Pandora - Writers block - Writers Forum

alias · 04-24-2008, 09:15 PM

EDIT REWROTE STORY

Initiation
The holy man is old, with sharp blue sunken eyes hidden behind a long curved nose. He looks as old as the gods he worships. The girl thinks. She would not dare say such a thing out loud. This priest has come to initiate her into womanhood, and give a god to watch over her. She stands in the slightly uncomfortable summer heat, under the shade of a great tree. All the townsfolk are there, dressed in, or better than, their feast day best. Her mother is watching from a bench at one of the many tables, already piled with food and drink. Pre-empting the celebrations to follow. The old man speaks quietly, his voice as deep and cool as the river he wades in. “Cleans yourself, come back to use clean and nameless.” The girl takes a few quick steps into the cool water, then dives in. The coldness forces breath to come in ragged gasps as she swims back to shore. Clean.

The raven like priest hands her a ring, her name is carved on the inside of it. This name represents her growing up. It is her real name. As the old mans leathery finger brush the skin of her hand he frowns and retracts the hand as if it hurt. The silence of those watching suddenly becomes tense instead of patient. “You can channel” the priests voice is no longer cool, it seems almost boiling with fear. “What.” Gasps the girl and the some of the people sitting on the tables. He reaches deep into his pockets and comes up with. Not much, a small cube of what looks like glass. He thrusts that into the girls hand instead of the ring, that symbol of acceptance. She feels like shes being hit in the chest. But instead of flying back she falls forward into a heap. Women scream and men gasp.

The pain goes on, and the girl screams, her hand clenched around the cube in her hand. The same way she might have held the ring. But instead of being accepted she is picked up and put into the shackles attached the old holy mans wagon. One of his guards prizes the object from her fist. The pain is replaced by confusion and an underlying sense of loss. The girl begins to cry as the priest turns to address the shocked and confused people. His voice once again has the calmness that comes from knowing many things. “This young woman can channel. She may not know it, and neither may you. But this.” He holds out the small glass cube that one of his men gave to him while he was addressing the now fearful crowd. “This knows, and lets me know. It is a detector and when it comes into contact with one who can channel, it uses their own power to hurt its holder.” The food and drink sit forgotten in the background. “As you all know those who can channel go insane. Even the strongest of men and women.” He pauses for effect. Everybody knew the story of how Tamiel, the king of Ulio, city of learning, went insane with power and destroyed his own empire. “It is in the name of not just my god, but all the gods that I must take her to Cin, to be executed.” The gasp that one would expect from such a statement does not follow. It is an understandable situation to the people. They know the danger of channelers.

To the girl it is impossibly confusing. My small window into this world is to be shattered? She feels helpless and hopeless. And she is.

The priest walks back to his wagon and looks at her contemptuously. His eyes like blue rocks in his head and just as hard. “As for your name,” He throws the ring away, somewhere in the fast flowing river. “You shall now be known as Pandora. The all-gifted.” He hisses the last few words with all the sarcasm a man who truly believes she is the devil incarnate can muster.

Chapter 2
The towns people shed no tear for Pandora, not even her mother. The loss of a child, even under such regrettable circumstances was just that. Regrettable. In The Quartet, everyone knew the danger of channelling and hated it. This fear is one of the reasons why priests of the 12 gods are so welcome. It was their main role to root out channelling. And to worship and uphold the laws of the gods. One god for each birthmonth. Gods enough for everyone but not for me.

The holy man stayed the night in the towns inn. The Inn of Ill Omen. A strange name. Appropriate. Thought the old man. He was alone now. He was no holy man anymore, just a man. There was once a time when he believed in omnipotence personified. “That which nothing greater can be conceived.” That’s what the priests tell others who ask what the gods are. This priest couldn’t imagine anything greater than the sum of everything around him. He had sworn an oath though, to serve these beings to his death. And to find and execute channelers. He lay on top of the neatly made bed. It is too warm a night to desecrate the bed.

Pandora. The irony of the name stung. It seeped deep into her bones like the cold of the night. Pandora lay were she had been shackled to the raven like mans wagon, outside the Inn. Forgotten now by the priest, and forever by her people. Her rage kept her warm throughout the cold night. But it also kept her awake. She lay awake when the holy man came with his two aids in the morning. They silently, loaded up the wagon and attached the two horses. Businesslike Pandora thought. She sits on a bench built into the wagon. It is simple, a flat board with 2 parallel side and the same number of wheels. Pandora watches the town disappear infront of a bright sunrise. It makes the town look as if it is in the middle of a huge inferno. But instead of flames there is the light of a new day, grabbing the edges of the horizon read to pull the day up.

