There was fire in the heavens. The aurora blazed overhead, bathing the frozen Baja peninsula in vibrant colour. It was somewhat beautiful. But for Rob Reynolds and Dana Sentrosi, it conjured up frightful images. The stories their parents had told them, of when great missiles streaked across ever-darkening skies to sow the sickening fire of nuclear detonation, came to their minds. For all they knew, this could be an omen, a harbinger that the past they knew as distant could very well come around again.
“It scares you,” Rob said out loud, both to Dana and to himself. “But, strangely, it’s not a frightful scare, more of an awesome one, I guess.”
Dana nodded. “In it’s own horrible way, it’s beautiful.”
“My mother would always make the sign of warding at it when it appeared,” Rob said. He held up two fingers in a V and moved his hand back and forth to the sky. Dana did the same, though the webbing between her first knuckles made her effort a clumsy one.
“Did it work?” she asked him.
Rob put his hand down. Dana did as well. “It worked. No harm ever came from the aurora anyways. Just from the leech pools.”
Dana nodded. “Your mother was wise then.”
Rob looked over at Dana. She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were gazing out at the dark ocean. It rolled bible black beneath the eldritch light of the aurora, slick and sinuous in its movements. Rob could not imagine why Dana dwelt there. The waters held the worst sins of their fathers. The depths were filled with radiation, while the shallows were filled with fierce predators. But her kind was at home there. The air dried out their skin and made them overheat. Each new generation was more like that. In time, they might not be able to leave the sea. This made Rob sad, though he didn’t know why.
Dana looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m missing you, but you’re not the one that will leave.”
She smiled a little, her whiskers tilting up. “Is the future worrying you?”
He nodded. “Where I came from, my people were few. Here, they are even fewer.”
“The True are fading.”
Rob shook his head. “We aren’t true. If anything, the True are false. Your people are more true than me.”
Dana put her hand on his shoulder. “You are the heir of the past, not the past itself. Your fate belongs to you alone. The same is true of all of us.”
Rob looked out at the sky. Through the aurora and the thick clouds. He could see tiny bright pinpoints: stars. They shone on in the blackness. How far out where they? All the old books that still survived told him they were a great ways off. He thought that was because they were windows into heaven, ways for God to look down upon the world. The stars were few, but like humanity, they had once been many.
‘God doesn’t want to see us,’ Rob thought to himself. ‘He’s shut most of the windows.’
“But there are still a few open,” Dana said. Rob turned to her.
“Did I say that out loud?”
“No. But it was heavy on your mind.”
Rob smiled he looked back up at the sky. There were a few stars that were still open.
“I guess He still cares,” he admitted. “Someone has to.”
Dana put an arm around him. “Even if no one out there does. I still do.”
Rob smiled and put an arm around her as well. “ I like that,” he said, holding her close against him.
High above, the clouds shifted in the wind. Slowly but surely, more stars shone down.
This is for Cal's Chorus Contest. The song is Beneath These Waves by Demons & Wizards. The word is Episode.
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The info-dump is leaving me queasy. It started well with the imagery and emotions but spiraled downhill the second you began to talk about "great missiles". From then on, it was like reading a poor attempt at trying to establish background in one sweet sentence while being natural; it didn't come off that way and sounded forced. Space it out. We don't need to know about the nuclear part, even, until maybe a paragraph or two down.
I don't know. It sounds bad right now so really any edit you make to this part will be better.
And the last sentence of that paragraph is preachy. People looking up at the sky wouldn't immediately self-castigate and be warned that doom could still be approaching. Streams of thought don't work like that, change it.
Terrible dialogue, sorry. It sounds...incredibly wooden. People don't speak in such nuanced, convoluted sentences unless you deliberately wanted to make these characters surreal and non-human. Anyway, change this, have them talk to each other piece by piece like you have below.
This is the template of conversation you need to take inspiration from and apply to the rest of the story. This part was about the only good dialogue in this entire piece.
Eldritch? I've heard it before...strange, odd? Whatever the case, it's an incredibly obscure word that most people won't understand and will rather think it was made up by the fictional society. You might want to change it, but I won't directly recommend anything.
