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I’m new around here…and I thought it might be in order to post one of my short stories to give y’all a bit more of an idea of what type of writer I am. Granted not everything falls into the same “historical fantasy” category as Leviathan, but it seems to be what I gravitate towards in my short stories. I wrote this sometime last year and it is the first story that I actually took the time to outline. Needless to say, it helped immensely!
http://storiesbyracheal.weebly.com/leviathan.html
Please don’t hesitate to point out any misspellings! I’m not quite as notorious for poor spelling as I used to be, but I still stumble. 🙂
@R-E-P for some reason the link does not seem to be working now…
@kate-flournoy Hmm. I just tried it and it opened just fine, but here it is again http://storiesbyracheal.weebly.com/leviathan.html 🙂
@R-E-P Yeah, the way you incorporated the Leviathan passage was neat. 🙂
I only found a few misspellings: common place=commonplace, sir-coat=surcoat, and a foot=afoot. Also when you use the word ‘it’s’, as in ‘it’s place’, you shouldn’t have an apostrophe. If you do, that means ‘it is’. That took me a bit to learn, since other words use apostrophes to denote belonging to. 🙂 And you said “fools guise”, “serf’s sons”, “servants hall” and “antagonists face”; that should be “fool’s”, “serfs'”, “servants’ “, and “antagonists'”.
There was also a place where you said “you other sister”, and “you Leviathan”, where I think you meant to say “your”. And you said he “bashed the back of his hand the dais”, where I think you meant “on the dais”; and “the man whole had kidnapped his sister”—“who had kidnapped…” and somewhere you said “at” where you meant “that”.
I know those aren’t all misspellings, but I thought you might like to know. I also noticed commas in place they weren’t needed, or where there should have been a period instead.
I hope some of this is helpful. 🙂@R-E-P ah yes, thank you. I’m not sure what was going on with the first one; it’s working now. *headscratch* Oh well.
I did enjoy this story— loved the humor, and I also really love the way you incorporated the Leviathan passage. That’s one of my favorite passages, btw. 😉
The biggest problem I noticed was quite a bit of telling, versus showing. I’ve no doubt you’ve heard the saying— ‘Show, don’t tell.’ Straightforward as that sounds, it’s actually not as easy as you would think, and you do seem to be having some difficulties with it. It’s something I’ve struggled with on my journey; probably the hardest thing about writing I ever had to master. I understand it’s not easy. 😛
One thing that would majorly help with this is using body language to show reactions instead of telling us the emotion the character felt. For instance ‘Carl was furious’ versus ‘Carl flushed bright red and set his teeth in a snarl’. Things that we can see if we’re merely observing the scene. You should write the story as though you were an occupant of the room, and give only as much information as you can see. We should be able to deduce their emotions from their physical reactions.
Also, you did quite a bit of head-hopping. We would be with one character, experiencing the scene with their senses, and then without the slightest warning we’d switch to another for a second or two, then just as hastily switch back. That can get really confusing, so just watch out for that.But I still enjoyed the story a great deal, especially the humorous note it ended on. 😉 Good work.
@emma-flournoy Thanks for catching all those mistakes…I’ll get around to fixing them next time I get into my editor. 🙂
@kate-flournoy Glad you enjoyed it. I really enjoyed writing this one. It just came…I’ve been doing my own headscratching over here. Sure, I’ve heard of “show, don’t tell”, but that was always in connection with film/screenplays/etc. Never in short story or novel writing. I went back and I re-read it a little more carefully than I have in a while (and I confess to seeing the POV shifts in a light I had not previously seen them) and I’m still scratching my head a bit. If it’s not too much trouble, would you mind pasting an actual example of how I told, rather than showed. If you critique it, due to the way my brain works, could you do that in a separate paragraph? I’m trying to better see what you’re getting at.
Show don’t tell is famous in fiction in general. Like all the writing books (irritatingly) say that.
I blog on story and spiritual things at mkami.weebly.com
@R-E-P sure, no problem. I work best with examples too. 😉
So take this first paragraph: The wind whistled through the crenelations on the castle wall. To Carl, it was a common place sound and he was not consciously aware of it. Regardless, it made a fitting backdrop for his boyish imagination as he planned a strategic mission against the wily enemy encamped in a copse of trees roughly half a mile from the castle. A grim, determined half-smile crinkled the lower portion of his face while his sharp, squinting blue eyes completed the look.The wind whistled over the castle wall like the whine of ghostly arrows, cold and sharp. Fittingly dramatic. Carl shivered and sank his chin into the collar of his cloak. They were hiding in the trees, he was sure of it. A grim, determined half-smile crinkled his face, while his sharp blue eyes squinted into the wind with all the determined ferocity of a seasoned warrior. It was a wily enemy, it was. The trees sheltered them from the arrows of his men. “Stand fast, men,” Carl muttered. He pulled a piece of bread from his pocket and munched it thoughtfully. “Stand fast.”
So at first glance, that has very little in common with the first paragraph. That’s because I took what you ‘told’ and ‘showed’ it through implication. I gave you the surface of the scene and left its interpretation to your imagination.
See, not only is showing more vivid and tangible, it also allows the reader to invest a significant amount of their own imagination in the work instead of being spoon-fed the details. Readers read your work to become invested— they pick up the book begging to be swept into your world, and to become a part of it themselves. If there is no place for them in this universe— no use for their imagination— they leave feeling a little let down.Often problems like this can be crippling, but the good news is even though you seem to struggle with this your story wasn’t crippled. It still intrigued and engaged me pretty strongly. It has a lot of potential.
@Mark-Kamibaya yaaaaahhh… well, that’s because it’s the single most important key for strong writing. :/ And it took me for-ev-er to figure that out. 😛
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