lame story currently called andelguard

[Aeladrine]

I haven't finished this. In fact, I just started this last night! So, what you're seeing is a very, very, very rough draft. I know, I know, lame excuse. Well, if it sucks, it sucks.
I'd love some reviews of the little I have so far. I want to know if the PoV works so far, if the main character's tone is... oh, I dunno. Analyze what I've got so far, if you don't mind. Be harsh!

Because I have to copypaste it, the stupid thing is going to be in italics. Sorry!(:

I’m not the sort of person to go and have adventures. I don’t go into the desert late at night with my friends and shoot fireworks and drink booze. I sit in my room and browse tumblr. I drink cherry pepsi and vanilla coke while playing things like World of Warcraft. I don’t need adventures or to lose those last five pounds. I’ve got the internet and my books, the perfect escapes. Those glorious places where no one cares that you’re too tall and almost-but-not-quite thin enough. Where no one reminds you day in and day out that gingers have no souls, that Doctor Who isn’t cool, that you’ll never be a successful writer. I can tell you, there are perfect places. They simply aren’t real. Unless, just maybe, they are.

I stumbled into a place that, at first, I would have called perfect. One second I was standing on a sidewalk in Tucson, surrounded by chattering crowds and a classmate on my way home and the next I was stumbling in a wheat field. The stumbling led to me falling, which led to me hitting my head on the ground. I was already close to passing out, I had that feeling you get when you stand up really quickly and your head goes fuzzy. So it was no surprise that when I hit the ground with my head I passed out for the first time in my life.

When I came to, it was because a bug was crawling across my face. I screamed and jerked myself upward quickly, but had to hold my head in my hands for fear of passing out again.

Then I realized something that, later, I could never explain. I knew who I was, I knew where I’d grown up and where I’d gone to school. But one simple fact eluded me: my name. I have no idea how long I sat there, trying in vain to remember something so simple. It was on the tip of my tongue, I just couldn’t quite get it out. It was frustrating.

At some point I just gave up, yanked my backpack of my back, and pulled out my water bottle.I was suddenly glad of what had always seemed, to me, as a ridiculous, unnecessary habit. I wasn’t sure when I had started having water with me at all times, but it seemed that it had been a good choice.

Once I had my fill of the water, which had seldom tasted sweeter than it did in my panicked state, I looked for a sign to tell me what direction I should walk in. There wasn’t one. Just endless wheat, row after row, so different from the streets of Tucson I’d been walking until quite recently. It’d be a long walk until I could find someone to help me home. I looked down at my feet, smiled at the worn in Chucks, and stood back up.

There was no real reason to choose any specific direction, so I decided it didn’t really matter which way I went. And what better way to decide which unimportant direction to travel in than simply spinning around and walking off in the direction you stop spinning in?

I suppose I should explain why none of the strangeness that had just happened fazed me. I had nothing in Tucson. My grades were horrible, it’s not like I was going to be accepted into a college. Even if I was, I’d never be able to get enough scholarships to go. My writing was going nowhere. Every time I started, I’d hit this block that I just couldn’t get rid of. For family, I only had my mom. She wasn’t exactly a presence in my life; she was always on her booze and her antidepressants, not caring that the mixture of the two could kill her.

I had no way to explain how I’d gotten where I had. The only logical explanation was that I’d been hit by a bus while walking home from school and was now in the middle of a very boring coma dream. I only had to wait for the crazy adventures to start happening.

The logical explanation wasn’t the one I was fond of, however. There was another, completely ridiculous explanation. Magic. I mean, how else can a person travel hundreds of miles and go from desert and dry heat to an endless wheat field?

I was surprised at how quickly I’d come to that conclusion. Magic wasn’t something that yesterday I’d even believed could possibly exist, yet here I was, jumping to that idiotic conclusion. But why not? I refused to believe that this was a coma dream. It was entirely too boring for that.

After some time, trees came into view and I could see the end of what I had thought to be an endless wheat field. One tree towered over the others, and I began to get just the tiniest bit anxious. The tree, with shelves that could have been either carved or grown, seemed familiar. It was a giant bookcase, with ornate, spiralling shelves and steps. And every shelf on the tree was filled with books. The name of the tree, and I was sure it had a name, was as familiar as my own name and just as inaccessible. I felt like I could almost spit the name out, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t there anymore, though I wasn’t sure why it had been there in the first place.

This land, whatever and wherever it was, was starting to frustrate me. It was taking memories from me, somehow.

