)

Nicely done

I apologise in advance if any of this has already been said.

TheEccentricScribe wrote:In his youth he blossomed, growing greater and greater in wisdom, learning and perceiving reality to depths that those many years older than him would never attain.

This may just be me spacing, but this seems awkward. I had to read it twice to understand it.

As is inevitable with wisdom, the Wizard, as he studied, learned a most devastating truth.

This is definitely not me spacing. This sentence just sounds awkward. There are too many commas and somewhat disjointed thoughts. I recommend you change it to something along the lines of "As he studied, the Wizard learned a most deavastating truth."

Terrified, the wizard told himself, “I will not perish like an ordinary man,” though he himself was yet a boy.

Kill the "yet." Change it to "only."

For months he was closed from reality, from family and friends, and in that time, a grave chasm was wrought.

Your overuse of commas really rears its ugly head here. Either a semicolon after "friends" or "and" after "reality" instead of a comma would work.

Yet, all of his experiments with wizardry, astounding as many of them were, could not yield one thing: eternal life.

Kill the comma after "yet."

Then, one fateful night, his wizardry went awry. He survived, though he was damaged, and he knew then that his attempts to stop death had killed him, and soon he would be no more. With what time he had left, the Wizard destroyed much of his failed work, especially what was dangerous of it, and decided to leave in better hands what was left, if any of it should be of value.

A lot of these commas can be taken out and replaced with conjunctions or semicolons or periods or other forms of punctuation. Commas are very low-level grammar, and when you replace them with higher level grammar (semicolons, hyphens, etc.) it makes your writing a lot better. It's a style thing. So lose some of the commas, okay?

I like your theme, and everything I didn't quote is good. Just ease up on the use of commas and "yet."

Hope I helped some, and didn't repeat what's been said before.

-St. Razorblade

With respect to my fellow critters I think the story was meant to be written in classic story telling style. Its about an old wizard, its almost a fable. After reading some other of Eccentrics work I discovered this.

This was a nice moral tale but I have a feeling it wasnt premeditated, I dont really see anywhere this story can go as it is in a telling style and has no character narrative.

Although this was probably meant to be written as a summary of the tale, I still didn't feel connected in anyway to it. We're kept at arm's length from the characters and the setting, and there isn't really anythin memorable in here.

However, this reminds me in some regard as the little 'background' bits you can find in Warhammer material, that add just a little bit more history to their pre-existing world.

If this is part of a longer story (such an tale in your world) then I would say the writing style fits it. But if it's a one off, then my advice would be to write it in your usual style.

Thanks to everyone for reviewing The Wizard. It most definitely needs work on the commas. To the reviewer who said it could be turned into a novel, I guess, but it's just not that compelling of a story for me to do that with, I suppose. What I was trying to do here was to create a simple plot with as little description as possible, and make a point with that simple plot. It is definitely not my style to write in this way, which reflects in the poor quality of the short story as a whole, and as an experiment failed from a holistic perspective. However, I tend to be a descript-o-holic, and was trying to write without being so heavy with that sort of thing, so at least in that respect, I did what I set out to do. It's certainly no magnum opus, and all of the problems and issues everyone has raised here clearly shows why. I will keep in mind what you've said the next time I attempt a short story (novels tend to be more my style), but as I am working on my third novel, I probably won't be doing that for quite a while. Thank you for your scholarly and helpful commentation.