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This story...
...was boring.
I mean, I kinda hate to say it, because that's about the harshest criticism to level at a story, IMHO. However, I can't really say anything else. In the end, I guess, this is half Aesop with 'ignorance is bliss' and half joke, because I think you're trying to be funny with that 'wise ass' comment. The thing is, I don't think I can say your character actually learned this during the story. He knew pretty much what he wanted from the get-go, and it just kinda fell into his lap after he meandered pointlessly through all the padding you've got here.
I think it's pretty ironic that your monk said “What the Sage helped people to realize is that we get so focused on the unimportant, that we rarely stop to think about the important ones." because 80% of this story was, for me, about 'unimportant problems'. You've got continual escalation-ish events through the story. The thing is, you're not really doing anything with that. Your MC (who's name I've already forgotten, given how bland he is) doesn't actually care about what's going on, except for being slightly annoyed about his radish patch, which might be the only emotion he actually displays in this story. You could escalate this seven times as far, and I still wouldn't care what's going on because it has absolutely no bearing on the story.
Well, here's a few more concrete points, because I should give something that's not just abstract in case my reaction comes from being outside your target audience, which is always a possibility.
Firstly, please please please put in a hook of some sort. This story struck me as 'bland' overall, and the opening, which sets the tone of any story, is a huge part of that. I have no idea why I should be interested in this farmer, and if you could supply me with one, that would be great; supplying me with one in the first sentence or paragraph would be even better, so I wouldn't skim until Taziz shows up and actually adds a bit of color to the story. For, like, one scene.
Secondly, in your poem: Empty yourself in the midst of the wood reads to me like nothing so much as 'take a shit in the forest'. Which may not be what you intended, so that might be worth revising.
Thirdly, although I felt that this story was mostly pointless overall, I'd point to the bit with the priest, the three sons, and the journey to the mountaintop as especially egregious examples of padding.
The bit with the priest felt entirely superfluous, since you don't do anything with the character except mock him. So if your audience doesn't enjoy mocking priests for its own sake, they'll likely find this pointless and/or annoying.
Same with the three sons; they don't do anything interesting or useful for the story, except highlight again that your MC really doesn't care about what's going on around him and has no real motivations in the story. The fourth son seems like he's being helpful, but there's no real reason you need to use him except for narrative device. Despite the way this story seems to try for fairy-tale-ish-ness, since the fourth son's only role is to inject one bit of authorial dictum into the story, you could literally do this any other way to compact your story without losing anything.
The bit on the way to the mountaintop is another example of pointless escalation to me, but even more pointless than the rest, because not only does the MC not even care, it's pretty obvious by now that the story is all but wrapped up, and we're just waiting for you to tell us how exactly that's going to go down.
I'd like to say that part of what's going on here is the way you've mostly told this story in narration. However, mostly-narrative stories can be done well, (Hills Like White Elephants springs to mind) so that's obviously not it. Still, I do think forcing a narrative voice like that can tend to subconsciously distance us from what we're writing about; if you're not intentional in adding in the bits (like character emotion) that make the story engaging and enjoyable, it may have slipped out without you really noticing?
Anyways, I hope this doesn't come across as overly harsh. Please remember that this is my impression/opinion, and not intended to be anything but that. I hope it's useful or entertaining, but you are, of course, free to disregard it.
...was boring.
I mean, I kinda hate to say it, because that's about the harshest criticism to level at a story, IMHO. However, I can't really say anything else. In the end, I guess, this is half Aesop with 'ignorance is bliss' and half joke, because I think you're trying to be funny with that 'wise ass' comment. The thing is, I don't think I can say your character actually learned this during the story. He knew pretty much what he wanted from the get-go, and it just kinda fell into his lap after he meandered pointlessly through all the padding you've got here.
I think it's pretty ironic that your monk said “What the Sage helped people to realize is that we get so focused on the unimportant, that we rarely stop to think about the important ones." because 80% of this story was, for me, about 'unimportant problems'. You've got continual escalation-ish events through the story. The thing is, you're not really doing anything with that. Your MC (who's name I've already forgotten, given how bland he is) doesn't actually care about what's going on, except for being slightly annoyed about his radish patch, which might be the only emotion he actually displays in this story. You could escalate this seven times as far, and I still wouldn't care what's going on because it has absolutely no bearing on the story.
