Eyes squinted upwards as laughter poured silently forth. Their depths glowed, pulsing softly as sunlight pierced their cold depths. A nose quivered with excited apprehension, forcing the freckles aboard to grip the pale surface tightly. They speckled his face like the splatter of paint across a canvas. His grin matched the gleeful beaming of the lamp hung from the clouds. His face was free from clouds of worry and guilt, mirroring the serene,celestial hue above him.
His legs twitched and fingers quivered. The wind urged him to run and leap, it beckoned to the small frame, dancing away. Unable to resist he followed with hands outstretched and reaching for the force that escaped him. His breath flowed freely, unhindered by the concept of energy. He gulped the air down gluttonously, relishing the satisfactory tingle it sent down his throat.
It tasted like cinnamon and bread, and the wheat that swayed under his feet. A sky of golden strands. It filled his gaping stomach and inflated his lungs and lent wings to his rapidly beating heart. It was warm, soft, and speckled with joy and peace. They added bursts of flavor to the mellow base, causing him to giggle as they fizzed and popped inside his mouth.
Chuckles echoed his own as the wind slipped from his grasp once again. Where frustration should have blossomed, determination took root. Giddy, drunken will. His legs curled as the form soared upwards, bursting out of the shimmering plains repeatedly. He could feel his fingers close around a wispy tail, only to emerge empty-handed.
It was unknown to him what this place was, and he had little inclination to know. He was perfectly content in his ignorance. As far as he was concerned, this field was the only place he had ever roamed and would ever roam. He would hunt the wind forever.
The boy flopped down on his bed of silk, letting his servants of barley and oat kiss his face and his bare toes and fingers. Flaxen hair curled gently around his face, framing it innocently. Wide eyes resembled the dreary blue of clouds about to burst, wide and curious. He let them close slowly, blissfully.
The sky exhaled, its breath washing over his face. It embraced the child, gently sweeping his curls away from the fragile face. He inhaled, breathing deeply. An overwhelming sensation of security and hope filled his being. It started at his heart and grew warmer, flooding his body. His chest collapsed in on itself to make room, his various organs reduced to dust. They were washed away by the tide of warmth.
"-Alhwin! Hey!" the voice cut through his conscious and ripped apart his field of eternity. It forced his eyes open, weary and beaten down. Not at all resembling the wide and curious eyes that they had previously been. A hand, warm and radiating comfort, grasped his own and pulled him from the biting stone floor.
"You good?" the blurred blob in front of him gradually came into focus, a pair of eyes questioning him. They were cut from blue topaz, and someone had neglected to polish them. The dark rings that framed them mirrored the ones under his own eyes. Tousled brown hair, faint worry lines creasing their forehead. The dreamer couldn't decide who looked worse.
"No," he spoke truthfully, voice cracked and barely holding out.
"But then again, who really is anymore..."
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139,664 Literary Works • 672,645 Reviews
Bonjour Mon amie~
Okay I'm to review this beautiful piece :3
This is gonna be short because most points were covered by other reviewers (and I'm writing from my phone so). Let's get to it~
Okay so first thing I should say is that you made an amazing work with the imagery and the use of words. You have a very extense vocabulary which is one of the writer's best tools (especially in poetry). Sadly, here it seems you were carried away by that.
As other have said already, you managed to portray the paradise as a feeling of bliss tremendously, but, you focused so much on it that there wasn't a story to tell really. Heck I even confused the imagery with plot development a few times because I was eager to see a story moving. When you wrote about how the feeling of warmth filled the boy, I legitimately thought his ribcage was literally opening, being tore apart; so I was like "finally something's going on" but a few lines later I was "no wait a second."
You have talent, for real, but experience beats all natural skills you were born with, when they work together, there's nothing in their path to greatness. So my only recommendation to you would be to write more, and more, and more. Share it, ask for feedback, try to dwell more on characters and story development. Also, as imagery is your strong point, it'd be good to always start with a description; a few lines is everything you have to actuslly get your reader's attention, so make sure those lines are the most developed ones.
Keep writing ~ ;D
"It's our paradise, and it's our warzone" - some guy on the radio. idk.
Hey there! I...um..well...I...would...
*Ultra imagery skill jealousy intensifies exponentially*
Huh? What? What do you mean I've been out cold for three days?! Oh, right. The imagery skills overloaded my brain. Alright.
So, as you can clearly see, you have a way with words. I appreciate the way you accurately and vividly described a dream-like state of paradise and bliss as gone through by what I assume is a small child. BUT! I must say that I found myself getting quite, how do you say, bored with reading what was basically a written establishing shot from a movie. And I'm not talking like "Lord of the Rings" establishment, I'm talking "had to hit that feature-length" Birdemic establishment. It kinda gets stale and repetitive after a while, and it makes me lose interest as I go along. I myself have always believed in prioritizing plot and character development over imagery, as to not have situations where the focus on making sure you see everything clearly overrides the focus on, you know, the story. Simply put, this story was roughly 99% setting and 1% everything else, not just in content, but also in structure. It'd help if you either wrote a continuation to this or gave it some context like
"Just another dream, I guess. Goodness knows those plains don't exist anywhere anymore."
I mean, really. Any development or plot would've helped. However, that isn't to say it's bad, just...er...incomplete. Try to put more emphasis on plot and mix them together. I'm sure it'll turn out alright. Tally-ho!
