Hey there, I'll take a crack at your revised version. Be warned that I can get very nitpicky and in-depth--I can write paragraphs picking apart an entire sentence. Don't let that put you of!
Daniel had no clue how he ended up in the middle of a burning forest, which caged him. Stretching out in every direction was an inferno of entwined, blazing trees and shriveling greenery. Even with the fires, the forest was dark, almost black.
This should be a powerful image that opens the story with a bam, but it falls kind of flat. I mean, it doesn't really feel like we've been dropped in the middle of a burning forest. Part of that comes from the description being purely visual. We see the inferno and the blazing trees and dark forest, but we don't feel the heat or smell the smoke; factors which, I think, would be more immediately noticeable than the sight of the fire. It's a common tendency to want to describe only visual things, but remember, if you're to immerse us into this setting properly, you need to appeal to all five senses. Don't do a laundry list of taste/sight/smell/sound/touch, but decide which ones are more important--which ones will convey a stronger image--and write accordingly.
I've never been in a fire before, but using logic alone I'd assume that the heat is the first thing I'd feel if I suddenly found myself in a burning forest.
Also, this paragraph suffers from some awkward phrasings. I understand what you're trying to say, but I think that your sentences could stand to be phrased better, clearer. The "which caged him" part at the end of the first sentence, in particular, is a stumbler. Nor do I think it's necessary. Seems like you didn't want to finish the sentence where you had, so you tacked on some superfluous description. A shame, because without that bit the first sentence would be quite shocking and impactful. Don't be afraid to use short, emphatic sentences when they're necessary.
There were thousands of people around him, equally petrified.
In general, it is not a good idea to begin a sentence with "there was/were." In almost every case, you can find a more natural, concise way to state what you mean.
“Hey, what's with the coat?” Daniel said. “There's fire everywhere, man!”
Okay, I laughed aloud at this. And not in a good way. This is, to put in bluntly, completely unrealistic. You find yourself in the middle of a burning forest. What's the first thing you do--run up to someone and ask them about their coat, or just stand around disoriented, trying to figure out what's going on?
Now that I think on it, it seems that Daniel was rather quick to figure out that he was in a forest in the first place. It's a good exercise to put yourself into a character's shoes to figure out how the character would react--at the very least it'll ensure you that your character's reactions will be based somewhat in reality, rather than being...completely out there and unrealistic. If you found yourself in the middle of somewhere that's burning up, would you be coherent enough to think "Oh, this is a forest?" Would you, when you see someone, ask them about their clothes or would you demand to know what the frak's going on, or ask them for some frakking help?
The "There's fire everywhere, man!" is a line that ought to be relegated to the realm of crappy 80's Saturday morning cartoons. Please don't use something like that seriously.
“Shut up,” the man spat, his voice youthful.
Err...and what does a youthful voice sound like? Young men have lots of different kinds of voices, you know. And it seems incongruous to mention that detail after the man's just pretty much insulted Daniel.
“Fine, Mr. Grumpy.”
Again, ask yourself if this is realistic. You're in a strange environment and the first person you ask for help is hostile to you. Would you grumble (rather immaturely, to boot) about how they're grumpy, or would you be shell-shocked, disoriented, and dispirited?
I have to mention that by this point, I'm really not liking Daniel. To be honest, I find myself hating him. He doesn't act like any human being I've ever met. He acts like a cartoon character, and a not very smart one, at that. Maybe he'll get better as I read on, but right now I'm dreading the prospect of reading more about him. Being able to create a strong impression of your protagonist within the first few paragraphs is a wonderful skill, but I get the feeling that you didn't intend Daniel to be this unlikeable.
This is an opening that has so much potential for drama--burning forest! Strangely behaving people--but your main character's reaction to it is so blase it ruins any drama and worse, credibility
He frantically scanned the dark environment, looking for any opening in his flaming surroundings.
This is the first sign of normal human behavior from Daniel. Even then, I'm finding him shockingly incurious about the whole thing.
Narrowing his eyes he saw that it was a flower bed.
Comma between "Narrowing" and "his."
“Hey, do you know what's going on?” a girl said.
“Hi. And no. I have no idea,” Daniel said. Looking at the edge of the field, his eyes grew wide.
Once again, ask yourself if real people in a real situation like this would talk so casually. Yes, I know this is a fiction story, but if your characters who are presumably human beings from this planet do not act like human beings from this planet, you are straining your credibility as a writer beyond belief. Generally the allure of fantasy--particularly urban fantasy, which I assume this is--is reading about people like us in situations we can never experience in our mundane lives. The "people like us" part is crucial. In order for us to identify with urban fantasy protagonists we have to expect them to have the same way that we would in such situations.
