I left a whole big dang bunch of comments on your doc. Sorry, it was late and I had nothing better to do. Overall it was interesting, but I tried to offer as much advice as possible.
One thing I wanted to go into a little more detail about here, since I think it’d help some other people:
Specific and general language. General language is trying to describe a situation, a bit like what you’d see in a synopsis. This is good for conveying information quickly, but it’s external to any particular viewpoint. If general language is a synopsis, specific language is a snapshot. “The tiny elephants wound in a procession through the streets” is general, but “The tiny elephants wove around a pair of red stilettos, then slipped underneath the tables of the sidewalk cafe” is specific.
Being specific is important because that’s the sort of thing that allows the reader to build a scene in their mind. With specifics, your scenes have more impact because they feel more real, like a memory as opposed to an abstract concept. It’s a good thing I keep in mind and look for when I edit my writing.
I really appreciated your response! A lot of my vague language and the undefined setting was because I was trying to make the story feel dreamlike, as you guessed. The main thing I was worried about was being a bit too vague and being unclear, which does seem to be a problem.
I will note that your reaction at the end to the events not really feeling miraculous was the intent. As fantastic as it was to the narrator, no one really cared about what he saw. That said, if you got the impression that the effect was unintentional, I probably wasn’t consistent enough in my tone.
I also tried detailing the relationship between the narrator and his companion in an earlier attempt at the story, but I couldn’t figure out a satisfying way to do so. If I go back to this, I’ll keep in mind that the background is more important than I thought.
theres no time limit for anything here, really, other than any you choose to self-impose.
@Yunsar It’s fun to have other people pick something for you, could lead you in directions you wouldn’t normally expect. Well that’s my reasoning anyway. However, if you’d prefer to pick your own you can do so!
you’ve got a good writing style and a consistent tone, but a few details don’t quite work for me. Why does everyone react the way they do to the elephant corpses? I get that it’s surreal but there’s only so far I can stretch my logic as a reader. This just seems like a completely nonsensical reaction. Maybe if you explored that a little further, confronted that fact, it would stick? Thanks for sharing!
sure, why not? It might get lost among everything else though, so you could always make your own thread in this subforum if you wanted, especially if you have multiple things you want to share.
Or maybe I should put like a “misc. stories” section in the second post? What do people think about that? please let me know
ooo that’s a real good one. Taking a few days is good. I advise people to take their time. Like I wrote my story yesterday but I always like to leave it a day before redrafting so I can submit something with a little polish (which I’m planning on doing later today)
Anyway loves, it is NEW PROMPT TIME!
I liked @CosmicLass’s idea from a while back for assigning everyone a different type of apocalypse to write about. So sign up for this round and someone will give you a world-ending catastrophe to inspire you.
I’m happy to come up with the prompts but I like it when other people chip in too, so please feel free to give out apocalypses, or even come up with your own one if you have a really good idea that you are too greedy to share
This round will run from today, February 27th, until March 12th.
Oh boy an existential crisis? Count me in! Though I’ll probably end up having a happy ending where the apocalypse gets fixed but, y’know. I tend to go for either happy endings or bittersweet endings, rarely do I go for a complete downer ending.
I’m in, and I’ll steal an apocalypse from another prompt elsewhere: Heat is going out, fires won’t start, and anything relying on combustion no longer works.
And I’ll give one back too:
Untrammeled rapid plant growth is destroying cities and infrastructure.
