Published January 4, 2011
I don’t remember much. In fact, I only remember one tiny detail. All of the rest is a blur. Sometimes, if I really concentrate, I remember a sound, maybe a voice, maybe even a face. If I’m lucky. And then I forget. I only remember one tiny detail.
Sometimes, I get scared. Sometimes, when I forget why and what I am trying to remember, and I am just lying in the black, bottomless pit that is my head, I get scared. Scared, because I can’t remember. Scared, because I know I will forget. Scared, because I don’t know why I forget. Why? Why am I trapped; trapped inside my own head? I can’t remember. I only remember one tiny detail.
I think they speak to me. Sometimes. Whoever “they” are. I have so many questions. But who would I ask? Who, exactly, when I can’t even remember who my family are. Oh my God. My family. My mum. My dad. Do I have any brothers or sisters? I don’t know. I only remember one tiny detail.
It taunts me. The constant beeping. When I think, it gets louder. I think it’s because I’m closer to being awake. Other times, I can fade it out, until it’s just background noise. It’s been around for so long, that I’ve learned to block out the noise. I am almost used to it. Almost. But not quite. I can’t decide when it started. But I want it to end. That I do know. I only remember one tiny detail.
Even though I know I am asleep, my mind is awake. Always awake. Maybe it is my brain, teasing me. Maybe it taunts me with the feeling of being wide awake, whilst my body stays fast asleep. Day after day. I lose track of time, after a while. I am awake inside, though I can’t ever remember actually being human. Actually being awake and out of my head. I think I have always been like this. Why can’t I open my eyes? Why can’t I wake up? I only remember one tiny detail.
I want to escape this living hell. I don’t even know if I am alive. But it’s hell all the same. Am I even sane? Maybe if I could actually remember something, at least I would be able to tell if I was sane or not. If I just knew what it was to be alive, to live. I just wish I could end this nightmare. I want to remember something. What am I trying to remember? I only remember one tiny detail.
Once, just once, I got so close to waking up. I could hear voices. Though now, I don’t know what those voices said. But I do remember one thing. One thing that was said. I held onto that word, that one precious word. Why? Because it was an answer. It answered one of my many questions. One tiny little detail: I have amnesia.
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138,303 Literary Works • 672,100 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okay...so this makes for a pretty intriguing start here. It looks like we've got ourselves a situation where this person here appears to have been subjected to a very shocking and traumatic situation where they can't seem to remember much of anything at all...and are struggling as a result of that inability to remember anything. It does a good job here of getting your attention as a reader.
This is creating a powerful sense of being trapped inside one's own mind here, and it manages to create a startling effect there in how terrifying it would be to genuinely not know what its like to be out of your own mind. It sounds a bit fanciful when its just stated but you manage describe it in such a way that you really bring the fear across quite well here. And the further descriptions of things forgotten seem to suggest that this person has some form of amnesia here and has perhaps lost nearly all of their memory here with the exception of only this one thing it appears.
Hm, the voices in the head certainly seem to be adding another level of horror and general mystery to this piece cause you do wonder what that could all be about. This ending does it's job very well here I think, it leads the steadily building sense of dread with this condition to a proper climax of how they don't even know if they're alive and end it on the final punchline of them having amnesia. It makes for an overall powerful start here.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Wow! This was so freaky! The way you described everything in it was just so, scary. I swear I was frightened. Anyway, loved it. Hope you write something more. Happy writing!
Right I'm going to quote the whole thing and make notes because I'm awkward like that! Also, when you said you were thinking about starting a novel is this the basis for it?
Now read this and get back online
Happy Writing
Hey there, AllyGrLxOx here to review!
I'll begin by saying that if I come off as harsh I truly am not trying to, I'm just trying to help you and your writing improve!
I do have some nit-picks which I'll point out!
You have so many short and choppy sentences, this is a short story right? Not a poem! I personally can not stand short and choppy sentences. I believe that they take away from the story and ruin the flow, so I would strongly recommend that you go and get rid of those terribly unappealing short sentences!
Starting a sentence with "and" is not a good idea and is something that you should avoid doing.
I would suggest cleaning up this sentence, it confused me and just seemed to be a muddle of words. As well as the fact that you just threw commas around in places where I don't believe they should be.
Commas can be confusing and they frusterate just about everyone! So here's a link that might help you better understand them: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm
By all means take away that "I think." Throughout the entire passage you had the words "I only remember one tiny detail," therefore there is no reason why your MC would all of a sudden be like... I think!
No, your MC knows. So please get rid of that "I think!"
I also want to talk about the "I only remember one tiny detail," that was at the end of each paragraph...
I think they were unnecsary for a short story and would be more appropriate if your story was a poem of some sort.
Well that's where I'm going to start to bring this review to a close!
My over all feeligngs were that the whole story was sort of pointless (please, please, please don't be mad at me!). The whole passage to me just felt like you were rambling on and repeating the same thing over and over!
All in all I thought it was boring, I couldn't feel any of the emotion.
My suggestions would be to go back and make your flow smoother, add more descriptive details, fix run-on sentences, and to get rid of choppy sentences!
Also have you ever considered making this a poem? I think the stories concept would make an amazing poem! :3
Any questions?
Feel free to PM me(:
I didn't like this one bit. In fact, I hated it. It just got so boring to me.
