"Writing Challenge 4/03" Wind Spirits

Iris is sitting there, waiting. Waiting for the skies to burst relentlessly upon her, to drown her. Waiting for the wind spirits to engulf her, to take her along with them. She can feel their presence; almost see them through the opal mist. There’s silver thunder pounding upon the onyx mountains.

The time is nearly there, the wait is almost over. Iris is floating in a rhythmic manner, chanting, pleading the wind spirits to take her above the ka'ajal skies, up to the golden skies.

Unfolding her legs beneath her she stands up, gliding across the sand to the glazed sea. The wind has stopped, resting it seems, the clouds have quieted, the only sound that of the wind chime in her hand and the hollow whispers of the sea.

She changes her direction suddenly, and starts towards the mountains. The tinkling wind chime in her hand, the hum of her voice creating an almost haunting melody. The wind is picking up again, her wine hair flying about her face, framing her pale face. She is unaware of the emerald eyes following her, watching her come closer. She reaches the mountains, stares up at them for a second, and then starts climbing up, clawing at the rocks with her hands.

She stops, turns around and looks down at the picturesque landscape beneath her, shaking her head, disregarding it. Her eyes make contact with the emerald eyes but she can’t see who they belong to. Black against black. She sees the sleek body of a black panther, standing still as if it’s been carved out of black marble. It snarls at her, but she doesn't flinch; it belongs to the wind spirits. She soothes it in a whispery language. The panther nods in respond to her, and beckons her to climb onto its back. The rain has started pouring steadily and together they make it to the top of the marbled mountains.

There, the panther leaves her and once again she’s alone. The wind is picking up, and the clouds are thundering again. It is time, she tells herself. She raises her hands above her head, and the wind spirits wrap themselves about her; a whirlpool of ghostly clouds. They take her towards the sea, and gently set her upon the waves. Her last thought is of the golden skies, and there’s a serene smile on her face; she finally has met the wind spirits.

*Ka'ajal is a Hindi word and it basically means black. It is also a makeup item, used as eyeliner.

First paragraph - "seemingly" seems out of place. If you remove this and also the comma, the sentence becomes "There's silver thunder pounding only upon the onyx mountains." I think it's stronger like that. You like to use a lot of commas in your sentences: some that aren't needed and some that make the sentence run-on. Watch out for these. It can make your lines harder to understand or read. I'd also take the apostrophes out around kajal and leave it on its own. It doesn't need them. Otherwise, I thought this was a good, short piece. In the last sentence I think you shoul definitely turn the last comma into a colon, so it goes "there's a serene smile on her face: she has finally met the wind spirits." Sounds better and looks better. There are many other examples of commas that could be semi-colons and colons in this piece, so watch out for them too. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the feedback! I have made the changes you suggested. I do have this thing for commas, and I've been trying to let go of the habit of using them too much.

Hey:

I'll definitely give this a deeper crit later, I'm not feeling well right now and I gt get to bed, so here's a really quick overview:

The main character seems cliche and over-done, it seems like we've seen her a thousand times before in a thousand other stories, and she isn't even a likeable character, exactly, although I'm sure you weren't going for likeable.

The lovely description gives this story a good air, that is the vibe about it is nice and I think that the present tense gives this an original touch.

Anyway it's like...midnight and I'm sick with a migraine and asthma and over lovely stuff, so I'm gonna get a move on. I'll try to give this a real crit later but I hope that small touch helped.

"Iris is sitting there, waiting. Waiting for the skies to burst relentlessly upon her, to drown her, waiting for the wind spirits to engulf her, take her along with them."

I think if you get rid of the first waiting you can join all of these words together. But then there'd be a lot of words so you'd have to cut a few out.

"...pleading the wind spirits to taker her..."
Shouldn't it be take her and not taker her?

This was a beautiful idea for the story, wind spirits. But it was so short... expand it, I order you.
There's nothing much to say, critiquing at 5 AM isn't really when I'm at my best.

It was short and sweet, and I loved the imagiry

Iris is sitting there, waiting. Waiting for the skies to burst relentlessly upon her, to drown her, waiting for the wind spirits to engulf her, take her along with them.

