“Ah. Burn it. Destroy the world. Kill me.” Bholla Baj screamed, threw the book away and banged his head on the wall. Another novel had ended with a cliffhanger.
For Bholla Baj waiting for the next book after a cliffhanger was the worst torture. It was the tenth book in last two weeks that had ended without resolving anything. Next book was coming out next year if he was lucky.
“Why kill the heroine and then show her in the epilogue? It is a very cheap trick. It looks like I am more bothered by her death then the noble hero.” He knew that it was because hero was busy saving the world and will save her in the next book. Another reason might be because Bholla Baj had never spoken to a girl.
“Might be, Really?”
“I am pathetic.”
“Yes, I am talking to myself and might be mad.”
“Yes, I have been reading fantasy books for last 2 weeks and might fail tomorrow’s exam.”
“Might Fail? I am very optimistic about my chances after attending one lecture of DEM.”
“Yes, I can’t even remember what DEM means.”
It was 5 in the morning and exam was scheduled to start at 11:30am. After setting his alarm for 7am, he decided to sleep. He woke at 7am and set a new alarm for 8am.
His emergency 10am alarm woke him. Breakfast did not agree with him before exam so he decided to skip it. He borrowed some notes from his friend QSQ(Qam Saf Qas) and started skimming through them. He was bored after reading about 15 minutes so he opened his laptop. There were important things to find out like:”How long this author took to write a book?”
He knew that he was addicted to fantasy books but they were just so damn good. At this point he knew every possible twist and has not been surprised or shocked by last 20 books. But he would keep reading them.
“Why..?”
“I have no idea.”
UMSM(University of Magical Sciences Montlore) had a policy of 80% necessary attendance for sitting in exam. The teacher of this subject was very generous and had decided to forego it. So Bholla Baj had not attended any lectures except the first one.
At 11:35am he was in the examination hall and first question in front of him was “What does DEM stands for?”.
He started laughing at himself.
………………………………………………………….
Chapter 2:
………………………………………………………….
“I was surprised at how easy this paper was. I don’t think anyone would get a bad grade in DEM.” Qam Saf Qas said to Abal Hlam and Sadran tuj. Any one else would have called these three his friends but Bholla thought of them as his temporary companions in the university.
“What grade would you get?”Sadran asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know? Sir Almik has uploaded the solution. All you have to do is look at it.”
“I am not going to look at it. I want it to be a surprise.”
Those three had been his companions for 2 years and knew that he was pretty eccentric so they just shrugged.
“How was your interview with Apnet Magics?” Abal asked him.
“It went ok.” was his reply.
“We should go to canteen and eat something.” he further added.
Four of them started moving towards canteen. He was mostly quiet on the way but Qam was very excited about his new job and continued talking about how important his company was. Qam also talked about how great was the badpind city where he would be working. Abal was mostly quiet on the way because he had failed two subjects previous semester and still had to clear them. Abal was going to be alone in the hostel because DEM was the last paper of last semester.
“I am going to do an internship here in the city. If you get the job at Apnet then we should share a room.” Sadran said to Bholla.
“I am all for it.” was his reply.
“Great, I am going to a hostel to look for a room. Would you like to come?” Sadran said while eating pizza.
“Nah, I am going to sleep. I did not sleep last night. You select the room and I will share it with you” Bholla replied during a mouthful of pizza.
“Are we going to watch a movie this weekend?”Qam asked.
No one replied and they all sat in silence. Qam knew that the silence meant that no one was up for it so he let it go.
Bholla’s mobile rang and he recieved the call.
“I am calling from Apnet Magics.”A man said on phone.
………………………………………………………….
Chapter 3
…………
Interlude
…………
Magic is not cool or very interesting in this world and it is certainly not Earth. This world’s name is Htar and it is situated in a universe named Raed. On Htar magic is used as fuel for running nearly everything. You can convert into electricity. You can use it to run cars and all things which we use are also present on Htar. Only difference is this that instead of using gas or petrol they use magic to create electricity. It is also used as fuel. There are no magicians. All of this conversion is being done through machines which run on strict principals. Using raw magic is more like writing a computer program and there are definately no spells.
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Chapter 4
1 year later
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“Why am I doing this job?”
“Because I get money from it.”
“I was going to start my own company. Why have I not started it?”
“Because I don’t have money.”
“When will I have enough?”
“In 20 years, Maybe..”
“Do I like this job?”
“No.”