I felt like you were being very redundant and that you were grocery listing rather than writing, which is one of the worst things a writer can do, if you can even call them a writer when they do that.
I'm not to keen on you continuously saying I only remember one tiny detail. The first time it was okay, not great, but okay. But you just kept saying it over and over and over again, and I grew to dislike it - it made the piece very boring, slow, and I really wanted to stop reading and click the back button. I understand that you were trying to make it a hook, a little suspense for the reader, but it just didn't work for you in this case.
I'm honestly surprised that I even finished reading this. It took me longer than usual to read because it in no way caught my attention. When you write, the first thing you have to do is snap the reader in a trap so that they don't want to stop reading until the end, and at the end they cry for more! But you can't just stop there. You have to keep that going through the entire piece, keep the reader stuck in the trap, stuck in the trance.
When I read, I love to have the feeling that I'm not apart of the real world, that I'm watching/hearing everything happen. I love to have the words become pictures in my mind to the point where I no longer see words and I see a movie. But this piece didn't do that. It was very bland - just a bunch of black letters on white paper. For me, it felt as if I were reading a dictionary.
You have the right idea about this, but you haven't really written it all that well.
I have been a member of this site for a very long time, and I understand how hard it can be in the beginning, seeing that there are so many great pieces on here and the people can be extremely harsh, but I encourage you to never give up. If you really, truely love to write, you will never give up on writing no matter what people say.
When people are harsh in thier reviews, it's not anything personal, not even a little bit. We do it so that you can become a better, stronger writer. We do it to improve each other. On this site, we're kind of like crutches for one another. We'll hold you up for a little while to help you and make you stronger to the point where you no longer need us. That's what I'm doing with you now, so please don't tak it personally.
Please continue with your writing, and feel free to PM me with any question or comments you may have about anything.
Hope I helped.
Peace, Love, Write,
fictionfanatic
Hmm.. this is quite good for a newbie! (I mean that in a good way xD)
I was actually quite surprised by how good this was. Really descriptive. I wrote something a little like this before. Except it was about being paralysed-She didn't know why she could move. Anyway, this was really enjoyable to read. I understood exactly where you were coming from. This was really good.
Normally I give really hefty reviews but I just can't as I have a long list of reviews to do. D:
Sorry I couldn't give you more time.
This is reallly good as I said and you should think about continueing it. I'm sure you'd get loads of reviews.
You have quite a little thing going on here!
You are talented.
Think more about personal description. I know it hard in a piece like this but always think about reading the story from an onlookers perspective.
Also I think you should rethink the title. It was a bit.. off. I know it tied in to the whole amnesia thing but I think with a btter title you could attract more people. I'm sorry I don't have any suggestion.
Overall this is good and really enjoyable.
I'm sorry I didn't giev a better review.
Kaka xx
I wish that I was as articulate as you are! This piece of descriptive writing is amazing. All of that emotional stuff about unanswered questions? The way you wrote it was just so... good
As you can see... I'm not very good at piecing words together 
But you are excellent. And for some reason, at the end, I smiled. Because all of those unanswered questions led to one thing - I guess that makes us wander if everything has an answer, right?
But I've got everything else. And that makes me wonder, too... Maybe we've all got some underlying problem, maybe we're all dreaming... Maybe we just don't know it 
Xxxx
And I think I'm going through something similar in my head, too. I've not got amnesia
I really liked this Lofty. The amnesia thing is a great idea. If you were planning to do a novel with this, I would have her remember bits and pieces of her life and family. It really captured my attention from the beginning. Can't wait to read more!!
~Kladi
Oh wow THANK YOU!!
Rob you are awesome.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR REVIEWING EVERYONE. Well, I say everyone. The two people that have reviewed my work (;
Lots of love to everyone out there reading my work!!!
Lofty XD
PS: I am in a very good mood now...
There was one tiny detail that kept me going.. That little tiny [ that doesn't sound right ] detail , so cunningly put there to keep the reader reading. Well you succeded. You've got my atention from start to beggining and, as much as I wanted to just skip to the end to see that detail, I just couldn't. Words used, composition, emotions and especially scenery is perfect. Thank you for posting.
Really enjoyed it.
*bows x20*
Hey thanks 'Life'!!
Yeah did not mean to submit as a novel. However I was planning on maybe developing it so that the storyline follows the her through the day after she wakes up out of the coma, and watches her as she begins to remember everything about herself (e.g. her family, her friends, what happened in the accident, etc.) but then she would wake up the next morning and would have forgotten everything again. But I wouldn't be sure how to continue the story.
Thanks for the review!!
Lofty XD
Hey, Life here to review!
First things first... Welcome to YWS! I hope you'll like it here. ^^
On to ze review itself...
I really liked the idea, and it was well presented and written, with no grammatical errors that I could find. The thing that confused me though was that you had submitted this as a novel. That could have just been an accident, but I don't see how you could write a novel in first-person about someone who has amnesia. It would just be 200 pages of rambling on about how you don't know who you are.
But, if you meant this as a short story that ends here, then you did a good job with it. ^^ It's not too long so as to get boring, but not too short to feel like it's missing something. And I loved how it was a bit repetetive, as that goes well with the concept of amnesia, it adds another layer to it.
All in all, a quite skillfully written piece about a not-so-usual subject. Good work and keep writing!
Yours truly,
|Life|