Well, here's a few more concrete points, because I should give something that's not just abstract in case my reaction comes from being outside your target audience, which is always a possibility.
Firstly, please please please put in a hook of some sort. This story struck me as 'bland' overall, and the opening, which sets the tone of any story, is a huge part of that. I have no idea why I should be interested in this farmer, and if you could supply me with one, that would be great; supplying me with one in the first sentence or paragraph would be even better, so I wouldn't skim until Taziz shows up and actually adds a bit of color to the story. For, like, one scene.
Secondly, in your poem: Empty yourself in the midst of the wood reads to me like nothing so much as 'take a shit in the forest'. Which may not be what you intended, so that might be worth revising.
Thirdly, although I felt that this story was mostly pointless overall, I'd point to the bit with the priest, the three sons, and the journey to the mountaintop as especially egregious examples of padding.
The bit with the priest felt entirely superfluous, since you don't do anything with the character except mock him. So if your audience doesn't enjoy mocking priests for its own sake, they'll likely find this pointless and/or annoying.
Same with the three sons; they don't do anything interesting or useful for the story, except highlight again that your MC really doesn't care about what's going on around him and has no real motivations in the story. The fourth son seems like he's being helpful, but there's no real reason you need to use him except for narrative device. Despite the way this story seems to try for fairy-tale-ish-ness, since the fourth son's only role is to inject one bit of authorial dictum into the story, you could literally do this any other way to compact your story without losing anything.
The bit on the way to the mountaintop is another example of pointless escalation to me, but even more pointless than the rest, because not only does the MC not even care, it's pretty obvious by now that the story is all but wrapped up, and we're just waiting for you to tell us how exactly that's going to go down.
I'd like to say that part of what's going on here is the way you've mostly told this story in narration. However, mostly-narrative stories can be done well, (Hills Like White Elephants springs to mind) so that's obviously not it. Still, I do think forcing a narrative voice like that can tend to subconsciously distance us from what we're writing about; if you're not intentional in adding in the bits (like character emotion) that make the story engaging and enjoyable, it may have slipped out without you really noticing?
Anyways, I hope this doesn't come across as overly harsh. Please remember that this is my impression/opinion, and not intended to be anything but that. I hope it's useful or entertaining, but you are, of course, free to disregard it.
There, he had immersed himself in politics, starting as a junior dogcatcher
I gave a hearty chuckle when I read this. Curiously, the pun at the end didn't make me laugh as much, though it did bring a smile to my face.
But yeah, I'll echo the above sentiments. While I enjoyed the story more than Mr. Elephant for Lunch before me, I still feel there was too much padding, making the story as a whole feel bloated. Too many details and plot points are brought up and then resolved before they amount to much. The scene with the sons, particularly. Couldn't any of the ideas debated have been discussed with Katrice instead? That would've been a nice character building moment.
So... while I enjoyed the whole slightly fairytail~ish approach, all the unnecessary fluff drag the story down for me.
>>Not_A_Hat
The bit on the way to the mountaintop is another example of pointless escalation to me
...
Heh...
By reading the first couple of pages of this story, I was thinking that it was going to be some sort of whimsical fairy tale-esque anecdote of the 2016 elections, particularly with the iconography of a donkey that everyone claims to be great. The extended allegory still kept my interest when it became apparent that this wasn't going to be the story that was told, but sadly it did not amount to much. A lot of my expectations that I set forth when approaching this story searching for a universal sort of theme tying everything together (which transitioned from undeserving people gaining power, to religious exploitation, to profiteering off a fad) and nothing ever struck me as particularly cogent. In other words, there are a lot of things that are established that never really pay off in a meaningful way.
