Soñadora

Well. I started this today. And it's sort of bad. Buht if I do want to continue and I think I do, I'm having a bit of trouble. I want to tell two different stories, in the same... well. STORY. It's rather confusing. Buht I can't seem to er.. well ok here it is first off:


What is it about finding our identity that is so inexplainably tantalizing? That's one question he had asked himself many times during the course of his growing years. He for one, was not in the least bit interested in his identity. Further, he also believed that the whole question of who one 'was', was also much too researched for our own good.

His sister had been one of those people who had searched for her identity, and may have very well been still searching for it today. He couldn't say more than that, and he couldn't very well say any less. But as he lay in the large field, the grasses he sat amid swaying in the light breeze that only a May spring (bounding on summer) day could provide, that's all of the pieces his mind was willing to put together. His light brown hair fell just below his eyes, the only part of his overall visage that his sister could simply not stand. She had always threatened to cut off the excess hair in the dead of night if he didn't do it himself. He believed she was the reason it had been so long since his last haircut, and also the driving force behind asking his hairdresser to keep it just below the eyes each time he did manage to step into one of those places.

Now, he didn't want to say that he especially enjoyed tormenting his older sister. In fact, he didn't always set out to do that, but somehow in the end that's how it always ended. They had seemed to have lost their common ground. And he knew exactly why, somewhere in the depths of his mind at least. Yet, he seemed to have not been able to grasp it just yet. The thing that mattered most to him now was trying to get them to remember, to remember and not forget the first of the Harting siblings. It might have as well been the last, as he and his sister had had no less of a struggle in raising themselves amid a family lost in memories and pains that always smoldered beneath the surface of daily appearances. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Sometimes he found himself so deep in memories, that it was almost as though he was looking in through a window to another time, another life. But mostly, he found himself lost in dreams.

He sighed deeply and sat upright rather abruptly, as though being broken from a trance. Stretching awake from what he realized had been sleep, he walked towards the blue house that had been his home for as long as he could remember. A home veiled by regret.

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(a/n: Now this is where I want to somehow FIND A WAY to back track into the story of the first Harting sibling.... then keep giving gilmpses of her life. While incorporating it with the narrator's own struggle with his sister and family etc... yeah er. Confusing I know?)
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There were two kinds of people: those that note there are exactly 5 black dots on each side of a lady bug's wing through mere observation, and those who merely see, well, a lady bug. Helen seemed to have found her fit among those of the first class as evident by her current position. The girl sat in the middle of what could only be described as a forest of flowers near the cliffside which overlooked a dark blue ocean constantly waging war with the rocks below.

The sound of the waves crashing against the rocks had become her bedtime lullaby, the source that brought her calm and a sense of place. Here she sat, legs crossed, face in hands, counting the dots on the back of a lady bug quite at peace lounging on the top of a yellow flower. The sound of a bell ringing in the distance broke her from her quiet reverie and she cast a glance towards a blue wooden house that sat a ways away. She slowly stretched awake and began her walk towards the source of the ringing.

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Right then. It may not be very good, hell, it may be bad. Buht I still want to find a way to work with it O_O.

Aevin

There were some things I liked here. I don't have any ingenious ideas for how you could make the flashback--you might just do it very bluntly, with a sentence like, "Thinking of the problems with his sister made him remember ...."

Anyway, I enjoyed some of your descriptions. I liked your image of the guy laying in the grass, and of the girl watching the ladybug. Both descriptions kept the visions firmly in my mind, and in both cases, I found the descriptions ... I don't know. They almost had a surreal feeling to them--a feeling that carried over into other parts of the piece. I liked it.

However, there are some flaws. The one I notice the most is with something called "passive language." Basically, this means you use too many words that mean too little. It makes it seem as if you're tiptoeing around the language, unwilling to commit. If you count the number of times you used the word, "seemed," it would seem as if you maybe didn't want to quite say anything totally directly at all. Try cutting down on the unnecessary words, and more bluntly getting to the point in every sentence. Strong stylists such as yourself do not need to rely on filler words to create the tone. Here are some examples:

Try, "He didn't enjoy tormenting his sister."

"He sat up abruptly, broken from his trance."

Umm ... Not to sound mean, but I can't help but chuckle when I read that. It expresses your problem perfectly.

You should get rid of "what could only be described as." So many words get tiresome for the reader, and in this case draw attention to an author's inability to describe something better. Your description of the cliffside, and the ocean "waging war with the rocks below" is lovely, though.

Well, I hope that doesn't come across as too harsh. It's not a bad piece of writing at all. But the extra words and the circles your sentences run in to say so little ... it gets a tiresome. Cut out unnecessary words, make the writing more concise, and I'm sure you can make this great. Good luck with revision!

--Aevin

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valeca

Dark Aevin nailed it on the head with the 'not commiting' part. It's almost as if you're afraid to say something definite about..well...anything.

The entire third paragraph was confusing in the sense that I'm not sure what its purpose is. There isn't a lot of forward motion with the story, but rather, a lot of dancing around - no solid ground to give the reader a sense of purpose to the story.

That said, I do like some of the descriptions in here and I liked the opening line quite a bit. It was a very strong beginning.

I would reconsider using the quotations around 'was' to around 'who one was' or not use them at all, in your first paragraph.

Good Luck

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I'm here.

chelseafagan

I liked it, but consider taking, like Aevin said, a lot of your extraneous words out. Your adjective use is a bit on the heavy side and most of them seem awkwardly placed, as though you just wanted to throw in a few two dollar words.

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Soñadora

Thank you all for the replies, they weren't harsh at all. I really do want to know what I'm doing wrong so I can attempt to fix it...and improve? Anyhoo. I'll take your advice, work with cutting out the unecessary words, and COMMITING to what I'm trying to say. Ha, and Aevin when I read that line over I realized it DID describe my problem perfectly lol.. So with all that said, I'll work on it, and add some more most likely and then.. come back for more of me sitting under the microscope. Thanks again.

mammamaia

you do seem to be trying to sound 'literary' and instead come off as just too wordy and a bit pompous... also, there are goofs that need fixing, such as 'inexplainably' for the correct 'inexplicably' and 'bounding on summer' which means i know not what... plus punctuation errors like putting a comma outside quotation marks, which is only 'legal' if you're in the uk...

simplify this as others have suggested and do a careful proofread and you'll have a much better piece of work...

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crzywriter

i'll be blunt...this needs a lot of work.

your first sentece is terrible if you're trying to catch someone's attention. In the second paragraph, you switch tenses (i think) and have some very unnecessarily wordy sentences. in general, i think that there's too much description. then again, i'm not the descriptive kind of person so i'm not one to give advice on that subject.

and when you introduce helen, give us a more intriguing introduction. unless she really is the boring person i found her to be.


hope this helps.

~Crzy