Published July 29, 2011
*I made this for a little contest*
**My theme is to write about the effect(s) of death, or life after death, in 150 words or less**
Death of an Angel
They stood before her grave, weeping. The child of a millennium, the golden girl, never thought to die, lay in the ground. Families from all over threw roses and kicked sorrow-stained rocks inward, while I sat down near the box; her picture now a burning memory in my hands, like a hollow promise of eternal love. Her empty breath filled my lungs as her ghastly hands peeled my heart. Petals and dirt surrounded her body, closed up in the gaping hole. Our Earth was prepared to eat another one. We had fed it love for centuries, forced to move on. We cannot move on, however, if the dead refuse to depart...
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138,291 Literary Works • 672,099 Reviews
The title is perhaps the most important part of a story this short. It provides a premise, and by the end it should tie back in. It's a chance to establish the theme before we begin, a chance to cheat, to go outside of the 150 word limit to amplify the work. You can by now probably see where I am heading with this? Apart from being rather cliché, your title doesn't really add any substance to your piece. It isn't subtle, it's a shame really.
This is fine as far as first lines go. It is a little direct for my taste, but you set the scene instantly and ask questions. This first line instantly nullifies the effect of the title, because it is as though you have said the same thing twice, almost. Because both tell us a female has died. Simple.
This confuses me a little bit. I think you have sacrificed concision for excessive explanation. For example, 'The child of the milennium' and 'the golden girl' are basically saying the same thing. Same goes with 'die'/'lay in the ground.'
I quite like this line. Here might be the only time you are truly concise, clever about word use. In three words you convey a lot of story, a lot of the image. Where as through out the rest of the piece you use your words abundantly. Throwing in silly add ons and excessive description. I would love to have seen the entire piece written like the line above.
This is a fantastic line. But with short stories get used to using metaphors over similes. Take away the 'like' and this line is powerful, and very suggestive.
Rather floral prose for a short story. Don't get me wrong it is lovely and all, but it hardly serves a purpose when you have so few words.
*bangs forehead on desk* I'm sitting here, baited by your character and narrative. Waiting for the denouement, the grand finale, the end all. Waiting to have my breath shoved from my chest and my eyes stung with tears. Then, you foreshadow a zombie subplot(?) and it's not subtle. I mean, you could have said 'but she is gone, for now...' But seriously this hurts the piece so much. Part of me thinks you wrote this wonderful story, got to the end and realised your prompt was 'death, or life after death' and thought "Well that life after death thing sounds cool, I might change!" It doesn't work. It may sound harsh, but it doesn't. With short stories you only have time to play upon one idea. The appeal is this single theme you drive home. They can be touching, they can be offensive, they can ask questions. They can't however end contrived. They can end open or tightly closed. But not like this I'm afraid. It's a shame.
Other than that well done. The writing itself is lovely, Good luck.
That was my goal, thanks.
I thought it was great! good work!
it had great emotional detail
Thanks Espeon. I don't think that I'll do anything more to this piece though.. I like it the way it is, and I think that I'll keep it just for future reference.
I know I probably shouldn't comment since I'm part of the contest too, but there is one thing I absolutely MUST say or i'll simply die of not letting you know.
Even though Octave has already mentioned this; you are pretty much describing the same thing in multiple ways over and over again.
I think reading this review should really help. It tackles this exact problem well.
Nothing on you though, I thought this was awesome!
You portrayed your given theme really well, and I'm all in for vivid imagery and hardcore word-play! But you must remember that however great it may be, it doesn't tell a story.
I really like your writing style though. You have a good sense of your own pace.
Simply something I felt the need to mention.
E.
I could never remember who made this point originally, which is strange because I thought A Room With a View was just lovely. I'm going to steal this.
Hey, I'm finally looking at some of your stuff
I think this is excellent.
Personally, the first line didn't catch me. It just felt to obvious. At the beginning you told us that this was supposed to be talking about the effects of death, and the first line was 'They stood before her grave, weeping.' It felt a little blah to me. Although the second line really grabbed my attention. If I would edit this, I would remove the first line and begin it with the second, which is much more interesting to me. The fact that people are standing beside her grave will become obvious soon enough.
Every line held great imagery. The words 'the golden girl' and towards the end 'our earth was prepared to eat another one' were really good in my opinion. I don't know why, they just got me.
Also, I thought this had a great ending. Really made an impact. Usually, I don't like it when writers use the '...' thing and trail off, but I think it was effective here.
So this was awesome! Good luck in the contest
Woww. Quite a review. I understand what you mean though, even if you did just saythe same thing over and over in 100 words xD
Mmmkay. So it's really late here and I just stopped by to do a review, and I guess I got lucky because I found a short piece to critique! 8]
I'm sorry if this came out a little rambly. >.O
So I'm pretty new to the world of flash fiction, but I've fallen madly in love with the idea of stringing together an entire story in a hundred words or less. This is a bit more than I'm used to, but I can deal. The rubrics are more or less the same because whether you have a hundred-word story or fifty extra words, your limit is still incredibly constrictive.
The problem with this story is that I don't see a story. I see a premise, but no story. It teases, but does little else but annoy the reader.
I'll go in depth as to why it didn't work for me.
First of all, this is saturated with purple prose. It's colorful and it's repetitive, as purple prose is prone to being, but the problem is your story can't afford this. Well, you can't afford purple prose in most works, but you have more leeway when you have a thousand words to spare as opposed to a hundred and fifty words. This is a premise, and this is an idea. This is not a story.
