Dreams & Hopes.

Prolouge

I wanted to end.
‘End’ is a funny thing, sometimes it is what we long for and sometimes it is what we fear the most. I have always lived with a principle that death is a beautiful thing. There is no running away from it, no matter whatever we do, no matter how much knowledge we acquire, no matter how much respect we gain or wealth we gather, at the end we will have to embrace death. That is the one and only thing we are destined for. Every person we see, everyone we know will die someday, and that is the truth we often forget to recall ourselves. I have always believed that there is nothing after death. No heaven, no hell. It’s just the end of everything. All that we wanted; all that we wished for; all that we lived for ends with death. It is forgotten. We simply lose our existence.

But now, these beliefs seemed just like some great words to draw one’s eye away from my failure. It seemed as if it was a way I tried to look into the world so that I can save myself from the truth: I was a failure. I was a person who gave away his life, his thoughts to a meaningless vault filled with nothingness, and still considered himself great in his own way. I regret my life. I regret everything I did to prove myself to be someone I was not. What I regret the most is to understand now that life is actually so simple and so obvious that it is all about enjoying the simplest pleasures of it, and not about expecting and dreaming something that is in one way or another impossible. I have seen the world, observed it.
Everyone is so busy running around to be someone great, someone extra-ordinary that they give up things that would have made them happier then things they settle for, “things” that everyone except you think would make you happy. In this boundless universe, we are some tiny creatures living in a planet, creatures that are hardly even visible from sky and we expect so much of us. This idea amuses me.

I dreamed of so much, but now it has to end because my dreams killed my reality. I stared at the night sky, it was magnificent. The way the stars gleamed from such a distance; a distance that I cannot even ever measure. I looked down below at the unkind, ruthless ocean. I knew that once I presented myself to it, it wouldn’t spare me. The very beauty of it that we are astonished upon would take the course of vengeance and my soul would be lost in its endless depth; but this is it.

For once in my life, I have been sure of something and I won’t let myself down. I took a deep breath. I tried to remember my first kiss, the first time I saw my parents proud of me, the first time someone showed me respect. The only evidence to my death would be the sky so I looked at it; I looked into the bright night sky which had no remorse or reminisce of the tears I cried or the regrets I shared below it. I thought of it; would anyone remember me after I was lost? Maybe my mother, maybe she would still stare at the forlorn street leading to our house with her eyes searching for me, maybe she would still weep silently at night and think of me. Will Aakshi think of me? I wondered. I wish I could see her once again. I wish I could see her smile once again. I was satisfied. I convinced myself that I will be remembered. I knew I might be wrong, my mother might hate me and curse me for all I made her go through and Aakshi might have even forgotten me; but I convinced myself and let go. I closed my eyes and just let go. I felt the breeze touch my face as I descended into my death. I could feel the pace at while I was falling, but it wasn’t exciting. It felt like a long time. I didn’t open my eyes even once, I kept them closed and waited for me to lose the ability to open them forever. My body touched the saline water, the water that will pay me solace. I couldn’t feel any pain. My body got numb. I was cold. My entire life flashed before my eyes. The resilience of water is unbelievable. One can never experience it until he gives himself to the water without the slightest of movements, until he presents himself to be devoured by water. I felt the water pushing me back to the surface and then again pulling me inside it. I didn’t fight. All I wondered about was what would happen after I die; I knew it would end but still, like every other person, I too was afraid of the great and unknown. I felt the lack of air in my lungs. I was out of breath, I was suffocating. I was further being pulled inside the ocean as if it wanted me more than anything. It warped around me like the arms of an old lover. I was losing my consciousness. I opened my eyes; I tried to move to the surface. I wanted to die but I didn’t know why I was doing it.
Why was I trying to fight? I tried to breathe, but water even owned my lungs by then. I knew it was over now, I belonged to the ocean. I wanted to calm down and feel what it like was to be dead. The slight light passing through the water started to fade away. The colorless water, the fizz, everything my eyes could make out started to fade away in darkness. I felt nothing.

Author's Note

Do not just read; feel.

Reviews

[JayG]

This one was hard to critique because it’s primarily an essay in which someone who has given us no reason to care about them talks about ending their life for reasons not given, other than in general.

You know the background, and your emotions track those of the protagonist because, for you, every line acts as a pointer to images, ideas, emotions, and more, all stored in your mind. So as you read, you feel. But for a reader, who knows nothing about the character, even to gender, every line acts as a pointer to images, ideas, emotions, and more, all stored in YOUR mind. And since you’re not there to ask when the story is read…

When you say, “my dreams killed my reality,” it’s poetic, but what can that mean to a reader who knows neither those dreams nor the reality? But unless it has the meaning to your reader as to the protagonist they’re just words.

Look at yourself. If someone came to you and said, “Someone outside just smacked a man and ran off, you might ask for details. But think of your response were they to say, “Someone outside just smacked your mother and ran off.” Look at how great the difference in your response would be. That’s the kind of connection our readers must have to the characters. Only then will your reader feel what you hope they will.

At the moment you’re thinking in terms of talking to the reader, and when you read, you do. You’re not just reading, you’re performing the role of storyteller. So you overcome the points I mentioned with the intensity of emotion in the voice with which you read, your facial expression, body language, and gestures.

