Hey! It looks like you're new here. You might want to check out the introduction.
Show rules for this event
The price of magic
The magic burned.
Cold bindings on hands. Cold surface. Rocks. Eyes burning, opened or closed, it didn't matter. Pain surging through skin, muscles, bones, blood, brain. But it was getting better. It hurt less, now that she had partially taken over. My senses becoming hers, my pain becoming hers. My mind, my memories... breaking. Most of my memories were insignificant, she was not present there. She did not need them. Why should she?
How much time has passed? For how long have I been locked here? Days? Years? Seconds? I could see no sun in the blotches covering my vision. I could hear no change in the never ending buzzing in my ears. I didn't have much time left, I was sure of it. Probably a few minutes, maybe one. An eternity.
"Why would you want become a mage?" Someone asked this question a long time ago. For some reason it was important. I could not remember who I was or where I was, but this words remained, somehow. Yes, I was a mage. I was the one that invited her in and was now paying the price.
Images flittered through my head, between the pulses of pain racking my body.
The boy was looking at me with his eyes wide. I could not remember his features, only his expression. I could tell his eyes were wide, not their color.
"Well, I could fly! And conjure fire! And wear fancy clothes! And I would never go hungry!" I grinned, swinging my legs down into the void, staring past the nothing-boy into the mist. I could not remember what I felt.
The light pulsed, surging into the sky. Inside it was there was... something. I could not see it, but I could somehow feel it. Its presence cut through the mist like the eyes of the boy from the memory. Of course it did. It was a memory of her.
"Is it [i]it[i]?" I asked, looking at the robed figure next to me.
"Are you sure? There would be no turning back," it nodded.
I reached out my hand and touched the light. The light surged into me, filling me with power, with presence...
I was flying in the sky, soaring over the clouds, feeling the wind on my skin, the cold air filling my lungs. Someone was watching from below, shouting, all excited.
I stood in the circle of people. I could feel the flames scorching my brows, hear the awed gasps of the audience. One person was clapping much harder than the others.
I inhaled deep the smells of the lavish food I have conjured. I tasted all sweetness, the saltiness... I looked at the person sitting across the table with me and smiled.
I swam in the dark depths of the ocean, feeling my lungs fill with water, but not drowning. There was something below the waves, a gift I wanted to give to someone.
I walked through the forest, plants sprouting all around me, my bare feet wet from the dew collected on the moss. Someone was holding my hand.
I pulled myself together. All that I had left. I had been controlling the magic for so many years. I knew her well.
I could not remember their faces. I could not remember who they were, but I bend the magic to my will one last time and send it out to the world with one wish. "Let they all be happy."
She wanted to know, to feel to world. She could take it. I just hoped that the spell worked and the first thing she will feel when waking up will be their gratitude.
Cold bindings on hands. Cold surface. Rocks. Eyes burning, opened or closed, it didn't matter. Pain surging through skin, muscles, bones, blood, brain. But it was getting better. It hurt less, now that she had partially taken over. My senses becoming hers, my pain becoming hers. My mind, my memories... breaking. Most of my memories were insignificant, she was not present there. She did not need them. Why should she?
How much time has passed? For how long have I been locked here? Days? Years? Seconds? I could see no sun in the blotches covering my vision. I could hear no change in the never ending buzzing in my ears. I didn't have much time left, I was sure of it. Probably a few minutes, maybe one. An eternity.
"Why would you want become a mage?" Someone asked this question a long time ago. For some reason it was important. I could not remember who I was or where I was, but this words remained, somehow. Yes, I was a mage. I was the one that invited her in and was now paying the price.
Images flittered through my head, between the pulses of pain racking my body.
The boy was looking at me with his eyes wide. I could not remember his features, only his expression. I could tell his eyes were wide, not their color.
"Well, I could fly! And conjure fire! And wear fancy clothes! And I would never go hungry!" I grinned, swinging my legs down into the void, staring past the nothing-boy into the mist. I could not remember what I felt.
The light pulsed, surging into the sky. Inside it was there was... something. I could not see it, but I could somehow feel it. Its presence cut through the mist like the eyes of the boy from the memory. Of course it did. It was a memory of her.
"Is it [i]it[i]?" I asked, looking at the robed figure next to me.
"Are you sure? There would be no turning back," it nodded.
I reached out my hand and touched the light. The light surged into me, filling me with power, with presence...
I was flying in the sky, soaring over the clouds, feeling the wind on my skin, the cold air filling my lungs. Someone was watching from below, shouting, all excited.
I stood in the circle of people. I could feel the flames scorching my brows, hear the awed gasps of the audience. One person was clapping much harder than the others.
