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Story Sample I Am writing(The first few pages)

3 years ago

[This is based off a writing prompt from myself on the journey to godhood]
Planets, The Universe, Galaxies. All have experienced harsh wars, corruption, and fear throughout the victims of each person who goes through a living day in this insufferable world. The corrupt, the aura It gives off is incredibly broad and bulky. The world was going down slowly a dark path during these times, with child soldiers being sent off to planets, the few that did survive, however… would end up ruling over the planet, killing millions and destroying almost everything the very thing as If It were a full-scale invasion. During all of this, however, a fruit was beginning to sprout from the Tree of Creation. Wars were going on throughout the galaxies with neighboring planets and soon… the corruption turned too great, too powerful and divine to be ignored. The fruit suddenly turned grey and black as if It were spoiled.


You wake up inside a dark and womb-esque area. Its completely dark and not very spacious. Whatever this area is, it is small and compact. You can't see or hear anything, you can't even breathe. You can feel something around you however. It feels... itchy and rough, like sandpaper or a cat's tounge, and as cold as an mother-in-law's presence. You shudder from the feel of it and retract your body inward to the fetal position to withstand the cold.You might be able to break it and get out or you could stay inside.
{Two paths split here}

[Path 1]
You decide to stay in the womb-esque prison hoping either something will happen or someone might get you out. However you forgot the fact that you can't breathe in here. By the time you realize you were supposed to break out of your current tomb, you are way too weak to do so. You slowly die over the course of surprising 22 minutes, due to the... nature of yourself. Your suffering is prolonged by the fact you seem to be tainted even more so than before now. Your veins run grey now and your pod eventually becomes like amber. You are eventually fossilized and put up for display, your whole body is preserved and people come to look at you as an all-star attraction of sorts. But, at least you died warm, albeit suffering as a result.

[Path 2]
You put your hand to the wall yet again, from this you determine its more of a pod than a womb. A womb is not as icy cold. The only warm thing in here is the aminiotic fluid that fills the entire pod. You retract you hand back and prepare a sharp punch at the wall. It breaks surprisingly easily. It felt like crushing a mushy apple, disgusting but easy. You can see a tear inside the fruit now, light shines through it blinding you momentarily.You stuck your hand out, grey in color and nails long and sharp.

 You began to tear the fruit open and slowly revealing the demon inside. You looked around with young eyes and turned your attention to the nearby gods. They looked in shock and terror as you looked around the surrounding in a stupefied state, astonished by the world of the god's and it's beauty before you felt  yourself being slowly dragged down by an invisible force. You saw beneath a terrifying sight, millions of demonic like creatures trying and failing to climb up a chasm. From here you can either decide to be cast into the pits of Abaddon, or try to reason with the gods to not drop you into the pits.

{Two Paths split from here but because I havent written the first path yet we are going to go with the second path}

Your survival instincts kick in and you yell at the gods to rethink there decision. They pause momentarily and you are suspended in the air. One of them seems to take a liking of sorts to you and orders for the other gods to release you. You are relieved and happy at the same time as you embrace the beauty of this place. You approach the goddess who took a liking to you and bow to express your greatfulness, this goddesss seems somewhat humored and disgusted by the approach. She attempts to get you to follow her to a palace. You can either choose to remain in the land here or follow her to the palace.

{Two Paths split here}
[Path 1]
You stay and explore the beautiful land, the goddess looks quite disappointed but does not force you to do anything. She heads back to her palace alone and hungry.  The land seemed to expand into a forest that you felt tempted to go into. You went inside the forest andexplored for hours before seeing that the path seemed to repeat itself. Unbeknowest to you but this place is an extradimensional everglade area with numerous abnormal qualities that tend tlo attract younger demons and god's alike. One of which included a loop of sorts, you would continously find yourself walking the same path. Surely however someone must be coming to save you. You walk on hours on end and feel hungry, you eventually see a rabbit. He begins to walk towards it but the time it takes to walk just a couple of feet feels like hours. You eventually strike it, wounding it and severing a piece of flesh for you to eat. You do so however it smells funny, you recognize as your own flesh to your surprise. You decide to not eat it and instead chuck it far into the woods. You keep walking and eventually stumble across what looks like a man in the far distance, likely a search party. You begin to walk closer but you're met with that same feeling of time slowing down and no matter how much you walk, your distance doesnt seem to decrease. You couldn't understand what they were doing but then they disappeared entirely only to reappear in front of you, striking you and taking a piece of your flesh. You are doomed to repeat the same fate over and over again in a time loop. At least you're still alive if you can call that living.