But how much of that performance makes it to the page? Not as trace. Your reader is placed in the position of playing storyteller in your place. Yes, they have the script, but not the performance notes.

See the problem? It’s not that you’re doing something wrong, it’s that the tools you presently own—the tools, we get in our school days, are inappropriate to the capabilities of the medium for the task you’ve set yourself.

On the page the story must have a very different form. A reader cannot relate to a narrator they can neither see nor hear, so they must relate to the protagonist who is living the scene, and experience it in real-time, with the protagonist as their avatar.

On stage we talk to the audience and tell them about the events. In a play or film we act out the action for them. On the page we must make the reader BECOME the protagonist and live the scene with that character. And how much preparation did your teachers give for that task? I’m betting that they never even called, “He said” a tag.

So…you have the desire. And that’s great. You’ve demonstrated the perseverance. And for all we know you’re positively awash with talent. But that talent is untrained, and trying to make do. What you need are the learned parts of fiction writing—the tricks the pros take for granted. And with them, and enough practice to make them as intuitive as the writing skills we use on the job, who knows where you’ll fly to?

As always, my suggestion is to churn through a few books on fiction writing technique to get a variety of opinions, and understand why, for example, a scene almost always ends in disaster for the protagonist. My blog is filled with articles meant for the newer writer, and based on the techniques and ideas you’ll find in the books on technique by Dwight Swain, Jack Bickham, or Debra Dixon. Of them, Deb’s book, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict is the easiest one to get started with. The best is Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, with Bickham’s, Scene and Structure very close to that.

I wish it was a matter of, “stop doing this, and do that instead,” but like any profession, there is a body of knowledge that must be mastered. On the plus side, if you truly are meant to be a writer you’ll find the learning fascinating.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/

[FoxgloveLove]

Well said.

[FoxgloveLove]

This was an interesting piece to read, with lots of emotion and imagery. In terms of the actual content, I think JayG's review was very insightful and contains some solid analysis of this piece. Because of this, I'll instead focus my review mostly on looking at your grammar and writing style.


---Grammar---

While your understanding of syntax is pretty good, I feel like you're usage of punctuation needs a little work. Your application of commas, semi-colons, and full-stops (periods) is somewhat inconsistent throughout this piece, so I feel that you should either take some time to read through your work again to make sure that you don't make too many errors or do a little more research and reading on how to use these punctuation marks correctly. There are times when your punctuation is correct, but there are also a lot of times when your application is not proper or appropriate. It's common for many writers to not follow every single grammatical rule, but when you stray too far from what is considered "grammatically correct," you can risk writing sentences that are awkward, confusing, difficult to understand, or mean something different from what you intended.

One small passage that exemplifies what I mean is the following:
"I stared at the night sky, it was magnificent. The way the stars gleamed from such a distance; a distance that I cannot even ever measure."
In the first sentence, you chose to use a comma rather than a period, which may seem okay because it is such a short segment, but it actually creates a run-on sentence. Since "I stared at the night sky" and "it was magnificent" are both independent clauses (i.e. complete sentences in their own right), you should use either a conjunction to connect them ("and"), a semi-colon, or simply separate it into two sentences (which is probably the easiest).

In the second sentence, you use a semi-colon to separate two clauses. However, the second part is a dependent clause (which is not a complete sentence). Semi-colons are used primarily to separate two related independent clauses without a conjunction, meaning that you should be able to replace most semi-colons with full stops and everything would remain grammatically correct (with some exceptions, like lists). A comma would be more appropriate to separate these two parts of the sentence.

For now, since semi-colons aren't entirely necessary to use in writing, the best thing I could suggest to improve your grammar is to forego using semi-colons until you get more experience with writing. In this way, you can focus more on the basics and do better research into when and how to appropriately use commas and full stops. Once you get that down, you can try experimenting with using more complex punctuation and grammar to match your writing style. Most people don't use semi-colons enough to understand how to use them properly, but it's just something that takes practice with writing. It's pretty easy to write without using them at all, but the more you write, the more naturally you'll be able to use punctuation to your advantage.


---Style---

You use a very elaborate writing style throughout this piece, which allows you to display a complex range of sensory descriptions, images, emotions. However, the more complex you try to be in your writing, the easier it becomes to write something that may sound awkward to the reader, who doesn't follow your exact line of thought. This, in part, has to do with some instances of improper punctuation, but it can also be found in subtle things like proper use of prepositions or awkward word combinations.

The biggest pitfall that many writers who write in this style (including myself) fall into is trying so hard to write eloquently that they end with something that is excessively complicated, wordy, and difficult to read. For example, something like the phrase, "a distance that I cannot even ever measure," comes off sounding more awkward than eloquent because of how unnecessarily complicated it is. Writing with a simpler style is not always preferable to some writers, but sometimes it's better to simplify when it's appropriate. In comparison, I feel it would be better to use something like, "a distance that I can never measure." How you write is ultimately up to you, but the more diverse your writing style is, the easier it will become to express the idea you want to convey in the manner you desire.


- Rating -
Content: 16/20
Grammar: 13/20
Style: 14/20
Structure: 17/20
Appeal: 17/20
--------------
Overall: 77/100

The easiest way to hone your writing style is to read a good variety of books written in different styles, as well as to just keep practicing your writing. Keep it up!