Hi, Waddlers. Pan dropping in to boot this out of the Green Room for good. I'm going to take the piece chronologically and break down my thoughts on it as I read. Grammar corrections will be shown in blue, but they won't be the main focus of this review.
He had never gone to Sleep before, but he had been arrested. Rested well and dreamed... but somehow never gone to Sleep. He wanted to try, and was at the gates, but he could not get in.
"Bale blar blar!" The distraction fussed. It stomped and tampered and made a ruckus out of sight. Attempting to scare him away, or make him pay attention to something other than getting to Sleep.
"Why won't you let me?!" The man named Soben called out in anger.
"I'm Guard! You have too muich guilt and anger. You don't deserve to go and I don't want you to!" Guard the distraction told him. He grunted in frustration.
His imaginary friend looked, too, quite fed up. He lay slouched upon the floor impatiently glaring at Guard. Who he could in fact see.
Unlike LadyLizz, I actually quite like the first line. I didn't assume 'Sleep' was a typo, and I quite like that you're making use of the duality of 'go' - we can go to places and cities and locations, but we also go to sleep, as if sleep is some kind of realm. I was actually intrigued by that.
However, things start to go off-track from then on. I feel like you're trying to create a really surreal, crazy narrative, but even within a few paragraphs it gets difficult to keep track of the characters you're introducing. It's hard to picture, as well. I can't tell whether the whole thing is metaphorical, or whether Soben really is waiting outside some physical gates and the distraction has a physical form. It's jarring to read because I don't know how to picture the world.
Too many characters introduced at once, as well. You might get away with that in a less surreal story, but it's already hard enough to figure out what's happening without the reader having to adjust to tons of names. The whole opening needs to be better described, less frantic, and, well, clearer. You can keep the oddities, but they have to be more palatable.
Teedey, the name of the said I.F, was much like a large rat dragon. Large for a rat, small for a dragon. It had a ugly bulky head with a long neck and huge bulky arms. However its torso was long and slender and wrists bore a large bone protrusion, giving him a lanky look. It had large horns -not on his head - which towered over him and behind him. The one over his head bore a lantern. The ones behind him held a plant, a mirror and a little dangled instrument which made a sweet high pitched noise with every swaying step of the beast. It had a long tail which from grew an ugly hair here and there. It wore a hat and dungarees with rainbow britches, perhaps to celebrate his pride for his own sexuality. Perhaps to confuse your eyes.
Once again, this is a heck of a lot to take in at once, and the description is so wild and weird that - despite its thoroughness - I emerge from the paragraph without any clear idea of how the dragon looks. I didn't get what you meant by the horns; you say they're not on its head, but you fail to say where they are instead. I do quite like the idea of the plant and dangled instruments and such hanging from the horns, but I think that image gets lost in the rest of the description.
It needs to be simpler, clearer, and a lot more focused. I hate really long descriptions, personally, because there's too much information to organise. Especially in a description as odd as this one.
His I.F was not real to anybody but him.
He wanted Teedey to kill the distraction...but he was unsure how he could then open the gates.
Oh of course. He could climb.
The distraction's face was suddenly clenched in a large hairy fist. It squealed like a pig and hissed like a snake, as it's whole body writhed to get away from this predators grip. As Guard the distraction's face began to tear apart, blood began dripping, no - gushing! To the floor. Teedey's nails scraped under the layer of skin to tear it off more. But soon the rest of the distraction would fall, he would only have gotten rid of the mouth. The hands and feet were just as noisy. One ankle of the littering distraction was grabbed and Guard was thrust down heavily, fully taking off its mouth - which was tossed aside. With this free, bloody hand, Teedey grabbed the arms and had the distraction In a banana shape. The faceless head faced him and began clapping its hands and feet just to taunt the man. The distractions body was snapped in two, and quickly after, its hands and feet were crushed beneath the I.F's feet.
If Teedey isn't real to the distraction, how could he kill it? It doesn't add up. Surreal as this universe is, you need to have some rules to it or else the story won't hold together very easily.
The whole fight scene is pretty long-winded, as well. When you draw action out too long, it kind of loses impact.
"This is harder than I imagined." The man whined.
"I find it all quite metaphorical." Teedey replied with a grin, admiring his man's butt from just below. Licking his gums with a slimey chap, he swerved under his man and took him on his own shoulders over the gate.
...I sincerely hope we're not heading into bestiality territory.
Discomfort aside, how could Teedey put Soben on his own shoulders? I thought Teedey was the size of a large rat? I really struggled to picture what was going on here.
Before they would get there though, a stork came flying, or perhaps plummeting, down into the water with a ferocious splash. They stork appeared old, and held a large sack which it had fallen on.
"Huuuuuuugh!" A creature emerged with a desperate gasp from beneath the water. A little monster. Well, not little, but young. It looked up at Soben confused, and then around desperately at the Stork. "Giiiiii!" A sound of panic escaped her as she leant over the Stork and held its head above the water.
Soben, slightly taken aback, watched intently as this little monster - which had an air of likability - communicated with the Stork. It simply looked past her at Soben.
"This is the man you'll be bared by. I've done what I needed to do." It said as the life began to slowly drain out of it. The monster didn't appear to be crying. Yet. She turned with a tensed chin and a deep frown to the man.
Okay, you've completely lost me here. I don't know what's going on. There's a stork? And a small monster? Which is suddenly dying?
"Sure," he replied. The little monster now named GriN became less upset and more curious of the man's behaviour. It was as if there was an invisible presence with him. You wouldn't be shy of changing clothes in front of a pet, and Soben wasn't afraid of talking to his IF around the little runt. He began to wade through the water towards the grove. GriN just watched him, then the Stork became a little boat, which bore wings that acted as paddles. Maybe this would not be the last place her Stork took her. She hopped in the boat and held her toes as it began to drift after the man. She began to smile.
Still completely confused. Who was having the life drain out of them? I thought it was either the stork or the monster, but they both seem fine now. What's even the importance of the stork and the monster? Why do they need to be in the story at all?
I've skimmed the rest of the piece, but honestly I don't think my points are going to vary much from here on in so I may as well draw this review to a close. I just don't understand what's happening. Events and characters pop up completely randomly - there's no sense of cause and effect, no sense that the characters' decisions are altering the course of the story. The scenes chop and change, the characters don't really talk like actual people, and everything just seems pretty disjointed.
How do you make this piece better? Well, it will need some substantial changes. The main thing I think is missing from this chapter is a sense of purpose. Why is it so crucial for Soben to get to Sleep? What does he want to find there? What consequences will there be if he doesn't make it? Without any answers to these questions, it's very difficult to align myself with the characters and root for what they're doing. The story just feels aimless.
The story needs to be a lot more grounded, as well. Yes, you can keep the craziness and the weird elements, but they need to be restrained somehow. Even in Alice in Wonderland, which is dreamlike and incredibly odd, a lot of what Lewis Caroll talks about is still familiar to the reader. The story pushes the boundaries of normality, but it's still understandable, because he twists things that we recognise as part of the real world and makes them strange. I think if you had more of that, the story would be a lot easier to follow.
Just focus it more. Ask yourselves what the rules and parameters of this universe are and stick to them. Ask yourself why the characters are here. Set a goal for them and stick to it like glue, and always ask whether each part of your narrative actually serves the plot. If you go off on tangents all the time, we'll lose the thread of the plot.
Keep writing!
~Pan
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