(Okay. Never saying THAT again!)
Hello xsplashx! First off, I would like to heartily welcome you to YWS. I hope to see you around!
Pretty. That's the first word that came to mind when I started to read this. Unfortunately, it doesn't really seem like there is more substance to this piece. I have the impression that you wanted to write something beautiful, serene... you know, something like paradise! I think you definitely captured that "pretty" aspect of paradise, but aside from that, this doesn't really feel like a short story because of how ambiguous it is. The descriptions are pretty, but I also feel like they fall short - in other words, it is a little empty.
There is nothing exactly wrong with what you've written, though. You've proven that you have a fine vocabulary and you have a knack for making words sound good together. However, I think you might have focused too much on the aesthetic of the words rather than their purpose. I suggest that you ask yourself a few questions when you revise this, such as What is the purpose of this story? What am I trying to achieve or communicate as the author? Is this [insert pretty description] necessary? If you keep these prompts in the back of your mind while writing and/or revising, you will likely produce a piece that is less vague and more clear to the reader. Of course, I am not encouraging you to drop the ambiguity altogether, but there comes a point when too much ambiguity is not a good thing. It is still a good idea to keep your reader guessing, but you don't want to necessarily have them feeling confused and overwhelmed even at the end of the story.
The other thing about the rather purple prose is that it is easy to get carried away with descriptions, to the point where they just don't really make sense. Again, there is a line between describing something in a unique and non-cliched way and describing something in a way that doesn't make sense or doesn't produce the visual that you as the author actually intended. For example, I read the following in your story:
This literally means that his stomach is open for all to see. "Gaping" is often used to describe an open wound. For example, someone might write, "Luke lay on the battlefield with a gaping wound on his thigh." Here, we understand that Luke has been badly injured on his thigh, to the extent where we might possibly be able to see muscle tissue and even bone. I don't think that you meant for your protagonist's stomach to be gaping. Did you mean something along the lines of "empty", as in "hungry"? I could be wrong, of course, but it seems an odd description to me. In fact, a lot of your descriptions do not make 100% sense to me, and I think this all comes down to wanting to use your great vocabulary all in one go!
I don't understand what is going on. It's cool that you used personification on freckles, but I can't really visualize what is going on because it isn't clear and mostly doesn't make sense. Keep an eye out for moments like these, because clarity is your best friend, especially when it comes to describing things.
Overall, I think that you have a lot of potential as a writer and you are obviously keen to tap into the amazing words you know. There is nothing wrong with that, but I would encourage you to do so in moderation. This way, you won't fall into a purple prose trap or confusing sentences/phrases like the ones I've quoted above.
Let me know if you have any questions - about the review, your story, or even YWS generally!
Best,
Lav
Thank you! I do tend to rely on descriptions, and words admittedly, so thank you for pointing that out cx I guess I'm so used to piling on excessive vocabulary rather than risk it sounding empty and boring heh. I'll be sure to come to you if I have any questions! Thanks again!
Hey!! What's up?
Oh my, do we have something here!
All right. Let's stars off with general comments--story-wise comments, to be exact.
I really enjoyed the fantasy behind it all. It's like you managed to shove all this "fantastic/supernatural" elements--in a very organized, neat way, if I may add--into this short piece of work. It intrigued me at first, but when I noticed it was a dream and these were all things happening inside the boy's mind, I realized how witty it is. Good job with that, too!
Now, for the more specific things I noticed (which you can totally ignore because, after all, you're the author and if you're happy with it, then there's no need to make any corrections.)
So, anyway, let's get started.
I encountered tons of strong words--adjectives, mainly. Gluttonously being the one that called for my attention the most. (I even read it in a fancy voice out loud, shameless on whether somebody heard me or not.) Now, this is completely fine, but be aware of the fact that you're gonna have to keep the story on that specific "vocabulary" usage. For instance, you cannot start writing a novel of cowboys and make them speak like cowboys for the first half of the story and then turn them into flipping Shakespeare or Sophocles. I just felt there were a ton of strong, intense words that lead up to AMAZING descriptions (because you did, after all, capture the essence of it and painted beautiful images in my head) on the first half of the story, but then you lowered that and I'd like to see more instead.
Also, right here, "It was unknown to him what this place was. and he had little inclination to know. " I see a period there, haha, I'm assuming it's that common typo we all freaking do and HATE (at least it drives me insane) when we write a period instead of a comma, but I'm just pointing it out for you to make a quick fix!!
""-Alhwin! Hey!" the voice cut through his conscious and ripped apart his field of eternity. It forced his eyes open, weary and beaten down. " Here, too, I believe the first "-" before "Alhwin" (really creative name, by the way! Congrats!!) is unnecessary. Again, I'm not sure, but you can perfectly remove it and it won't lose the tone it had in the first place.
Other than those minor, insignificant details, I say this was really good. The ending was absolutely intriguing and it left me wanting more. Really amazing way on handling strong emotions/ideas and putting them down into words.
I look forward to reading more of your works!
Keep the hard work!!!
Sincerely, Writer1204
Eee thank you!!! The review was incredibly helpful, I'll keep in mind the part about vocabulary, since I do tend to do that, a lot hehe. Thank you thank you /thank/ you again for the nice long review cx
Don't mention it!! It's my pleasure <3