Arianna held to a branch for her life. She sweated furiously, and her heart was pounding. A hundred feet above her was the ledge she'd fallen from, below her... She gulped.
Her armor was light compared to some, however, on a cliff, it weighed her down. Tears slipped off her cheeks and into the abyss below. Mist filled the bottom. The sounds of a swordfight above her were loud enough to wake the dead. Which she would be soon.
Maybe the gods will have mercy, and turn me to a bird. The thought amused her, and she smiled weakly. Curse Shawn.
One of her hands slipped. Rocks fell to the bottom, she listened for them, and counted eight seconds before she heard a splash. Arianna glanced down into the ravine below, she instantly regretted it.
More rocks tumbled from above, a man's backside was the only thing visible. A cry echoed as the man misplaced a foot and tumbled to his doom.
Shawn. Arianna watched the man she and Hendrix had fought for the past three years fall to his death, he saw her, and shouted out something that never reached her ears. She held her breath as she watched him disappear into the mist.
"Arianna!" Hendricks voice rang throughout the ravine. She looked up, his head poked out over the ledge, he hopelessly reached out a hand, as if his arm would stretch down and pull her to safety. But her hand only slipped a little more.
"Don't forget..." Arianna released her grasp. Shadows enveloped her, as she fell to her end, Hendricks cry followed. Her last wish was that Hendrix 's story would end happily.
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,742 Reviews
Hey there Horisun! I'm here for the review you requested in my thread.
This was an intense piece of flash fiction. You jump right into the action, with her dangling literally off a cliff, and race straight to the climax. That's definitely a good start, so let's jump right into this.
Plot and Story
I don't want to discourage you with this, so please don't take it to mean your story is bad (it's not), but I feel like it's important for you to know that when I came to the end of this story, my reaction was along the lines of "okay, that's kind of sad, I guess." That doesn't mean you don't have a good story - it means that the set-up didn't work in a way that gave me an emotional payoff. Let's talk about why.
The very first thing a writer has to do in a story is get the reader to care. If the reader isn't emotionally invested in the outcome of the story - whether because they want the main character to get the thing they want so desperately, or because they want to explore this cool world, or because they're just curious to see where it goes - then the reader will stop reading, or get to the emotional parts and simply not care. In order to care, the reader needs to know three main things: who the main character is as a person, what they want, and what's stopping them from getting it.
The reason that I didn't really care when Arianna fell to her death was because I don't know who she is. I know that she's fighting, and I know that she cares about someone named Hendrix, and that they were fighting a guy called Shawn and seem to have succeeded, if at the cost of her life, but that's like knowing names and dates in a history book. What I don't know is why, and that is the most important part of making a reader care about a character - showing the reader what the person cares about and why. Right now, all we really know about Arianna is the immediate thing stopping her from getting the thing she wants - she's dangling off a cliff. We know almost nothing about 1 and 2 of the three things I mentioned above.
Fix that, and you've got a great piece of flash fiction.
(I wish fixing it was as easy as saying it. The problem is, it's of course difficult to explain things and characterize a character in such a short piece of fiction. Simply explaining how she got here and why she's fighting Hendricks with a couple paragraphs of exposition won't work - it'll feel too distant. We need to live it with her, feel what she feels. My suggestion would be to actually start this piece earlier, before she gets knocked off the cliff, and show the events that led up to that. Show her desperation in the fight, exchange dialogue that reveals why they're fighting, give her a chance to demonstrate bravery, self-sacrifice, anything that will make us care when she falls.)
Sentence-level Stuff
I mostly only have one specific comment here:
Here's a question for you: when you are dangling off a cliff, about to fall to your death, are you really going to be thinking about how your armor isn't that heavy compared to other people's, but still weighing you down? Not really - at most, it would flash through your mind that your armor is making it hard to hold on. When you're writing in a character's head like this, the narrative's attention should always primarily be where the character's attention is. This means that the details you describe in the narrative should mostly only be what the character is noticing. In this case, the tears, the description of the abyss, and the sounds of the battle all fit, but the detail about her armor doesn't. It's a small thing, but being careful about details like that really adds to the narrative.
I think that's about all I've got for you! I hope this helped, and I hope I wasn't too harsh. You're definitely going somewhere with this story, so good luck, and keep writing!
Thank you so much for the review! I will take what you said into account.
Hello, MaybeInk here for a review!
This was very moving and the suspense was jarring, good work!
*Deep breath* alright, when I clicked on this story, I thought you just didn't have a title and "Cliffhanger" was just a warning or something. I didn't expect such a literal title. I'm a little shook now.
ANYWAY, I think I've recovered, so I'm going to point out that Hendrix/Hendricks doesn't seem to have a consistent name, but I think AmadeusW already got that.
About the name, I think maybe "The Edge," "His Cry," "And She Fell," and any variation of the two could work.
Well, that's it for me, keep writing!
~ MaybeInk
Thanks for the reveiw! I am horrible with title names! Thanks for the suggestions!
Whoaaaa this is terrifying in a good way. Yes, you'll definitely need a title change. Let's go to the review first, then I'll conjure up a few suggestions for titles.
First: The suspense is amazing. I love it. But when someone is hanging for dear life on the edge of a cliff, I really don't think they'll have time to think and smile at their thoughts. "Maybe the gods will have mercy, and turn me into a bird. The thought amused her, and she smiled weakly. Curse Shawn." This passage is unrealistic. I would imagine that if this character was thinking at all, she'd be screaming in her head and screaming to her fellow soldiers up in the "swordfight above her" to save her from dying.
Second: There are a few grammatical errors. "A hundred feet above her was the ledge she'd fallen from, below her... She gulped." The "below her" part should be made into a new sentence. Like "She looked below her, then gulped."
"Her armor was light compared to some, however, on a cliff, it weighed her down." This sentence works, but I do think it would run smoother as two sentences.
"Arianna glanced down into the ravine below, she instantly regretted it." I think you could place a period where the comma is.
"A cry echoed as the man misplaced a foot and tumbled to his doom.
Shawn. Arianna watched the man she and Hendrix had fought for the past three years fall to his death, he saw her, and shouted out something that never reached her ears. She held her breath as she watched him disappear into the mist." In this passage I feel like the first sentence establishes this man has already fallen and died, whereas it is explained in the second paragraph that he is still falling. The sentence "Arianna watched the man... reached her ears." Should be broken up into two sentences because they contain two different ideas. One idea is that she saw the man she had once been enemies with fall to his death, the other idea is that he saw her and shouted.
Hendrix is spelled two different ways.
And that's all! Now on to the title ideas:
1. The Precipice
2. Her Final Moments
3. On the Brink of Death/On the Edge of Death
HAPPY WRITING!!!!!
Thanks for the reveiw! I had a friend in first grade named hendrix, and didn't know how to spell his name