A cold dawn streaks over the desert,
Lighting up the earth in a bright red glow,
And a
mysterious wind is starting to blow.
Whipping up the grains into a dark cloud,
The sandstorm rolls over the bleak land,
In a
wave of suffocating specks of sand.
Everyone huddles quietly in their homes,
Waiting for the violent storm to pass overhead,
Soon
it’s over and the winds have fled.
But something is rushing towards the town,
Rapidly tunneling through the desert sand,
Weaving
this way and that, through the land.
The villagers gasp in fear at the terrible serpent,
As it rises out of the sand, scattering the grains,
It’s
thundering roar echoing across the desert plains.
The men have no time to gather their weapons,
For out of its gaping jaws spurts it fiery breath
Sweeping
the small village in pain and death.
The woman and men clutch their children tight,
As the serpent and the roaring flames of red,
Leaving
the village charred and every human dead.
The serpent turns to leave the black remains,
For the desert winds to blow back and forth,
As it heads for the cities of the far north.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,738 Reviews
Heya, Fel! Casanova here to do another review! I'll be taking this one piece by piece as well.
Let's get to the review!
I find the transition from the second line to the third one rather off, but the rhyming didn't really hold it back any so props for that.
in a stand alone piece this would be good, but by now it seems like you're just repeating what's already happened in earlier poems of this kind, and I think you could do better in diversing them.
Only the rhyming put this off for me. Fled makes it seem like they went quickly. You're obviously trying to draw this out, I would suggest something with a much duller tone to it. The rhyming is starting to hold you back.
This seemed off to me. Maybe it's because of the,"Something," line, when you could have just said serpent. You've already established that is what was harassing the desert, I would suggest the change.
I'll be stopping it there, I feel like I've already critiqued what is wrong with the next lines in the previous lines, so I'll leave it for you to judge.
Anyway, I've said all I could on this one. I hope it helped.
Keep on doing what you're doing, and keep on keeping on.
Sincerely, Matthew Casanova Aaron.
This is Kaos here for a review on this next part!
A small thing that I noticed is that the lines feel shorter in this one. The first thing that I want to bring up is emotional attachment, which is something that I don't have to this story. I haven't been given a reason to care for the people of the village or really the serpent because the reader hasn't really been given a chance to connect to them. The basis of the characters for me is, for the people, "Oh no there's a snake that's going to kill everyone" said in a nonchalant tone, and the serpent is, "I do evil things for no reason whatsoever." Give the reader a better connection to the story than this because I haven't found a reason to care that the people are going to die.
You go back to using a lot of adjectives to describe again, which is something that I think makes it weaker. I suggest broadening your vocabulary and using stronger words to better set the tone of the story. Word choice is something that may not seem important, but it's like punctuation, it makes all the difference. This also helps you with imagery as it gives you more ways to describe, which brings me to figurative language. I want to hear more similes and metaphors, since that's something you have a lack of and it would strengthen up how you're going to describe.
As for the story, it went in the direction that I thought it would and this disappoints me when I can tell what's going to happen. The serpent destroys the town, as the prophecy said it would, but I would like to touch on something now that it's set in stone. Make an emphasis on the helplessness of it. That's something that would be a good twist on it. Let the prophecy come true fully without any heroes to defeat the serpent or anything of that sort. I think that would make a good theme to run through the story, which is that the prophecy did come true and the serpent can't be stopped.
I'm hoping that's how it runs through at least, because it's going to make me angry if we get a "the-prophecy-has-been-broken" at this point of the narrative. Let them all die by now like it was said, and put an emphasis on how helpless they are to it. There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered and I hope they show up in the next two parts.
I hope I helped and have a great day!