The only real composition issue present here is a bit of redundancy in your first paragraph where you describe multiple aspects of Axel's being as being consumed by self-loathing. Repetition is a bit of theme here, but this one instance was out of place since in the entire rest of that descriptive paragraph you go out of you way to use distinct adjectives.
Also, in the last paragraph, you describe him as spending every night in torments, which is not actually strictly technically speaking an incorrect plural use, but it did seem somewhat unusual.
If it seems like I am splitting hairs here, it is due to the (relative) brevity of the story - which is not a bad thing - and otherwise because of your proficient technical craftsmanship throughout the remainder of the story. Good job.
I will say that it does seem you are writing below your own bar here. Your descriptive elaborations of Axel's miserable and sordid existence could have been a bit edgier, channeled a bit more purple prose. Which is to say, you probably could have made the story a bit funnierEDGIER by dressing it up a little bit more.
I will skip critique over the structural elements of your submission, as they are adequate.
I have two critiques for this story, both of them concerning the narrative. The first being that it does not aptly conform to the contest prompt. This was not the story of a new Beginning, what you wrote about were two bookends. I imagine that the story still fulfills the essential criteria of change as Frizan was somewhat ambiguous about how the actual prompt intersected with the contest rules, but the viewpoint character's juncture of change has long since passed. You allude to it momentarily by giving us a glimpse of some of his earlier wood-working, but there is no deeper exploration of those times. The moment of change for the character we see in the first scene never surfaces; the reader is left to imagine what it might have been - where you might have improved the story would have been to have a series of flashbacks to different points of the Elder's life, establishing the nature of the change itself while revealing more of their core character.
The second critique is that, because of the points above, the only real change envisioned here is one of aging itself. It is hard to discern that the character's inherent nature has changed considerably, one is left to infer it. Standing on its own, the only way the character changes in the story is that they grow older with all the shifts in temperament that aging brings with it. Which is faintly lazy storytelling. If there had been further elaboration upon this character's past, or a clearer presentation of their future self, other forms of change would be more evident.
As far as grammar goes, your use of commas is not strictly incorrect, but is awkward and inefficient. Here's one of the better lines I can use to demonstrate that.
His father, he had never known, and he did not have any siblings.
If that sentence does not immediately look strange to you, take a moment to say it aloud. Account for the placement of the commas. The comma after father introduces a significant unnecessary pause in the flow of the sentence and the paragraph as a whole, the very notion that he had never known his father should be a single unbroken thought. If you want to create a more deliberate kind of pause, an ellipsis might have been more appropriate, or even the use of additional words or a hyphen, since you seem to have a fondness for them (though be careful with your use of commas in conjunction with hyphens, your usage of them earlier in the second sentence of the fifth paragraph is awkwardly arranged and distracts from the story).
The line breaks go without saying. While the actual grammar throughout the story is fine overall, the lack of partitioning between paragraphs - which is known to happen when you copy and paste directly from word documents - makes the story look somewhat disheveled. Taking the extra time to have partitioned everything neatly after posting it would have made the whole thing look neater.
He unscrewed the tube with his right, unwrapped some of his makeshift temporary gauze, and holding the wound closed as much as he could with his pinky and ring finger, pressed on the tube with his thumb and index finger ... just about doable.
That last line represents an abrupt change in the use of the past tense that has been running throughout the story, as well as a shift in the third-person perspective before abruptly shifting back again. Simply adding a 'it was' up front would have fixed that. Be careful to use appropriate transitions in tense and narrative focus.
He pulled on a new pair of jeans, followed by first one set of sock and sneaker, then another. A small plastic bottle full of water was used to wash off his arm and hand, leaving just the pucked-up red-orange streaked patch of hardened medical glue. Half-full bottle was returned to bag. T-shirt, jacket and wig were picked out and donned. A quick pat to ensure that his documents and last quarter of money were still safely in the pocket of his jacket. Bag went the way of his previous attire.
Absence of particular word drastically changes tone of paragraph in noteworthy departure from verbal aesthetic of remaining story. Guess which one.
As far as the story itself goes, it is serviceable. The use of the bridge as a symbolic liminal space is not shoved down the reader's throat, there is adequate rumination upon past events and exploration of the immediate future. The only real thing missing from the story is a better exploration of why the character decided to change. This is easy enough to infer, but in my personal view the character's crisis and specific situation was not extreme enough to prompt his particular response. Taking a moment for the character to have reflected a little upon the actual decision might have been useful for establishing why he thought faking his own suicide was the best course of action.
“I suppose Wright’s <=WHY were always accustomed to the wrong side of fortune...”
