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Thought
Am working on the next chapter of Ice. It's already five pages, and there are a bunch of bits (many of which aren't complete) which, if added as they are, get it up to eleven pages. And that all together is slightly under half of the total number of scenes that are intending to go in the chapter.
Stylistically, I really like the idea of having the whole year as a single chapter...however, it's already going to be pretty long and it might wind up even longer. I'm unsure if I should try to break it up (and the immediate question that springs to mind is then 'where?' because everything just sort of flows one after another until the very-much-perfect ending - you'll understand when you see it. Or not, as the case may very well be) or if I should keep it as one block.
To distract you from this pointless ramble and the unrest the below posts may well create, as well as creating an outlet to vent any anger, I offer this fragment to distract you:
The trainer heard a short, loud scream, like someone being killed. She stopped, considered, then headed toward the sound.
People died loud for a lot of different reasons. Usually loud meant the body wouldn't have anything else done to it, any money still there. Or sometimes the body might be cut or torn a lot, and usually the money was left those times too. In the trainer's experience, it was bodies that had been made without any noise that usually didn't have money with them. The trainer didn't know why this was, but she knew it.
Another good thing about screams was that usually whoever else had been there left quick, so they wouldn't be dangerous to her. The trainer thought sometimes it might be different maybe, if the thing that killed the person was a staying-in-one-place thing, like the city plants. Still, those sort of things weren't that dangerous either, not if she was careful.
When she got close, she could hear tearing, gulping sounds, slobbery and wet. She paused, listening. She had never heard that. She felt curious and so she continued, going even more carefully than normal.
There was something blue there. It looked a bit like the red and striped big dogs, its form stout and thick, but it was hairless, its body shiny slick. There was something else about it, odd, the neck and head looking closer in form to human ones, and its body was flat with wide shoulders, so that the arms went out to either side. It was tearing at what it killed, a crimson wet thing, making little grunts and noises as it gulped down chunks. The remains of the clothing were still there, mostly red-soaked, but on the edges the color was a dirt-smeared white.
The trainer thought the thing didn't look too fast. She could see a square bulge on the leg on the left, which had been broken off just above the hip. She wanted that. And she thought the blue thing wasn't so big it would want to eat her too, and that if it did she could probably run away fast enough.
She slid out from behind the bushes carefully. Its head moved and they stared at each other.
"Rha…." it growled.
The trainer couldn't tell if it meant something. She waited, but the thing didn't make another sound.
She took a step forward. Uneasily, it moved back slightly. She kept going, moving to the side. I don't want this, she said in her mind, trying to show it that in how she moved, that she wasn't going to take what it wanted, that she wanted something else. Slowly, slowly, it backed up.
Imaginary cookies and promises of not reviewing your innocent story to those who respond, constructively or otherwise.
(Oh, and you don't need to read PR to understand the story. In fact, reading PR may just give you the wrong ideas and cause incorrect assumptions. Just try to take the story by itself. If it's confusing, complain!)
Stylistically, I really like the idea of having the whole year as a single chapter...however, it's already going to be pretty long and it might wind up even longer. I'm unsure if I should try to break it up (and the immediate question that springs to mind is then 'where?' because everything just sort of flows one after another until the very-much-perfect ending - you'll understand when you see it. Or not, as the case may very well be) or if I should keep it as one block.
To distract you from this pointless ramble and the unrest the below posts may well create, as well as creating an outlet to vent any anger, I offer this fragment to distract you:
The trainer heard a short, loud scream, like someone being killed. She stopped, considered, then headed toward the sound.
People died loud for a lot of different reasons. Usually loud meant the body wouldn't have anything else done to it, any money still there. Or sometimes the body might be cut or torn a lot, and usually the money was left those times too. In the trainer's experience, it was bodies that had been made without any noise that usually didn't have money with them. The trainer didn't know why this was, but she knew it.
Another good thing about screams was that usually whoever else had been there left quick, so they wouldn't be dangerous to her. The trainer thought sometimes it might be different maybe, if the thing that killed the person was a staying-in-one-place thing, like the city plants. Still, those sort of things weren't that dangerous either, not if she was careful.
When she got close, she could hear tearing, gulping sounds, slobbery and wet. She paused, listening. She had never heard that. She felt curious and so she continued, going even more carefully than normal.
There was something blue there. It looked a bit like the red and striped big dogs, its form stout and thick, but it was hairless, its body shiny slick. There was something else about it, odd, the neck and head looking closer in form to human ones, and its body was flat with wide shoulders, so that the arms went out to either side. It was tearing at what it killed, a crimson wet thing, making little grunts and noises as it gulped down chunks. The remains of the clothing were still there, mostly red-soaked, but on the edges the color was a dirt-smeared white.
The trainer thought the thing didn't look too fast. She could see a square bulge on the leg on the left, which had been broken off just above the hip. She wanted that. And she thought the blue thing wasn't so big it would want to eat her too, and that if it did she could probably run away fast enough.
She slid out from behind the bushes carefully. Its head moved and they stared at each other.
"Rha…." it growled.
The trainer couldn't tell if it meant something. She waited, but the thing didn't make another sound.
She took a step forward. Uneasily, it moved back slightly. She kept going, moving to the side. I don't want this, she said in her mind, trying to show it that in how she moved, that she wasn't going to take what it wanted, that she wanted something else. Slowly, slowly, it backed up.
Imaginary cookies and promises of not reviewing your innocent story to those who respond, constructively or otherwise.
(Oh, and you don't need to read PR to understand the story. In fact, reading PR may just give you the wrong ideas and cause incorrect assumptions. Just try to take the story by itself. If it's confusing, complain!)
no subject
(Anonymous) 2004-12-13 04:18 am (UTC)(link)The first sentence is a little confusing. It's kind of hard to distinguish if the scream sounded like a person being killed or if the scream itself was like someone being killed.
"Or sometimes the body might cut or torn a lot"
There's a typo in there.
"The trainer thought sometimes it might be different maybe, if the thing that killed the person was a staying-in-one-place thing, like the city plants."
Is the narrator talking about plants like bellsprout or plants like power plants? It might be a dumb question but leafy things aren't exactly common in the city.
"She slide out from behind the bushes carefully"
Slide should probably be slid.
Now you've got me curious about who this is and exactly what this is for. Who's the narrator? Would we know the narrator even if you told us? Is this for Ice? Is this Ice?
Ahh!! Get the questions out of my head!
Kohlihead
(Anonymous) 2004-12-13 04:28 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Kohlihead
(I'd consider dropping 'be' to be a typo, in that I normally use it but for whatever reason failed to add it. Why pick on such a small point, anyway?)
I actually do edit and write up essay things about fanfiction stories as well as reviewing. No one ever said it's impossible to do all three. (Not really such a thing as an editing review, I think...not with the standard meaning of review rather than FFN's, anyway)
Oh, and I'm happy to hear you typically see far fewer than two grammatical mistakes in my other writing. Thanks, I'll try to keep that up!
no subject
I'm unsure about the scream's phrasing, but not sure if there's really a better way of putting it. The trainer just associates 'short, loud noise of a certain pitch' with 'dead body'. She doesn't really consider it that important. I'll think on this...
As to the plants, you're right, it is ambiguous now that you mention it, but I'm not sure how else she'd put. She's referring to the odd plants mentioned in chapter 3, and she doesn't actually know their names.
And the narrator is 'the trainer', of course! Who needs silly little things like names?