Memory 118

memories to be written, memories to be read. the time is in late 1987 in which hawar, a 21 year old Iraqi, heading out to Turkey. the time is when Saddam Hussein was still in power.

Memory

- 118^th -

 

Turkey…Van, December, 27th 1989, Wednesday…………….. 11:15 am

           

At a time when death quietly is ambling to you, even if it is invisible, your soul will answer it and advance to it. What heart would want? What mind would say? SURRENDER or FIGHT. 

            There is where I am now. I could just go further; better to say run away from behind. I asked myself the same irritable questions over and over with the hope to find justifications to my adversaries. Afterwards who am I?

            “Hey, yea…” I lifted my eyes arduously, which were shut already for awhile, and a rush of violent snow-like snow spattered against them. Wiping my eyes with my right arctic gloved fingers, could manage to shout back “ WHAT…” while I was not so sure it would reach anyone where for meters ahead on what on hell I was pacing on I could able to see just nothing except whiteness around me.

            My heart was trying to tear my chest apart as I was exhausted down to earth if it would be an expression to meet my physical condition, and also as I began to worry when it took a while and there was no any reply. Then as devil I started to chuckle because it was hilarious, I wanted to die while I worried to live longer.

 Lastly I managed to grasp some words through the storm ramming at me “ keep ep… ll be lost … yea weeek.” The voice drowned by the rattling wind and killing frenzy freezing crashes that crushed me.

Better to know me, my name is Hawar, 20; I am the third child in my family. We are ten children of a mismatched parent; a stern, mountain bodied, never-know-to rest father, and an angel soft, heaven-peace mother. I was born in Iraq, Its north part, in 1969. To say more about myself I won’t be able to say more.

Back to where I was I held my arm up my face and faced the storm along. I wished to run to cope up with the voice now I could hear a little, but I hardly felt that I might have had any feet. My toes were motionless and ice-cold, my knees wanted to throw my body since they could not hold it up any longer, but yet I had to fight: I had to live.

Author's Note

this piece might be a little vage, but that is the memory in the middle of the memories which would babble many surprising secrets that will shock anyone. I look forward to hearing reviews which for sure construct the work, and encourage me on it.

Reviews

[SweetNutmeg]

OK, this is a tough piece to review. The narrator is describing a struggle against snow and cold, perhaps a storm, describing it in metaphors and complex sentences. Then suddenly we get this information about his (her?) name and family. The switch is abrupt and awkward. That is my main observation about the basic structure of the piece.

Now for the details of the writing itself.

Word order is a real problem. For example: "At a time when death quietly is ambling to you," adverbs almost always come after the main verb, before the secondary verb, so it would be "At a time when death is quietly ambling to you," Another example: "What heart would want?" In questions subject and verb are reversed, so it would be "What would heart want?"

Then there is the problem of word use. You use certain words in a way that lead me to believe you do not fully know the exact definition. English is a difficult language, because there are so many almost identical words that mean very different things. dw817 pointed out "further" and "farther," as an example. English is very sneaky and confusing.

My suggestion to you is to study word order. Choose very simple sentences from literature that you think are beautiful and diagram them, to see what order the words and clauses take. If you were my student I would have you divide the sentence into clauses, decide if they are independent or dependent clauses, then break the clauses into words, and observe the word order within each clause. I would also suggest you go back to your first English lessons to refresh your memory. When you are very advanced it is sometimes easy to forget the basics.

My other suggestion to you is to read as much as you can, so you can see words at work. If you find a word that is beautiful to you, learn everything you can about it. What part of speech is it? Is there more than one definition? An old fashioned English to English dictionary (PAPER! not on the computer!) can help because it shows the various forms a base word can take. Merriam-Webster and American Heritage are good American dictionaries. I do not know British dictionaries.

The ideal situation would be getting a one-on-one tutor to explore word order and definitions, as those are your major stumbling blocks.

[Baban.A.A]

thank you very much, you are aright right about the structural part of the writing, as I commented on dw817's review I kind of wrote this very rush and did not reread and edited it that is why the mistakes and clause misplaces can be easily seen, however you are right again I also found out about that I need to go back to some simple tenses and word basics to revise my memory. I pretty appreciate your time reviewing and reading that helped alot. thanks again.

[Aarea]

Ok this was kind of confusing but it seemed good, I like your writing style and details. Keep up the good work!!!

[Baban.A.A]

thank you so much for reading and commenting. I agree with you it is vague but really if you know why it is, and why the character speaks that way, you may say alright it must have been more confusing. I really want to see this inprint, and the reason why I posted this first page here was to get some feedback just like yours, thankfully, to tell me about my style of writing, I feel awsome you liked it. thanks again for reading and reviewing, it means alot.

