The Battle of Wickshire

A young worrier fights in a battle of the ages!

It was first light, the sun just peaking up above the eastern hills. I shivered, my silver and gold armor rattling around my fairly built body. I was a tall seventeen year-old male with smooth caramel skin and calluses on my hands. My friends back home called me “Milk Man” because of my milky white eyes and my small pinpoint pupils. I wasn’t all that strong but I did know how to wield a sword.

 To our west sat the dark forest, where no man ever returned. Behind us held a large mountain range while in front of us an army prepared for battle. Built into the side of the range rested a restless town.

Our Army of Light was limited. We had a couple of hundred elves with longbows, some fifty or so dwarfs with heavy hammers and large double-bladed axes, and maybe twenty mortals brandishing their swords for the battle to come. Our enemy, the Dark Hoard, was built by the thousands. It seemed their lines never ceased. There were trolls, goblins, orcs, and even a few possessed men. There were also some other surprises in store for us, but I’ll get there later...

A conch horn blew, signaling the start of the battle.

The two armies rushed at each other, war cries filling the air. I was somewhere toward the middle of the army while the first line smashed head-on into the enemy's sarissae. The long, steel-tipped wooden poles lodged themselves into already wounded and killed worriers with a snap.

The battle had begun.

It was intense and terrifying, but in a crazed sort of way, exciting. When you rushed at your enemies you felt a sort of pride for fighting for your home. You also felt something like riding a Pegasus and going into a steep dive, the pit of your stomach rolling up into your throat. Your legs turn to jelly for a split second and then, all at once, the Pegasus swoops up and levels out. It all happens so quickly that your stomach is abusively thrown back into its rightful place.

We had lost track of time, I had lost track of my friends. I looked up and around amid the ruckus and spotted the sun slowly moving below the western forest, illuminating the peaks of each tree. I vaguely recall the look of horror on my dearest brother's face as he was mercilessly wrenched apart, limb from limb, by a ravenous troll only several hours earlier. It’s hard to imagine someone so sweet and protective who, before this all began, was the owner of a little confectionery shop that opened up into a daycare for the little ones. They would miss him dearly back home. 

I took another distracted turn to observe my surroundings. Another large troll smashed its way through our troops with a tree trunk. Goblins slashed at our loyal and brave fighters with their sharp daggers constructed of bone. Orcs shot down our lines with their poisoned tipped arrows.

We fought deep into the night, everyone barely holding on to consciousness. Our army had kept up but they wouldn't last much longer. The enemy continued spilling out into the field.

Out of the dark midnight sky, we heard a large screech met by another screech. They continued until all that filled the sky were large hoards of what appeared to be massive reptiles with sharp, spiked tails, and dagger-like claws. They spit acid into the faces of my allies. They picked up my brothers and sailed off with them into the night, never to be seen again.

“Drakons!!!” shouted one of my comrades. “Mind your heads!”

Those were the last words I heard from him as a troll loomed up out of the darkness and crushed him with the single smoosh and crunch of a tree.

A goblin tried to stab me but I cut the squat smelly thing down before it got the chance. Out of my peripheral vision, I could see a dark shadow drift toward me.

“Creepers are coming from the dark forest!!”

I ran. Looking toward the forest I spotted what appeared to be a river of darkness flowing from the branches themselves.

I thought back to when I was a mere child of six. My village was having a festival to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the death of the dragon Syntax. We were having a good time singing and laughing and dancing into the night.

Then the lamps were lit and the darkest part of the night came upon us. Screams fill the air as dark mist-like humanoids move through the crowds. Every person they touched dropped dead, shivering to death, their body temperature so low it made one think they just got back from the Arctic. Even the slightest graze could kill.

The only thing that could drive them off was sunlight, and we were fresh out of that for the next couple of hours. We were done for.

I continued to run toward the village on the mountain. Just then my vision sparked and I felt a sharp pain in my back, just below my right lung. I hit the ground with a dull thud and groaned. An arrow was protruding from my back, gooey, sticky blood oozing from the deep flesh wound.

I crawled, determined not to die just then. Suddenly I got launched into the sky. A smell like rotten meat and feces filled my nostrils and made me choke on my screams. The drakon that had plucked me from the battle whispered in my ear.

“I am Asgoth. Remember me when you tell your story to the harpies in the Underground.”