They travel along the road, its tiles worn smooth in some places, rough in others, by the decay of use. The track is almost lost between the never ending blue expanse of sea and the tangled Wilderness. The sea is a reflection of the sky, or the sky a reflection of it. It is hard to tell. Both are the grey-blue of a dawning day. The Wilderness to the left is endless, almost. It goes on for hundreds of unexplored miles in the centre of the Quartet.

Sabsz · 04-24-2008, 11:01 PM

Quote:

Prologue

New blood joins this earth. On a gentle slope dotted but not marred by broad truncked (truncked? It might be just my vocabulary but I have no idea what this word means. It took me out of the story) trees. The daylight dies as the mother watches the day, her last day, slip away over the black jagged silhouettes of trees and vegetation. A trader is travelling (travelling should be traveling) on the edge of the Wilderness, a huge expanse of uninhabited, mostly unexplored forest that stretches for thousands of miles. Along the edges of this lies the inhabited world, this trader is travelling (traveling) through these fringes of humanity, looking for fortune. Instead he finds a dying mother and a baby girl. He takes pity on the mother and child and takes the baby with him. And as a result of this one random act of kindness, he dooms the world to be shattered, the pieces scattered across the world. And to be put together again by the greatest hero the world will never know. Fey.

Nobody remembers this merchant, this faceless harbinger of fate. But everyone will remember the baby who he carries with him. Pandora. The breaker of the world.

I liked the ending of this. I love the sentence 'The breaker of the world.' Well, something really jarred me was this was all written in the present tense. It may just be my opinion, but it really took me out of the story. Some of the sentences were long and I had to reread a few to comprehend them. Sometimes, I didn't know what you were talking about. Shorter sentences = more comprehension.

I'm not the best in grammar so I can't really help you there.

I stopped reading at the end of my quoted passage. I read your ending, though. I liked it but again, I disliked the tense. I think it would have more effect in the past tense.

I just realized that you switched tenses a few times. I recognized it most in that short excerpt of the last chapter.

This is my first critque and this is what stood out to me. I think this story could be really good if you fixed a few things.

Good luck.

-- Sabsz

Katastrof · 04-24-2008, 11:05 PM

Well, I'm sold. I like this idea alot, even if it's similar to The Unforgiven (never seen/read it so I can't really comment...), and what's even better is that you already have a concrete base to build on. And what a solid foundation!

Anyways here is my advice to overcome your impediment:

1) Just write. You already have all the ideas formed well and usually that's the hardest part about writer's block (well, if it even exists that is). Personally from what I've read, I don't think you have writer's block but rather the dreaded inner-editor struggle. You're trying to hard to make your story epic/great that you're sacrificing what first comes to your mind and labeling it as "not good enough". However, that's why there are such things as multiple drafts. Don't try making it perfect on the first try. Just write what comes to your mind and then after you're done come back to it and make it better.

2)Don't try to sound so writerly. Reading your prologue I could see alot of wonderful ideas but they look just like that, like ideas. My advice is to scrap the prologue and only keep the "Ulio the Chronicler" part as it works wonderful as a prologue and hooks the reader (at least it hooked me). The rest of what you have reads more like notes from your story rather than an actual part of a narrative.

3) Don't repeat what you've already said (or if you have to try using more than just a thesaurus):

Quote:

New blood joins this earth. On a gentle slope dotted but not marred by broad truncked trees. The daylight dies as the mother watches the day, her last day, slip away over the black jagged silhouettes of trees and vegetation. A trader is travelling on the edge of the Wilderness, a huge expanse of uninhabited, mostly unexplored forest that stretches for thousands of miles. Along the edges of this lies the inhabited world, this trader is travelling through these fringes of humanity, looking for fortune. Instead he finds a dying mother and a baby girl. He takes pity on the mother and child and takes the baby with him. And as a result of this one random act of kindness, he dooms the world to be shattered, the pieces scattered across the world. And to be put together again by the greatest hero the world will never know. Fey.

Right here you repeated the idea that the Wilderness is a large forest where no one lives--5 times. I kinda got it at "The Wilderness". If you want to emphasis something, try showing it through examples of what the forest looks,smells,sounds like; what it lacks; what is has; what's different about it from the rest of the world; et cetera. This is kinda why I think you should scrap the prologue; its too boring and repetitive for the story you're trying to tell.

