The Sky is Never the Same
Bullets blazed paths by me as I ran forward, ducking for cover. Harry, a man in my squad, jogged behind me, dodging the bullets that grew ever nearer, waiting to bite. Suddenly, thundering waves of sound threw me to the ground as a bomb exploded nearby. A scream echoed through the field, louder that the bombs that were now exploding left and right.
I turned back, yelling for Harry at the top of my lungs, the black smudged air burning my lungs. Crumpled on the ground, limbs missing, was Harry. I scooped him up over my back as my commanding officers voice boomed forth in my mind. “No one gets left behind!”
Agony tore through my limbs as a bomb exploded and shrapnel flew. A medic buzzed around me, like an annoying fly in my ear. A black pause consumed me, engulfed me, trapped me. I awoke with a groan in a medic tent, a firm voice whispering softly in my ear “You’re going to be okay, you’re going to be okay...” The quiet voice slipped away as the black void resumed.
“Harry...” I croaked, finding my throat like sandpaper. A stout nurse hurried toward me, an unrecognizable expression on her face and water glass in hand. “Is he...ok?” A subtle shake of her head was the only answer she gave me, putting the glass to my lips. I swallowed hurriedly, to alleviate the suffering of my parched throat.
The nurse left soon after, leaving me to mourn for Harry. I knew little about Harry, except that he loved books and the sky. He said to me one night when we were on our bunks, “The sky is never the same, sometimes it is blue with white fluffy clouds, or gray with streaks of lightning. On rare occasions, vibrant hues of red and gold adorn the sky, covering her in beauty. The sky is never the same.”
I pondered over Harry’s words. Just like the sky is never the same, Life is never the same. We do not have the same experiences over and over. The sky does not repeat itself, just like war should not. If war repeats herself, then we will blot out ourselves.
Harry filled my mind that night as I tossed and turned, sleepless. The thought that I would never see Harry again, or hear his small laugh, or even listen to him talk about the sky, scared me deeply. His parents, friends, and family would cry and ask why this had to happen. Why did this happen? A life is a wonderful thing, who would want to take one from another human being?
I squeezed my eyes shut, not letting my tears escape. A simple thought came to me. I will fight to keep other lives safe. I will fight for freedom, justice and love. Fighting may terrify me, but it will keep others safe from harm. I will always remember and fight for you and your family, Harry. The sky is never the same.
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140,079 Literary Works • 673,000 Reviews
I just posted a piece/script about war myself and I found this to be interesting to read.
Constructive:
Character Development. Unfortunately since this is a short story you didn't have enough time to develop characters but what you have here is definatly something to work from for a long piece in the future.
Thundering waves of sound. When a person is in a combat situation they don't tend to come up with words like these. I know that he is recalling the situation but I still wouldn't use those words there because it's the readers first time experiencing it and it's quite the mouthful.
Good:
It painted a very vivid picture of the war that he was experiencing. One thing that I might add since the character makes contact with the ground and shrapnel and things does mud/sand restrict his vision? Just something to think about.
I will fight to keep others safe. I will fight for freedom, justice and love. Fighting may terrify me, but it will keep others safe from harm. I will always remember and fight for you and your family, Harry. - Wow those are some strong words! Great work.
Okay I think that about sums it up. It was very good, but short it would work better as part of a short story the story could be longer still if you wanted it to be a short story. If you ever do a longer version of this let me know!
~Caroline
The writing form of the short story is one of the hardest to master. I hate reading short stories because I enjoy reading developed characters and developed plots. However, this story had both of those. This faceless soldier and his bravery really struck a cord in my heart. "The sky is never the same," is very true. The only thing I would suggest would be to describe where they are a bit more. But believe me, your story would be fine without that.
Hey,
I like the title of your story and and the connection to the story with it. But the story itself is has some problems. Firstly, you should have divided them into paras, while reading I sometimes could not keep track of the things. The flow is not smooth. I have come acrosee similar stories so you might want to work a bit on your ideas again.
But the last para has depth to it, so nice touch. You have potential, just work on it a bit.
