Some writing

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Hey guys, don't read the following story if you're not interested. It's just something I wrote, been toying around with a children's story, bit of a fairy tale kind of style, but with some deeper meaning to it. I hope you like it, criticize it all you want (including spelling and such) and don't hold back. My skin is thick enough!

It really wasn’t a night out of the ordinary, to be quite honest. There was a moon, there were stars, and the same humid, warm climate swept across the partly sleeping city as always. Partly, for at times the city seemed as lively at night as it was during daytime, when the markets were crammed with people and the sounds of a busy city filled the little house. While tonight wasn’t such a night with busy sounds, it’s rather safe to say parts of the city were still wide awake, as always. Truth be told that the city was in fact the most lively and most wide known city in the entire country, maybe even in the entire world. “Where are you going?” people would say. And if the answer by chance would be “To The City”, then everyone would nod understandingly. For there was no other city than The City, certainly not anywhere nearby. And so it was that we find our story in this bustling City, on a warm, humid night in the beginning of August. The one big difference with all of the other nights in August, however, was the knock on the door of the little house. The knock wasn’t overly loud, but loud enough to sound all the way up the stairs to the little room where Jiro was sleeping. Was sleeping, of course, because at the sound of the knock, Jiro had woken up instantly to wonder who it would be, knocking on the door of their house in the middle of the night. So he got up to take a peek out of his bedroom window and find out what was going on. On the street below, just to the left of the rusty lantern post outside of their house, Jiro saw a strange-looking man. Wearing a red vest, a bellowing dark blue set of pants and a black hat (at least Jiro thought it was a hat) he looked quite the comical figure. But as Jiro looked closer, it was apparent that the stranger was both serious and grievous, and his sunburned face showed even greater grief when he had taken off his hat. Jiro’s mother, who had appeared in the doorway in the meantime, eyed the stranger at first, but then burst out into tears all of the sudden. Hesitantly, the stranger walked up to the door in order to comfort her, but it was apparent he did not how to handle the situation. And although Jiro felt the urge to really comfort his mother, he stayed there, affixed in his position, eyeing the scene that was unfolding before his eyes. “Are you sure?” Jiro’s mother whispered in between two sobs. “As sure as an honest sailor can be, ma’am,” the stranger, apparently an honest sailor, said. Jiro’s mother broke down into tears again, and Jiro decided at that point and at that time that he didn’t like to see people cry, and he certainly didn’t like it when his mother was crying. He wondered what in the world could make people, and in particular his mother, so sad that they would have to cry. And in the middle of that thought, Jiro felt sure there was something bad going on. And not bad in the sense of something missing, or something stolen. No, not Just Something Bad, but Something Really Bad, Something So Bad that it had made his mother cry out in front of an honest sailor. So as fast as his legs could carry him, Jiro ran down the two sets of stairs, jumped over the little table that stood in the hallway and clung to his mother. “Mother!” he said, looking at her anxiously, but she did not respond, still crying vehemently. “Mother!” he said again. “What’s going on?” His mother sobbed, sighed, and sobbed again. And just as she was going to give Jiro an answer, the honest sailor stepped in and gave the answer for her. “It’s your father, little one. He’s gone on a far away voyage. A voyage so far, that it will take him at least twenty years to come back.” Jiro eyed him with amazement, for he was young enough to see miracles and magical things even in the corners of the streets of the City. “Twenty years?” he gasped. “Twenty years!” the sailor nodded. “And you know what? I bet that if you wish for it, he will probably take a present along with him. An elephant, or two. Or maybe the hat of a vicious pirate.” While all the promises and possibilities did sound good, Jiro started to frown, because he was also old enough to realise that twenty years was, in fact, a long period of time. “But if I wish for it now,” he thought out loud, “I may grow up not liking my initial wish anymore.” The sailor smiled weakly and placed one of his big hands on top of Jiro’s head. “I’m positive,” he said with an honest sincerity in his voice, “that if you try hard enough, your father will do the best he can to make any wish come true.” “Even three elephants?” Jiro gasped. “Even a dozen elephants, and a couple o’ pirate hats won’t be too much to ask either, I’d say,” the honest sailor answered. That was convincing enough for Jiro, so he closed his eyes and thought really hard of what he would want more than anything in the entire world. But the more he tried, the more he came to realise there was, in fact, not really an object, or a present, or anything for that matter that he wanted best. Anything, except for being able to see his father again. He closed his eyes even more firmly than before and starting wishing for that to happen. And so it was, that in the middle of a warm, humid night in the beginning of August, right next to a rusty lantern post, a boy wished to see his father again. And he wished for it until he felt sure that there was no possible way in which his wish wouldn’t come true. And then he wished some more, just to be sure that if the connection failed (which was not very likely to happen, Jiro believed, but he did so just in case), his end of the line was not to blamed.

As you can see, it's some sort of a prologue to a longer story. Not finished yet, but worthy of remarks nonetheless. Give it your best shot!

[The Hierophant]

So, are you wanting this to be a kind of epic tale? Or a more down-to-earth folksy piece? I only ask because if you want it to 'feel' folksy then you'll have to take care not to get too 'pedestrian' with your narrative (Ie: 'He did this... and then this happened... he felt such-and-such a way.... then he did this').

Also, I would advise you to be careful about the dialogue you give each character. For instance, would Jiro, a boy who is still young enough to believe in magic really make long-term judgments with technical phrases like 'I may grow up not liking my initial wish anymore?' I understand the statement you were making by having him think that line, but you have to ask yourself the words that a young boy would think to himself, and why. Especially when he has just been told that he will not see his father for such a long time. The art of writing 'natural' dialogue is truly tortuous to learn. I've been trying to come to grips with it myself for the last few months and am making abysmal progress...

But that is just technical criticism. If a fiction writer doesn't have creative ideas then they don't have anything at all... and I think that overall you have laid some good foundations for a longer piece. I get the impression that you want to take this in a magical/fable sort of direction? Who do you plan the narrative to revolve around? Jiro? His father? Both?

Anyways, you've got me wanting to read more now. Keep it up [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[ 01-28-2005, 10:49 PM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]

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I'm indeed going to the magical/fable sort of way, and it's more or less intended as a children's story . Kind of in the way a fairy tale is written (in my eyes overly simple [easy to read out loud] and fairy tales tend to repeat sentences and occurrences) so that's what I was trying to accomplish.
The way the narrative is set up is also because of this. I was thinking about changing it before making the post, but I felt that fairy tales and fables do tend to use this kind of narrative. If you think that it's breaking apart the story too far, please let me know and I'll try to find a way around it.

You're right about Jiro though, he shouldn't be using that kind of words, so that's some valuable advise. To be honest, I hadn't even considered that to be important as well, so thanks for that [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Finally, concerning the focus of the story. Without giving away too much of the plot, think of it as a child's voyage into the unknown realm of his dreams, embedded in the real world grown ups live in. A child's perception of the story as a whole is a dream, but a grown up's perception may see something very different. What I'm trying to accomplish is to show there's two sides to every story. A realistic one, and a fantastic one. And the realistic isn't per se the better one of the two.
I'd like you to try and read the piece in my first post with a child's eyes and with the eyes of a grown up. I bet you would see different things. The child [in you] would react as Jiro would, and the grown up in you would see through the story the honest sailor told.

You could probably compare it to Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories in terms of deeper motives and storylines (it's a great book, do read it if you can!). My story, however, focusses on a more grave situation than the one portrayed in Haroun.