Right now, you want to make this piece a little bit more fragmented. So you're going to want to split up the second sentence. Instead of what it looks like now, it would look like this:

"Waiting for the skies to burst relentlessly upon her, to drown her. Waiting for the wind spirits to engulf her, take her along with them."

See? It's a lot more fragmented, but it makes it sound nicer.

The next thing you're going to want to do is to put a little bit more parallelism in this sentence: "Waiting for the wind spirits to engulf her, take her along with them." When I read that sentence out loud (which is something really cool and you should try it if you don't already) I automatically insert a "to" in the sentence. So it would read like this:

"Waiting for the wind spirits to engulf her, to take her along with them."

That's grammatically correct.

Moving on...

She can feel their presence; almost see them through the opal mist. There’s silver thunder seemingly pounding only upon the onyx mountains.

First of all, I would probably get rid of the first word "there's" and just start with "Silver." It sounds more poetic-pretty to me.

Next of all, thunder is a noise, therefore it can't be any color. If I wrote "red shout" would that make any sense? No. I appreciate metaphors, but in this case "There's silver streaks of lightning..." might be very good here. I don't know -- you decide.

I think someone else commented on this, but the word "seemingly" doesn't fit. Why? Because it's ambiguous. Instead of adding anything to the scene, it takes it away. Silver thunder seems to pound on the mountain. Seems? Does it or doesn't it? You see? The imagery gets clouded and we, the readers, are not sure of what's going on.

If the silver thunder is a metaphor, then you can get away with the word "thunder" but you HAVE to get rid of seemingly. So you would write:

"Silver thunder pounds upon the onyx mountains."

Or something like that. You notice how I shortened up the sentence? I like fragmented sentences for descrption. They give the whole descriptions a punch when used in moderation.

If this isn't a metaphor, then you must get rid of the word "thunder." Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. So it would end up looking like:

"Silver streaks of lightning pound upon the onyx mountains."

A little longer, but still pretty.

The time is nearly there, the wait almost over.

Once more, parallelism. "The time is nearly there, the wait is almost over."

Iris is floating in a rhythmic manner, chanting, pleading the wind spirits to taker her above the kajal skies, up to the golden skies.

Floating? Okay...

And she is pleading the wind pirits to take her there. Look out for typos.

Unfolding her legs beneath her she stands up, moving, almost gliding across the sand to the glazed sea.

Once more, you use ambiguous words and the story comes to a halt. Remember, this is a descriptive piece. Basically, it's a poem disguised as prose. So you really don't have to use words such as "seemingly" and "almost." In fact, I would advise against it.

I would write this sentence like:

"Unfolding her legs beneath her, she stands up, gliding across the sand to the glazed sea."

The wind has stopped, resting it almost seems, the clouds have quieted, the only sound that of the wind chime in her hand and the hollow whispers of the sea.

Once again, no almosts. You have a nice way with words and your descriptions are stellar. You don't need words such as "almost" and "seemingly." They undo your work. Yes, they are enemies. Avoid them at all costs.

She changes her direction suddenly, and starts towards the mountains. The wind chime swinging in her hand, the hum of her voice creating an almost haunting melody.

Er... I'm not sure what you mean by the last sentence.

The wind is picking up again, her wine hair flying about her face, framing her vacant eyes. She is unaware of the emerald eyes following her, watching her coming closer.

Too many "eyes" in these two sentences. The word "eyes" is very strong because of the hard "i" sound, therefore, try to avoid overusing the sound.

She reaches the mountains, stares up at them for a second, and then starts climbing up, clawing at the rocks with her hands.

She stops, turns around and looks down at the picturesque landscape beneath her, shaking her head, disregarding it.

I would probably split up these sentences and change the verb forms to to make it more powerful. So it would look like this:

"She stops, turning around, and looks down at the picturesque landscape beneath her. She shakes her head, disregarding it.

Her eyes make contact with the emerald eyes but she can’t see the being they belong to.

Now really, "the being" sounds a little clunky. I would change it to:

"Her eyes make contact with the emerald eyes, but she can't see who they belong to."