I'm going to quote E. M. Forester on this.
The king died, and the queen died. -> Not a story. This is a narrative, a sequence of events. A story requires it to be related, and the events must be linked to each other. Your story is essentially this, but it's even stranger in that it doesn't quite fulfill the second part though it sort of did.
The king died, and the queen died of grief. -> That's a story, because there's a link between these two events. They're related. Cause and effect is big in a story, whether it's flash fiction or a 100,000-word novel. Remember, there must be a cause and there must be an effect. Your story sort of has this, but doesn't at the same time. Let me explain why.
"She died, but she didn't depart."
That's essentially your story boiled down to its major events. Now you're thinking that hey, there's cause and effect. She wouldn't be refusing to depart if she didn't die. That is true, which is why I said you sort of fulfilled the second part. Your problem is that while you fulfilled the part about the first event triggering the second one, you failed to draw attention or even make anything out of its effect. oo" You just mentioned it in passing, and it teases the reader but it leaves her (him) hanging. A story, no matter how short, should be fulfilling and should satisfy the reader. Your conclusion was a cop-out of sorts.
But hey, at least you have a story, and you have a good start. Now, let's move on to why you didn't write out the rest of the story. You've come in just under 120 words, but a majority of those words looped the reader around in circles. Think, Twin. Think of these as the last words you'll ever write. You want it to be short and effective. These are your last 150 words, your last story. You want to get as much in as possible - would you still dwell on your MC's feelings? oo Let the reader connect the dots, and give them enough credit, but not too much. Flash fiction requires thinking on the reader's part, but don't give them a brain teaser. ^^
Lastly, a little tip on writing flash fiction - use everything, including the title, to your advantage. The cardinal rules of fiction still apply here, and one of them is to start with conflict. Also, try to avoid having such a reactive protagonist. Your protagonist doesn't do much in the story - she just waits around and sees the ghost. This could work, but at the moment, it's just another weak link in an already wobbly story. >.O"
The one thing I will commend you on is the emotion you peppered throughout the piece. You can't keep this in the exact same form - no way, you'll lose too many words - but do keep the general spirit. Emotion always adds a great deal to final impact, and if you leave your reader's heart in splinters, then they'll forgive everything else. This piece isn't quite strong enough to make me bleed yet, so try adding a little more in less words. <3
Again, you have a great start, but flash fiction requires a great deal more revision than your normal work requires, given its constraints. Best of luck in the contest, Twin!
If you need anything, drop me a PM~
Sincerely,
Octave
Spoiler
I've never been good at talking in present tense, but I've been trying to work on that. However, to me, even the last couple of lines seemed to be in past tense. I'll look into changing that though, and adding more to it. You were right, she was next to him as a ghost/angel. Thank you for your review.
Brandon!
I'm here
So, I see what you meant when you said you had a really different theme to mine
I think you did a good job of sticking to the prompt. Like other have said, I think you captured the scene well. I could really imagine the funeral happening. People crying. Freshly piled dirt on the coffin, etc.
I don't know if this was your intention, but I read it as if the girl who had died was standing next to the MC, as a ghost. Or an angel? Anyway, she hadn't died properly, moving onto a new life, after her human one. I might be really wrong though, haha! It could all be in the MC's head or something.
I did want to point this out -
So, most of your piece is written in past tense, but these lines;
are in present tense. I don't know if this was intentional, but I think as it is, it disrupts the flow of the piece. It would be better of it was changed to past tense like the rest of the story.
'We had fed it love for centuries, forced to move on. We could not move on, however, if the dead refused to depart...'
Anyhow, I think this piece was pretty good. I do have to agree with josh though. You could add a little more to this, seeing as you've got more words to play with. This contest has a small word limit anyway, so you may as well use them all to get your story across.
I hope this helps!
xDudettex
Thank you both, I was going for the affect of realism and emotions specifically, and it looks like I hit that right on the head.
@josh: Yes, I used few words, but I felt that more than what I had would somehow mess it up. I'll work with the limit though and see what I can do. For the record, I'll probably submit two entries.
Wow-zah great work Twin, loved it. I would make one suggestion if I may - keep in mind the word limit, you have only used 90 out of a possible 150 words, that's a bucket full of confidence if I have ever seen one, coming in under 60% of the word limit. The problem is you can provide that little bit more depth if you stretch it out. Other than that well done, look forward to critiquing this properly!
P.S. - Keep in mind you can submit up to three works using the same theme.
short , precise and concise. A powerful message conveyed concisely.
Let's see now if my reading of this piece is what you intended to impart to readers. First of all, I have to admit that I was overtaken when you depicted the dead body, your description of the sad scene in general is fascinating to me. You made it look real.
My point here is the following: I see that you are full of anger and dissatisfaction. About what ? and for what? You seem to be reproaching death itself, the act of ceasing to exist seems to be unfair to you.
The way you sympathized with the dead body tells not only how sad you are but also how cruel departure is.You are blaming the earth too, though we give her love and affection, she doesn't look to halt eating our bodies.
To sum up I say, You perfectly pictured to readers how it feels like to go through the horrible feeling of loss.
N.B: Interpretation of a literary text is slippery, meaning is not fixed. Noureddine Hermassi
Well this is a short story, not a poem, but thanks anyway. Hehe. Your kind words are much appreciated.
Hmm, interesting. I really don't know what to say but I think it's a story that conveys your emotions. It sounds sad and depressing but that's what I absolutely love about poems. Keep writing!