Noticing one of the Sunday regular’s, a widow that’s lived decades longer,
This one is actually a bit nuanced, the use of the contraction itself is not incorrect, but it changes the tense without use of a proper transition.
Life was like flowers laid beside a gravestone. The surface level smile you put on daily, embellishing bleakness that eventually withers without support and dies. Amidst a sunrise shining like a heavenly glow, through the yew trees where a young man kneeled (knelt) in dirt for the hundredth time, but never to pray.
Excellent prose, but a single spelling error and throwing together contradictory prepositions sort of spoils the flow. Be a bit more careful with spatial descriptions in the future.
Turning them around, to see an adolescent's terrified face, frozen stiff, realizing how it nearly reflected how he was caught desecrating the very same graveyard.
Because of the specific tense here, the pronoun used is ambiguous and I was initially uncertain if the narrator was referring to the youth or himself. Consider the simple difference in implication that the difference of one word makes - a young boy about to go through apoplexy or else the narrator revealing that he himself had also once attempted to desecrate the same graveyard.
As for the story itself, I like the emphasis here on the end of one stage of the narrator's life prior to the beginning of something new not only for themselves, but for another as well. Done while also working in the implication of identical bookends for both. This is the kind of story-writing I might have liked to have seen in a longer entry. Good work.
The absence of line breaks are the single greatest technical flaw with this story. The absence of a reason for me to care about this god-child's existential dilemma is the single greatest compositional flaw with this story. The character is some random godlike figure who destroyed the universe and was inspired to make another one by another random figure of ambiguous consequences. I understand that in the ineffable void of nothingness the characters reside with, comprehending anything about either of them is a futile endeavor - but I would have liked to have known more about them both, in order to care. As it is, both of them are flat and one-dimensional. The not-universe they reside in is intentionally featureless and pointless; and when we know nothing about either of its occupants one might argue that there is barely a story at all.
The only grammatical errors of note were that you misspelled here as her and transposed me and be. The rest of the structure is near enough to adequate that I see no reason to remark upon it; you clearly know what you are doing.
The story itself lacks anything in the way of true tension or drama. There is a tiny bit of build up that ultimately leads to oh my the Prince is part of the rebellion, such a shame nothing will ever come of that since this was a one-off story! The revelation that Tedjek was not born of the Queen is contrived, with zero build-up or foreshadowing of any kind, and the explanation we are given for the Queen's behavior only raises more questions as to why she ultimately spared Golan - questions which, incidentally, will never be answered. We are given no deeper or meaningful evidence as to how or why the King is corrupt or even why there is a Rebellion, we are presented with these statements as though they are fact and an otherwise reliable character's belief is proferred as evidence that they are the truth despite him being just a wee little bit dim.
Overall, the story has excellent structure but is extremely lackluster and devoid of true substance as far as the composition itself goes. Maybe if this had been formulated as part of a longer, more dedicated story - or perhaps if the individual pieces had made more sense - it would have been decent. All I can really say for it is that the story technically meets the contest criteria.
My only real issue with your entry is that there is no clear, objective change in Sarah's character. A 'maybe' that trails off into nothing is not a change if it is not capitalized upon. We do not know if she goes to see her father's grave, and reading the bright lines of the contest prompt, there is no contrast in her to serve as a basis of comparison pre and post discussion. So this was essentially New Years Resolution: The Story of Two People in a Bar.
I did like the dialogue itself, it was very natural to read and gave me a good sense of the nature and tone of the conversation. That said, having read the story multiple times I still barely know anything about these character, or the setting they live in. The particular struggle that turns out to be the crux of Sarah's dilemma remains a near-total mystery to me. The setting feels more like an excuse for the characters to tell a particular story rather than having holistically produced anything; the whole piece lacks depth due to that, only the implication of depth conveyed by admittedly decent dialogue between characters.
A neat and tidy entry, only two or so grammatical errors overall. The structure of the story is very efficiently arranged, each paragraph is just about the right length and everything clicks together like perfect puzzle-pieces. Excellent work.
I liked the disembodiment of the woman in the cubicle across the aisle, how the viewpoint character could not see her because she gave parts of her body away to an office filled with very conveniently placed cripples and buffoons, all in order to set up that sucker-punch of a last line. Excellent placement of conceptual clues and keys leading up to a short but profound culmination.
I would hesitate to say the story aptly meets the contest criteria, as we do not get to see more of how specifically the viewpoint character has changed. Obviously he is now doing something different, the contrast that you established is crystal-clear, there is an obvious change, a reason behind it, etcetera - I just wish we could see a little more. I realize asking that given the ending is somewhat unreasonable. Perhaps adding a single reaction shot, him going on his way with his outlook changed, might have sufficed. Then again, I might also argue the story is nearly perfect as it is, and that adding more just to satisfy the contest parameters more squarely would be a waste. Outstanding work.