First of all, I don't know what place this came from within you, so I don't want to offend, but there is almost nothing original in this piece at all. It's all been done before. Every last bit of it, except MAYBE the fact that even after thinking of how war is so bad and so destructive, this character says he wants to do it anyway, and we get a glimpse into how war is perpetuated instead of just how it's bad. THAT is the point I want more of. I do not care about Harry. He only existed in this fiction piece to give some last words, to spur thought in another person. That's not a real character. That's a flat plot device. Make it real, please.
If you can't bring that originality to this kind of piece, find another genre where you CAN bring that special something. There are things that only YOU know about, more than anyone else. Write those, and leave the specialties for people who know about them, because otherwise you end up regurgitating everything you've learned from those experts, and it has no depth. This is what happened here.
What inspired you about this idea? What made you put your fingers to the keyboard and pump it out? Capture THAT, not this flatness. What did you see? What emotion rushed through you that made you feel this was necessary. I want to see THAT. And I want to see how even though he knew it was wrong, this man agreed, at last, to destruction.
People making bad choices while knowing they are bad is compelling.
Let me know if you have questions. Good luck!
Hello there, Yubbies! I'm Rose, and I'm here to review this piece.
Overall, this piece has potential. I've read quite a few pieces that have resembled it - works about soldiers reflecting on the loss of a fellow soldier or loved one - but this one, although it's a bit muddled, still managed to hold my attention and even make me feel for your main character a little bit. Nice work there.
That being said, I do have a few suggestions concerning the improvement of this piece. My main criticism deals with the way you've broken this piece into paragraphs. For instance:
"Agony tore through my limbs as a bomb exploded and shrapnel flew. A medic buzzed around me, like an annoying fly in my ear. A black pause consumed me, engulfed me, trapped me. I awoke with a groan in a medic tent, a firm voice whispering softly in my ear “You’re going to be okay, you’re going to be okay...” The quiet voice slipped away as the black void resumed."
Because you'd lumped all of this together into one paragraph, I became a bit confused. I had to reread it to understand that your character had passed out. If I were you, I'd break it apart in the following way:
"Agony tore through my limbs as a bomb exploded and shrapnel flew.A medic buzzed around me, like an annoying fly in my ear. A black pause consumed me, engulfed me, trapped me.
I awoke with a groan in a medic tent, a firm voice whispering softly in my ear “You’re going to be okay, you’re going to be okay...” The quiet voice slipped away as the black void resumed."
See how much cleared this is? Sometimes, the best way to accentuate a certain part of your writing is to break it apart into paragraphs. Your work will feel polished and clean as a result.
Next, avoid using cliches.
"“Harry...” I croaked, finding my throat like sandpaper."
"I turned back, yelling for Harry at the top of my lungs..."
"Throat like sandpaper" and "at the top of my lungs" are both phrases I've come across before. While they're not horribly overused, they're on the edge of being trite.
"Fighting may terrify me, but it will keep others safe from harm. I will always remember and fight for you and your family, Harry. The sky is never the same."
These are powerful words. Great job.
Overall, nice work! Always keep writing. If you ever need anything reviewed, feel free to let me know.
-Rose
So, I'm not going to nitpick here, but just give you some thoughts in general...
First off, this is told from the perspective of a guy, and I assume you are not a guy. The prose is a bit odd for a soldier, too flowery and forced. For example:
...that's quite the mouthful there. If a person is in a combat situation, they're not going to have time to wax poetic, and guys in general usally don't talk with a lot of eloquence (heh). That doesn't mean this has to be strewn with profanity though, just that you need to match the style of the narrative to the story's mood. That is, what effect are you trying to achieve here? War stories are generally written with a rough, raw style to it--- it serves the situation. But hey, maybe you could change it up a little. Don't shun originality, just don't make the reader roll their eyes.
