To read this story or to participate in this writing event, you only need a free account.
You can
To find out what this event is about click here
Electric Thief
How It Rates
Description
A traveller, eager for a job in the big city of Arcem, finds out that there's more to the city secrets than its gleaming sky-scrapers. Theft is work, too.
Comments
LiLit,
I took a crack at reading your story. I've attached some of my comments (I only commented ont the first half).
You have a few really nice bits of description which suggest to me that you have the capacity to write far better than you have in this particular piece. Are you ESL? I ask because some of the way you've written this story sound stilted and some of the word choices are very strange.
A few comments:
1) You've prertty much avoided passive voice, which I appreciate.
2) You have a tendancy to tell vs. show. Check out this article to see what I mean in more detail.
3) The story is VERY confusing. I have no idea what's going on most of the time. I get that our protagonist has come to the city to find work, but after that things get very, very muddled. Why does the mechanic trust him enough to not only let him on her secret plan but also share her invisibility drug with him?
4) The story reads like a very rouigh draft. Numerous typos and clutter make it very tough to read.
I hope you don't feel I've been harsh--as I said, you have a few bits in there that read well and I think you have tallent--you just need to work on craft.
Warmly,
Nathan
I normally like to leave long comments, but I think other-one Nathan actually covered the big stuff. It was fairly confusing, not as much on a macro (story) level as a micro (sentence) level.
Take, for instance, this sentence:
"The orange heat of midday shot spindles of reflected light off new shapes cutting into the sky."
I kind of get what you mean, but I'm having to really work my imagination to do it. Or when you mentioned Domen, I had every reason to think that Domen was an individual for five sentences, and then had to backtrack when I found out it was a town.
I don't want to give a rating yet, because I think that if you had someone read through and point out which sentences seem oddly-constructed or confusing, you could really make some serious improvements here. There's still time!
I'm trying to figure out how this story has garnered four down votes. While I do think it could use a couple of editing runs, I definitely liked the flow. The idea's that Ariadne subscribes to remind me of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books. If you haven't read any of them, I would highly suggest looking them up.
Ariadne does seem to be a little overly trusting, but I think that works out pretty well in the end. Decisions of that kind tend to be made on a snap basis a good deal of the time anyhow. From the way things seemed to be going, you could almost look at their "mission" as a job interview. Albeit a very intense interview to say the least.
Definitely an enjoyable read! What ever you do, don't give up on this story. Keep at it and I'm sure you'll turn into a gem ;)
There is a real otherworldly aspect to the language and writing here, and I really struggled to decipher it. It is stilted in places, and it was hard to follow. Ariadne is well named (much like the character in Inception) as she provides that guide role in the story far better than the ball of thread of legend. I really think you could do with simplifying this and making it clearer what is going on. I'd recommend reading it on a sentence by sentence basis, and ensuring each one is understandable, and doing the job you want it to. Lots of promise here, just needs a bit more work.