Fewer grammatical errors than I remember, so that is good. Your sentences still tend to be rather awkwardly arranged though. Here are some of the rougher patches.
As the bang of the gun sounded through my ears my fingers jerked in pain, my hand had flown up to so the two sections of my arm collided. First there did I manage to stop it after having staggered a bit. My ears hurt from the sound of the gunfire, but the man I had shot screamed so much louder.
Nothing is strictly incorrect in the first sentence but should be entirely rewritten; the sequences of sensory events do not really mesh as well as they could and your description of the kinetic force moving through the bones in Chorlotte's forearm and upper arm is rather crude.
I liked that the story took a more realistic evaluation of the impact that a sensory power like Charlotte's might have on the psyche, the way you describe lives literally vanishing from her perception as she simultaneously sends instructions to the killers and warnings to the victims adequately conveys the clear moral conflict of the character. What I did not like is that the feeling of disgust and repulsion Charlotte feels for her acts and the acts she facilitates comes across as more of a nuisance than an actual existential or dissonant factor that ultimately convinced her to become a turncoat. More attention and effort could have gone into describing the more visceral and cerebral aspects of how all that death was affecting Charlotte, since otherwise her turning does not really convey the sort of feeling I suspect you were aiming for. Otherwise, the story clearly meets the contest criteria.
You know, I would really like to read the other larger story this one was chopped out of just so I can have sufficient context to complain about what I read here. Absolutely none of this made any sense whatsoever, and I am not talking about the psychedelic trip through Soren's mental dreamscape. The actual plot, setting, and characters make no sense. Random names, titles, and faces thrown together as if I am supposed to know or care about who they are, some vague allusions to a broader conflict - there is not enough substance to the story for there to be a story. Not enough of a character for us to appreciate that he is mad, nor the consequence of the Chaos Lords rubbing off on him. The entire story could be summarized as, 'some guy was brainwashed and driven mad, the end.' There are ways to convey the impression of a fractured, distorted, and chaotic narrative without having to withhold all significant details from the reader. All I can really say about this piece is that I want to read the actual larger body of work it appears to be a part of.
The actual grammar throughout is decent though. Just work harder on conceptual premises in the future.
@Terminal I only want to mention that, initially, it was much edgier, but I actually started to creep myself out and had to delete a chunk of it. You can only get so much out of the "edgelord" joke before it starts to just make you feel uncomfortable. It's a particularly tricky element of parody.
I can see why Terminal's reviews are so celebrated now. Almost makes me want to join the next contest. But no, no. We clearly need more voters/judges/etc.
@Terminal Thanks for the review, appreciated the detail.
Yeah, I was picked on that apostrophe one before. Ha ha. I think long ago, people told me I don't punctuate enough and maybe I've been overcompensating ever since. :P
Nice catch with the third correction, I wouldn't have noticed that one, but you're absolutely correct with the possible ambiguity.
However, the contradicting prepositions, I'm unsure exactly how I'd 'fix' the issue and I don't really know if I see the problems with that.
Also, the one spelling error you mentioned. Actually has to do with where we live. I'm in the U.S. (and I know a lot of people aren't because I see so many people spelling color with a 'u'.)
@Terminal The formatting seems to have been crippled between the transition from my post in the contest entry thread and the submission list here, rather than between a text editor and RPG. (I actually wrote it here, and then pasted to local plaintext as safety measure.) It has proper chapter breaks, but paragraph breaks have lost a whitespace character each... I agree with most of the comments - there are a couple of slightly awkward sentences that slipped my own proofreading. I did contemplate elaborating on the why from the narrative character's perspective, and actually modified a sentence to emphasize it a bit more, but I also did not want to derail the narrative or whack the reader over the head with it. Might have made it a bit too vague, though I'd reckon readers should still be able to fill in the gaps as intended; balances are tricky like that. All in all, thanks for your feedback! *salutes*
Thank you very much for reviewing. Now, lesse. Yeah, I'm aware my sentences need working on, heh. I am, though, quite worried about how you perceived that feeling of Charlotte's. The idea was that she felt that there was something inherently wrong with what she was doing, and started acting to avoid getting that feeling again by giving warnings, until it became too much and she "gave in". The first time she felt it, it was a nuisance, yeah, because she was a wannabe villain and feelings of "what I'm doing is wrong" should be left at home, which is why she was hoping it would get easier over time. ... Hm. I'll keep it in mind.
Thank you. I'm happy I warranted a "Good work"~!
Edit:
Before the thread is locked, I'd like to say I'd vote for Potatoes if I could.