[eatme]

Yeah, you seem to have the common behavior of writing to yourself. A professional story teller is aware of his audience. Controlling your audience exactly defines the master story teller.

With that in mind, and you were talking to me... and you said.. snow-like snow, I was supposed to think what? Is snow-like snow different than snowy snowed snow-like snow? I'm pretty sure I can speak for most of the world that none of us is sure how snow gets more snow-like. That would be like watery water, and dry dryness or happily happy.

Next stage of controlling your audience is audience involvement. When I say to one of the ladies here, "he had the sexiest eyes..." I did not say green or blue or in fact anything at all. But when done properly, she knows what I mean far better than I do, because she brings the description of sexy eyes to the table. This technique of audience immersion is super powerful. They 'see' the world, because you let them bring a huge amount of themselves. With that in mind, when you tell me about the heart tearing its way out of the chest, it comes across as over acting. What starts as a state of panic filters through the reader as being a scene from Reanimator.

Next is the info dumping. Readers your audience like to feel smart. They like to DISCOVER information. When you just 'tell me things' it breaks the atmosphere. One version is, the character finds an old newspaper in the cabin and he reads it, and is 1985 on the paper, and he thinks, 'no one has been here in two years.' as the reader-detective... we go.. oh yeah,, that means it is 1987. I want to discover the characters, not have them stuffed into my face.

As far as publishing goes, it is a brutal world out there. HOOK ME! the first 90seconds are everything. If people don't see something quick and soon, they walk away. action, atmosphere, I don't need names or dates, or background.

And it was good advice to write to the end not rewrite. It can take 2,000,000 words of practice to build your real style.

[Baban.A.A]

thank you for reviewing first of all, I needed this really. first what bothered you most I believe was the snow like snow, since my first language is not english, but I live in england, so I used a widw variety of my mother tongue's words and expressions in this book. this is the first page by the way, I needed this kind of feedback to know where I am because I want to publish this book, since I am so sure it is going to turn out great, I trust the story because they are true memories based on a true story. it is not something you have ever heard before I assure you. secondly, you are quite right about info dumping. I know this info was out of place, but I have revised this first draft dozen times, so if I post the final draft it would be absolutly different, but yeah you are right I must be aware of this thank you so much to tell me this I have got the idea, I was kind of unaware of this, so thank you for this advice. and about publishing world, again you are right, but as I said I have changed totally the pages which now I am very confident with, but as you said I have to build an action or atmosphere to drag the readers in, thanks for this again.one thing if you can reply me back. I did not quite understand the last line of the review, I mean I understand the words but I could not graspthe emaning or the concept, if you can clearified for me. again thank you for feedbacking, I consider everything you have said, wish me best luck.

[Alleyway Rover]


Okay before I get started, I want to warn you. I don’t know how far along this project you actually are, but I assume you’re just past the first chapter. As such, it might be tempting to take my recommendations to heart and start chapter 1 over again.

Resist that urge at all costs. Push forward and slam the entire book down in all it’s flawed glory. It’s going to be flawed, it’s a first draft. “All first drafts suck” according to Hemingway and the crazy old b*****d was right. If you go back and try to fix problems on chapter 1 before the whole book is laid down, you risk getting stuck in a feedback loop where you are perpetually editing the first chapters and never making any headway in the actual story.

Throw down the story first then worry about fixing it.

Also, what follows is just the opinion of one local maniac, I don’t claim any actual knowledge, just a series of hunches.

Okay let us begin:

Overall:
Okay, I like the mystery and the fact that you throw us into this situation without any explanation. I agree with the other reviewers that the situation is vague, but the conflict is pretty clear. Our main character is trapped in a battle against the elements and his survival is at stake. So that’s pretty cool, there’s a lot in this chapter to pull the reader into the next one, and that’s probably the biggest job of the first chapter.

The setting is interesting, at least, it could be interesting. Other then the fact that it’s cold and snowy, you don’t talk at all about the land around the the character. His thoughts are all introspective. Here’s the thing, this is a part of the world that I am completely ignorant about. In fact I am surprised that there is a snow storm, a bad one it seems, that close to the equator. I’m inclined to suggest playing that up. I would guess that, because you have selected a rather obscure starting point, you have some personal experience with this location? At very least I think you are familiar with this area of the world. 90 percent if not 99 percent of the people reading this are not and that makes the setting all the more gripping. You have a chance to drag the reader to a place he or she has never been, take that chance and bring us there.