I inhaled deep the smells of the lavish food I have conjured. I tasted all sweetness, the saltiness... I looked at the person sitting across the table with me and smiled.
I swam in the dark depths of the ocean, feeling my lungs fill with water, but not drowning. There was something below the waves, a gift I wanted to give to someone.
I walked through the forest, plants sprouting all around me, my bare feet wet from the dew collected on the moss. Someone was holding my hand.
I pulled myself together. All that I had left. I had been controlling the magic for so many years. I knew her well.
I could not remember their faces. I could not remember who they were, but I bend the magic to my will one last time and send it out to the world with one wish. "Let they all be happy."
She wanted to know, to feel to world. She could take it. I just hoped that the spell worked and the first thing she will feel when waking up will be their gratitude.
Non-title-case title. Pedant powers, engage!
Not much else to say here until the end. This one is confusing. I'll optimistically assume that's on purpose, as the narrator here seems to be losing him/herself and sense of time to this "her." But with so few details given (never even a proper noun) and the way things jump to a new scene every sentence, it's just a big blur.
Yeah, that's the word. A blur. There's nothing I can really make sense of, beyond "magic is a whirlwind" and spellcheck needs a run at the resulting story.
Not much else to say here until the end. This one is confusing. I'll optimistically assume that's on purpose, as the narrator here seems to be losing him/herself and sense of time to this "her." But with so few details given (never even a proper noun) and the way things jump to a new scene every sentence, it's just a big blur.
Yeah, that's the word. A blur. There's nothing I can really make sense of, beyond "magic is a whirlwind" and spellcheck needs a run at the resulting story.
I covered another like this just a bit ago. Same comments apply here, the piece gets ahead of itself and dives into the deep end while leaving me in the dust. This whole style does not work in minis.
Thank you for writing, though. Don't get discouraged, learn, and come back stronger!
Thank you for writing, though. Don't get discouraged, learn, and come back stronger!
Man, the problem with portraying confusing things in minifics is that they're confusing.
Like, trying to convey the emotion of confusion to the reader without actually confusing the reader is remarkably tricky. I'd suggest you dial back the description and go a bit deeper into narration. Tell us what's going on, instead of simply conveying it. As-is, this is just mostly impenetrable to me.
Like, trying to convey the emotion of confusion to the reader without actually confusing the reader is remarkably tricky. I'd suggest you dial back the description and go a bit deeper into narration. Tell us what's going on, instead of simply conveying it. As-is, this is just mostly impenetrable to me.
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of obscure fictions this round. I remember Cold saying “don’t try to be subtle in the WriteOffs”. I agree up to a point. I mean, as I already said, it’s perfectly acceptable—even encouraged—to titillate people’s neurones with intriguing story, provided the reader has enough elements to elaborate different meanings and juggle with them.
But here, we’re left with a very generic story, in a way: someone sentenced to death remembers their life as the final minute approaches. By failing to deliver on what’s special in that case, i.e. the mage created a living being which then proceeded to destroy a large part of the country he lives in, you strand us in totally uncharted territory, and we have no blazed trail to escape. So that’s it. We’re in the middle of nowhere, trying to make sense of something that is way to fuzzy to be perceived clearly.
Sorry.
But here, we’re left with a very generic story, in a way: someone sentenced to death remembers their life as the final minute approaches. By failing to deliver on what’s special in that case, i.e. the mage created a living being which then proceeded to destroy a large part of the country he lives in, you strand us in totally uncharted territory, and we have no blazed trail to escape. So that’s it. We’re in the middle of nowhere, trying to make sense of something that is way to fuzzy to be perceived clearly.
Sorry.
So in a shocking twist that will surprise absolutely nobody, I disagree with >>Not_A_Hat. I know, I know. Sometimes I think that I'm genetically wired to refute basically everything he says. Still, in this case, I think there's an interesting discussion to be had: the importance of confusing your readers, and how this piece could confuse us better.
I don't want to go into a lot of detail about why confusing your readers is, contrary to what most people would think, a good plan—mostly because I'm in the middle of writing an essay on that exact topic, and I don't want to end up repeating myself. In summary it is simply because it is good to convey character emotions by eliciting similar responses in your readers, to better help us empathise. Confusion, if used properly, is no exception to that—you just have to be careful not to completely lose your readers in the process!
So let's first talk about why this piece tries to confuse us. It is, after all, a piece about losing control, about submitting to a power far beyond your own and surrendering to overwhelming forces. In the moment, our mage is disoriented, and disorienting the reader is an excellent way to start this piece off...
Which is why I hate your opening sentence.
