Young Writers Society

Happy RevMo!

Valkyria here to leave a review!

This was a great story! The imagery was fantastic. I loved the way you describe the machine and its inventor.

His dragon was a perfect machine. It was clockwork, warmed by a furnace in the depths of its chest like a beating, burning heart. It was a creature of steel and smoke, knitted together at the joints by loving hands and hope.

It slid serpent-like through the night, yielding to his every touch as if it and he were one and the same. The city stretched below them, a map of stars below smog nestled between harsh mountains. Factories belched poison into the air so far below. The wind was cool against its gentle wings.

He was an imperfect being. He was flesh, cooled by the need to survive that was etched in the darkest parts of his mind like ancient runes. He was skin and bone, torn apart deep inside by cowardly truth and determination.

He clung child-like to the back of dragon, trusting its wings to keep them aloft as if he weren't the one who'd built them and knew them more than anything. The sky pressed down on him, insistant and inevitable like the weight of the dead in the graveyard. The mountains offered refuge so far away. The rain stung his cheeks.

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

First Impression: So this was a really interesting short story, I feel like there's an awesome idea behind but there's something a bit off about this story, it doesn't quite live up to the premise that we've got going on here. More details down below.

Anyway let's get right to it,

His dragon was a perfect machine. It was clockwork, warmed by a furnace in the depths of its chest like a beating, burning heart. It was a creature of steel and smoke, knitted together at the joints by loving hands and hope.

It slid serpent-like through the night, yielding to his every touch as if it and he were one and the same. The city stretched below them, a map of stars below smog nestled between harsh mountains. Factories belched poison into the air so far below. The wind was cool against its gentle wings.

He was an imperfect being. He was flesh, cooled by the need to survive that was etched in the darkest parts of his mind like ancient runes. He was skin and bone, torn apart deep inside by cowardly truth and determination.

He clung child-like to the back of dragon, trusting its wings to keep them aloft as if he weren't the one who'd built them and knew them more than anything. The sky pressed down on him, insistant and inevitable like the weight of the dead in the graveyard. The mountains offered refuge so far away. The rain stung his cheeks.

He stole a glance over his shoulder as the machine shifted and ajusted to the moving of his weight, its wings steadying them just as he had designed them to. The lights had almost caught up. He could pick out the shapes of the other winged metal beasts and their drivers from the murk and the coalsmoke. They were smudges on a nighttime canvas of black and blue, imperfections that he and it hadn't erased.

They were faster than he and it. They would catch his illegal machine - the clockwork he'd spent a decade constructing, the clockwork they'd stolen from him, the clockwork he'd snatched back - and put it back in the bowels of the Queen's palace that overlooked tar-coloured slums. Her words were divine, and would be made true.

They were almost upon he and it. There weren't many of them - he had left most of them bleeding out on marble floors when he had retrieved it - but there were enough. His heart scrabbled and fought uselessly like a snared rabbit. He flung himself against the neck of it, pressing his face against its passive warmth.

He did not see the shining jaws strike out of the sick fog. He did not see them clamp around its wings and twist around. He did not see the maddened crocodile gleam in its eye as it tore the wing from its joint, and nor did he see the triumph on its pilot's face.

He did feel the swoop of his stomach as they began to fall. He did feel the adrenaline like drugs through his blood. He did feel the wind pry him away from the dragon, his perfect machine, and the caress of the rain crying goodbye.

It fell beside him, its eyes blind to the city and its garish lights coming up to meet it, blind to its maker's terror, pleading for it to fly again.

He watched as his once-perfect machine fell limp against the rushing of the air and the factories' poison. He copied its image of end, forcing his muscles to calm and his mind to calm and the wind to calm and

Pretty descriptions and dramatic-looking scenes aside, the story and its ending doesn't pack as much punch as it should. It feels sad, but why should I be sad?

I think this is attributed to your main character. He's pretty flat all throughout. All we know is he's human, he built a giant dragon, he got into beef with the Queen, and he failed in the end. But why? Why does he do all this? What are his motivations, his goals in life, his beliefs that drive him to do all of this? The absence of these makes him hard to root for and relate to.

In the end, he fails. Failure would mean something if it happened to someone I knew. However, it ain't the case here. On top of a flat character, the closest I could get to a reason as to why we should feel bad for his failure was because he worked on the machine for ten years. Aside from that, there isn't much at stake. There's no reason for him to win or not lose aside from that. Naturally, I would feel bad for him. But that sympathy would only go as far as "Poor man, God bless his soul" as I fold the headlines for the day and resume sipping my morning coffee. That's because to me, he is just a subversive engineer who went against the law and was caught by the government for that. I then pack up, kiss my wife goodbye, and start walking to work, thinking everything would be alright.

That wouldn't be the case if he was someone I knew personally, and someone whose failure or success meant something to me.

Before I end, I noticed you were trying to use those long dashes in the 6th and 7th paragraph. I think you were trying to use the Em dashes, or the long dashes. You can produce them in MS Word by making two dashes or by playing around with Ctrl+Alt. You can look it up if you're not too sure.

I'm going to leave you with one question you can probably use in your future stories. It was eye-opening for me and hopefully it can help you too. It goes:

"Who is this person and why should I care about them?"

Anyways, that's all that I got for you today. I hope I can get to see one of your works again (they're pretty vivid). Have a good day!

