I held a rose in my hand . She was a blushing red, exquisitely formed, fragrant perfect . I did not know from where she came , but she was mine , and I loved her
But even as I was grasping her , she grew old , withered and died , petals becoming ashen and black, falling away one by one into oblivion.
I found a bush and picked another ,as perfect as the last, she wasn’t mine but I loved her.
A serpent crawled out of the bush . It lunged forward and tore of her head. He crawled away , leaving a trail of red, petals strewn across the ground .
Short story... I'm opening with a dream sequence , and using them occasionally to show a side of the protagonist's mind in a condenced format.. and i love any excuse to use thing kind of semi poetic prose.
posted
With such poetic language, I wouldn't be surprised to learn it’s a dream. But what affect do you think it will have on a reader, or even an editor, to begin with such lofty language? I wonder if they'll think this is the whole story and maybe stop reading.
Everything has a cost. Will this side of the character's mind be important enough to risk alienating a reader with the language?
I re-read this, and I'm not sure what I'm learning about the PoV character or the setting. They feel they push others away? Everything they touch dies? They aren't good at gardening?
And finally, I didn't like that the rose was called a "she." I was looking for another character, and it caused me to stumble while I read it. I had to re-read it.
posted
The flowery language does speak like a dream. The dream works only if it reveals important things about the character or the story - without making the reader work too hard digging out the metaphors. With this one, recurring loss of the roses makes me suspect tragedy, but doesn't say it directly. I also wonder if the reference to roses as 'she' is metaphor for wives or lovers lost to age, accident and/or violence. I would hope that the meaning is clarified and the readers interpretation reinforced soon after the reader invests the time to figure all that out.
Technical nits: Comma between fragrant and perfect.
Period at end of first paragraph - unless the conjuction at the start of the second is a poetic continuation. That's getting far from prose, though.
A lot of your punctuation marks have spaces before them. If that's intentional, it's distracting.
'She wasn't mine' in third paragraph starts a new thought. Should be in it's own sentence.
The serpent is 'it' in the second sentence of that paragraph and 'he' in the third.
posted
If you want to start with a dream sequence, and make it poetic, how about just writing a poem? That way, you can begin with a poem. Either the MC dreamt in poetic form (sounds cool, right?) or the MC is writing a poem to encapsulate the dream.
In either case, I noticed it was a little heavy on the adjectives. Not to say that's a bad thing per se... but if you overdo it it doesn't read well as fiction. For example, calling the rose a blushing red... doesn't do it for me. Why don't you call it a blushing rose, for example?
I held a rose in my hand. She was a blushing red, exquisitely formed(( ; )) fragrant, perfect. I did not know from where she came, but she was mine, and I loved her((.))
But even as I was grasping her, she grew old , withered and died((Sentence break needed here; start with "Her petals became")) ashen and black, falling away one by one into oblivion. ((I like the imagery here))
I found a bush and picked another ,as perfect as the last. (( Split the sentence here too; it ups the impact)) She wasn’t mine((,)) but I loved her.
A serpent crawled out of the bush. It lunged forward and tore of((f)) her head. He crawled away, leaving a trail of red ((delete the comma)) petals strewn across the ground.
Not sure why you have lots of spaces before your commas...
I'm interested, but not entirely hooked. That's the difficulty with starting out with a dream sequence - and with only having thirteen lines. How quickly after this does the dream end?
[This message has been edited by BoredCrow (edited July 12, 2007).]
posted
I don't get much sense of a character, what the characters hopes and fears are, and that anything worth reading about is going to happen. In other words, nothing that makes me compelled to read on. That's the risk of starting with something like a dream in a short fiction piece.
The language is interesting, and rouses a little interest, enough that I wouldn't put it aside yet.
In my opinion, to strengthen the opening, let us meet the character and the characters situation before we invade their subconscious.
posted
The language is pretty, but it sounds more like a prologue then an actual story. The prose should match the rest of the story.
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