What's funny about that is that this is the kind of opening sentence I usually adore—it's snappy, it's brief, it's vivid and emotive. In three words you had my attention. In three words you had me smiling, leaning into my screen, ready for more. And in three sentences you had given me a strong foothold from which to take my bearings, emotionally and narratively, and given me space to find my balance. If you weren't aiming to spend a paragraph after this disorienting me, it would be a fantastic (albeit understated and not wholly original) hook.
But imagine for a second that you cut it—or, if (like me) you like it too much to bear that thought, moved it to later in the piece. Open instead with a fragment: "Cold bindings on hands." What's a reader's reaction to that going to be? Confusion, certainly. Perhaps interest, too—a little confusion certainly can be a hook in and of itself, as confusion naturally creates suspense. But most importantly, the reader would have no idea where the narrative might go from a first sentence like that. Open with that, and we have no foothold.
Why do I think this is important? Because as it stands, the piece gives us the briefest of moments of balance, of understanding, only to pull that away from us merely three words in and drop us straight into the mire of confusion. Given your second paragraph is constructed to slowly build coherency, both in building itself from fragments to sentences and in introducing clarity over description, it seems strange to start the piece off on such a strong footing, only to knock us down and build us back up. Start from the confusion, and build us back to understanding, and you have a much better structure to those emotions.
On the whole, though, this piece is pretty great! There's some fantastic moments buried in here (you actually gave me the shivers with "I could tell his eyes were wide, not their color") and the prose is generally strong—in my opinion, with the exception of the opening sentence, the first half of this story is pretty much spot on. What lets you down, I think, is that section beginning "I was flying..." I think I can get what you were trying to achieve here (it reads to me like an attempt at describing the feeling of using magic, where metaphor and reality become mixed and difficult to separate—if so, I can't actually criticise your use of this technique, though I will admit that it felt unnecessarily confusing after the first section had done such a good job of slowly building us up to understanding), but it wasn't super-easy to spot what was going on to the point that, even now, I'm not entirely sure I get it.
One last nitpick from me: let's take a little look at your final sentence.
Before I even get started, I just want to say that there's nothing wrong with this sentence—it reads clearly, it's grammatically consistent, and it absolutely portrays what you want to say. But... it feels weak, to me, as an ending. Every now and then I talk about the cadence of sentences, particularly opening and closing sentences, and what I mean by that is very much in line with the musical understanding of cadence. See, in music, there are certain progressions of chords that sound final, just as there are certain progressions of chords that sound unfinished and leave the listener expecting more. Some sentences have similar tones: like, looking back even at this paragraph as I'm writing it, I know that I would never end a paragraph on "But... it feels weak, to me, as an ending" because... well, it feels weak as an ending. And I admit that this is something I rely entirely on instinct for—I have never properly sat down and tried to understand what it is that makes some sentences endings and others not, and that's probably something I'll need to do at some point. But to me, your final sentence doesn't quite have that ending cadence to it.
Except, rather unusually, I don't think it's because of how it ends.
"... will be their gratitude" works. It reads like an ending. It's solid and it ends with confidence. But I think it gets weakened by the few words before it: "she will feel when waking up" not only makes that final "will" a repetition, which feels a tad awkward, but the jump into simple future tense also feels a tiny bit uncomfortable. It's nothing that makes the sentence itself bad or wrong in any way, but final sentences have a lot more that they need to do that simply be right, and I think it's worth rethinking this one.
Still, like I said, this piece is pretty good on the whole. It is rather ambitious as regards the confusion, and I don't think it quite managed to achieve what it was hoping to do with that, but I can't fault the author for trying—it was the right choice for the story being told, and I greatly admire the attempt. Your writing is technically solid, emotive and full of beautifully vivid imagery. All in all, I think this piece is Almost There, and with a little bit of careful thought about its structure you could edit this into something pretty great.
(Horse? HHHOOOORRRRRRSSSSEEE)
Edit: I know >>Xepher already mentioned it, but I feel I should definitely point out the whole "title case" thing—following conventions like that is really, really important for helping to keep anonymity, which is one of the most fundamental parts of the writeoff format! (Plus, y'know, it just looks unprofessional and gives readers a bad first impression. Same goes for checking those bbcode tags!) Unless not title casing your title is super important for some big, artistic integrity reason, please remember to check it! Thanks <3
I don't want to go into a lot of detail about why confusing your readers is, contrary to what most people would think, a good plan—mostly because I'm in the middle of writing an essay on that exact topic, and I don't want to end up repeating myself. In summary it is simply because it is good to convey character emotions by eliciting similar responses in your readers, to better help us empathise. Confusion, if used properly, is no exception to that—you just have to be careful not to completely lose your readers in the process!
