Lilysplash wrote:skittles323 wrote:I finally have a story I can post, but I have to ask for help, it's supposed to be a short story to help get out writers block, but I honestly have no idea where to go with it, I mean I have an
idea but nothing solid so I wanted to see opinions...
Also a note, it was written on my nook on a plane, so that's why some of the stuff isn't capitalized or stuff may be spelled wrong 3: This story also doesn't have a title... Sorry D:
Every time I hear that rain, that damn tapping of drops against the outside, I cant help but try and remember the one thing I cant...the day I died.
The months come and go as they please, I chose to let time do as it wishes, the ages haven't been kind though, as lately the weather seems to be getting worse and worse.
I... i /want/ to say its okay, i want to be able to tell myself that it can't happen to me again.
I think the worst part is that i dont even know what i'm scared of.
It was raining the day i woke up. No idea where i was. The silence was deadening. Until all i could hear was the little pitter patter of rain on wood; the wood of my coffin. No heart beat, no breathing not even the flutter of my eye lashes.
Just. Damn. Rain.
My fear over took me and i clawed at the wood screaming but the rain only seemed to get louder and louder covering my desperate pleas.
I had drifted out of it only to come to in a hospital.
Once again, the rain slightly pitter pattering, beading on the window. No one knew who i was, and no one came for me.
I.. . Never had any identification and they said they found me on the side of the road. Though i told them differently so many times, the doctors and nurses insisted on the fact that i had simply just /imagined/ dying.
How do you even imagine, the cold feeling, the quiet.
And nothing but the damn rain.
They released me despite it all, sent me off into a world that i had no memory of, and seemed to have forgotten me as well.
I had nothing when i had supposedly entered the hospital but on my way out there had been an envelope waiting for me.
No name, and no real indication it was for me. I never asked what made them assume it was for me, simply took the package and went out the door. I walked for a while, for a long time actually.
I had finally plopped onto a bench under a pavilion in some park.
So yeah, I'm mostly looking for vauge idea's that are able to be molded into something bigger... I don't know. Suggestions?
Good idea so far. It has promise. But again, grammar, grammar, grammar! Mechanics are vital, and leaving out basic capitalization will not make it look cooler! Ex. "Can't" instead of "cant". This doesn't go just for you, but many authors; grammar is, in fact, a deciding factor about readers. Otherwise, again, it's inspiring and creative.
~Lilysplash
While grammar and orthography are very important (almost equally as much as the story itself, because yes, readers will put down a book full of grammatical errors and horrible orthography, no matter how good the story), they're what you look for at the very end of your revision. You do not cross out scenes because of grammar mistakes. It's the easiest to fix. What you should look for first and foremost before you start plastic surgery (=fixing grammar and orthography) on a patient who is bleeding (for whom plastic surgery is the last thing he needs) is whether you even need that scene at all. Do you have conflict in it? Action? Character(s)? Is what they're doing interesting and engaging? Does something change? Because if nothing changes, you do not have a completed scene.
What you have written is promising. It's an interesting idea. But what you've done in that piece of writing is telling us the backstory while your character doesn't really do anything. She just sits down on a bench.
So what's the change? She was dead and came back at the beginning, and that's still true at the end of the scene. Your character doesn't learn anything new by the end of it, the readers don't learn anything new, and the situation for her doesn't change.
So that's where you can edit.
You also asked for ideas on how this could go on, right? Does your character have a compelling need? Something she wants more than anything (or wants to avoid more than anything)? For example, to find out what happened. Whether she was really dead and came back or whether it was all a strange kind of dream, or whether she just went crazy. Once your character wants something, and other things and/or characters stand in her way of getting it, you have conflict. And conflict is central to each and every story. Without conflict, frankly, you don't have a story.
I hope this helps