Anyways, take the advice as you see fit. Good luck and I look forward to reading Chapter 1!

alias · 04-24-2008, 11:58 PM

Thank you for the the critique, i think your mostly right. I will definitly try re-writing alot of it. I have more than the bare bones of the story down, but on in IDEA form as you said. Well, most of the story lol, hopefully it will fill itself out a bit.

The Unforgiven isnt a book, it is a song (by metallica). I have not copied the story at all, just the structure of the lyrics, and then only the first few lines..

Quote:

New blood joins this earth
And quikly hes subdued
Through constant pain disgrace
The young boy learns their rule

It was just to help get my head around it, i think ill make a much more original intro poem in the tangible future.

Raging_Hopeful · 04-25-2008, 03:04 AM

Eeek I was wondering about that initial poem. It needs to be shorter and less repetitive. Maybe try researching actual quotes in greek (roman?) mythology about Pandora.

Quote:

Prologue
New blood joins this earth. On a gentle slope dotted but not marred by broad trunked trees.(Personally this opening did not work for me at all. The present tense comes across as weak. And prologues are really, really unnecessary and are extremely overused. If you do your job as a writer and "show the story" the reader will not need a prologue to explain what you could not.) The daylight dies as the mother watches the day, her last day, slip away over the black jagged silhouettes of trees and vegetation. A trader is travelling on the edge of the Wilderness, a huge expanse of uninhabited, mostly unexplored forest that stretches for thousands of miles (This is a heavy sentence and completely unnecessary. "..the Wilderness, a large expanse of unexplored terrain" will do just fine) Along the edges of this (forest? land? needs a noun) lies the inhabited world, this trader is travelling through these fringes of humanity, looking for fortune. (Better yet, cut this sentence. It does not make sense. "Along the edges of the dark Wilderness a trader travels along a dirt trail, searching for the next village where he can scrounge enough to feed himself for another day." Spice it up a bit, make it interesting. So far I don't care about the mother, trader, OR child.) Instead he finds a dying mother and a baby girl. He takes pity on the mother and child and takes the baby with him. (This could potentially be a moving scene and you pass up the opportunity. She is dying and her child is being taken away. Where is the dialogue here? Where is the description?) And as a result of this one random act of kindness, he dooms the world to be shattered, the pieces scattered across the world. (shattered...scattered... too cute for this doom/gloom story.) And to be put together again by the greatest hero the world will never know. Fey.
Nobody remembers this merchant, this faceless harbinger of fate. (Then why bother mentioning him? You could cut this WHOLE beginning part and start by introducing Pandora as a child, living with the trader. THEN introduce the details and backstory of her past. By then the reader will hopefully care enough to keep reading.) But everyone will remember the baby who he carries with him. Pandora. The breaker of the world.

That's all I have time to critique. The problem here is that you're telling, not showing the details and interesting dialogue of these characters. In this entire piece that you have posted, there is not one scrap of dialogue, even though you are introducing some pretty important things, it doesn't feel important because you pay little attention to it. It feels like a story summary, not a story.

Start by defining the characters and giving them voices. Scrap the prologue. It's a crutch you don't need. Tell us WHO gave her her name? It's a very powerful name and there should be a good story with it. Don't tell us, show us.

Keep writing and working on this piece

It has potential as long as you give it the opportunity to grow!

Cheers,
Linz

alias · 04-25-2008, 06:35 AM

Thanks. Im not sure what you mean about the Poem though, this isnt based on any mythology. I posted a revised and expanded first chapter and intro poem. And dumped the Prologue.

Sabsz · 04-25-2008, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Cold

The trees seem like great monuments to the lack of human intervention. These great densely packed monuments covered with snow and ice. A strange silence hung from their branches too, on top of the snow and ice. The silence of emptiness, the silence of the absence of human life. A quietness Pandora knew, and kept as her own. That was one of the few things she knew. That and her name. It meant “Godless one” in the local dialect.

She moved between the trees, shivering. Her blood brown auburn forgive me but I don't think 'blood' would be the best way to describe brown. When I read 'blood' I think dark red, not brown hair wet with melting ice from the night before. Her pale grey eyes were as sharp as ever, but instead of wit, charm and arrogance. There is you seem to have switched to the past tense. So 'is' should be 'was'. hate. She hated the world that cast her out.