So let's first talk about why this piece tries to confuse us. It is, after all, a piece about losing control, about submitting to a power far beyond your own and surrendering to overwhelming forces. In the moment, our mage is disoriented, and disorienting the reader is an excellent way to start this piece off...
Which is why I hate your opening sentence.
The magic burned.
What's funny about that is that this is the kind of opening sentence I usually adore—it's snappy, it's brief, it's vivid and emotive. In three words you had my attention. In three words you had me smiling, leaning into my screen, ready for more. And in three sentences you had given me a strong foothold from which to take my bearings, emotionally and narratively, and given me space to find my balance. If you weren't aiming to spend a paragraph after this disorienting me, it would be a fantastic (albeit understated and not wholly original) hook.
But imagine for a second that you cut it—or, if (like me) you like it too much to bear that thought, moved it to later in the piece. Open instead with a fragment: "Cold bindings on hands." What's a reader's reaction to that going to be? Confusion, certainly. Perhaps interest, too—a little confusion certainly can be a hook in and of itself, as confusion naturally creates suspense. But most importantly, the reader would have no idea where the narrative might go from a first sentence like that. Open with that, and we have no foothold.
Why do I think this is important? Because as it stands, the piece gives us the briefest of moments of balance, of understanding, only to pull that away from us merely three words in and drop us straight into the mire of confusion. Given your second paragraph is constructed to slowly build coherency, both in building itself from fragments to sentences and in introducing clarity over description, it seems strange to start the piece off on such a strong footing, only to knock us down and build us back up. Start from the confusion, and build us back to understanding, and you have a much better structure to those emotions.
On the whole, though, this piece is pretty great! There's some fantastic moments buried in here (you actually gave me the shivers with "I could tell his eyes were wide, not their color") and the prose is generally strong—in my opinion, with the exception of the opening sentence, the first half of this story is pretty much spot on. What lets you down, I think, is that section beginning "I was flying..." I think I can get what you were trying to achieve here (it reads to me like an attempt at describing the feeling of using magic, where metaphor and reality become mixed and difficult to separate—if so, I can't actually criticise your use of this technique, though I will admit that it felt unnecessarily confusing after the first section had done such a good job of slowly building us up to understanding), but it wasn't super-easy to spot what was going on to the point that, even now, I'm not entirely sure I get it.
One last nitpick from me: let's take a little look at your final sentence.
I just hoped that the spell worked and the first thing she will feel when waking up will be their gratitude.
Before I even get started, I just want to say that there's nothing wrong with this sentence—it reads clearly, it's grammatically consistent, and it absolutely portrays what you want to say. But... it feels weak, to me, as an ending. Every now and then I talk about the cadence of sentences, particularly opening and closing sentences, and what I mean by that is very much in line with the musical understanding of cadence. See, in music, there are certain progressions of chords that sound final, just as there are certain progressions of chords that sound unfinished and leave the listener expecting more. Some sentences have similar tones: like, looking back even at this paragraph as I'm writing it, I know that I would never end a paragraph on "But... it feels weak, to me, as an ending" because... well, it feels weak as an ending. And I admit that this is something I rely entirely on instinct for—I have never properly sat down and tried to understand what it is that makes some sentences endings and others not, and that's probably something I'll need to do at some point. But to me, your final sentence doesn't quite have that ending cadence to it.
Except, rather unusually, I don't think it's because of how it ends.
"... will be their gratitude" works. It reads like an ending. It's solid and it ends with confidence. But I think it gets weakened by the few words before it: "she will feel when waking up" not only makes that final "will" a repetition, which feels a tad awkward, but the jump into simple future tense also feels a tiny bit uncomfortable. It's nothing that makes the sentence itself bad or wrong in any way, but final sentences have a lot more that they need to do that simply be right, and I think it's worth rethinking this one.
Still, like I said, this piece is pretty good on the whole. It is rather ambitious as regards the confusion, and I don't think it quite managed to achieve what it was hoping to do with that, but I can't fault the author for trying—it was the right choice for the story being told, and I greatly admire the attempt. Your writing is technically solid, emotive and full of beautifully vivid imagery. All in all, I think this piece is Almost There, and with a little bit of careful thought about its structure you could edit this into something pretty great.
(Horse? HHHOOOORRRRRRSSSSEEE)
Edit: I know >>Xepher already mentioned it, but I feel I should definitely point out the whole "title case" thing—following conventions like that is really, really important for helping to keep anonymity, which is one of the most fundamental parts of the writeoff format! (Plus, y'know, it just looks unprofessional and gives readers a bad first impression. Same goes for checking those bbcode tags!) Unless not title casing your title is super important for some big, artistic integrity reason, please remember to check it! Thanks <3