This thread is an experiment to see if I can get some people to help proofread and help edit some drafts I have for a story I'm writing. Im not worried about people copying my work because frankly I dont even know if it will ever get published, I just know that it has to get the
fuck out of my head and onto paper, AKA somewhere that isnt just my brain.
Now I will only be putting chunks at a time, and probably from diff chapters as well, with the intent of not making a TL;DR scenario and to try and get criticism bits at a time.
This is assuming that anyone wants to read it anyway, which BTW I am prepared to regret posting this at any moment LOLOL
I would like help getting peoples critiques on digestibility and continuity between paragraphs, etc etc. Also, if it is garbage, then well, that is why Im making this thread!!! XD Any feedback is good feedback, and I am prepared for some insults hehehe.
This is of course Fiction.
Genre: Sci-Fi\Fantasy\"Dead-earth"
Title: TBA (aka still havent decided)
Overall Themes: Salvation must be earned
Setting: Floating city, last of 3 major havens for humanity. The only artificial sanctuary that isn't a mountaintop. (not explaining it here LOL)
This snippet is from Chapter 1: The Birthing(Or the Awakening), this is only a small chunk of the chapter 1, and
mostly is the dream segment up to when he(the protaganist) wakes up, so I want to know what you guys think!
Rass could not know it was a dream. It was as though he had never experienced anything before these moments of remembrance, at least nothing in such a way that could be understood by an earthbound soul.
The moments anterior to his dream could only be described as a piceous vacuity. A everlasting tenebrosity, as inescapable as it was vast and unending. Rass was the darkness and the darkness was he, in that he knew no time, nor effort; and only the bliss of sheer nothingness. A realm that could not be explained and experienced, with nothing so mortal as finiteness or physical complexity. It was like being plucked from a floating existence from within a void of blackness and drawn downward by a suddenly intensifying feeling of gravity. Rass was impressed upon by a culminating sense of being rapidly compressed in a most corporeal way and then encompassed by a thick warm softness. It felt like he was poured from a pitcher into the center of a mold, still tepid from the fires of a kiln. There was a fleeting feeling of familiarity, as though he found himself back to place of old, like fitting on clothes that one could not bear to forsake. These sentiments were comforting to Rass in an peculiar way, calming and soothing him as his mind drifted onwards from the bleakness of incomprehension. It brought on a surreal exchange of emotions that felt so old that it was almost like he had never known them at all.
The void within his mind echoed a faint beat. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
A heart.... My heart....The beat......
It was the sound of his heart throbbing, a slow methodic beat that drew him inward reflectively. For a sound he could recall so well it, for some trifle reason, felt foreign and scary. It was most certainly not his to claim but at the same time Rass knew instinctually that it was. He accepted it because he was alive. The beat began to pump faster in a subtle way, driving him onward from the peaceful abyss. As it picked up speed, diverse intangible images danced before him, not unlike sparks from flint flying off into the black of night. They were sharp and clear for an instant, then faded as nothing but an instantaneous recollection.
No....... I want to float forever........
The throb began to pulse slightly faster. It pulled him from the darkness in a peculiar way. The calm methodic beat aroused the would-be quick images and like a deluge they suddenly threatened to overtake him completely. More than simply seeing them, Rass was absorbed into their universe. Events unfolded before him with such a physical reality that he could not second guess them. Rass could not comprehend them, and he strangely felt like a forlorn bystander in a world that wasn't his. There were people fighting and clashing in fields of steel and blood, the moaning gasps of love on a soft bed, screaming and dying people fleeing in mobs; but all of them without faces and identity though sound and substance. Laughter and melodies of song and dance flowed through him, but Rass had no grasp of their origins. He heard the sound of wind through grass so tall that would cover a man to waist, and saw the flames of a distant burning metropolis licking the sky like a hungry dog at the bottom of a milk bowl. Tendrils of smoke drifted up and faded into the blue of the sky up past the screams of people burning. He could feel the heat from the flames warming his skin even from this distance, a raging inferno that left none alive.
No.... I will not be overcome.....
This, like the other flashes of the distant reverie faded away into nothingness only to be replaced by more jaded and faster moving events. His heart began to beat faster as he left them behind systematically and he sped farther away from the darkness of the void. The corporeal illusions threatened to completely overwhelm him. It was comparable to bright lights that could still be seen even after closing your eyes. It was then that Rass became aware of a subtle sound, muffled and unclear that bled through the blinding images. The tone of someone's voice so close though so quiet it was nigh inaudible. His mind came to focus but it was so faint it was but a whisper. Every moment of every image there was this voice, always talking to him. It was an odd feeling. To him the words did not matter, only that they were there. The images began to ebb as he took notice of it and the radical sensations became less clear and sharp as the voice became louder. The soft spoken vocals gave him solace in such a way that it brokered an empathic appreciation for its mere existence. The formless words played to him like a lullaby, giving him peace. Though everything was fragmented and dangling, the voice was his blanket from it all.
Abruptly, it felt as though Rass was suddenly hurled from it all together. Something clicked in such a way that brought his mind to an acuteness like that of a pinpoint. Rass was then aware of so much but so little, and there was no apt way for him to be prepared for what happened next.
Rass' eyes slowly drifted open. The deluge of light was painful, as though they had been opened for the first time in his life. It lasted only for a moment before the brightness faded into tolerable levels, bringing the hazy forms of the twilight room into focus. The apparent dream still flashed before his eyes, still apparently half war sleeping Rass' state of confusion carried on for what felt like eons, as his mind stirred and came together like the pieces of a puzzle. His world sharpened considerably as his eyes adjusted to the light, which incidentally was not as bright now as it had been when he first awoke. Rass stifled a yawn and he reached up to scratch the sand from his eyes, but his arms ran against the tension of the chains holding him to the chair.
Chains? What is going on?
He was taken aback by the fact he was bound from foot to neck in lengthy metal chains. They snaked wildly up from his legs, around his torso and then outward and around his arms, binding them tightly to the arm of the metal chair. The large warm links pressed firmly against his flesh, pale and naked under the coils of steel and iron. The links chaffed him as he tried to move about, pinching his skin painfully with every motion. The arms of the chair came off at ninety degrees. The metal chair was dark colored, like almost like a tarnished copper, and was warm to his body posed against it.
