Life Is War (DayDreamer)

, this happened to be the very same short story I ripped from Writer's Way on S*T and PM-ed to Way to let her judge if you can be teacher of the Institute. Sorry about that.

Your story is indeed peppered with foul words. I had a feeling you kinda overdid it on the vulgar language, though, it feels a bit unnatural. Other than that, it's good, except that the beginning and ending don't quite synchronise. You were writing a whole paragraph about death metal and your character dying then you seem to have forgotten about it. You could have mentioned something in your ending that makes readers think your beginning paragraphs weren't randomly put together, that they had some kind of significance in the story. That was my impression anyway.

Nice storyline, though, and it was an awesome fight.

The reason why the beginning and end don't seem to synch is...because it isn't actually finished yet. I just wrote up to that last part and I haven't thought of the specifics of what is gonna happen next yet.

Whenever I put the excessive language in a story I worry that I overdid it, it was the same with this one. I'll review it and try to make it more natural.

If you're having issues naturalizing the language, so to speak, try using a couple of 'bad' words as a one word sentence interjection type thing. It makes it seem like it's part of the character's internal monologue. Like he's saying it under his breath to himself. Just a suggestion.

Are you having trouble finishing up your short story? I suppose you can throw out all your ideas (is that the right phrasal verb?) and we can all talk about it.

'throw out all my ideas', yeah that doesn't sound exactly the way you meant it to

My writing process is just really eratic. I have the ideas to finish the story, I've just got to get into the mood to type it out. I have to be in the right frame of mind to add all the descriptive details, otherwise I end up rushing through and focusing on just the story advancement.

I'll eventually have a good day soon where I'll suddenly feel like continuing it, and then I'll be able to move on properly and touch up what I've already got.

I remember it was "throw-something", but yeah, that was LOL-able.

I know what you mean about the moods. Like right now I'm not in the mood to type out Chapter 3 of my novel even if I already have it on paper (cheerios to the traditional written form). And the descriptive/advancing mood frustrated me a lot when I was roleplaying. But now I've hardly any time on S*T thanks to studying and stuff so that doesn't bother me much.

I hope that good day comes soon then, you seemed to have taken a long time.

Speaking of my poor English standard, my schoolmate told me her English teacher said there was no such phrase as "blinked back tears". I remember reading it somewhere, though.

If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to rush me

Well it has indeed been a while, and that is made evident by my entrance to the next stage of my creative process. If I leave something for too long without working on it (as with this story), I eventually start rethinking the entire story, plot, characters, setting, everything.

At the moment I'm wondering if I shouldn't just do away with the high-tech, medieval styled weapons/armour and go with standard modern day weapons instead. Though that might be because I'm just starting to think that the whole MR armour and MR/A sword idea is dumb. I call this the 'Regret' stage of my process. Unfortunately, I've not gotten further than this stage in a long, long time.

I think I need to find a way to set myself to and keep some personal deadlines on my writing. I never had this problem when it came to writing things for school, because there'd be a deadline and I'd just ignore any regrets and get the work finished.

DayDreamer wrote:

If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to rush me

Er... I kinda want to see how the ending's like.

And I get into the "Regret" stage ALL THE TIME. Even after I get back my school essays and my teacher praises them.

Well good news is that I think I've managed to pull myself out of procrastination, and am ready to finish (or at least add a lot more) now. More will be online within hours

Yippee. As for me, I guess I should be submitting my third chapter anyday now. In the meantime, I shall work slowly on my short story, which is actually going to be rather long, I predict. Due to massive time constraint, I think I shall most probably reach the Regret and Tire stage before I even get halfway through the story.

I know I'm getting off-topic again! There really should be a thread for off-topicness!

I've read your second part. Yes, it was an eventful fight, but it seems to be nothing more than that. The entire description of the surroundings is left out, such that it seems almost as if your fight was taking place in an empty room. Your characters should interact with their environment a little more, maybe mention passers-by and such to make the setting more realistic.

But I love your humour.

Maybe I should write a dedicated comedy story next

The thing I was most concerned about was that the fight veered from the first part in amount of description. Seems I was indeed correct.

I have just had a couple of ideas of ways to include the environment a bit more around what I've already got.

Anyway I have the next part planned out as well, so today I'll probably make edits to the second part and submit the third part. I think there'll be a total of five parts, though the fifth will be sort of an epilogue.

I also want to get opinions on an idea I have for a twist in this story. I'm thinking of having the gun-wielder (yes I haven't actually got a name for him yet) reveal at the end that he was following the main character at the start (also doesn't have a name yet) because he is the main character's lost son. I'm wondering if that might be a bit cliche and if I should just leave him as just some random guy. This would change the ending quite a bit, because at the moment the main character was in the middle of travelling back to his homeland to end his life when he got caught up in these events. Having a son would give him a reason to stay alive and alter the ending.

The idea that both men are related is cool, but not the father-son relationship thing. That sounds really far-fetched. Maybe the lead character did the gun-wielder's family a good turn or something, but it was a small matter and so the lead character forgot about it and didn't know the gun-wielder was related to them anyway. That sounds a bit better than having a lost son.

I must agree with Pen: the whole father/son bit is used up. You could try the whole gun-wielder-is-secretly-trying-to-kill-main-character-for-reasons-still-unknown thing. That way he still would have been following the lead character, but for a much darker purpose. The gun wielder could have his own little soliloquy revealing his intentions when the main character isn't there. Just a thought.