She’d been walking since last night. The same night the village boys dragged her from the sobbing mother and threw her away like a broken piece of furniture. Callously, coldly, angrily. They were boys she had grown you could just say 'grew'. It has the same meaning as 'had grown' and it uses less words. up with. The Priest directed them and the thin layers of manhood they held tightly around them fell away as they did all he had said. She had grownyou used this phrase for the second time in one paragraph. up in that village. She knew all the people by name, who then cast her aside to die. Because the priest said she was destined to become evil. She had no god, no birth-month. No known parents. He said. I understand what you are trying to say but the 'he said' is unneeded. We already know the priest said these things about her. 'He said' is just redundant.

So, he took away what she did have.

He did this in the name of not just his god, but all the gods, one for each birth-month. Does she live in Roman times? Just a question. ;] Because the Romans named the months after the Gods. And our months derive from theirs.

And so Pandora was cast out of the warm, yet un-welcoming glow of civilisation and into the cold mid-winter black hole that was The Wilderness. She started to grow tired and lay down. There in that cold heap she spoke out against the whiteness that surrounded her.

“Who am I!” Her demand was quickly swallowed by the heavy melonchally silence. There she slept. Dreaming the dreams of one who is utterly alone, and knows it. She drempt That should be 'dreamt' of her real mother, what she remembered of her. Just a blurred face. Her mother had died giving birth to the child, somewhere in The Wilderness. Pandora had been found by a passing by innkeeper travelling to the nearby city for a carpender to fix the Inn of Ill Omen. And to this auspiciously named home the Innkeeper took Pandora.

I stopped reading there. My biggest issue with this piece is that you are mostly telling. You don't have to do this to get her back story across. It could be a simple piece of dialouge that showed she was deemed godless by the preist. It could be a single thought.

It's much more interesting to SHOW this rather than tell this. I like her backstory but I'm sorry to say, the way you presented it was a little boring.

Readers don't want piles and piles of backstory the moment they open a book. Maybe, you should start the stories when they threw her out of the villiage. That way you would be showing us what happened, rather than telling us.

Quote:

An effigy of blood and bone joins us,
And quickly she’s cast aside
Before the effigy can be filled with life
A child of unknown parents
A child of fate
This young woman lacks a birth sign, lacks an identity.
She is godless.
She is cast out.
The young woman struggles on.
Alone, alienated, not human.
She has no kin, no home, no identity.
She vows upon her own,
“Never more shall I be cast away, the world will pay”
And so this effigy is filled with hate
Here begins the story of Pandora.
Of the end of light and the breaking of the world.
And out of the ashes and rubble and memories rises Fey.
The greatest hero of all.
- Ulio the Chronicler

There was nothing wrong with the poem, I actually really liked it. But, some of your lines were a little long. I think it has much more flow when the sentences are shorter.

Good luck.

-- sabsz

Katastrof · 04-25-2008, 03:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alias

The Unforgiven isnt a book, it is a song (by metallica). I have not copied the story at all, just the structure of the lyrics, and then only the first few lines..

It was just to help get my head around it, i think ill make a much more original intro poem in the tangible future.

Ya I'm not sure if you can copy the lyrics without prior consent from the artist.

Sam Winchester · 04-25-2008, 04:12 PM

The trees seem like great monuments to the lack of human intervention. These great densely packed monuments (you need a "were" in here or this sentence is fragment.) covered with snow and ice. A strange silence hung from their branches too, on top of the snow and ice (silence hung from their branches? I doubt if this makes sense). The silence of emptiness, the silence (I know you were going for emphasis here, but you could lose the repetition and still not lose any of the emphasis) of the absence of human life. A quietness Pandora knew, and kept as her own. That was one of the few things she knew. That and her name. It meant “Godless one” in the local dialect. (The name "Pandora" comes from two Greek words "pan," meaning "all," and "doran," meaning "gifted". So the name "Pandora" means "all-gifted". I've never heard of it meaning anything else in any other dialect.)

She moved between the trees, shivering. Her blood brown auburn hair wet with melting ice from the night before (this is another fragment sentence). Her pale grey eyes were as sharp as ever, but instead of wit, charm and arrogance. There is hate (This part is confusing and has a tense change. I think it should be written like this: Her pale, grey eyes were as sharp as ever. But instead of wit, charm and arrogance, they burned with hatred.). She hated the world that cast her out. She’d been walking since last night. The same night the village boys dragged her from the sobbing mother and threw her away like a broken piece of furniture. Callously, coldly, angrily. They were boys she had grown up with. The Priest directed them, and the thin layers of manhood they held tightly around them fell away as they did all he had said. She had grown up in that village. She knew all the people by name, who then cast her aside to die. Because the priest said she was destined to become evil. She had no god, no birth-month. No known parents, [h]e'd said.
So he took away what she did have.
He did this in the name of not just his god, but all the gods, one for each birth-month.

