z

Young Writers Society


12+ Violence

Cloud Walker

by MaxWagner


Mizpah

(n.) The deep emotional bond between people, especially separated by distance or death.

Grey. The smell of smoke. Charred walls. Chips of charcoaled paint fell from under my fingertips as I touched the walls. I could see faint beams of sunlight streaming through the fire tainted windows. My footsteps stirred up ash and debris. I can recall moving down this narrow hallway, running one hand along each wall. Every detail was a different shade of muted grey. This house defied nature in a sickeningly fascinating way. It had withstood flames I’d never seen and aged through times I would never know. The stories buried in the rubble whispered to me, calling me forward.

Flashes of memories not my own danced out before my eyes. A young child with dark pigtails screeched, racing down the hall, ribbons flapping wildly behind her. A man punched the wall on my left- his screams of anger caused my ears to ring- the burnt hole remaining in the drywall as a tangible reminder. A young couple engaged in pleasuring each other against the wall to my right, the young woman’s red lipstick smearing across the young man’s face stood out against the grey background, and their juvenile giggles echoed around me. The flashes propelled me from the hall, moving me forward.

I then stood on a stairwell, overlooking the building’s main entrance. Descending each step, mirroring the household’s previous occupants, I could feel the rough hand rail under my palm. My hand moved with the grain of wood, its smooth varnish long lost to the tongues of fire that had licked this home. Holding my hand before my face, I saw the traces of black soot covering it from fingertip to heel. Another memory flashed, and I returned my hand to the rail, gripping it tight to support me. The long, flowing fabrics on the owner of this memory’s dress felt foreign to me, but looked natural on the timeless beauty walking before me. Her dark ringlets would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. Her slender neck decked in pearls tainted with blood would stay with me long after this illusion dissolved. Her smile fading into horror when her gentleman escort turned against her had me choking back a whimper. My own throat burned watching hers being slit with a bejeweled dagger. My own horror rose when I reached out to her, only for the memory to vanish like the smoke I could smell, and the charred house to take her place once more.

My feet pushed me forward without my help. I then moved down another hallway, this one littered with portraits incomprehensible. The soot and ash coating the walls gave no regard to the paintings, tainting them all the same. The only distinguishable feature worth noting were the pair of clear, turquoise blue eyes following me down the hall. They appeared in every painting, seeming to taunt and mock me while I increased my speed to escape the haunted halls. I felt the eyes burn holes into my soul. The further down the hall I went, the less ridicule filled the eyes, and the more they pleaded with me. What they wanted, I could not tell, but at the hall’s middle the eyes began to well with tears, an impossible sight that caused me to shiver. Drops of water trailed down the paintings, mixing with the soot in little streaks, but revealing nothing of what lay beneath the ash. Finally, after traipsing far down this hall, the end was reveled in the appearance of an open door. The light emanating from the exit blinded me, and I covered my eyes with my arm. What lay beyond the door, I never found out, for the floor fell out from beneath me, and I knew no more. 


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260 Reviews


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Wed Mar 28, 2018 1:56 am
TriSARAHtops wrote a review...



Hi Max! Welcome to YWS!

All in all, I thought this was a really solid piece of writing. There are a few things I want to quibble about, which I'll get to soon, but overall, I thought it was a strong hook, and I am definitely intrigued to learn more! I'll try not to repeat anything that Nobunaga has mentioned in the review below.

The tone for this piece was established really well, I thought, and right from the opening sentences, the writing had a vibe to it that remained consistent throughout the rest of the chapter (I noticed below you said it was a chapter?). Personally, I wouldn't say that creepy is the word that leapt to mind, but there's definitely an eerie, mysterious quality to your writing that came across nice and strongly here.

I think the imagery was also great! As someone who struggles big time with description, I'm a teensy bit jealous. All the memory/ghost people were vivid and super easy to picture.

