Flying Exercise

Exercise I wrote for action scenes. I want the reader to feel like they're flying, feel what it's like to get smashed by turbulence and thrown around. Tell me if I succeed or where I fail.

Two eagles rose in the air to meet each other through screaming deathcries of war. The first, a solid white bird of prey, rushed through barreling updrafts careening toward his enemy, a black griffinhawk. He flashed his brilliant white wings as he dove through bursts of clouds, spinning in hypervolume bulletglide slicing through winds too fast to be real. His keen eyes glinted in the setting sun, shining like a halo over their endless blue battlefield. The black griffinhawk zeroed in on the white eagle and shot off like a razorbeam serrating blue sky as he streaked toward his foe. He spread his black wings on a burst of warm air that carried him up and up higher, then he tucked the tips of his wings in and speared downwind head on toward the rising bird of prey. The two birds screamed as they barrelled toward each other, then clashed in a bloody tirade of talons, spinning around in a vicious jetstream of whiplash gales. Feathers fell as they leapt away from each other and flew around for another pass. The dark griffinhawk blinked his piercing yellow eyes ringed in red, and beat his massive black wings powerfully against the thin air to gain speed. He spread them wide at the cusp and sailed in a wide arc around to fly back towards the white eagle. He had only one shot. The white eagle dove down and swung back up riding the updrafts around cloudbursts and air funnels. He flapped his wings like he'd never flapped them before blazing toward his enemy. He hit a patch of turbulence which rocked him like a boulder smashing his beak, and struggled wildly being thrown around and around in a cyclonic wind tunnel, finally pulling out it and gliding on high winds. The black griffinhawk extended his talons, tucked his wings tight to his body to gain speed, and lashed at the white eagle's throat, ripping it out like mouse-prey it had hunted. The white eagle fell flailing down through the clouds in a spiraling trail of bloody feathers and dieing screams.

Author's Note

Eagles were just off-the-top-of-my-head characters to practice flying action scenes with. I want to get to the point where I can write about human beings riding flying creatures attacking each other with weapons.

Reviews

[Jaclyn]

As I am the punctuation/grammar/spelling Nazi, I noticed a few run-on sentences, spelling errors (dieing should be dying), and places where commas would have been helpful. However, keeping in mind that this was only an exercise, I'll get to the meat of it now.

Your tone/mood is excellent. It is frenetic and vivid and action-packed. I did notice what one of the other reviewers noticed about the white eagle being mentioned more, and with the white eagle being mentioned more, one would think that the white eagle would win. The black bird is nearly an afterthought due to its more brief mentions, so it is ALMOST a little random in the ending slashing. As always, I loved your imagery as well. I know I say this a lot, but when I can picture something in my head and get a feeling from it, I know that the images are well-written, and this is important to me to keep me interested, so GOOD IMAGERY!! *laugh* I wish I could be more helpful in terms of this next comment, but something felt a tad awkward or rushed. Again, however, I know this was just an exercise, and I really enjoyed it, even with the subject matter not being something that I care about all that much. I don't think I COULD care about the subject matter too much though because it was not really expanded on BECAUSE it was an exercise. Did that make any sense whatsoever? It's very late right now. *yawn* Good job, and I DO mean that (I love that you are someone I can be honest with).

[Brown Bull]

Not a bad paragraph, but you probably intended it to be more than one.

Just a couple of things I noticed...

I am still confused at "tirade of talons" and the use of the word leaped. If they were together, I think "pushed" away from each other or something to that effect sounds better. To me, leapt implies that there is a solid surface to leap from and they are in the air.

Although you are using many powerful words, often using less of them can be better...
"ripping it out like mouse-prey it had hunted" I suspect you mean to say "the mouse-prey" here, but I would shorten it a bit and just say "ripping it out like its mouse-prey"

A griffinhawk sounds like a real eagle, but it is not as you point out. I would note however that each of the four times you mention this bird you describe it as the "black or dark" Griffinhawk. Once the bird has been introduced to the reader, I believe that mentioning the colour is not only redundent, it keeps the reader away from the character. A better way would be to introduce the bird as the black Griffinhawk, then just a Griffinhawk or perhaps the black hawk and lastly just as the Griffin. Each time the reader is drawn closer to the animal.

White eagles don't exist either, except on the Polish flag, but I noticed that you mention the white eagle seven times and the black bird only four. I don't know if that means anyting or not, I just noticed it.

Keep writing, i have been waiting for something new from you, having read this piece more than a month ago without comment.

BB

[Nicole Hellene]

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