A little smoother, I think.

Black against black, she realizes, and then she sees the sleek body of a black panther, standing still as if it’s been carved out of black marble. It snarls at her, but she isn’t afraid of it, she knows it belongs to the wind spirits, and then in a whispery language she soothes the owner of the emerald eyes.

These sentences need a makeover, if only because they seem to be run-ons. Remember, short sentences often pack a punch more than long flowy sentences.

So...

"Black against black. A sleek panther is staring at her, standing still as if it's been carved out of black marble. He snarls at her, but she doesn't flinch; he belongs to the wind spirits. She creeps towards the panther and, in a whispery language, soothes him."

That's just an example of what you could do with it -- I wouldn't advise a complete copy and paste job with that. But your sentences can be shortened to make a great impact on the reader.

The panther nods in respond to her, and beckons her to climb onto its back. The rain has started pouring steadily and together they make it to the top.

Top of what?

There, the panther leaves her and once again she’s alone. The wind is picking up, and the clouds are thundering again. It is time, she tells herself. She raises her hands above her head, and the wind spirits wrap themselves about her and take her towards the sea, and gently lay her upon the waves.

The last sentence is a run on, but it doesn't have to be. It just has too many ands. Instead, you can write this:

"She raises her hands above her head and the wind spirits wrap themselves about her, taking her towards the sea, and gently setting her upon the waves."

Notice I didn't use the word "lay." Lay is a tricky verb that has way too many sexual overtones to it, as many horny teenagers will tell you.

Her last thought is of the golden skies, and there’s a serene smile on her face: she finally has met the wind spirits.

I would split up this sentence like:

"Her last thought is of the golden skies. There's a serene smile on her face; she has finally met the wind spirits."

I changed a couple of other things, but the many thing was the splitting up sentences.

All in all, not bad. Nice descriptions... just ease up on the "almost" stuff.

Snoink! I love you! Lol...

No really this helped a lot. I would have actually spotted these mistakes before but the thing is I wrote this is in a rush. I know I shouldn't be writing in a rush, but I really wanted to write about the picture, and due to my SAT preparation I barely have time to write.

But anyway, thanks a lot...I'll make the changes you suggested. I had a lot of doubts about some of my sentences but couldn't really point them out to myself, but you did...so thanks!!

Ahh! You revised the story! *panics*

Oh well, that's what I get for taking so long to critique.

Um. I should warn you that my critique kind of overlaps with Snoink's. I swear, I wrote most of this critique before I read hers ... *cough*

Lots of pretty words. Pretty is good. You've got a great grasp of words that sound lovely together — or even just words that sound lovely on their own. Lots and lots of word candy, which is always fun to read. The story itself is simple but very nice — I do think you should expand on a lot of these concepts and flesh this out into a full-fledged short story. Otherwise, I'm not entirely sure that the story is as emotionally potent as it could (or even should) be, or even if it has as much depth as it might potentially carry.

It's good as it is. But. If you go back and work out these ideas — the panther, the wind-spirits, the girl and her longing to join those spirits — it could be even better.

Iris is sitting there, waiting.

I'm not sure the word "there" is effective in this particular instance. We don't know where "there" is, so it doesn't enhance our mental image of where she is. And while this is a great word for certain narrative styles (like casual first person narrative), it really doesn't serve any purpose here.

Iris is sitting, waiting.

If you take out the "there", I'd suggest trimming "is sitting" to "sits". The two consecutive "-ing" endings (i.e. the present imperfect + present participle) are very noticeable here, and hamper the flow of the sentence. As opposed to:

Iris sits, waiting.

You still may want to tweak the sentence to adjust the overall flow of the paragraph, though.

Iris [sits], waiting. Waiting for the skies to burst relentlessly upon her, to drown her, waiting for the wind spirits to engulf her, to take her along with them.

Repetition is good. Excessive repetition is not.

