A Word and Flaming Hair

An ode to my former self...

“What?”

Sir Galorn paced the length of the room, not looking at her, a hand on the hilt of his sword.

“Yes, Emery, I am sending you away.”  He said the words slowly, as if he was spelling them out to a child.

Emery sank into the chair, looking very much like a child with her flabbergasted look and disheveled red hair.  But of course, she was very far from being a child. 

Grown too smart to be a child, Galorn remarked to himself.

“But Galorn…” she sputtered

“Sir Galorn,” he said, emphasizing his title.  He paused, waiting.  When she repeated it with a sir, he clicked together his heels, and with a satisfied smile resumed his pacing.

“You can’t just put me out on the streets, Galorn!”

“Ah, but I can,” he said slowly.  He pondered for a moment, then decided to ignore the fact that she had forgotten his title again.  He spun around, leaning across the table towards her.

“I never wanted you, Emery,” he snarled. 

Emery leaned away from him.

“You served me well, telling me the comings and the goings of Serloyle’s court,” he continued, “but you have grown past that.”

“You used me as a spy?”  Emery spat out the word in disgust.  Her life was crumbling down with every word that he spoke.

“Not a spy, exactly,” Galorn said, smiling faintly at her reaction.  “But to some extent, yes.  And now, I no longer need you.  Because, my sweet, Aribola is coming to visit.”

Emery resisted recoiling at the mention of the woman’s name. 

“So it’s goodbye, my dear,” Galorn said, pulling Emery out of her trance.  He ran a finger along her jaw.  “So pretty,” he murmured.  “A shame you can’t stay, my sweet love.”

Emery wacked away his hand. 

“I was never your love, Galorn,” she spat.  She rose and opened the door.  Her anger shown as brightly as her hair, and Galorn watched her go.

“Such a shame,” he muttered again, without the slightest touch of remorse.

Reviews

[Philip Muls]

You definitely capture the life at court with knights and kings. But I miss the context to make sense of it. It intrigues but also irritates because of incapacity to understand the meaning.

But it has potential!

[Raylene]

I must say it is elegant yet your missing a few key pints such as going into more of a background of your characters make us fall in love with them or make us hate them yet it is a beautiful story I love how you use more unique words to describe what is going on yet with out a back ground it may as well be useless.

[JayG]

Any reader, on entering a scene needs context. Without that they are just words on a page. They need to know who they are, where they are, and what's going on. Look at the opening as a reader, who has only the context you provide, will see it.

• “What?”
Someone unknown, of unknown gender and age, asked a question of someone unknown, for unknown reason. There might be a great deal of emotion in how the word was spoken, but because the reader knows nothing at this point it'ds delivered in a computer voice.

• Sir Galorn paced the length of the room, not looking at her, a hand on the hilt of his sword.

Someone male is pacing for unknown reason, in a room of unknown length in an unknown place. He feels it necessary to hold his sword hllt for unknown reasons.

• “Yes, Emery, I am sending you away.”

For unknown reasons, the male tells someone named Emery, who is of unknown age and gender that he is sending them to an unknown place, for unknown reasons.
- - - - - - -
So, given that we have no useful information on place, people, or action—and are confused as to what's happening, what will a reader find interesting or entertaining enough to want to read on?

They won't read on in hopes of learning the things they should know as they read, for two reasons. First is that they have no assurance that you will clarify. But of more importance, you're describing what you see happening in your mind—a picture they can't see.

At the moment you're thinking and writing visually, as though the reader can see it. But they can't. So when you say, "But of course, she was very far from being a child," the reader had no idea of why you say, "Of course."

Here's the bottom line: You're talking to the reader, transcribing the words you would use in person. We can't do that. While you can tell the reader how a character speaks a line you can't tell them how YOU speak the narration, so it comes as a monotone.

Storytelling is a performance art, and the WAY you tell the story is just as important as what you say. But you cannot make the reader know any of that because tone falls off the words at the keyboard, and your visual acting doesn't make it that far.

It's not a matter of good or bad writing. It's that like most new writers you're using the tools you presently own, and use every day, and assume they work for fiction, too. But they don't. Writing fiction for the page takes a specific set of writing skills that are character-centric and emotion-based. Their goal is to entertain.
But the skills we were given in our school days are author-centric and fact-based—mean to inform.

And that's what you need to work on. To write like the pros you need to know what the pros know. It's easy to find, and your local library system's fiction writing section can be a huge resource. You can get a kind of overview of the areas you need to be up on by digging through the writing section of my blog.

Bear in mind that I've said nothing about your talent and potential as a writer. My comments are on craft, and once you have the knowledge of a pro, and have practiced them to make them as intuitive as are the skills you learned in school, who knows where you'll go.

[Zoli Fern]

Thank you, JayG. I appreciate the response, and will take your suggestions to heart. This was an older piece of fiction, and I think that I have improved my skills since I wrote it, but it is great to see what I need to improve the most, since I am the same writer. Thanks again!

[Weeping willow]

Wonderful write,kept me to the end of the story,it's well done,liked it;-]

[Glen Weimann]

Zoli Hi. I think this came through as a RR? I think the writing is strong - well done, well balanced between narrative and dialogue. The pictures are clear. However, as a 'story' it leaves me unsatisfied. It's more like a trailer from a well known serial or a scene from a medieval soap, where prior knowledge of characters and context would add much more depth to one's appreciation. Hope this helps.