Well, this morning I had a bout of Writer's Nymphomania (which is the opposite of writer's block) [edit: actually it's supposed to be Writer's Hypergraphia. But I'll leave it as "nymphomania" because of the entertaining images that conjures up. ~ HMB] and managed to dash off a short story on its own in about six hours flat. This story is "The Islanders", which is now featured in the fiction pages.
This is not immediately Ravenloftish, but it does have some key elements that tie it to the genre.
The Tribune and the Nameless Female Narrator are both major characters in my homebrew campaign world. Both have actual names in that setting, but I wanted to omit those so they didn't distract from the story here. Both of them have very lengthy stories that go way beyond this short story.
Either way, I hope you like it. Warning: there are scenes of disturbing violence and assault (although they are not explicit). You have been warned.
Word count: 7,864.
The Islanders (comments)
The Islanders (comments)
Last edited by HuManBing on Wed Apr 25, 2007 7:44 am, edited 3 times in total.
I have to say I'm surprised by the lack of feedback for stories here. Not just my stories, either - most other writers get no feedback. I've tried to go round and put some constructive comments on others' threads. But for a story to hang around for nearly a month, and get no comments from forum people, is really weird. (And elliott20 doesn't count. He knows me from real life.)
I wrote a fan fic on a board for a science fiction based computer game about four years ago. That got a lot of feedback, even though most of the people were there to play a computer game. (And you'd figure that playing a computer game is inherently less sociable an activity than playing a role playing game.) The imbalance surprises me.
Then again, I think I may have made a mistake in the way I wrote the story. I wrote it all in Microsoft Word first, and then posted it when it was more or less done. (There were minor edits and rewrites to do.)
That meant that people coming to the forum would have seen nothing there one minute, then a fully completed story the next, of six postings.
Maybe I should have posted each posting separately and left a few days between them. From a purely cynical viewpoint, that might have built more anticipation for the ending, and possibly provoked discussion.
Then again, maybe I'm overthinking this. It's entirely possible that the story isn't good enough to justify reading and commenting on it :/
I wrote a fan fic on a board for a science fiction based computer game about four years ago. That got a lot of feedback, even though most of the people were there to play a computer game. (And you'd figure that playing a computer game is inherently less sociable an activity than playing a role playing game.) The imbalance surprises me.
Then again, I think I may have made a mistake in the way I wrote the story. I wrote it all in Microsoft Word first, and then posted it when it was more or less done. (There were minor edits and rewrites to do.)
That meant that people coming to the forum would have seen nothing there one minute, then a fully completed story the next, of six postings.
Maybe I should have posted each posting separately and left a few days between them. From a purely cynical viewpoint, that might have built more anticipation for the ending, and possibly provoked discussion.
Then again, maybe I'm overthinking this. It's entirely possible that the story isn't good enough to justify reading and commenting on it :/
The lack of comments is part of the reason I stopped writing, so I'll try to get better about commenting on my fellow author's tales. I generally assumed that my story sucked too much for comment as well, but it seems that most of the 'one post' stories on the board go without much notice. I will have to try artificially prolonging my next story (if it's ever written) to experiment.
BTW, I liked your story, but didn't really have anything to say past that. The character is well written, as is her decent into probable-villiany. Also, now I want a Dragon in a box.
I'm glad you put the phrase 'Dragon-tamer' in there because there's far too many scaly things with wings in D&D - I spent part of the story wondering if it was a manicore, or a dragonne. I'm a bit thick.
BTW, I liked your story, but didn't really have anything to say past that. The character is well written, as is her decent into probable-villiany. Also, now I want a Dragon in a box.
I'm glad you put the phrase 'Dragon-tamer' in there because there's far too many scaly things with wings in D&D - I spent part of the story wondering if it was a manicore, or a dragonne. I'm a bit thick.
"No, but evil is still being — Is having reason — Being reasonable! Mousie understands? Is always being reason. Is punishing world for not being... Like in head. Is always reason. World should be different, is reason."
Yeah, I'm guilty of that too. At the start of the fiction board's life there were so many stories, I thought "I'll get around to commenting on them when I have time".
Then as the stories began to slow to a trickle after just a few weeks of board life, I realized this was probably not the best thing to do.
Hence, comments in your Festival of Lilies thread!
And more to come in the Iron Sole thread too, I hope.
Then as the stories began to slow to a trickle after just a few weeks of board life, I realized this was probably not the best thing to do.
Hence, comments in your Festival of Lilies thread!
And more to come in the Iron Sole thread too, I hope.
(Incidentally, I hadn't commented until now because I hadn't read it until now!)
This is good. The style is clear and consistent, and I'm especially fond of the way in which you keep to the narrator's perspective--not just that events are viewed through her eyes but that the narration is actually colored by her perspective, beliefs, and upbringing. This is especially important since you make it clear in the early chapters that the narrator is unreliable, not so much in her depiction of events but in her interpretation of them, first from youth and then from insularity.
The way nothing ever gets named is a nice touch. I had no idea the Creature was a dragon until the narrator was called "dragon-tamer," and keeping the Republic, the Island, etc. unnamed helps to remove the sense of place and time--kind of a "floating in the mists" effect, as it were.
One discordant note--when the Tribune works his semi-magic-jar magic on the narrator, from your description (and the scene break), I assumed at first that she'd extorted what she'd wanted from him and then murdered him (which, in my opinion, would be far too overdone and cliched). If you intend revisions, making the follow-up scene a bit more explicit as to what has been done might be more appropriate. This is especially the case because while the narrator is, as I noted, unreliable as to motivations, she is precise as to details and this one scene was written with a lack of precision.
All in all, an excellent submission!
This is good. The style is clear and consistent, and I'm especially fond of the way in which you keep to the narrator's perspective--not just that events are viewed through her eyes but that the narration is actually colored by her perspective, beliefs, and upbringing. This is especially important since you make it clear in the early chapters that the narrator is unreliable, not so much in her depiction of events but in her interpretation of them, first from youth and then from insularity.
The way nothing ever gets named is a nice touch. I had no idea the Creature was a dragon until the narrator was called "dragon-tamer," and keeping the Republic, the Island, etc. unnamed helps to remove the sense of place and time--kind of a "floating in the mists" effect, as it were.
One discordant note--when the Tribune works his semi-magic-jar magic on the narrator, from your description (and the scene break), I assumed at first that she'd extorted what she'd wanted from him and then murdered him (which, in my opinion, would be far too overdone and cliched). If you intend revisions, making the follow-up scene a bit more explicit as to what has been done might be more appropriate. This is especially the case because while the narrator is, as I noted, unreliable as to motivations, she is precise as to details and this one scene was written with a lack of precision.
All in all, an excellent submission!
Thanks for the feedback, Sylaire. I'll go back and see what changes I can make to the final break scene - the intention is for the scene to be fairly certain that the Narrator is in charge of the whole island, but the Tribune is clearly in charge of the Narrator now.
Looking back and reading it again, it seems unclear what's going on. There seems to be a somewhat sexualized intimacy too, between Tribune and Narrator which I hadn't intended originally. (And which is entirely absent from their earlier meeting in her bedroom.) I'll see if I can change that so it fits in better.
Naturally, I'm very glad to hear you like it! ^__________^
Looking back and reading it again, it seems unclear what's going on. There seems to be a somewhat sexualized intimacy too, between Tribune and Narrator which I hadn't intended originally. (And which is entirely absent from their earlier meeting in her bedroom.) I'll see if I can change that so it fits in better.
Naturally, I'm very glad to hear you like it! ^__________^