IN WHICH A MAN IS LOST IN THE WILD All fourteen of his comrades were killed by the sudden avalanche, but as Elan scrambled desperately away from the fallen rocks, some scratches and a bruised foot were all that he had. He spent an hour trying to pry the rocks away, shouting out names in case one of them were buried and might need help. But, shocked and grief stricken, he made no headway. It was getting dark and this place was dangerous. So he left. He must get back to the others. Elan was far away from the rest of his band and did not know the way back. After last summer when the river had shrunken to a trickle and the animals had died everything had been hard. Anxious for a new food source, all of them, carrying their meagre tools and clothes, had been on the move. Most of them had been left in a safe area while he, one of fifteen, had ventured out to explore. This was the first time that the men had foraged in this area. What way had they been travelling? East? Elan began moving back in the direction that he thought that they had come. He trudged through the marshy ground toward a distant forest and hoped that the spirits of his ancestors would guide him back to his children, his parents and the others. The next day Elan awoke in the green grassy clearing that he has chosen to sleep in. He had stopped here when it had become too dark, knowing that it was not safe to move at night and that silence was the first defense against predators. Hunger overrode his distrust of the bright red berries above his head and he ate greedily of them. Then he left, his dread multiplying as the fresh hope that a new day had promised, faded. He was lost. ***** Elan lived for the next two years in an area adjacent to where the avalanche had happened. One week after setting out he had decided that the search was hopeless. Two weeks after that he had found his way back here and decided, against reason, that if they were looking for him, this is where they were most likely to find him. With more time, he concluded that the band had most likely moved on, and that the day of the disaster had meant the end not only of the life of his friends, but of his life with his own kind. Food was not plentiful here, but there was enough for one. There were snakes. There were rodents. But there were no bears and there were no wolves, and Elan adjusted, made do. He spent his days searching for things to eat, maintaining his pitiful shelter, offering prayers to his ancestors and if it was warm, basking in the afternoon sun. ***** As Elan broke the branch from the tree to take it with him he saw something in the corner of his eye that made him stop. He turned. And when the spear flew toward him he ran. He had not seen the thrower of the spear. He had not seen how many others were with the thrower. But he ran for ten minutes and then he stopped. Breathless in his hiding place, he heard shouting. He heard one voice call, and another answer. They were moving towards him. He picked up a stone and waited. The first man crashed through the bushes two minutes later, making a mockery of Elans hiding place. Dressed in a shiny, glittering coat of a sort that Elan had not seen before he screamed and rushed at Elan. He lifted a long, sharp instrument which if he had been other than a hunter-gatherer, Elan might have known as a sword. Elan dodged and in terror, flung his stone toward the attacker. And the man collapsed, mortally wounded. Then the other arrived. Taking up a similar posture to the first, the second stranger murderously lunged at Elan. The two of them struggled in the dirt. And just then, a spacecraft from another world landed, right on their heads, killing them both. Elan was dead. The Zorlans had arrived.
I wrote that for another purpose and thought that I might as well post it here. First time I've attempted anything of the sort in about 15 years, so be gentle!
Mission accomplished. On the plus side, I'd say the story moves along and we get a good mental picture of what's going on. But--and I claim no expert knowledge in the craft of writing fiction--I would offer the following criticisms... 1. That first sentence--the one that should GRAB the reader--is a bit awkward. How about something like this: I excised "comrades"; it doesn't seem the right word. 2. What "others" must he get back to? Even if you're trying to stay somewhat mysterious, it's a little confusing because he's with one group of others (the dead ones) and has to get back to a different group of others. Suggest "tribe," "group," etc. 3. Yech. Sounds kinda flowery for a primitive. 4. "area adjacent to where the avalanche had happened." Is this on a mountain? An avalanche that takes out 14 people is a pretty damned big avalanche. If he's on a mountain, staying two years there means living through the winters there. 5. "Against reason?" That's a little too rationalist for a primitive. 6. "making a mockery of Elan's hiding place" Jarringly modern expression used to describe a primitive man's perspective. 7. The explicitness and the shifting perspective almost make this line comical. How about something like this: 8. That ending...o-kaaaaay. You definitely provide a jolting non-sequitur, an E.T. ex machina. If this is the end of the story, it's unsatisfying. If it's the beginning of the story (i.e., the first chapter), why not open with the spaceship landing? What came before with Elan seems superfluous; it doesn't seem likely that anything said about him will figure in the subsequent tale. Not a bad effort, but I'd suggest keeping your viewpoint narrow: if this is Elan's story, tell it like he would, with only the knowledge he would have.
I'm not gonna be polite. Frankly it was awful. Fact is I wasn't engaged at all. Was bored after the couple of paragraphs and found myself pushing myself on out of duty to you. Also, I find the use of the chracater's name a bit bizzare. The first few paragraphs use the name "Elan" and then keep using "he or his" far too much. It's almost as if you were taught at school never to use the character's name more than once in a paragraph. Despite this, later on you over use "Elan", almost as if you were rebelling against the idea of not using it too much beforehand. Now, I could be completely wrong on that. However, in addition it didn't gripme at all, and I'm not sure why. It readlike an opening for an X Files episode. I dunno mate, I think it needs work.
There's lots of potential there. Lots and lots of potential. (That is, by the way, the polite way to say essentially what El Chup said.) For one thing, you're hiding the ball. For another, other than survival, we have no idea what your protagonist wants, and no idea at all why we should care whether or not he gets it. Lastly, while it's okay to use a Deus Ex Machina to get your character into trouble (never okay to use one to get him out of it, but using one to get him into it is okay, if done right) the kind of trouble the D.E.M. gets your character into shouldn't be what ends the story. That just feels cheap and lazy, and tends to make the reader wonder what the hell he spent that time reading for.
Practice makes perfect, no? If John Castle can sell his amazonian sex pulp shite then I'm sure that with a bit of effort and skill learning you can turn out something decent. You're certainly intelligent enough to do so.
That's up to you. The difference between someone who's a writer and someone who just wants to be one is that they both get the "you can't do it" speech; the latter believes it and the former yells, "Fuck you!" and perseveres.
As Paladin says, if you want to write, write. There are plenty of writing styles out there, you don't have to be art house writing by numbers, or even use what JohnCastle described as 'Deus Ex Machina'. To be fair I don't even know what that is, so I won't even begin to comment on it. However, Im pretty sure if you read Trainspotting and 50 shades of grey, neither will be the gold standard example of writing that would be expected in Ivory towers, however both raked in mega millions. Trainspotting was a belter of a book, 50 shades Im guessing wasn't high brow but it certainly kept it's audience captivated. I guess a good story is a good story. If you can improve it with clever devices then all the better, but don't rely on them.
"God from the Machine." It's a literary device wherein an improbable coincidence affects the situation the story's protagonist is in. It's usually used very, very badly to get the protagonist out of a tight corner which there's no character-driven way out of. It's cheap and, moreover, it's lazy. It shows that the writer expended insufficient energy planning the story and developing the character. Again, though, the Deus Ex Machina can be inverted and used effectively to get your protagonist into trouble -- but this is still best done in the planning stages. Found a scene in your story where there's not as much tension or conflict as there ought to be? Throw your protagonist into the briar patch. For example: Your protagonist's car won't start. Irritating, sure, but boring. Okay, so throw a cop with a chip on his shoulder into the mix. Now you'll get tension. The cop doesn't need a back story. He doesn't need to appear ever again. His one purpose is to pump up the suspense in that one scene. That makes him a Deus Ex Machina -- but one that readers will forgive you for, if they notice it at all, because he adds fun instead of sapping it out of the resolution of the scene.