The fire was in the vague form of a square, matching the distant tree line.
Erm, I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The way you're describing this makes it look like a bonfire someone intentionally set up, but then you describe the forest itself as burning, as if in a wildfire. The fact that the fire is confined to an area shaped in something as regular as a square implies that it's being controlled. A wildfire is a fire that has gone out of control.
Do you want there be a fire in the forest, or do you want the fores to be on fire? Stick to one or the other, because right now you're throwing a host of confusing, contradictory images at the readers.
And the "matching the distant tree line" part completely lost me. Is the tree line shaped like a squarea?
gray smoke floated.
Floated where?
"Floated" is an odd term to use for describing smoke. It gives an impression of intangibility; the more common verb I've seen associated with smoke is "billowed." It might seen like a minor thing, but when you're writing every word has to count. A word used wrong or in a weird way will jerk us directly out of the narrative, and the same goes for awkwardly phrased sentences.
What's going on? He hadn't gone camping last night. Was I sleepwalking? It was possible, but doubtful, because never in his life had he sleepwalked. And why are all these people here with me?
Well, finally Daniel's showing some curiosity. I wish we could've gotten more of this earlier--for instance, when he first lays eyes on the burning forest.
It might be a good time to mention just what Daniel had been doing before he ended up in the forest.
He spun in a circle and saw the trees slowly untwist.
??? I don't understand this at all.
These descriptions I find confusing, in part because I'm still working under the impression that the fire is confined in a square-shaped area. Is that not what you meant by square?
“Where did that come from?”
Daniel sure has a penchant for stating the obvious, huh?
The young deer was crying out in an agonizing melody of sorrow.
This is excessively melodramatic. You'd convey the same impression, but much less heavy-handedly, by cutting out the "agonizing melody of sorrow" part.
“Easy, little guy,” Daniel said. The fawn raised its head to look at him. Daniel saw his face reflected in its glassy black eyes. He looked bald since his black hair was invisible in the oily depths of its beady eyes.
Hmm, I'm liking this paragraph a lot more than the previous ones. Daniel's displaying an admirable character trait, for one--he's kind--and the description of him looking bald in the fawn's eyes is a nice, specific detail. The kind of solid anchoring that this piece has been lacking.
Foot falls crunched on the grass.
"Footfalls" is one word, and I'm not sure if it's the appropriate word in this case. To me at least, "footfalls" carries the connotation of a softer sound than crunching.
Daniel looked up to see what they were.
But he already knows what they are! They're footfalls, as described in the previous section. Surely he should be wondering who they belong to, instead?
It might seem trivial, but you honestly do have to think long and hard over every single word and phrase you use. You might mean something, but if the prose doesn't actually say what you mean, then there's no point in saying later, "Well, what I meant to say was this." Your prose has to speak for itself, and to do that it has to be as clear as possible. I'm not saying that clarity is the only style of writing; there are a lot of writers who made their career from writing opaquely. The difference is that they were all well trained in the craft and knew exactly what they were doing. Nobody on this site is as talented as them (which makes sense, we're all young and learnign here). The vibe I'm getting from this entire piece is that you either don't care about whether your writing is clear or not, or you're struggling to put into solid form the words that are swirling, undisciplined and untamed, in your mind.
I'm going to be honestly harsh here and say that though this is a "new version," it reads more like a rough draft. The first time you jot down the pictures in your head. Something almost always gets lost in the translation, though. It's your job in the revisions to tighten every sentence, look over every word choice, and eventually regain what was lost.
Her face was rather cute, even with the dark spots under her eyes.
Different people have different ideas what is "cute." Describe what makes her face cute to Daniel--that would also create a more solid physical description of her.
“No it doesn’t, you silly goose,” Daniel said cheerfully.
...does anyone actually talk like this? Teenagers especially (I assume that Daniel is a teenager). I have only ever heard old ladies say "you silly goose."
I'm finding all of Daniel's interactions with the girl perplexing. I mean, they're in the middle of a burning forest, but they're trading banter and seem to have absolutely no concern for their lives. It doesn't ring true.
The man in the orange coat jogged to the left, exposing the side of his face.
You have a lot of awkward phrasings like this. Just try reading this sentence aloud. It doesn't come naturally off your tongue, does it? I get that you're trying to say that as the man jobs past, his face is exposed, but the way you're phrasing it implies that the man is exposing is face deliberately. Well, at least I think that's what it implies. The syntax is so tortured it's difficult to figure out.