Last sentence lacked any sort of punch. Making someone "sad" isn't doing anything. Go into it more or cut it out, let Rob express his "sadness" by himself without narrator interruption of his emotions.
Bad, cheesy dialogue. I think I've already mentioned something about this above, so fix it like I suggested.
Good, no comment here. It teetered on the edge of info-dumping in that big paragraph above but you managed to cut it off before it became truly a bore.
That's...really unrealistic. How could she possibly know that he was thinking about windows, of all things? The chances are almost nil. At least make him talk about windows in the beginning or something, so she would take that as a reason to speak of them now.
Good, no comment, except that "slowly but surely" is an egregious cliche that you need to cut from your last sentence.
Overall, the dialogue really killed your story here. That should be your primary concern; work with how they speak to each other, don't make the conversations so heavy in every sentence or it sounds like a bad fantasy novel. There are other mistakes too, which I pointed out, but your dialogue woes take the cake.
Hope that helped.
A nice piece. That being said, here's my critique:
How about: 'Fire was in the heavens.'
Avoid using 'There was' and 'There were' to begin sentences.
That's somewhat nice to know. (Avoid using the word 'somewhat').
I don't think this sentence is necessary. You can show us how the characters feel as the scene progresses.
Because Dana says this, you don't need to say 'It was somewhat beautiful' in the first paragraph.
Is he referring to the sky?
Show us, don't tell us.
Even if it takes an entire page to show the reader where Dana lives, it's better than dumping information in one sentence.
'Her kind'... What exactly does Dana look like?
'At home there'... There or here? Where is there?
When you tell the reader information, you must be specific. Otherwise, you might confuse the reader.
You should only be vague when you're hiding information.
This scene needs a stronger conflict. A conflict ensures change, and change is what hooks a reader.
Without anticipation and change, readers can stop reading.
During dialogue, the characters Rob and Dana should not be in the same paragraph. Having two characters in one paragraph during dialogue can confuse the reader.
Who says: "Did I say that out loud?"
My first thought is that Rob said it, because you mention him last. My second thought is that it makes more sense if Dana is still speaking.
I have no idea who is saying this, nor do I understand what is being said. What exactly is 'heavy on your mind' supposed to mean? Is it essential to the dialogue, to the reader, or to character development?
That sounds awkward. How about: 'more stars appeared.'
To begin, pretty much everything after the "opening" was beautiful. I liked the dialogue and thought it was very meaningful. It really was pretty cool. The opening is only 90 percent amazing. You need to maybe give even more descriptions and (I know all writers think I'm a moron when i say this but,) change/simplify you word choice so that it flows a little more like poetry. It is really the second sentence in the beginning paragraph that I don't like a whole lot. I'm not saying it is bad. I'm just saying you change it from an okay opening to an opening that grabs you by the neck and says get in here. (That's a good thing despite the bad analogy.) Only Kellogg's frosted flakes type stories go far. (stories that are "more than good. They're great.")
Hello Conrad!
It's should be its. You've got the second it's right.
All through out the story you've got double quotation marks, but there you've got single quotation marks. Just thought I'd point that out. ^.^
I think there's a word missing there. And? As?
That should be one sentence, not two.
One last thing; this only a personal opinion so you might not agree with this one.
You have a very beautiful opening but that sentence really sticks out as odd. It's very weak and stands out as it's too plain. The rest of the paragraph has very strong imagery. Maybe substitute the word 'somewhat' with something stronger.
Other than that, I have to say I really liked this piece. It's very deep and meaningful, and the imagery is very beautiful. The descriptions and dialogue all flowed very well. Good job!
-Zehra
Excellent opening sentence. Can't really say anything more about it because it speaks volumes for itself, I would say.
Excuse me while I nitpick about commas, this you can disregard if you have differing concepts of flow:
This seems jarring. Not sure how you would fix it. Maybe like this: The stories their parents had told them came to their minds; stories of when great missiles streaked across ever-darkening skies to sow the sickening fire of nuclear detonation.
For all they knew(,) this could be an omen; a harbinger that the past they knew as distant could very well come around again.
That's about all I have to say, other than I really liked this piece. It's quaint, just vague enough, but not pretentious. Kudos all around.