While the first and second sentence of the narrative sound fine on their own, when lumping them together, the repetition becomes a hindrance rather than a help. Look at this way:

Iris [sits] waiting. Waiting for the skies

While the use of repetition in the second sentence seems well and good on its own, it's not as powerful inconjunction to the first sentence. So. I'd suggest somehow replacing the "waiting" in the first sentence to something else that works just as well (if not better). Even trimming the sentence down to

Iris sits.

would be fine, although I'm not sure if it's too fragmented for your preference.

She can feel their presence; almost see them through the opal mist.

The semi-colon should be a comma — otherwise, it's grammatically incorrect.

Also: for the sake of parallelism, I'd suggest changing "almost see them through them," to "can can almost change them."

My last nitpick is the use of "opal" as an adjective. What's wrong with it? Google images of "opal" and you'll find that the colours of the opals in the images are almost always different. Opals are noted for their wide range of colours. So using "opal" as a colour adjective is somewhat ineffective since you could be saying the mist is pink, white, or blue with flecks of green and purple.

There are plenty of stones that are predominantly/always white; choose one of those, instead. Just remember that "opal" isn't exactly the best indicator of colour.

There’s silver thunder pounding upon the onyx mountains.

First of all:

"Silver thunder." A visual adjective for an auditory noun doesn't really work. "Silver" is one of the few visual adjectives that can be paired with noise, like "silver music," but the connotation of the word doesn't really work in the instance of "thunder" and "pounding". "Silver" as an auditory adjective is (according to the god of all things useful) means "soft, clear, resonant". This doesn't generally apply to thunder, and your own verb ("pounding") kind of contradicts the adjective.

Secondly, there's no segue between this sentence and the previous one; the narrative just jumps from the mist to the mountains with no bridging point.

Iris is floating in a rhythmic manner, chanting, pleading the wind spirits to take her above the ka'ajal skies, up to the golden skies.

Okay, a couple of things don't exactly work in this sentence.

First of all: "is floating". As far as the reader is concerned, Iris is still sitting, waiting — remember? There's no transitional action between that and the floating. A verb needs to be injected somewhere between the first sentence and this one to indicate Iris's movements.

Then there's "ka'ajal." To begin with, the correct transliteration of the Hindi word is "kaajal."

Secondly, according to my wide and varied sources (yeah ), kajaal's singular meaning is in reference to the makeup. It doesn't mean "black." With that in mind, I'm not sure how well it works with your story. It's not really an effective metaphor; it lacks the potency that a lot of other replacements might have. It sounds pretty when said, but that's about it. It could just be me, though.

Then there's the "above the [kaajal] skies, up to the golden skies." Golden + kaajal are somewhat contradictory, no?

How you fix it depends on your mental image of Iris's surroundings. If the sky is golden, but also tinged with black, then you could potentially keep both of these descriptions (without it sounding strange). And if it is black-tinged gold, then you could even incorporate the idea of kaajal into the description (again, without it sounding strange). "Golden skies smudged with kaajal," or something to that effect. The makeup metaphor remains, and serves to enhance the image.

If the sky is only black (or only gold), though, you'll likely want to tweak this sentence so that it makes sense.

But, also — what's the point of using "kaajal"? Is Iris Hindu/Hindi-speaking? That's the only reason that would make sense (in which case I'd point out that the name Iris is hardly Hindu or South Asian). Otherwise, if your intent was to enhance imagery — any potential for that was nullified by explaining what kaajal is, thus telling us that you assume the readers don't know what it means. And if the reader doesn't know what it means, it obviously can't help them get a better visual, right?

Also — "in a rhythmic manner" sounds flat, especially against the poetry of the rest of the sentence. "Iris is floating rhythmically," works better, although it still sounds a bit awkward.

Unfolding her legs beneath her she stands up, moving, almost gliding across the sand to the glazed sea.

There should be a comma after "beneath her." Also, "moving" is kind of redundant since "gliding" and "unfolding" and "stands" all are verbs that specifically indicate she's moving (and do it better, besides). I'd suggest cutting it out, since it serves no purpose in the sentence.

I'd also suggest snipping out "almost" in "almost gliding across the sand to the glazed sea." It does nothing except work against the effectiveness of the verb "gliding".