And so Pandora was cast out of the warm, yet unwelcoming glow of civilisation and into the cold mid-winter black hole that was The Wilderness. She started to grow tired and lay down. There in that cold heap, she spoke out against the whiteness that surrounded her. “Who am I!” Her demand was quickly swallowed by the heavy melonchally (melancholy) silence. There she slept, [dreaming the dreams of one who is utterly alone, and knows it. She drempt (dreamt) of her real mother, what she remembered of her. Just a blurred face. Her mother had died giving birth to the child, somewhere in The Wilderness. Pandora had been found by a passing by innkeeper travelling to the nearby city for a carpender to fix the Inn of Ill Omen (The two "bys" in the first part of the sentence slightly confuse it. If you try something like: Pandora had been found by an inkeeper passing by on his travels to a nearby... [And I don't think you need to tell us what he was passing by for.] ).. And to this auspiciously named home the Innkeeper took Pandora.

When she woke, one word stuck in her mind “cold.” It unfolded in her mind like a flower (I think this sentence is unnecessary. It really doesn't do anything). She mouthed the word, her lips were scarlet against the white snow (you need a qualifier here). I need to get out of here, she thought to herself. I should head to the Haen (I would italicise her thoughts). She begun heading south and west (south-west) to find the road that would take her to Haen, a large town that the Innkeeper had often gone to buy food-stocks at. It was a short journey to the road. [H]er hysterical perambulating the night before had taken her away from the town parallel to the vein of a road that led back to the city. It was called the Western Highway, and it branched out and connect to all the smaller towns and villages on the way south from Tul before becoming one big paved road. Then it headed for the biggest city on the western side of the quartet, Cin. Who am I? Pandora’s voice echoed the corridors of her mind as the trees became more sparse. She stepped onto a gentle slop dotted but not marred by broad trees. On the bottom lies (tense change. "Lay") the path. A great grey river reflecting the light of the early morning (fragment). Upon this great river walked a young man. He was medium height, with brown hair that went down to his chin. He looked messy, but clean. He wore the ring of the initiated. A ring all those who had survived 16 winters wore. It looked new, so he must have been the same age as her. She was meant to have received her ring, and the priest had come to give it too her. But finding that she had no known birthday he named her godless, [telling] the villagers that if she had no god to protect her she would go mad and become evil. Having not the callouslness of heart to kill her, the towns people had banished her.

“Hello. Do you need some help?” [a]sked the initiated youth.

“No,” Pandora replied simply.

He glanced at her hands. He knows im not initiated. (Is this the narrator speaking, or Pandora thinking?)
“Where are you heading?” the brown haired young man asked.
“To Haen,” she said. “To become initiated,” she added, noticing him glance again at her bare pale fingers. She knew lots of people headed to larger towns for initiation. “What is you name?” she demanded of him, her voice shaking a little for she was scared he had passed through her town and knew of her.

“Fey.” He stated firmly. “Who are you?”

“Pandora.” She had paused before speaking, pondering the question on a deeper level.

----Thats all i got form the beginning, now heres the end of the last chapter----

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hope my critique helps. There are a few things in relation to fragment sentences and other grammatical errors that I've noticed. I would recommend reading Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. This will teach you the dos and don'ts of grammar.

I also agree with the telling part (ignore my signature in this instance). I'm not saying you can't tell, but try to show more. Other than that, you've got a good story. Good luck with it.

Sam.

alias · 04-25-2008, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katastrof

Ya I'm not sure if you can copy the lyrics without prior consent from the artist.

Yah it was just for planning. I rewrote it with completely original lines.

Raging_Hopeful · 04-28-2008, 03:13 AM

Alias,
I mean with the name Pandora, you have access to piles and piles of Greek mythology. You could choose a quote that talks about her "box" or something that could relate while sounding hella class as you do it. Was just a thought, a creative element.

Cheers,
Linz

alias · 04-29-2008, 08:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raging_Hopeful

Alias,
I mean with the name Pandora, you have access to piles and piles of Greek mythology. You could choose a quote that talks about her "box" or something that could relate while sounding hella class as you do it. Was just a thought, a creative element.

Cheers,
Linz

Thanks very much, i had a look at that. I was surprised to find it does have some context to my piece, if only in the later planned parts. It fitted a lot better in the re-done version though.