Feedback on my story.

Fayane · 01-12-2007, 03:29 AM

I posted the first paragraph of my story hoping to get some honest feedback if anyone would be so kind as to read this and let me know what you think thank you very much.

The sky was a grayish blue and the sun hid behind the overcast sky that hovered above me. As I looked through a wall of ash I could see a nearby village I wondered where I had wandered to, I felt alone and as if a terrible event had taken place here, I looked around and all I could see was the faded brown of old saloons and hotels, the sand had lost it’s color and was a dark shade of gray as if it was tainted by fire. The ashes kept falling like an endless rain of gray that did not wet what it touched, but only added a feeling of sorrow and despair to the town. As I walked further into what I did not know the blood from my wounds left a red line in the sand, I started to see all the buildings in lines on each side of me as to develop a path to where I could not see the end. I was scared and alone with no memory of how I ended up here if I even knew where here was I would have a little feeling of hope, as I walked I read all the signs around me most of them were signs on the buildings but I walked past one that read (Emerson County) I didn’t recognize the name but I knew it was a place I have never heard of. As I walked on, the sky seemed to open up with each step I took, I took a step back and the clouds closed a little and out of nowhere I heard a feminine scream, I ran as fast as I could to get to the voice, in my head I was thinking (thank god someone else is here) and as I ran the buildings around me were moving so fast behind me and the voice still seemed so far away no matter how far I ran the voice never came closer and I started to get worried, I started to run out of breath so my run slowly developed into a walk, after a few minutes of walking I stopped and listened for the scream again and heard it but it still seemed so far away and this time I had heard an echo. I then felt a chill crawl up my spine and it felt as if I stayed there forever because it wouldn’t go away, I turned around and was shocked at what I saw my jaw dropped and the next thing I know I was standing in a pool of blood, I blinked and awoke in shock back in my bed.

Martyr · 06:33 AM

Rule Number 1: "It was all a dream" SUCKS! Every time. I don't know how many times I gotta tell people this, but you can't do it this way. It's been done. It's anticlimactic. It doesn't drive the story, and it leaves me confused and annoyed.

Especially since, The Second Problem is that you have WAY too much pointless and, dare I say it, tactless description. A whole bunch of that sun crap doesn't apply to the story. It's excessive, it doesn't take me anywhere, it doesn't take the story anywhere, it's just a mess on the page.

A grammatically poor mess on the page, I might add. The writing was so thick with words either poorly or uncreatively punctualized, that I could barely get through the mess to realize what was going on, that is:
I wandered through an echoing world of empty buildings until I found myself standing in blood until I woke up in my bed, safe from all harm and with nothing more to worry about.

And I look at that, after rephrasing it coherently in my mind, and I find myself amazingly disinterested.

The sadder fact for you, my friend, is that any publisher wouldn't do all the work I did. They'd throw it waway well into what should be the third sentence, but is actually a very boring run-on sentence, which has no conceivable use except to alert publisher's that this paragraph needs a ton of work before you begin to think about writing a new sentence.

Spoiler: Edit: Yes I am mean and nasty. No, I am not being extra hard on you for any reason. This was plain hard to read, and if it's your first paragraph, then your entire story is already doomed, unless you overhaul this on a massive scale