And that is my story of how I, Markes Jackoul II, died and came to be in front of you, said harpies.

Reviews

[JayG]

• but I'm trying!

Since you are, I thought you might want to know few if the traps that hold pretty much everyone back—and how to fix them.

This will sting, so take a deep breath.

First: Yes, you were taught to write in school. And after more than a decade of practice, writing mostly reports and essays, you can write nonfiction fairly well. But fiction, and poetry? Your teachers spent zero time on the techniques of writing it, because the goal of public education is to give us a set of general skills that make us useful to employers. And what kind of writing do most employers need from us? Nonfiction: reports, papers, and letters.

Professional knowledge in any field is acquired in addition to our school-day skills. But because we forget that, we make the natural assumption that writing-is-writing, and we have that taken care of.

If only.

The major thing we’re missing, when we leave school, is the goal of fiction. So, we assume it’s telling the reader a story. But it’s not. It’s to provide an emotional experience. As E. L. Doctorow put it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” And how much time did your teachers spend on how to do that?

So…we start writing both fiction and poetry not knowing what we’re trying to do, and zero knowledge of how to do it. We don’t know what a scene on the page is, or the elements that make it up. And, we’re unaware of the three issues we must address early, on entering a scene, so the reader has context to make sense of our words.

Problem 2:

When you read your own work, before you open to page one, you already know where we are in time and space. You know what’s going on, and what will happen. And, you know whose skin we wear, their mood, personality, objective, strengths and weaknesses, and, their backstory. The reader? They have punctuation for emotion and what your words suggest to THEM, based on their life-experience, not your intent.

So, because you already have all that, you’re going to leave out things that seem too obvious to mention. Then, as you read, you fill in the blanks and never notice yourself doing it. And as you read, the narrator’s voice, your voice, is filled with the emotion you know to place there. How can it not work...for you?

See the problem? Look at a few lines as a reader must:

• It was first light, the sun just peaking up above the eastern hills.

So, here, you establish that we’re not on the scene, just hearing about it from someone pretending to once have experienced the events. Is that really different from someone not using first person pronouns as they talk? Telling is telling.

Two problems with the line. First, you say it was first light. If that’s true, the sun has not yet broken the horizon. And in any case, why do you need to say it’s early in one way, then follow it with the same thing stated differently? Every unnecessary word that’s removed makes the story move faster for more impact.

Next, it’s “peeking.” As stated the sun had reached the peak of travel.

• I shivered, my silver and gold armor rattling around my fairly built body.

First, no one would wear gold armor. It’s too heavy and too soft. And no one fights in silver. Wearing it would pretty much guarantee that you’d be robbed of it immediately, though.

Next. Have you looked into armor, and how it's worn? It can’t rattle, because each piece is strapped on. And it's such a load to carry, people only wore it when thay were going into battle.

And what’s a “fairly built body?” Are there unfairly built bodies? In all the world, only you know stress the word "built" as it’s read.

• My friends back home called me “Milk Man” because of my milky white eyes and my small pinpoint pupils

This person is extremely sick. The white iris is called arcus senilus, ccurs mostly in older people, and, is bad news. And pinpoint pupils, if not the result of stroke, or medication, would render the person pretty well blind at night.

Because you’re telling the story from the outside in, and assigning characteristics and actions, based on plot needs or whimsy. You’re not involving the most important person of all, your protagonist.

It’s not your fault, because no one told you that there are techniques we must have, or even that the writing techniques you were given are useless for fiction. So, like most hopeful writers, you went with what you have. And since we’ll not address the problem we don’t see as being a problem…

When we read, you don’t see the tools in use, or know the decision-points, where the author did A, instead of B. But we do see the RESULT of using those skills, and expect to see it. More to the point, your reader expects it in your writing—which is the best reason I know of for digging into the skills the pros take for granted.

The library’s fiction-writing section is gold. Personally? I’d suggest starting with Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found, to date, at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

Bad news, I know, but since it’s not something we’ll notice without it being pointed out, I thought you might want to know.

For what it might be worth as an overview, the articles in my WordPress writing blog are based on the kind of things you’ll find in such a book.

