[Character development story.]
[Proposed situation: In a hospital ward, the protagonist Ning's sister has been in a coma for several months.]
Meimei:
Mother was slightly better today, she managed to take the prescribed medication and got out of bed and walked around in the garden a bit. I prepared lunch for her in a plastic container, so she can heat it up when she wants to. Some paigu and chaofan , so you don't need to worry about her.
I got the idea of writing something for you, a book, a diary, whatever you want to call it. So that when you wake up, you won't be so lost. You won't be drowned in the sands of time, drowned by the currents of memory. The doctor said you may recover, you may not. You may recover fully, or you may recover with brain damage.
I hate them, with all their 'mays'. They push me onto the fence, one foot in despair, one foot in hop- . I'm sorry, Mei mei, you shouldn't hear me, or even see me like this. But it's hard you know, so hard at times. The landlord doubled up the rates today, and the medicine price had gone up by ten cents. I'm sorry, Mei mei, I wish I could tell you of a better world, a better life, but I can't. I'm sorry.
*
Is New Year's Eve, as I sit with you, Mother is safely asleep back home. Fireworks lights up the darkening sky in splatters of gold, green and orange. Should I describe them to you? Right now, silver ribbons arches up like a rockets, exploding into silver droplets with a loud boom. Next, small red dots flits and jumps before bellowing gracefully into a navy ball. The darkening sky provides the perfect backdrop for this exploding kaleidoscope of neon colours.
Is another year then, new start, new hopes. Do you remember what we did this time last year? It was only twelve months ago, 364 days. How can everything change within such a short amount of time? We all went out to the balcony, I still remembered grease on your lips because we had KFC that night. The scrape of chair legs against the tiles, mum's soft laughter cocooning us in an embrace.
A year ago.
Six months and twenty-nine days before Wednesday.
Do you remember what happened that day?
Never mind. That is something we should leave.
But it's been haunting my mind each night like a leaking tap, tapping and eroding the already jagged seams of my sanity.
Wednesday.
A word that would never be the same again.
*
Mei mei, I'm sorry, again. I shouldn't have reminded you.
But my mind won't let it rest, and it leaks and leaks …
I haven't told this to anyone, not even Mum, not even Mel. Only you, because, your reaction is the only one I want to face.
I've been offered a chance to rewrite our lives.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,795 Reviews
Hello.
So I'm not quite sure what to think like this.
This seems caught somewhere between a backstory infodump and forward progression. You have a certain amount of realism in the infodumping, but I'm having a hard time reconciling the character's desire to document present things in a way that's interesting for the person in a coma, but they're also using it as a sort of vent location, as well.
The events in and of themselves are alright, but they're a little dry. You're kind of just listing events without much extra added information from the character narrating it. What I mean by that is, you're not really inserting the narrator's thoughts and feelings about the events going on. They're acting more as a scribe instead of a narrator, and I'm looking for a narrator.
You're focusing very strongly on the other side, on the person being written to, and in a sense neglecting to actually insert the narrator. If you were to put in the narrator's ideas about what's going on and a few more personal details, a few more things about their life to actually show who the narrator is. Right now it's strings of events and people and withholding backstory because the narrator doesn't want to talk about it— hence why it feels like a mix of infodump and backstory.
Also, little thing, but I have no idea how the title fits in this.
Overall, I need more of the actual narrator. Right now they are a scribe, simply transcribing things for the sister's benefit. If you want to make this into a deep character building piece, then I need the actual character to be visible in the prose.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
~Rosey
Thanks so much Rosey, I agree with what you're saying, in retrospect I haven't focused that much on Ning at all. There is another one of these characters coming up so, so when I write that one, can you see if it's better?
I agree with you on the personal detail, but when I want to ask is. Where exactly is the info dump? Do you mean the way Ning recounted the events or what is it?
As for the title, that was referred to the last line.
Once again, thank you~
The info dump feeling comes from the recounting of events with no emotion attached to them. You're not giving us a whole lot of information, but it's nothing but information. There's no purpose past the sake of describing.
If you made the description serve multiple purposes, then the info dump feeling would go away.
I had a feeling the title referenced the last line, but I can't quite tie it together and it's two ends of rope that won't connect no matter how much I pull.
Truly amazing, and very sweet, good job Flite.
Jack
Heya, Flite. Happy New Year! Let's kick it off with a review.
Right, so this piece is very emotional. I can feel what's Ning's going through: frustration, hurt, anger, and everything else that's just waiting to explode. It's understandable, considering that it's possible for her to lose Mei mei forever, and to make it worse, she already seems to have lost their mother, now just a shadow of her former self, due to depression or so.
For what I like, fine the cultural feel in this nice. It's much more enthralling when we pick up the references, like Mei mei's name. I actually asked you a lot about that through PM. Also, your description is superb. I could imagine the scene vividly, so good job!
On to the critique, I notice you shifted tenses after the asterisk. I understand what you want to do, but I think that because of that, you tended to alternate between them. By that, I mean that you used present tense when most of the paragraph was in past, and past when most of it was present. Just be sure to take note of which you've been using previously and you should be fine. I'll list them down for you later. As for character development, I didn't really feel much of it, save for the mother since she appears to be faring better. Ning, on the other hand, was still her nostalgic and caring self. The only difference I saw was that she gained hope at the end because of the offer she was given.
Now, I'll be more specific and nitpicky. I'll be quoting and commenting as I go along.
I think you could separate this into two sentences, replacing the comma after "today" with a period, then eliminating the first "and", putting a comma in its place. Also, here's one of those tense shifts I was talking about. It should be "get".
Just some small typing error I noticed. Erase the space before the comma.
Yeah, the use of "recover" kind of got redundant for me. I suggest you change it up a little.
This is just a tiny and more of a personal thing than anything else. It's just that I prefer that words be cut off in their proper syllables, so I'd appreciate it if you put the "e" in there. It seems more natural to me that way.
I think that should be "It's". Also, I suggest you put an "and" between the comma and "as".
I just crossed out the "s" in "lights".
Same comment as the one before. I think it should be "It's".
Another one of the tense shifts. It should be "remember". Now, for that second sentence, it's sort of incomplete for me. I'm not really sure what to suggest for it, but there might be some way to incorporate it better into the paragraph.
This may just be me, but I was confused by the second line at first. I mean, it's because previously, you said "A year ago", then it goes to "Six months...". I understand now, but you might want to tweak that.
Well, that's about it! I hope this review helped. Good luck and keep writing, Flite!
Thank you Skye! Yeah, I do tend to switch between past and present tense without knowing, so I'll work on that. When you say character development, do you haven any suggestions to improve that?
Wow, what a great beginning. You are such a writer. The concept of writing things down in hopes that she will read it, but never knowing, is a really interesting idea. I think you have the bud of an excellent story here. If you developed a bit more on Ning's role as the mother now that her actual mother has sort of been a shell of her former self. Maybe talk more about how her mother used to be? The cultural references are integrated into the story very well too, it adds authenticity. I can't wait to read more!
Thank you!
Hey there, Flite!
First off, this is amazing! I love the description of the fireworks and the way the whole thing just flows together.
No spelling or grammatical errors, and I like the way you cleverly added the words from the different language in a way that the reader understands them. It's almost like half poem, half journal entry.
Keep up the good work!
~Swiftfur
Thank you!