I absolutely love reading this! I love how you describe every detail and how you made the main character in his own world. Very well done! I would love to read more of this since you left the ending hanging.

This is great. Please write more!

This is beautiful. It comes off to me as "flesh is imperfect, let's trust machines" but then he dies because he trusted and glorified his machine too much. It's the same old theme of hating the world, but instead of some sort of Gnostic-type theology, it's secularized. Well, if you really hate the world like that, maybe getting taken out of it is what you get. But you didn't, and that's why it's sad.

Hello!
I enjoyed this story, because it had some poetic elements to it, especially in your choice of adjectives.

In this sentence,
"He was skin and bone, torn apart deep inside by cowardly truth and determination."
I sort of understand what you're trying to say, that he's imperfect and human, but the "cowardly truth" part kind of confused me. It may not be the right descriptor for your idea.

Also, I feel as though you need to give some background to your character and his world in general. The reader trying to figure out why the character is running may detract from their enjoyment of the story. You may have made everything a bit vague intentionally, but in this story, it doesn't work the way you may have intended. I've found that intentional vagueness seems to work better at the start of a book, rather than in a short story. (I have a problem of being super vague in any writing I do, so I get this kind of feedback pretty often.)

The ending, as the character is falling through the air, had me impressed, because you did an amazing job of slowing down time in an intense moment. Although I love happy ending, the abrupt ending showily how death is all of a sudden and doesn't wait for anything.

It was a pleasure to read.

Hello!
I enjoyed this story, because it had some poetic elements to it, especially in your choice of adjectives.

In this sentence,
"He was skin and bone, torn apart deep inside by cowardly truth and determination."
I sort of understand what you're trying to say, that he's imperfect and human, but the "cowardly truth" part kind of confused me. It may not be the right descriptor for your idea.

Also, I feel as though you need to give some background to your character and his world in general. The reader trying to figure out why the character is running may detract from their enjoyment of the story. You may have made everything a bit vague intentionally, but in this story, it doesn't work the way you may have intended. I've found that intentional vagueness seems to work better at the start of a book, rather than in a short story. (I have a problem of being super vague in any writing I do, so I get this kind of feedback pretty often.)

The ending, as the character is falling through the air, had me impressed, because you did an amazing job of slowing down time in an intense moment. Although I love happy ending, the abrupt ending showily how death is all of a sudden and doesn't wait for anything.

It was a pleasure to read.

Hello! When I saw the description, I thought 'Ooh! Steampunk!', so here I am.

I really like how the, MC, who I assume is an inventor, thinks. I like his view that creatures of metal are more perfect than those of flesh. What I want is descriptions of the creations. There is a nice description of the dragon, but it's fairly short. To really give me a snapshot of the world, I want a bit more description of the inventor's lovely creation.

"The mountains offered refuge so far away. The rain stung his cheeks."

This is sort of choppy. I'd use longer sentences for smoother reading.

"He did not see the maddened crocodile gleam in its eye..."

I was a bit confused here. Is this referring to a flying crocodile-like machine, some species of flying crocodile, something that isn't a crocodile, but has a mad gleam in it's eyes, or (not the most likely) a type of crocodile that jumps really, really high. I was confused by all this and it's another place I think a little more description could go a long way.

"He copied its image of end, forcing his muscles to calm and his mind to calm and the wind to calm and -"

What? That's it? What happened? Why is it stopping? I agree with StormCycle, if this is done as a cliffhanger, there are better ways. If he passed out, you can say that. If something else happened, at least provide some closure rather than just breaking off the sentence. It just doesn't make sense. Also, some readers might want a few more descriptions of the world, like what was all that about the Queen? I understand that you want to save that extremely interesting news for later, but a little more info would go a long way.

I hope that's helpful!

Feltrix

Hey regismare!
I really liked this story, specifically because of your writing style. I can tell that you have a talent with words just by reading; everything really flows together. I was intrigued by how unique your writing style was--the ways you used words often surprised me, but not in a bad way. It drew me into the story more, and held my attention.
However, there were a couple problems.
I did end up confused over what was happening. Who is this pilot, this creator of the perfect machine? Why is he fleeing from people? I'm assuming he dies at the end, but I am still not sure on that point? Frankly, what is going on? I couldn't really understand the situation your character is in. He's being pursued by people, for an unknown reason, and it ends by him watching the machine he thought was perfect, plummet, (I'm assuming) killing him off.
Despite my confusion, I still really like this story. I think if you explained a little more what was happening, I'd understand. As it was, the (assumed) death of the main character and his perfect creation definitely made me think. As for your writing, it's really enjoyable. It carried the story well, and I look forward to reading more of it in another time.
Sincerely,
Cub

Hello, regismare! Storm's here to do a review, so let's jump right into this.

It slid serpent-like through the night, yielding to his every touch as if it and he were one and the same. The city stretched below them, a map of stars below smog nestled between harsh mountains. Factories belched poison into the air so far below. The wind was cool against its gentle wings.

He was flesh, cooled by the need to survive that was etched in the darkest parts of his mind like ancient runes.

They would catch his illegal machine - the clockwork he'd spent a decade constructing, the clockwork they'd stolen from him, the clockwork he'd snatched back - and put it back in the bowels of the Queen's palace that overlooked tar-coloured slums.

He copied its image of end, forcing his muscles to calm and his mind to calm and the wind to calm and -