posted
I gazed out into the transcendent serenity of the vast mass of deep-blue before me. Closing my eyes, I took a slow, deep breath & let the rhythmic repetition of waves and hypnotic calmness of the sea take me in. It was just before dawn and I was quiet alone on the misty shores of the silent beach. The sea had brought back so many memories. Suddenly a familiar feeling of loneliness and fear crept over me, that same feeling I had all those years ago, at the beginning of my journey. A decision that would change my life forever. One that has gained me both happiness, but also great loss and grief - but to this day I can still not determine what my journey has truly brought me. Has it brought me a life of happiness or despair? Perhaps I shall never know……
It was a dark, dusty morning in the mid December of 1941, around halfway through the infamous ‘War of Resistance’ between the vast nation of China & the monstrous devils that were controlling our country - The Japanese. At the time I was living in a small village named Tae-Kung in the fishing town of Sukcho inside Southern Korea. I was at a ripe young age, having just turned 18 the June before, which in Korea was the age of marriage for females, though at the time such customs were often ignored as the people were too preoccupied from the fear of the Japanese rule & finding enough food to keep themselves alive
posted
I'm just going to point out some of the obvious ones, and leave the rest to more qualified board-goers...
quote: It was just before dawn and I was quiet alone on the misty shores of the silent beach.
That needs to be fixed...
quote:One that has gained me both happiness, but also great loss and grief - but to this day
You use both and but together... it doesn't work well... If you really want to keep that line, maybe should you cut it down to "both happiness and grief -- and such great loss, too -- but..." but even that seems excessive...
Also, the beach isn't silent if you can hear the waves... tho' it may be deserted, save for the character that is there.
And that's as far as I've got w/ your story. I know the others will write lots of excellent advice to help you -- as they did for me.
[This message has been edited by HSO (edited July 01, 2004).]
posted
There are a couple of things in this to point out.
First off the initial paragraph is full of very dense prose which I found quite hard to read. I think its to do with the imagery. Perhaps you could cut it back a bit.
quote: the transcendent serenity of the vast mass of deep-blue
It's on the heavy side and less likely to engage a reader, which you need to do in your first lines.
You use aliteration a lot "rhythmic repetition" and "familiar feeling" and combined with the style these phrases stick out more than they should.
Would a feeling suddenly creep over you? The words don't seem to fit together. Creeping is something that happens gradually.
I felt I slogged through the first 5 or so lines and then got interested. The section on the decision, while a bit expositional, interested me a lot more. Could you not start with this instead? "This was the place where the journey started all those years ago" or something like that. I'm not so much interested in the sea, calmness and serenity as I am in the turmoil in the character.
The second paragraph is much better. It's evocative of a period of history and the impact on a young (I'm guessing due to the reference to a girl's marriage age) woman. The tone is distant, filling in information, so I would hope you close in on the character again and we get to see life through her eyes rather than hearing about it. What do they have to do to find food? How much contact does she have with the Japanese? etc.
The only jar here is "a ripe young age" which I've usually heard as "a ripe old age". If you're playing on that, ok, but it still sounds a little odd to me.
On the whole, there's probably too much packed in here overall. You need to break it up a bit, give the reader time to breath and take in what is happening.
From teh point of view of critting, it would help to know what this is a part of (short story? novel?) and genre (fantasy? historical?)
Hope this helps and I haven't waffled on too long.
posted
Hi samj, welcome. The feeding frenzy can be a little intense your first time; don't let it panic you.
I'm going to echo the idea that your prose is very dense. The thing is, that your word choices are all good, but you're making too many interesting choices at the same time. The reader can't see them. What that translates to specifically means too many modifiers.
If you strip your second sentance down to it's basics, "Closing my eyes, I took a breath and let the waves and the sea take me in." If you throw in one modifier it punches the sentence up. "Closing my eyes, I took a breath and let the rhythmic repetition of waves and the sea take me in"
Suddenly, "rhythmic repetition" works wonderfully--partly because the alliteration is also becoming an onamodepaedic devise too--but mostly because your canvas is clearer, so we can see the decoration.
posted
Hi, thanks for all the comments, it has helped alot. for those of you who want to know what this story is about. I am currently working on my Year 10 english personla Interest Project, which I chose to do on the Sino-Japanese War. As part of my assignment I've decided to include a story which I am writing about a korean girl who has been taken to China to become a military sex slave (comfort woman)for the Japanese army.I am still deciding on the plot, but I plan to for her to fall in love with a Japanese soldier who dies at the end, Following his death she will stay in China where she marries another and bears his child. It is from the girls point of view, look back into the past.
I have changed my start slighty, please tell me what you think. Sam
I gazed out into the vast mass of ocean before me. Closing my eyes, I took a slow, deep breath and let the rhythmic repetition of waves take me in. It was just before dawn and I was quiet alone on the misty shores of the beach. The sea had brought back so many memories. Slowly a familiar feeling of loneliness and fear crept over me, that same feeling I had all those years ago, at the beginning of my journey. A decision that would change my life forever………. It was a dark, dusty morning in the mid December of 1941, around halfway through the infamous ‘War of Resistance’ between the vast nation of China & the monstrous devils that were controlling our country - The Japanese. At the time I was living in a small village named Tae-Kung in the fishing town of Sukcho inside Southern Korea. I was at a young age, having just turned 18 the June before, which in Korea was the age of marriage for females, though at the time such customs were often ignored as the people were too preoccupied from the fear of the Japanese rule & finding enough food to keep themselves alive. For the most of my later childhood I could remember the Japanese terrorising our country. Like many of the farmers the Japanese had robbed my father of most of his land, leaving us to survive only on the little crops that we could manage to harvest on the miniscule patch of land that we were left with.
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