“Do I even like the business that I am going to start in 20 years?”
“No.”
“Why not end my life? Why am I even alive?”
“I am a coward. I am basically afraid of dying.”
“How many days on work have I missed since I started at Apnet Magics?”
“If you add up all days except weekly holidays. It comes close to 3 months.”
“Why have they not fired me?”
“I am good and they are short on staff.”
“If I could be anything. What would I be?”
“An unobserved ghost.”
“What do I want with life?”
“No idea…..”
“Should I go to a doctor?”
“Yes, Defintely.”
After staring into empty space for another 30 minutes Bholla got up and started his laptop. He typed his resignation and emailed it to Apnet Magics.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,805 Reviews
Hey there! I was also drawn in by the tagline, and wanted to see what this was all about.
First of all, I love the personality of the title character. I love the interplay that happens between him and the narration, and how easy it is to then see him interact with roommates. The interactions seem pretty genuine.
One part I'm not liking so much is chapter three. I know it's necessary information, and it was definitely useful information, but I don't like it cut up into a separate chapter. I think you could find a way to weave this information into the other chapters without having to outright say it. Like, it already seemed as if magic was not special, because nobody was reacting it to the way we would expect them to. Perhaps explaining a bit more what the company the character interviewed does, like mentioning maybe a trial run they needed to do in the interview or something, would get the point across without being so explicit.
I really, really, really enjoy chapter four. I wonder if you even need the previous three chapters. It kind of rolls all the information into one moment -- we see that magic is his boring, boring job, and we see the same lazy elements of his personality as we saw in chapter one. You could start from chapter four without losing too much, I think. I also really appreciate how much I can relate to the character -- he's stuck in a trap, and he finally is making a move to get out. The only thing I don't really believe is that he's "good". How can he be good without studying diligently? Is it a skill you can just have natural talent in?
This was a great introduction to the story and I look forward to you sharing more.
If you have any questions or comments about my review, please PM me or reply here!
Hannah
Thanks for the review. Thanks Again. Your review has motivated me to write the next chapter and also improve the previous one's.
So the thing about this story that made me want to review it was the description. "Read at your own peril. It is too close to reality." Well, let's see if it is "close to reality" you say.
Hey there, I'm outvaders. Once again, welcome to YWS. It's a pleasure giving you your first review (or at least one of your first). Let's get started.
The first thing I noticed is that there are information dumps in these chapters. Meaning, there are some sections where the story just tells the reader. This is actually a mortal sin in creative writing (maybe not tat mortal, but it's still a crime). There's this rule in creative writing that goes, "Show, not tell." What you did in these info dumps (like the entire Chapter 3) was tell. That's the job of non-fiction writing. Your job as the creative writer is to show, to immerse the reader into the world of the story. Besides, it's boring if you just tell it straight to the reader. You'd lose their attention quickly. It would feel less realistic to the reader; though they know what's happening in the story, they aren't in the story.
The way I would rewrite the last two paragraphs of Chapter 1 to show and not tell:
"The clock read 11:35 in the examination hall. Papers were silently passed to the back, from one person to the next. As soon as Bholla received his, the first thing he saw was 'What does DEM stand for?'
Laughter started rising from the top of his lungs."
Obviously this isn't the best example, but I hope you get an idea of how to not tell the readers what's happening.
This telling instead of showing has implications on the other elements of the story. Take the setting for example. The way this story is "unrealistic" is how there is little sense of setting here. It labels the settings as words like "canteen" or "examination hall" without further elaboration. I acknowledge that Chapter 3 talked about the setting enough to give an idea of it, but the level of detail shown in this chapter isn't consistent throughout. Thus, other un-detailed scenes feel more far artificial and less realistic to the reader. It simply isn't immersive enough.
There are more implications of this telling and not showing, like in the characters, conflict, plot, etc. It also actually affects the interest of the reader in your piece. To be honest, I lost interest just from reading the first paragraph, and from then on I was struggling just to complete these four chapters.
The major issue in this story is how it tells and doesn't show, as I constantly say in this review. If you can learn how to show instead of telling, that would be a major step for you as a fiction writer. I advise you read more fiction and observe how these authors try to immerse you through their words.
Don't be discouraged by my words or the words of other reviewers though. Just think that we, the YWS, are trying to help you become a better writer through our comments. If you've learned something from this community today, then that's something worth celebrating.
Anyways, that's all for now. Best of luck in your writing endeavors!
Thanks. I will try to improve it.