One thing that did stand out for me was the fact that we don't really find out anything about the narrator (aside from the fact that they can see the memory-people). Which, is not necessarily a massively bad thing - yet. A bit of mystery is cool for the opening chapter, and obviously I haven't read anything else of this story, but the fact that we have no connection to the narrator may be a bit off-putting for some readers, and might delay them connecting with the story. It's clear here that the focus is on what the narrator is seeing, which you don't want to distract from with too much info about the protagonist, but I feel like having some more personal reactions, rather than description, could help the reader connect with the narrator more strongly.

Sometimes the sentences felt a little choppy, which I think came from the fact that a lot were fairly similar (often on the shorter side) lengths. I'd suggest playing around with your sentence lengths, and maybe reading aloud so you can hear the rhythm of how the writing flows.

I'm not sure what time period this is set in, but I got some definite old-timey vibes. Sort of circa Victorian-era, maybe just before or just after. If that's what you were going for, it works! If not, we can potentially discuss what made it appear that way to me (basically it's word choice and phrasing, but I can be more specific) and what might make it feel more modern, if that's what you were going for, for example.

Sometimes the writing in this chapter felt a little too wordy. I think a few things contributed to this. Hopefully I can explain this without getting too rambly :)

There are a lot of adjectives in this piece. And adjectives are great, and definitely key in creating the great imagery you have going on, but there is such thing as overusing them. It felt like almost every noun was preceded by at least one adjective, which after a while felt a bit much for me. The writing didn't quite enter purple prose territory, but the abundance of adjectives did slow down the writing, and made some of the stronger adjectives you used lose their power. Moderation is key, so maybe go through and work out which descriptions add something really vital to the chapter, and which aren't so important, so that the key stuff really stands out.

As far as general wordiness that comes from sentence structure-y stuff, here are a few examples that I'll discuss:

A young couple engaged in pleasuring each other against the wall to my right,

his screams of anger caused my ears to ring

an impossible sight that caused me to shiver.


Obviously, everyone's writing style is different, and some people are more concise than others, and I'm not trying to make you change your style, but there are quite a few moments here where there will be a phrase that's a bit of a mouthful, and could be expressed less verbosely. For example, the 'engaged in' in the first example I've quoted doesn't add anything to the sentence, and could be replaced with 'were', or just 'pleasured' (just to go off on a slight tangent, but 'to pleasure' as a verb always makes me cringe. I would suggest 'embraced' to keep with the tone of the writing, but my dislike towards 'to pleasure' might just be me). The extra words make it feel a bit clunky and affects the flow.

There's something else I noticed in this chapter, and feature in the last two examples I've quoted, is a tendency to structure sentences in a way that results in having verbs in their infinitive form (ie to shiver, to ring, etc). (Incidentally, both use 'caused', but they're far enough away from each other for repetition not to be an issue). This appeared quite a bit, so it's something to keep an eye out for, because whilst sometimes it's unavoidable, it does make the writing feel wordy and choppy.

...And that's about it from me! There are a few areas that could be worked on, but in generally this was a fab effort. If you have any questions, feel free to give me a shout!




MaxWagner says...


Thank you for your review.

The whole not-introducing-the-narrator was intentional. I'm not sure how to describe someone in first person, and giving his back story isn't what I intended on doing in this book.

I'm very glad that you liked the imagery and tone in this. I worried it would be too dark.

Thank you for pointing out my abuse of adjectives, and the choppy sentences. Those are not things I've noticed, but can definitely see. The wordiness... I've been fighting that one for a long time. All of my English professors have pointed it out. Despite the fact that in my response I have ended several sentences with prepositions, I was avoiding using the phrase "making out" in the sentence about the couple... I hate that term, and I'm not fond of "pleasuring" either, but it felt like a better choice.

I've had people tell me that infinitive verbs are stronger? But does that distract from the piece itself?

Ok, I skipped the paragraph about what era this is set in for as long as I can. ... It's not Victorian, though that would've been fun. The word choice is deliberate? I like large, out of date words, and so does this mc. I wanted to make him look like he was put in the wrong era. (pay back for not staying in his own story, LIKE HE SHOULD HAVE)

Again, thank you for the review! Guess it's time to edit the heck out of this piece...



TriSARAHtops says...


You're very welcome! Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you.