I know this can be discouraging, but every successful author faced that same problem. So hang in there, and keep on writing. It never gets easier. But after a while, we do become confused on a higher level. And, the crap to gold ratio tips more toward gold.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

[Cameron@Poet]

Thank you for this comment. No, this is not discouraging because like it says in my bio there is always room for improvement. I will look into everything that you are saying, however, with the eyes, this is more like a fairy taleish type of thing so no he is not unhealthy or anything and personally I don't think many young adults will think of "arcus senilus" when they read this. Most probably don't even know what that is. When we see a goblin or something we don't first think "That is a sick green man that is really short. He also is a cannible." We think "That is a scary disgusting monster that is dangerous," if you see what I mean. Do you think it is best that I stick to poems instead of short stories? They honestly never were my thing but I thought this one was fairly exceptional.

[JayG]

• I don't think many young adults will think of "arcus senilus" when they read this.

Something you need to take into account: No matter how strongly you believe something, it has nothing to do with that belief being either accurate or wrong.

You’re right. No one will think of "arcus senilus" when they read about the white eyes. They’ll just say, “Seriously? All white eyes?” When you read about having white eyes, you think of a defined, but pale iris, of the kind that drugs or disease causes. But what you actually told the reader was that the character has a pure, Sclera-white, eyeball, without the iris, and with a pinpoint black pupil.

Not what you meant, of course, but your intent doesn’t make it to the page, so for the reader, it is what you told them. Remember, the reader has only what the words mean to them, not to you.

• When we see a goblin or something we don't first think "That is a sick green man that is really short.

This might come as a surprise, but goblins aren't real.😆 And as portrayed in books and comics goblins are NOT short green men, who are otherwise normal. Per the dictionaly definition, “A goblin is a small, grotesque, monstrous creature."

Were such a being to appear before you on the street, what you would actually say is more like, “Holy s**t…What in the hell is that?” And at the same time, you'd be backing away.

You CAN’T make things up and assume that the reader’s mental image after you mention it is the one you held when you wrote them.

Take the term “vampire.” If you use the term, your mental picture will be of your character. But your reader may have a far different image called up. It might be the, Dracula, type wearing a tux. It could be the kind created by Anne Rice, those in dark Shadows, or the two different kind of vampires I created in, Ties of Blood, and, An Abiding Evil. You know what your character is, and your characters know. The reader? Unless you’re writing fiction with the techniques of the profession they don’t, and can’t.

Your intent is good. You’re working hard. But as the proverb says: “If the only tool you own is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' And at the moment, all your thinking, your conclusions, and writing, is guided by a set of writing skills unrelated to those of fiction.

No one says you have to change. But sometimes, a screwdriver comes in handy.

• Do you think it is best that I stick to poems instead of short stories?

Boy do I have bad news for you… 🤣

Poetry, like fiction, has a goal of providing an emotional, not an informational experience. And true to your training, in each of your poems, you’re talking TO the reader about YOUR feelings and viewpoint, when you should be giving them reason to react, emotionally. We don't tell the reader, "I cried at my father's funeral. We work to make the reader weep—which is a learned skill.

Again, it’s not a matter of talent, or how well you write, it’s that there’s a LOT more to writing poetry, and fiction than there appears to be—things that we miss because the pros make it look so natural, and easy.

Did a single teacher talk about prosody? Poetic meter? Did they explain the difference between trochaic and iambic, and why it matters?

For a better idea of what you're missing, read the excerpt to Stephen Fry’s, The Ode Less Traveled, on Amazon. You will be amazed at the things he points out that you use in life, daily, without ever noticing.

Then, find a copy of Mary Oliver’s, A Poetry Handbook. You might also want to go to the Shmoop site and click on Student. It’s a great resource on many subjects, but in this case, use the button to the left of the mid-page search window to Select Poetry. There are lots of great poems, analyzed in depth, to show how and why they worked so well.

Hope this helps.

[Cameron@Poet]

This helps a lot JayG! Thank you for your help! I will surely look into all of it and maybe I will come out with another short story that you can check out and give pointers on. I appreciate your help! I'm learning a whole lot from a pro writer.

[M. J. Smith]

Quite the ending. Making account to the creatures of the underworld. A horror twist reminiscent of the tales we told around our campfires in my youth. Nicely done, Sir.

[Cameron@Poet]

Well thank you very much M.J.

[Cameron@Poet]

I wrote this in school so I am totally open to any and all criticism. It will totally help me grow!