Published July 5, 2017
One day the shadow of a girl decided to take a walk through her heart. She found a path and followed it until she came to an evil, dark, burning, terrible place. There was no sunshine, just blackness and burning. It was here that the demons Hatred, Anger, Jealousy and Pride lived. The shadow of the girl fled in terror from the demons, who pursued her and tried to consume her. She didn't stop running until she came to a forest. A grey mist hung over the forest. The trees were twisted, and the ground was cut and scarred. Then she heard wailing. Following the noise, the girl came to a deep, deep cut in the ground. It was an old one, yet it still wept blood. Two figures were walking through the trees, crying and wailing. This was the domain of the shades Sadness, Loneliness and Despair. They did not seek to consume the girl, but as she left, she kept turning back several times. Sad and lonely and despairing that the place was, she felt a strange pull, she wanted to stay there, besides that huge, jagged cut and try to heal it. The shadow of the girl shook her head and ran again. The next place she came to was a bright, green, sunny field. Glowing figures danced about on the grass, some were sitting, some were running and playing and laughing. These angels were Happiness, with her bright, burning glow, Kindness, with her soft, gentle glow, and Hope, with her thoughtful but fazzling smile. The girl wanted to join this pleasant group, but she still had more to see. So she journeyed on until she came to a little meadow. There were four figures sitting and arguing. Their names were Want, Ambition, Determination and Confusion. Not wanting to get involved, the girl fled. She returned to the angels, and it was there that she resolved to stay. To never, ever let the Demons come, to never give into the Shades Sadness, Despair and Loneliness. So the shadow returned to the girl, and the girl felt this resolve. As years passed though, the girl learned that every being in her heart had a place and a purpose. Even the demons, though she learned to never let any of them consume her. She learned to rise above them, to control them. Most of the time.
Every single feeling that we can feel, Anger, Hatred, Jealousy, Pride, Happiness, Hope, Kindness, Love, Loneliness, Ambition, Determination, Confusion and even Want, They all have their purpose and place. Everyone feels these figures, and everyone should learn to control them, to never be consumed by them. We lose control a lot, but the more we practice, the better we get at getting along, or controling these figures of feelings.
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140,220 Literary Works • 673,046 Reviews
Hey there Midnightmoon
Myjaspercat here to leave you a review
So, overall I liked this story a lot. You did have a few errors that'll point out latter but they didn't obstruct the text enough to cause a huge problem. That said, I do want to focus on the way this piece is written for a couple reasons.
1.) Show Don't Tell
Were going to start with the most basic pieces of advice. This is the benchmark piece of advice that will improve your writing tenfold. So, what exactly does it mean?
Well, showing vs telling is a matter of how you establish information. At it's most basic level, you've shown information if the reader is able to interpret it themselves and you've told if you've established that information yourself by addressing the reader or through exposition.
In your piece, you have basically told the reader everything. Now, while it's ok to tell in a short story since you don't have a lot of room to overly describe or what not. But you still want to show the readers some things. Let's look at the difference again:
"Telling" is the most basic, and quickest, way to get information across to the reader. In a narrative form, a telling sentence might be one like "the carpet was red". It doesn't leave much to the imagination, and only really does one thing at a time. The problem is that, with too much telling, your story becomes boring.
"Showing" is a dramatization of information. If we showed the same example as before, it would read something like "his body fell to the floor, and the blood seeping from his neck was lost amongst the dark red of the carpet." The same information gets across--the carpet is red--but there's a bit more happening, and it's a bit more interesting. The point is to make the reader feel like they are there, watching the scene and you are showing it to them, rather than remind them they're just reading a story that you are telling them.
So basically, since this is a short story it's ok to tell, however you do want to add moments of showing to your story. Add them in when introduce the specific feelings, show us how the girl seems them through her eyes. I'm gonna leave this with an example:
versus
^^That isn't the best of examples, but hopefully it gets the point across.
2. Formatting
This is going to be pretty short. Mainly I would suggest that you break down the first paragraph into a couple of shorter ones. Right now the large block of text is kind of intimidating and it can affect the flow of the reader.
3. Nit-Picks
I would change this to just "an evil, burning place" since both dark and terrible are normally words that describe evil things. Therefore your reader can most likely assume that since the place is evil it's also dark and terrible.
4. Everything Else
One, try to vary sentence structure a bit. Right now your piece is filled mainly with short and basic sentences that don't hold a lot. Believe or not, shorter sentences actually slow down the pacing of your story
Two, like I said earlier, describe these different figures/people etcetera to us a bit more. I mean, we all have our own images of what these feelings may look like, but show us how you perceive them.
Three, this was a good story and I really liked it. I would just love to see it with a little more detail and a little longer. Yeah I know it's a short story, but you have a lot of room to expand with it still being classified as so, incase you didn't know a short story is generally 1000-8000 words so you have the room.
Good luck and continue writing, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Hello, Red here!
I think your story is beautiful, and I can visualize it in my head. The message was true and anyone with half a heart can relate to it. The ideas of the demons and emotions and how they interact with each other also worked very well, and I enjoyed the whole thing very much, as it painted a grim picture with glimmers of hope, which I always have had a soft spot for.
There were a few typos I would watch for, like mixing up "beside", with "besides", and other little things like that. I would also, to make the piece even more colourful and fresh feeling, use more punctuation that isn't just periods and commas. Also, I would make a new paragraph for every place she comes across.
Overall, I loved this piece, and I hope you recognize how good it is.