Oh, I totally feel the same about introducing the narrator when you're writing in first person (I can never quite work out how to subtly introduce their name for one). I think as long as there's something for readers to connect with with the main character, not knowing a lot is fine, just so long as a bit of personality is there (unless, I guess they're meant to act as an omniscient narrator).

Also agree that 'making out' would not fit. I think I just really do not like pleasure as a verb.

I think a lot of the issues with the infinitive verbs tie in with the wordiness, and I haven't heard that they're stronger (I'll have to think about that for a bit). I feel like they can be a little distracting in the sense that often they can pull the reader out of the action a bit and make the writing feel more narration-y than action-y (if that makes sense at all) in a similar way that passive voice can do that. It does depend on what context you're using the verb in the infinitive, because there were other cases where it wasn't so much of an issue.

As far as the character and word choice... sounds intriguing! I'd be interested to see how that pans out because it sounds cool.



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Mon Mar 26, 2018 8:39 pm
Nobunaga wrote a review...



Hello!

Well, this was creepy! I especially liked the way you started this chapter. I'm a fan of openers that really catch your attention and deposit you directly into the story. Good job there.

I love your writing style. I'm a sucker for really descriptive passages and I like to have all of my senses appealed to. You did a great job at that. I really felt like I was in this burned house. I do think that a change in verb tense would do you well though - or, at least, sticking to one verb tense. You tend to switch from present to past, and I know that you did it on purpose because of the flashbacks, but I think I might have a better suggestion. Sometimes, when people write flashbacks or visions, they choose to italicize it and then write normally, as if it's happening in real time.

Especially because you have four really block-style paragraphs, I think choosing to separate the visions would do your writing well. Even though this piece was short, I found it a bit hard to get through because, at some point, everything just started to run together. Your writing style - even though I do like it! - just added to that droning feeling I was getting while reading this. I think separating your paragraphs into smaller bits, and italicizing, would help things go by quicker.

Also, I noticed some repetition that became a little annoying at times. For example, in your first paragraph, the word "wall" is repeated too closely together and it just sounds weird. I would take out the word in this sentence:

Chips of charcoaled paint fell from under my fingertips as I touched the walls.


Because you'd just said "Charred walls.", I think you can get away with replacing "the walls" with "them" or something of the like. There were also a lot of allusions to the house being burned, but we already know the house is charred and burned and grey, so you repeating those facts to us in the later paragraphs just feels unnecessary. Maybe try focusing on another detail or just moving on.


I don't have anything to say grammar-wise. You did a good job on that part too!

Now, is this a Chapter, or is it just a short story? If it's a Chapter then I need answers! It seems like your MC is some sort of psychic, but I don't know much else about your story. This is just your opener, so it wouldn't be good to bog it down with an info dump. I would just like to see more things explained in the next part. This left me with a lot of questions! It's good to have your readers asking "Why?", but not for too long ;)

Thanks for the entertaining read!




MaxWagner says...


Thank you for the review; it is greatly appreciated. I wasn't exactly aiming for creepy, but that works, and I don't like to be one who beats around the bush.
The verb tense thing... that is a struggle for me. I've been working to get better at that, but I tend to forget that I'm not the one who lived my pieces, so sometimes I write as though it's still happening, and then other times I write as though it were a journal entry. ... I shall strive to fix that.
The large chucks of text are due to it being only a second draft. I'll (hopefully) fix that.
THANK YOU so much for point out the double usage of walls. I can't believe I did that. ... no. I can. I probably wrote one sentence, the went back later and added the second, but forgot to use a synonym/descriptive noun.
I do see now that I emphasized the burnt factor of the house too much... I'm hoping that adding more to the text will spread that out without having to scrap too much...
This IS a chapter, and an opening one at that. He's not psychic, I can say that much. I uploaded another piece, and it's connected to this, but it's not the second part. I'm not so good at writing things in order... \
Thank you for reading, and your input!



Nobunaga says...


I'm so glad that this is a chapter cause I seriously want to read more. And he's NOT a psychic? That's so interesting. There's so much well done mystery here. You're so welcome for the review! I'm always glad to help.




It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
— Walt Disney