Daniel rubbed his chin, stubble scraped against his fingers. “I need a shave.”
Err...what? And just when I was beginning to think of Daniel as an actual human being. This line is a total non sequitur and the last thing that anybody in such a situation would think about. The way this scene is written makes me think that you've forgotten at some points that the characters are in the middle of a frakking burning forest. The setting doesn't just serve as a backdrop to be described once or twice but then thrown aside; characters are supposed to interact with the setting.
The fiery trees were now at least a quarter of a mile away.
Wait...so Daniel was moving? You've given no indication of that. For all I know, he's still crouched by the fawn.
the source of the sounds, which were growing in intensity.
See, here's another place where absolute clarity is essential. The way this sentence is set up implies that the source is growing in intensity, whereas I think you mean to say that the sounds themselves are.
Its antlers were on fire, while the rest of its body was unsigned by the flames.
"Unsigned?" Did you mean to say "untouched?"
This is another image that should be striking, just like the burning forest. Don't be afraid to go into detail describing it.
“It's amazing,” he said.
“What is?” the girl said.
“That deers adapted to forest fires.”
Errgh, must I repeat the old "real people don't act this way" canard?
I mean, these kids just saw a stag that's on fire and still alive! Geez, and the only thing they can think to say is "The deer's apated to forest fires?" I doubt that will be the first thought that crosses your mind if you witness such a thing.
To be honest, at this point, I'm not sure if I want to continue. The characters are the driving force behind a story, even a plot-based one. If they behave in unrealistic ways, you've lost the audience's willing suspension of disbelief. As it is, I have trouble believing that these people are even people at all. They have no personalities and they behave as no human being on Earth ever would. You've said before that you don't know any people and that's why you have trouble writing them. So you don't have a family? No classmates? No neighbors? Come on, you must at least talk to cashiers when you buy stuff from the store, unless you live as a recluse and order everything online. But even then, you should at least interact with your frakking landlord/landlady.
Look, I like being a recluse too. When I was younger I thought nothing could be grander than living as a hermit and writing all day. But it is IMPOSSIBLE to become a good writer if you don't know people. If you don't know how they talk, how they behave, how they think, what their hopes and dreams are. If you can't put yourself in other peoples' shoes. I've always believed empathy to be the fundamental characteristic of a writer. It took me a long time to develop my sense of empathy and that involved having to get out, go into the real world, make friends, talk to people, observe people, and basically, live in the goddamned real world.
I'm getting the feeling that by this point, going line-by-line would be a waste. The problems with this piece are fundamental. They go beyond mere awkward sentence structures and misplaced commas.
Quite simply, your characters are not people. Your story has no logic to it. It is a mess of inconsistencies with some nice images thrown in.
I don't mean to be this harsh. Normally I am not. I honestly went in this expecting to enjoy it, and I tried to like it. I almost always try to find at least one thing to like about a story--I do like some things. You have a lot of powerful, well-developed images. The deadly rosebush, the flaming stag, the fawn dissolving into water, the gathering of animals at the end. The entire scene itself reads like something out a creation fable--we have destruction, then rebirth. It doesn't make sense, but that reinforces the sense that something grand and epic is going on, beyond the comprehension of mere humans.
So I liked that. But that is not enough to make up for the shallow farces of characters, nor the fact that nothing that's going on makes any sort of logical sense. A whole bunch of random crap is happening and nobody reacts in a sensible, realistic way. It's beyond frustrating. You have these wonderful images, but there is barely any sense of wonder because the people involved don't have any sense of wonder. In a lot of stories here, I see characters who are less people than cardboard cutouts forced to move as the plot demands. But I can't evcen call your characters even that. There doesn't seem to be any discernable plot, and their actions don't seem to do anything to further it. They're just...there. They're all ciphers, with no personalities and no motivations.
Maybe this is supposed to represent somebody's dream (Andrew certainly thinks it is) and that's why nobody behaves like they have a brain. If it is a dream sequence, it has gone one rather longer than it should. Or maybe I need to take drugs to understand what's going on.
I'm sorry about being mean. I know you must have worked hard on this--I mean, you've even revised this. It must hurt beyond all comprehension to have somebody tear it down to its very foundations. You don't have to agree with everything I said, or even carry out any of my suggestions.
I guarantee you, though, that if you don't start understanding people now, you will have a very hard time writing in the future.
PM me if you have any questions.
Points: 4198
Reviews: 157
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