The wind has stopped, resting it almost seems, the clouds have quieted, the only sound that of the wind chime in her hand and the hollow whispers of the sea.

"Resting it almost seems." There should be a comma after "resting", but that's if you're going to use this phrase. The "it almost seems" completely kills the strength of the sentence. It slaughters the sentence. And then it trambles all over the corpse a couple of times for good measure.

Don't hem and haw. Don't be uncertain. "It almost seems," undermines the power and poetry of your narrative. It shows that you the author are second-guessing your story — or at least, that's the impression that carries across to me the reader. That's not good.

She changes her direction suddenly, and starts towards the mountains.

The comma after "suddenly" is unnecessary, unless "and starts" becomes "starting".

She is unaware of the emerald eyes following her, watching her come closer.

I'd suggest replacing "come closer" with "approach." Omit unecessary/excessive words.

She changes her direction suddenly, and starts towards the mountains. The wind chime swinging in her hand, the hum of her voice creating an almost haunting melody. The wind is picking up again, her wine hair flying about her face, framing her vacant eyes. She is unaware of the emerald eyes following her, watching her coming closer. She reaches the mountains, stares up at them for a second, and then starts climbing up, clawing at the rocks with her hands.

I'm sure this is pretty self-evident with the bolded text, but all of your sentences either start with "she" or "the wind". Variety is your friend.

With that said — vary your sentence structure in this paragraph. All of them start, "Noun - verb - etc." It's tedious and makes the narrative very clunky.

Black against black. She sees the sleek body of a black panther, standing still as if it’s been carved out of black marble.

Again, I'm pretty sure this becomes self-evident, but — I urge you to find an adjective other than "black". You're also pretty non-specific in terms of "black against black". I assume one of those is the black panther, but what's the other black thingy? The sky? The picturesque landscape? Something completely different? Elaborate; not too much, but slip in a short phrase or sentence to clarify. Although leave the first sentence ("Black against black.") as it is — it's lovely.

Also, your comparison of the black panther to marble is kind of, um, redundant. Majorly redundant. The black panther is like black marble? I'd suggest trimming it down to simply "marble", so:

She sees the sleek body of a black panther, standing still as if it's been carved out of marble.

You may want to play with this sentence, though. And again, I'd suggest finding some other way to describe the panther.

The panther nods in respond to her, and beckons her to climb onto its back.

A couple of really minor things. The comma is unnecessary, unless you're replacing "and beckons" witih "beckoning". And it should be "beckons for her to climb onto its back."

And finally — "in respond" should be "in response". Minor spelling thing.

The rain has started pouring steadily and together they make it to the top.

Two things.

First of all, there's no segue between this sentence and the previous one. I'd suggest either slipping in some kind of logical segue or, easier still, separating this into a new paragraph. In which case, you might want to elaborate on this. The rain is pouring steadily, and it's probably slippier — I'll bet it's not so easy to for Iris to find traction on the "marbled mountains".

Also, I'm wondering if it's humanly possible to replace "has started pouring steadily" with a slightly less wordy phrase (or even a word, if you can find an appropriate synonym). Even "the rain begins to fall," would be less of a mouthful; right now, there's too much crammed in too small of a space.

The wind is picking up, and the clouds are thundering again.

Hmm. Clouds don't really thunder, do they? I'm assuming the thunder is the point of the clause (as opposed to the clouds), so I'd suggest rewording it to indicate that it's thundering. Without the clouds.

She raises her hands above her head, and the wind spirits wrap themselves about her and take her towards the sea, and gently set her upon the waves.

A bit of a minor nitpick on word choice: you can't really lie on the sea, or on the waves of the sea. (In other words: It's more of an "in the sea" thing.)

Also, for the sake of flow, I'd suggest taking out "and gently set" to "gently setting". And, while you're at it, break up the sentence. There's too many clauses, even if they are bridged by "and" — a lot of the potency that this passage could have is lost because it's such a run-on sentence.

Overall — a very lovely story. A bit of poetry, a bit of prose, a bit of awesome.

Sorry it took me so critique this. Good luck on editing!