Story I wrote

On January 30 2010 05:33 Chill wrote:
I think the idea is extremely cliched. I feel like I've read lines like "The beauty of life isn’t what you achieve doing. Instead, it is the fact that it all ends. Death brings meaning to everything you do." directly before.

On January 30 2010 06:04 Severedevil wrote:
It's not really a story. Though I dunno what kind of story you can squeeze in if this extremely short piece is 500 words too long.

Also, fuck third person objective. What the hell sense does it make to describe a scene from no one's perspective?

On January 30 2010 06:04 Severedevil wrote:
It's not really a story. Though I dunno what kind of story you can squeeze in if this extremely short piece is 500 words too long.

Also, fuck third person objective. What the hell sense does it make to describe a scene from no one's perspective?

On January 30 2010 06:20 CaucasianAsian wrote:


Same way with Hemmingways 'White Elephants'. It is to be percieved by an on-looker and not by feeling one of the characters. The same way if you're eating in a resturaunt and you're overhearing other peoples conversation. You don't know the whole story, and have to fill in the gaps that you don't understand.

On January 30 2010 05:33 Chill wrote:
I think the idea is extremely cliched. I feel like I've read lines like "The beauty of life isn’t what you achieve doing. Instead, it is the fact that it all ends. Death brings meaning to everything you do." directly before.

Take death for example. A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it and often consider its intrusion a tragic event. Yet we'd find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. If death were indefinitely put off, the human psyche would end up, well, like the gambler in the "Twilight Zone" episode.

- Ray Kurzweil

On January 30 2010 07:41 StorkHwaiting wrote:


Hmm, that's not quite what Third Person Objective is...

Rather, third person objective is the PoV of an outside narrator, but it's not limited to a remote, unfeeling observer. In fact, the narrative voice itself can become a character in the story. Third Person objective purely means that you can't get into the mental aspect of the characters IN the story. 3rd person objective can actually be a very fun perspective to use. Also, the narrator can know more than both of the characters in the story. 3rd person omniscient is still a 3rd person objective as long as the omniscient narrator does not speak about what the characters are thinking.

Also, to the people saying that you can't do much story in 500 words, I beg to differ. I've seen some amazing depth in flash fiction less than 500 words.

To the OP's story:
The story is hard to get into mostly because the characters are not very sympathetic. It's hard to do a suicide story in a short medium. Mostly because it's so anathema to human nature, the writer has to work hard to sell the believability of someone wanting to suicide. You provided a motivation ie lost family, job, etc but it's such a cliche reason that the audience is not engaged. Remember, writing needs to be engaging. It needs to stimulate the readers' minds. The story really doesn't have any stimulating material in it other than the guy who can't die. But that too is a rather overdone concept and overall this story just didn't have much emotional impact.

The prose, diction, and verb tenses also had a lot of rough patches. I'd also ask the teacher to help you with dialogue tags, how to do them, and how to punctuate them as there are a number of errors here and there in how you used them.

But writing technique is easy. The important thing is that your story didn't have quite enough emotional provocation, unique characterization, or plot conflicts to really engender a satisfying read.

Still, this is the joy of writing. Getting better and learning more about the craft and utilizing your creativity every time you try.

On January 30 2010 07:41 StorkHwaiting wrote:


Hmm, that's not quite what Third Person Objective is...

Rather, third person objective is the PoV of an outside narrator, but it's not limited to a remote, unfeeling observer. In fact, the narrative voice itself can become a character in the story. Third Person objective purely means that you can't get into the mental aspect of the characters IN the story. 3rd person objective can actually be a very fun perspective to use. Also, the narrator can know more than both of the characters in the story. 3rd person omniscient is still a 3rd person objective as long as the omniscient narrator does not speak about what the characters are thinking.

Also, to the people saying that you can't do much story in 500 words, I beg to differ. I've seen some amazing depth in flash fiction less than 500 words.

To the OP's story:
The story is hard to get into mostly because the characters are not very sympathetic. It's hard to do a suicide story in a short medium. Mostly because it's so anathema to human nature, the writer has to work hard to sell the believability of someone wanting to suicide. You provided a motivation ie lost family, job, etc but it's such a cliche reason that the audience is not engaged. Remember, writing needs to be engaging. It needs to stimulate the readers' minds. The story really doesn't have any stimulating material in it other than the guy who can't die. But that too is a rather overdone concept and overall this story just didn't have much emotional impact.

The prose, diction, and verb tenses also had a lot of rough patches. I'd also ask the teacher to help you with dialogue tags, how to do them, and how to punctuate them as there are a number of errors here and there in how you used them.

But writing technique is easy. The important thing is that your story didn't have quite enough emotional provocation, unique characterization, or plot conflicts to really engender a satisfying read.

Still, this is the joy of writing. Getting better and learning more about the craft and utilizing your creativity every time you try.

On January 30 2010 07:41 StorkHwaiting wrote:
The prose, diction, and verb tenses also had a lot of rough patches. I'd also ask the teacher to help you with dialogue tags, how to do them, and how to punctuate them as there are a number of errors here and there in how you used them.

On January 30 2010 09:10 Mora wrote:


I am also trying to improve my writing and i don't have a teacher to consult. One of the areas i struggle with are dialogue tags. Could you point out the passages that you are referring to?