But now I at least had a place to travel to, instead of aimlessly wandering. The tree was full of books, perhaps it could help me find what I was missing.

As I said, not much so far.

If you guys don't mind, could you also review a finished story of mine? This one is finished. Sorry about the formatting, DA made it rather wonky. But here it is!

Thanks for all the reviews, guys! And don't forget, I really do want harsh reviews!

For those who don't know, harsh reviews tend to give you the most ideas of how to improve. They can hurt sometimes, but harsh reviews tend to force you to see what you're doing wrong.(:

And, should anyone want me to review something of theirs, feel free to post a link in this thread or to PM me!(:

Will be updated as more stuff happens.

EDIT: That sucked. Rewritten below.

[Aeladrine]

/reserved

[Aeladrine]

I’m walking. I’m walking and I’m trying to acquaint myself with the fact that I’m probably dead.

I don’t remember dying. I don’t remember anything, really. A sidewalk, cars zooming by, a friend holding my hand. No screeching tires, no screaming, no thud-thump-pain. But I have to be dead.

I’m walking through fields I know. They’re on Durain’s Isle, on the main and the largest of the nine islands. There’s no one here. That’s no surprise, though, this stupid island is abandoned. All nine of them are.

I have to be dead. Durain’s Isle is part of the continent of Andelguard. Laef, Ifre, Gwyna, and Andelguard. Lands of leaf, fire, bestfriend, and everything, in my younger days. Made-up-land; the place for my mind to roam, my hand to draw, my pencil to write. Home of the Andel, where the line between animal and human was blurred and so people had these funny features because as a kid I’d thought it’d be cool if a person could have a cat’s ears or a dog’s tail.

I have to be dead. Because this place isn’t real. It’s a figment of my imagination. Death is whatever you want it to be, isn’t it? Wherever you want it to be?

I have to be dead. Because if I’m not, I’m trapped in my own mind.



Somewhere along the way I trip over something, swearing up a storm. Looking back to my treacherously weak ankles, my glare burning like a thousand suns, I see a partially unearthed stone. It seems vaguely familiar, something I know but also something I don’t really remember being here in the middle of nowhere. It’s part of one of the temples that used to litter the entire continent, back when people only lived on these islands, before the other continents and other people were discovered. This temple should never have gotten so run down, so forgotten about, though. It gives me a chill; an eerie feeling permeating the air.

It makes me wonder: what happens to forgotten gods?

[Aeladrine]

/last reserved post

[Aeladrine]

shoop da whoop

[Aeladrine]

another reserved post, juuuuust in case (or possibly just a lame attempt to get someone to reply? IDK!)

[Nahale]

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[Aeladrine]

Thanks for the critiques! And don't worry about picking it apart, stuff like that really does help.(:

For this one that I'm working on, I don't know if it actually will work in a longer piece. It's a style I don't do very often which is why I did it in the other story. I thought I did it well there (and it was my first time at t, too!), so I figured I should keep challenging myself with it. I did write it over multiple sittings, so that can be fixed at a later point when I edit. I want to get everything out there first and then go back and edit.(: That's why I'm getting all this helpful information from you guys now, so I have it here to look at!

Yeah, the one on dA was something I did entirely to challenge myself. I'm glad you got the ending (or at least I assume you did) because the majority of my class that workshopped it didn't. They did not appreciate actually having to think about a story, which is something I like to try and make people do every once in a while.

Actually, throughout writing that story (can you believe I sat there in my friend's room for four hours just writing it and never even noticed that the time had passed? The Muses were certainly with me that night!) I would put bigger words in and have to erase them. It took me a bit to get into the flow of Cory (that's the narrator, sorry that it never mentions his name, there was just nowhere good to put it). He's... not the sort of character I usually write.

Can you believe that, one week after I wrote this, I hit season six in Doctor Who? All of the sudden there was this character named Rory and I was sobbing all the time. I cried in class when they asked what happened to Rory, I cried the first time I reread what I had written, I cried as I originally wrote it. And now, every time Rory dies in Doctor Who or we think he dies? I start sobbing. Also with angel Bob, because he's so like Rory and Cory.

Those two make me so sad.
ohlolistartedcryingagain

[Nahale]

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[Aeladrine]

The funny thing is that I made the characters the night I wrote that and turned the story in the next day. I have no reason to be any sort of attached to them.(:

[Aeladrine]

updated, wheee