[Path 2]
You follow her into the palace and soon discover that she has dressed you up with a white powdered wig and colonial suit. You are informed by many servants, who look rather cute and harmless, that you are going to have dinner with the goddess, you feel excitement but a small case of danger. You ignore it however due to the kindess shown by the goddess. You prep yourself to look good for dinner before you enter the dining area. It is a rather coloassal room with plenty of space to eat and even do other miscellaeneous recreational activities. There is a massive chandelleir hanging above your seat, you decide to take a seat. The goddess looks at you hungrily, you start to ctacth on but your'e immeditaely struck in the back of the head. You wake up in a suit of sorts, you feel like an empty husk. You are instructed to serve water to the goddess and you are compelled to oblige. When you pour the water you see what's on her plate. It is yourself, on that plate. It seems you are now serving as a meal to the Goddess of Gluttony. You are forced to serve her in a new body, you come to learn that the other servants are simply demons such as yourself the goddess thought looked appetizing and now you serve her for eternity. You are not dead but you feel incomplete...
[That is all I have currently]
I'd like to know if I should stick with it not for now.

Story Sample I Am writing(The first few pages)

3 years ago

This is also my attempt at getting out hell

Story Sample I Am writing(The first few pages)

3 years ago

Here is some first impressions (that are not very deep). It sounds interesting an unusual and that makes it king of cool. Still there are a bunch of problems that you want to weed out.

  • You have a show-don't-tell problem: I noticed this a little bit in the beginning. The first sentences are much too analytical and detached for a narrator that is just regaining consciousness. For example "womb-esque" area sounds like the result of a train of thought, but it stands there at the beginning, where I would much rather know what I actually see and feel (diffuse shapes, a soft resistence when trying to extend a limb...)
  • The "mother-in-law" bit actually sounds like the narrator is being sarcastic. It's the wrong thing at the wrong time.
  • You are jumping tense after the first split.
  • A first-choice death is huge downturn, particularly if you can't really make an informed decision yet.
  • "However you forgot the fact that you can't breathe in here" -- You might aswell add "you idiot". This does not have the feel of the character thinking (Nobody ever thought "Oh I forgot to breathe"), its you, the author, lecturing the player.
  • Try to eliminate "the fact that". This phrase always signals a problem. If it's a fact then why don't I know it? It's a cheap way to do an infodump and needless words besides.
  • The show-don't-tell problems get really bad when we come to the second choice. I felt you were paraphrasing the rest of your thoughts there rather than actually telling the story. I put me off so badly that I couldn't actually read on on the first try.
  • What are the bold words/letters about? The emphasis does not make sense to me.

Regarding your question: Definitely stick with it. It's cool and unique. Just needs a bit of polish.

Story Sample I Am writing(The first few pages)

3 years ago

Thank you for the feedback. I'll polish it up now.

Story Sample I Am writing(The first few pages)

3 years ago
I'm not going to get into any of the smaller proofreading issues right now (except to mention you've got some problems with tense switching and apostrophe usage), but the major thing that jumps out at me here is how much this needs to be explained with more detail.

There's the old 'show, don't tell' rule. True it can be overemphasized sometimes but it's a good general guideline just the same. Everything from 'You looked around with young eyes and turned your attention to the nearby gods...' onwards reads like a rough draft or an outline.

You're seeing the gods and the supposedly beautiful world of the gods, you're talking to the gods, but the reader is just briefly told that these things happened without getting to experience any of it for themselves. Slow down a little and write this stuff out as it happens, with some more imagery and other sensory details. It sounds like a pretty unique setting and I'd like a chance to get to know something about it.

Also I think you can just scrap the first choice entirely as it's just asking whether you want to play the game or end it, basically the equivalent of infamously inane 'do you get out of bed in the morning?' choice we see so much of in subpar games.

Now if staying there longer made you more evil and corrupt and you got a completely different story based on that, that would be an interesting use of it...

But why not just have the character climb out of there and start experiencing things, leading them to having to deal attention of other gods? Because for real, the only direct action or detail seems to happen when breaking out of the fruit, after that it's a little like you just gave up.

Not trying to make this overly negative, but it's a weak point in your writing you're going to have to address because it affects how the reader experiences the entire story. I think you might be picturing much more epic things in your head that you're just not communicating in the writing itself, and the only way to do that is to zoom the camera in and break it down one scene at a time.

Story Sample I Am writing(The first few pages)

3 years ago

Thank you for the criticism. I might include the staying in the pod results in you becoming more evil or I might just scrap it altogether