I want to talk about this paragraph for a moment:
“Better to know me, my name is Hawar, 20; I am the third child in my family. We are ten children of a mismatched parent; a stern, mountain bodied, never-know-to rest father, and an angel soft, heaven-peace mother. I was born in Iraq, Its north part, in 1969. To say more about myself I won’t be able to say more.”

As it stands, this paragraph feels completely out of place. It feels like you just shoved this in because you felt we needed information about your main character. You are correct, we do need information about your main character, but there are more interesting ways of doing that. You’re telling this story in first person POV and that gives us an all access pass to this character’s mind.

First of all, if the fact that he has ten siblings is really important, don’t tell us he has ten siblings. Show us. Maybe while he is trudging through the snow he thinks about the last time he and his entire family sat down for a meal in the house he grew up in and how, if the doesn’t survive this storm, he will never see them again…. or something.

Find a way to give us this information without interrupting the story. Keep in mind, if the information isn’t crucial to the story, leave it out. He is struggling to survive in some frozen hellscape right now, so I probably don’t need to know how many brothers and sisters he has.

Overall I think I need more. I need more description about the surroundings, I need more from the main character. I know he is trying to survive, but WHY is he trying to survive? That might seem like an obvious question, he’s trying to survive because dying is bad, but if he’s trudging through the snow, he’s obviously trying to get somewhere. He’s trying to accomplish a mission of some kind. He has a goal that threatens to die with him.

It has to be on his mind, so show us what is on his mind as he tries to survive this situation.

Lastly there are tons of grammar and syntax errors here. Forgive me if I’m off base or out of line, but I am guessing that English is not your first language?

If that is the case, the next edit should probably focus a lot on sentence construction. You might even consider sitting down with a native speaker and try to hash out some of this together. As it stands, I get the majority of what you are saying, but I find it hard to follow at times and it pulls me out of the story trying to figure it out.

That’s all I have, hope this gives you some ideas moving forward and I look forward to the rest of this piece.

Cheers.

[Baban.A.A]

I will start with this sentence, Havenot anyone told you how smart you are? you were right %1oo percent about everything you have said in the review. first thank you so much for reviewing, and answering my request, and thanks for youe honesty which I feel very great about. my first language is not English, I know the place very well though it is not my home, and just to let you know these are true memories based on a true story, I want to publish this book, and this was the first page which now is not any more as I have changed the firsst chapter for dozen times. now I feel confident with my first chapter, but more I trust the story very much, I believe it will turn out great and successful. I kind of looking for a feedback like this, I accually needed this. the expressions I have used in this book are very unfamiliar to the audience as the place, the story, the words, the characters. are all unfamiliar and kind of strange things no one heard about. I am totally agree with you that most, if not all, of you are ignorant about this place, its atmosphere, the people. you may have thought that he was trying to run, you are right he is trying but as you said from what, if you know how the story is powerful as I know you may directly sau complete it and publish it because for sure there are millions of things the majority of the world don't know and never heard of, but I want to publish this to let you know that there have been lves like this, there have been people who have died without knowing why, or died for a cause very important.

I don't want to take anymore of your time, but I feel privelged that I have got a feedback as this, and not to forget about the paragraph you said is out of place, I have taken outthat, but thank you for clearifing it for me how should I deliver an info if nessessary. thanks again to you, wish me best luck with it.

[peter right]

it is an interesting chapter, it is vague but beautifully written. awsomely described, I liked it.

[Baban.A.A]

thank you very much. I feel great you liked it.

[~VertoAtrum~]

"Snow-like snow" made me raise my eyebrows a bit, i didn't make sense to say it twice. It was very vague at first what was going on. It was a interesting approach, however, to writing.

[Baban.A.A]

thanks for reading and reviewing. I appreciate it. yeah the expression came to my mind like not even snow is soft sometimes, there snow was even against them that is why it was snow like snow, because next you will see how human like human react according to what will happen. I don't want to anticipate anything here or to discolse a secret, but believe me what you will find next about him will be completely shocking and pity that you see humans do stuff like this. thanks again for reading and reviewing.

[reeyce smythe wilder]

This was a confusing yet interesting read. There were parts of the piece that felt missing, so it left much wanting. Narration was...unorthodox. Not a bad thing, but definately different, but I suppose it's because the character speaks the way they do in Iraq. I would like to see this completed to understand it more.

[Baban.A.A]

thank you very much for reading and commenting. it means alot. I understand how vague the start might have been, very sure of that, yet I very much tried to arrest the attention of the reader, and it seemed the mission completed when you said it left much wanting. yest it is true the style is very different because I want to stick to originality of the memories which arebased on true memories of a person like Hawar in Iraq. thank you so much for the review and I hope you will enjoy the upcoming more.thanks again