Next thing is that the action moves waaaaay too slowly here--- it gets bogged down in the description. The example I gave up there ^^^ demonstrates this. An explosion happens in an instant, in real life. Re-read your sentence to see what I mean. (A good clue that your action is moving too slow is if you have to put "suddenly" in there at any point during the sentence. Good action is tight with suspense, and brief. In an action sentence, "suddenly" is redundant.
Oh, there is also a VERY sudden transition b/tw battlefield and medic's tent.
Slow down! Give us a little break here, the reader needs to catch their breaths! How did he pass out? Give us some more sensory details here... what kind of agony? What did he see, think, hear? People usually drop of instantly into blackness before losing consciousness or see a bright flash. (This is from experiance though, so not a general statement. ;P) I know it might seem cliche, but there needs to be a bit more going on before the medic's tent. Heck, even a paragraph break will do it.
Third and final point, is that your character's actions and reactions are unbelieveable. For instance, one does not simply "scoop up" a limbless comrade. Men, full grown men, are heavy, even without arms or legs. Plus they've been running around for awhile, he's going to be tired. Have him struggle a bit. (While we're here I'd also like to point out that bombs are generally a lot more messy. One, does not simply lose all four limbs simoultainiously without the damage having reached any of the vital/torso area)
Another thing, and this is from a pychological stand point, is that guys tend to think in compartments. That is, they don't see in wholes like girls do. While if a girl would have been in this situation, she would have broke down, distressed over her fallen partner. However, guys can put that aside. They can ignore the grief and focus on the task at hand. (This has been demonstrated many times in war situations.) It seems a little ackward to me that your guy suddenly ignores all the whizzing bullets and bombs. The priority is... what? "No man gets left behind" is a bit unrealistic in a war situation. So, you should give some more credance to his actions--- what drives him to stop for his friend? You're character needs a bit more motivation. (But hey, overall, I liked the way you handled it. No touchy-feely stuff, which is great. Still, it would have been nice to know what was going through his mind.)
That all being said, the last section where you slip into introspective monologue seems melodramatic. It's all too sudden, you need to slow down a bit, establish a connection to the main character. Readers don't really care that much about flashbacks and such in the first scene... they want to know what's happening in the present.
So... expand on this! Give us some more action, more description. Overall I liked the way you handled the prose--- it was rather original. Just try and speed things up a bit. You should have some more violence in there--- you don't need gruesome or hyperrealistic, but hey, this is war after all.
I liked this, gave us an interesting situation. Flesh out your protagonist more, expand this scene so it's not so short.
Great job, keep writing and good luck with this!
~ED
Hi yubbies! Here to give you a review!
There are a few nitpicks in the spoiler:
Spoiler
This sentence doesn’t really flow that well. Maybe something more like “I turned back, yelling for Harry at the top of my lungs whilst the black smudged air burned them.”
[quote]
“The sky is never the same, sometimes it is blue with white fluffy clouds, or grey with streaks of lightning.
So, what I liked is that it drew up a lot of interesting questions. Firstly, the obvious one is, what exactly is going on? Is it in a war- zone? I think that this doesn't need to be revealed completely, but perhaps you could make it slightly clearer. I mean, it is a short story so it’s not like you can say what’s happened later on.
I really also enjoyed some of your writing techniques, such as triples. “consumed me, engulfed me, trapped me” . This is really good. Also, I really liked the language that you used because it was quite kind of original which made it more interesting. A slight critique I have to mention to do with this, though, is that sometimes it seemed the words you used were very sophisticated, but slightly hard to understand, it’s like you went a bit overboard with a thesaurus. I’m sure you didn’t, but it was a bit tricky to understand, and to me seemed a bit unnecessary to use that vocabulary.
A final improvement I’d like to say is maybe you could make this piece of writing a bit longer so you can expand on your descriptions in various different sections. For example in the beginning paragraph, this could be expanded so there is much more detail so you can really picture what is going on. What you've got so far is good, but I think it could be developed a bit more.
Well, overall, I did enjoy reading this, and I think it’s got lots of potential, but to make it even better it could be more developed, with your detail and descriptive language. Well done so far!
Keep writing!
-Tamara xxx