Young Writers Society

This is great. Super interesting and it grabs your attention right from the start. I really love the choice of using "you" the way you did, making the reader the main character of the story. "You say" "You know better" "You close the dumpster lid" It really makes the scenario feel real. really go imagery. Keep it up!

Wow, this was really interesting. I think it's cool that you wrote in second person, which is pretty rare for short stories. The imagery is amazing as well, with lines like "Thin lilac lips twist into a frown." and "A halo of shadow and garbage encircles his head." you give the reader a vivid image. In flash fiction, oftentimes these descriptions are lacking in order to shorted the story, so I'm glad you included them! I wish I could make suggestions, but I think this piece is excellent as is. Overall great job, hope you have an amazing day!

Hello Sonder!!

First off, I have to say; I really like your name. I assume if you're using it as your YWS handle, then you know the meaning of the word, and the feelings and emotions that surround it. I think that as a writer, as a person who purposefully instills your your point of view into other peoples lives, be the people fiction or not; it applies more than ever. But even in general, it's such an unnerving feeling sometimes

As a fan of flash fiction (Or at least, my peculiar version of flash fiction evenly melded with poetry crashing into a monologue), I saw your description of this work and I was instantly intrigued. For an English assignment I just had to do, we were supposed to write and epic fight scene with no context, no explanation, just the fight and victory. That's what this made me think of. It's just a snippet of a bigger story, with no context or background, but it holds so much detail!

A huge part of flash fiction is detail. Whether you're writing a scene, or a completed short story, it's the details that matter. I love how many details you used to describe this angel with eye-covered wings.
"A halo of shadow and garbage encircles his head."
This line particularly starts of with the image of an angel who used to be something more, but has now been contaminated and warped. I also really enjoyed how with every action, the description of our de-glorified angel grows more and more detailed, until I feel as though I can see him clearly in my head.

I found no errors, grammatically or spelling wise, so great job on that! I very much enjoy reading your works, I wish you luck in your future writing endeavors!

Best of luck, Autopilot

Salutations!

You know, for a prompt about something you could find in a dumpster, this is certainly one of the more creative and genuinely unexpected responses anyone could have gotten. It's short, as school and university/college creative essays tend to be, but it was wonderfully entertaining. There is as much to critique here as in longer works, but I still have a fair bit to say. I'll take it line by line.


I've always had difficulty deciding whether to split a paragraph once it introduces dialogue, or if I should rather just leave it, since the dialogue matches the actions that precede it. For your first and second lines, I feel they can be merged into a single one, as opening a dumpster's lid and addressing whatever is inside the dumpster seems to me as one series of actions. In contrast, you did well keeping the following two paragraphs separate; sure, the first one ends with a description of the fallen angel and the second starts with one, too, the description of its halo can be seen as part of the immediately noticeable features, whereas the rest are things you'll notice once you look for even a second longer.

When you describe the jutting ribs, you make a reference to something for which they appear to be begging, but you end with "who knows". I feel that could have been more effective if included in brackets, as it would allow a question mark to be used after it, while not replacing the full stop that would need to appear at the end of such a sentence, outside the brackets. It wouldn't affect your word count either, so I recommend keeping parenthesis in mind for next time (even though it would make it a parenthesis within a parenthesis).

The fifth paragraph I originally wanted to say you could merge with the fourth, but again, I agree with your choice; the wings and the body are worthy of separate descriptions, as they're distinct enough. The wings are also more thematically important, so I don't think the reader would object. Besides, it keeps your paragraphs short and doesn't interrupt the flow, which is always good. As for the eyes themselves, how exactly do they line it? Are they scattered all over the wings; are there a few located in the centre, like an actual butterflies'; do they only line the arches of the wings? There are many ways it can presented, so I feel you could perhaps steal at least a few words to clarify that detail. Nevertheless, the eyeless face with the eyed wings is definitely an unsettling feature, and a good way of making the most of your limited words.

It's interesting that the angel's lips are also lilac. A good touch, and in keeping with the imagery. However, lips can't frown, so if you could have said something about them pursing instead, that would have been more appropriate. Nevertheless, you got your point across, and it's not too bothersome, so your description still succeeded!

In your antepenultimate paragraph, your final clause feels forced. We already know he has wings covered in eyes, so while repeating that is good for emphasis, something like "the emaciated figure whines" would have worked more efficiently. It would also have freed some words for you to use for the suggestion I made a couple of paragraphs ago.

Your last two paragraphs are yet another case where I'd personally have merged them, yet when I think about it, keeping them apart still works. I'm fascinated by how you consistently manage that.

As a final note, your usage of commas is somewhat... I don't want to say bothersome, but something like that. Your third comma in your third paragraph (the first one outside the dialogue) shouldn't be there, and I could say the same of the one in the fifth paragraph, just before the iris mention, but you could just as well argue it's a stylistic preference. I love commas, too, but you seem to use them a bit too much, even for my taste.


Your story was hardly a story, and yet it said more than some I've read that are twenty times its length. I'm curious as to why you chose Enoch as the name the narrator says the reader - using a second person narrator is yet another fascinating feature about this work - gives to the angel. I looked it up, and it refers to one of only two people who was escorted to Heaven without dying, but I can't guess why you chose that of all names. Is it because he couldn't be led astray? Either way, it simply adds another layer of mystery to the story.

Your imagery is wonderful, and it leaves me somewhat mystified and inspired. Thank you for sharing this! I sincerely hope you got outstanding marks for it.

~ Hunter


EDIT: I read BlueAfrica's review, and it explains so much! Your symbolism is even richer than my ignorant, uncultured mind thought!

me then: I'm totally gonna go review this flash fiction Sonder wrote!
me now: whoa whoa whoa how does one review flash fiction?

I think roughly half my problem is that flash fiction always raises so many questions and I want answers, darn it, and I'm not going to get them and my review can't be "this is great but I have Questions" because it's a necessity of flash fiction that it's not going to answer all the questions or even most of the questions.

I guess the one question I'd really want at least a hint of an answer to is why the "you" of the story opens the dumpster only to put a garbage bag over the Watcher's knees and close the dumpster again.

So naturally I started by googling Enoch, which is a name only vaguely, vaguely familiar to me as being Biblical. There are a couple different things to go through, but I'm guessing this angel is a Watcher. Presumably a fallen Watcher. And I'm guessing this is the reason for all the creepy eyes on his wings, eee.

(In my research I found a line in 2 Enoch that said, in reference to the Watchers fathering Nephilim, they "befouled the earth with their deeds," which is sort of funny because your Watcher is literally living in a dumpster. But then again maybe you knew that and did it on purpose.)

I'm also guessing the narrator's unwillingness to tell the Watcher their name stems from the mythology of the power of names. Which I'm also learning this semester is why demons always named Jesus as the Son of God, because they were hoping to gain power over him by knowing his true identity (even though it obviously never worked).

I think your description, while spare, is a good amount for the length of the story, especially because you focus on the one thing we really need description of: the angel. Readers have an idea of what dumpsters are like in a general sense, and I always think that descriptions of "you" in second-person stories ruin the effect. Like, once the author starts describing "you" I lose that sense of oneness with the narrator because the description inevitably sounds like someone who is not in fact me.

I don't have much else to say, because...flash fiction. So, sorry about that. But as usual, it's really good and deliciously creepy in that way your shorter works have.