I think that the author had an idea to tell the farmer's story of a smart donkey and tie it together in a neat bow with the concluding pun, but wasn't exactly sure of what sort of story he wanted to tell in between those two points. As a result, we have a hodgepodge of different scenarios that don't exactly gel together with one another to come away with an overall thesis or point of the story. Our characters don't really learn any lessons, despite the ending's claim to the contrary, and we as readers also don't really learn anything about this phenomena of putting things on a pedestal just because someone vaguely hinted that it might be a good idea. The various scenes of this story aren't exactly connected together and they more seem like constructs meant to get the main character in the physical place and situation of the story's conclusion rather than organically making these sorts of decisions and realizations himself.
I wouldn't say that any of these scenes are bad ideas: the insincere father, the four sons, the goofy and flamboyant apostle, and strange monks, but they lack a thread tying them together and as a result seem like plethora of scattered ideas that don't have any relation to one another. My main advice for this story would to be concretely sketch out what you're trying to say and have each scene be an extension of that message, or don't have it at all. This is a fable format kind of story, and if there's no clear lesson, or the lesson seems false, then it completely falls on its face when it hits the conclusion regardless of the story that came before it.
I enjoyed the goofiness and some of the underlying subtext, but without anything more substantive, I'm left thinking that there's not a lot cohesion to the piece as a whole.
I think that the author had an idea to tell the farmer's story of a smart donkey and tie it together in a neat bow with the concluding pun, but wasn't exactly sure of what sort of story he wanted to tell in between those two points. As a result, we have a hodgepodge of different scenarios that don't exactly gel together with one another to come away with an overall thesis or point of the story. Our characters don't really learn any lessons, despite the ending's claim to the contrary, and we as readers also don't really learn anything about this phenomena of putting things on a pedestal just because someone vaguely hinted that it might be a good idea. The various scenes of this story aren't exactly connected together and they more seem like constructs meant to get the main character in the physical place and situation of the story's conclusion rather than organically making these sorts of decisions and realizations himself.
I wouldn't say that any of these scenes are bad ideas: the insincere father, the four sons, the goofy and flamboyant apostle, and strange monks, but they lack a thread tying them together and as a result seem like plethora of scattered ideas that don't have any relation to one another. My main advice for this story would to be concretely sketch out what you're trying to say and have each scene be an extension of that message, or don't have it at all. This is a fable format kind of story, and if there's no clear lesson, or the lesson seems false, then it completely falls on its face when it hits the conclusion regardless of the story that came before it.
I enjoyed the goofiness and some of the underlying subtext, but without anything more substantive, I'm left thinking that there's not a lot cohesion to the piece as a whole.
This is a long involved buildup to the letdown of the predictable final pun, which probably should have been made earlier in the story if used at all. Edited for clarity and simplicity, and given a punchier ending, it might make a workable children’s book, but to an adult reader this seems like an Aesop’s fable that has been drawn out much further than it needed to be taken. We already know that people en masse may be foolish enough to select a donkey to lead them; children must have that sad truth delivered to them via short comfortable fables.
This very well might be the longest Shaggy Dog Story I've ever read. I'm trying to figure out how much to ding it in my scoring for that. :trixieshiftleft:
For the most part, though, this kept me reading. The various escalations felt natural, even if in hindsight I'm left agreeing with previous reviewers that a lot of the plot threads ultimately went nowhere. The prose is smooth enough that there were only a few elements which broke my immersion -- oddly enough, the names Danthony, Tedward and Bilfred were the worst offenders, possibly because this is otherwise earnest enough to carry its own weight, and those names are where the story came closest to revealing its core lack of seriousness.
Ultimately, though, while I did feel cheated by the ending, there was enough else to appreciate here to keep me feeling broadly favorable about it. I'm possibly an outlier in that, though, and I do second all of the above advice.
Tier: Strong
For the most part, though, this kept me reading. The various escalations felt natural, even if in hindsight I'm left agreeing with previous reviewers that a lot of the plot threads ultimately went nowhere. The prose is smooth enough that there were only a few elements which broke my immersion -- oddly enough, the names Danthony, Tedward and Bilfred were the worst offenders, possibly because this is otherwise earnest enough to carry its own weight, and those names are where the story came closest to revealing its core lack of seriousness.
Ultimately, though, while I did feel cheated by the ending, there was enough else to appreciate here to keep me feeling broadly favorable about it. I'm possibly an outlier in that, though, and I do second all of the above advice.
Tier: Strong
