posted
The soulless eyes bore through his soul, paralyzed inside his old truck the hapless victim could only move his eyes. The long thin alien glowed with an eerie light and it walked calmly towards his truck, its black robe swished as it walked and because of the February wind its cowl had slipped off. Death has come for me thought Pete, I do eat lots of things I shouldn’t and I smoke – oh God don’t take me now. A tear trailed down from his right eye, he could only feel the tears well in his eyes, tomorrow is Roy’s graduation from high school – I promise God I’ll change, please I promise! The creature held a long staff which had a long crescent shaped blade on it, for Peter that only confirmed his suspicions that he was going to meet his maker...........
The aliens in this story have entrenched themselves on our planet, they need our energy to survive and they have struck a bargain with all goverments to secure their secrecy. All of humanity become cattle to trade for alien technology - remember Roswell? I am looking for would these lines make you wanto to read further or doze off?
[This message has been edited by TMan1969 (edited July 11, 2006).]
posted
I had a hard time getting into this because of the run-on sentences. There's also a number of places of ambiguity which left me confused. For instance:
quote: The soulless eyes bore through his soul, paralyzed inside his old truck the hapless victim could only move his eyes.
To make this scan grammatically, you'd need to change some punctuation. "The soulless eyes bore through his soul. Paralyzed inside his old truck, the hapless victim could only move his eyes." The repeated use of "eyes" is mildly confusing because they are the only active things. It leaves me with the faint sense that the eyes at the end of the sentence are the same as the ones at the beginning. Oh, "hapless victim" is on the cliched side so perhaps just use the characters name. It is clear from the action that Peter is a victim and hapless.
Besides cleaning up the grammar, you might want to adjust the structure of the story. I didn't know who owned the soulless eyes until you mentioned the alien. It will make the scene clearer if you show us the alien first before talking about a detail of its actions.
I hope this helps, and feel free to ignore what doesn't.
I first thought it was Peter but since the summary of your plot makes it appear that he's about about to die, I'm not sure where the POV comes from. If you could clear up the POV it would help with the confusion a lot.
posted
Yeh, POV - this sometimes gets mixed up when I am writing. My first thought is to write out the story, start to finish then go back and fix it. I got this idea from reading a Stephen King article, in it he said to write out your story, don't correct grammar, spelling as this will slow or hinder your creative process..so you are absolutely correct..I have to refocus the story and clarify somethings
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Death cannot exist as a being, it's somrthing one finds in mythology or folklore. Yet Peter was witness to the very creature walking slowly towards the old Dodge truck. Peter was paralyzed and his eyes were locked into two the two dark pools on the creatures near skeletal face. It raised its wicked scythe and lowered it viscously into his chest cavity. It's surronding light intensified and Peters eye became vacant, his body an empty shell - soulless.
posted
TMan I liked this opening better. I know who's POV I'm supposed to be in and what is happening to him (at least as far has he understands it). The tone is still a bit to remote for 3rd person though.
Small nits -
"Death cannot exist as a being, it's something one finds in mythology or folklore " -
didn't sound like a POV thought. Also the "it's" might work better as "that's".
"Yet Peter was witness to the very creature walking slowly towards the old Dodge truck."
This suffers, IMHO, from the same POV problem and it is too remote. Frankly if something in a black robe and scythe were walking towards my truck, not only would I be freaking out, I'd be trying to run the other way.
"Peter was paralyzed" - Show me this. He tried to move, willed his hand to find the door lever and yank it open, nothing happened. He was transfixed by the two dark pools . . .
. . creature[i]'s[/i[ nearly skeletal face.
[This message has been edited by kings_falcon (edited July 13, 2006).]
posted
Yes. But I am a bit slow at responding because I spend so much time thinking about the crit and redlining comments. If you can wait a bit please send it to me : kings_falcon@yahoo.com
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