The path of exile part one
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The never ending roar of the sea waves greeted me as I slowly regained consciousness. Everything that happened came back in a rapid flash. My love for them, their hate of what I am. The taunts, jeers, and yells that stalked me like a crippling plague in town. Only one person showed me any kindness, the captain of the Transcendent. He cared for me and calmed me when I was upset. But he wasn’t with me when I needed him most, the one day I truly started to hate the townspeople.
I could take the taunts and yells no longer, and in a blind rage I cursed the town. Death, pain, sickness, and despair haunted the town for a week before the townspeople finally caught me. Made to stand trial for my crimes, the court was divided in what to do with me. Some of them wanted to exile me, the rest wanted me dead. Exile couldn’t be that bad could it? I thought to myself. Then of course the location of exile was said. Wraeclast. No, kill me now! I screamed in my head, but it was too late now. The court was over and my sentence was given, exiled to Wraeclast. No one knew much of the place, only that all of the people are dead and the rumors of them now haunting the rest of the continent. Many people believe different things about the landmass though, but all I thought of the place was that it must be better than this ship. The ship that was to take me to Wraelast was the Transcendent of course. But she was an old ship, and not meant to be taken on such a long journey. The exiles weren’t in much better shape than the ship was unfortunately. Most of us were already starved before they got on the ship, and we were only given a few pieces of bread every couple of days. Knowing the captain gave me an advantage food wise though, getting an extra piece or two, and more than a handful of water made me stronger than most of the exiles on the ship with me. Soon enough, some of us started dying off and the crewmen couldn’t be bothered to get them out. Disease became an issue along with starvation and thirst. They started to compete to take all of us soon enough however. Storms were starting to brew now and it was getting nasty down in the cargo hold. Constant exposure to the rain made us all even more miserable then we were before the storms, and the ship seemed to be losing hull integrity with every clash of thunder. Our luck ran out soon enough and the ship was blasted with lightning. Fires everywhere and the hull splitting, I recognized my certain doom and prepared to die. _____ This is it for now. If you liked this say so in the comments plz and give criticisms. I am by no means a good writer and I am not in the beta. All this information was compiled from watching others play the beta. link to http://ryukaki.com my inspiration :D part 2 for any and all of you people interested will come soon (i.e. no one...) "Look at it this way: The longer it takes before you get your key or the game goes to open beta, the better the game will be when you finally get to play!" quote from Garr0t Last edited by jamesthing on Sep 20, 2011, 5:19:32 PM
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inspiration edit/bump
"Look at it this way: The longer it takes before you get your key or the game goes to open beta, the better the game will be when you finally get to play!" quote from Garr0t |
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You have mad writing skills. This is awesome.
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First off, thank you for plugging me! Glad to see others exploring their creative sides a little bit.
Next, we touch on some writing things. Here are some questions, as a reader, that I end up asking myself while reading/after reading this bit. Where are we? Who is the person thinking/speaking? What is currently going on? We wake up on a beach, but suddenly you're talking about a lot of things that happened in the past, but you go from a tranquil, relaxed setting to one of high emotion and frustration, all without letting me as a reader get my bearings-- it's not bad in and of itself to do this, but you need to have consistent, reliable transitions, " Are we in the town now? This sounds immediate-- happening in the present tense, and you don't make it very clear that what happened was a curse was cast; like a spell, and not "CURSE YOU TOWN, I HATE YOU!" which was what I initially thought you meant. Instead it reads like currently, the character is cursing the town in retrospect, and then considering how all of these bad things had happened to it and now is reflecting on being captured. You could try, instead, bringing out details about why the character is here later, and instead tell us about what is immediately going on. Waking up on a beach that is likely crawling with undead is not the right time to be reminiscing about how you got here, it's the time for finding out where you are-- a huge island, likely Wraeclast-- and gathering both information and protection. These are reasonable actions that a normal person would take in this situation (after panicking, of course, unless they were the stalwart or adventurous type.) So ask yourself, "What would this person, if they were a real person, do in this circumstance?" as opposed to "what do I think would be more interesting." While backstory is important and fun, it's not the right time for it. You could do something fun, like sprinkle in the details about the shipwreck and the being captured and exiled among your character getting his or herself together and figuring out where they are, in brief flashes of memory, like an amnesic patient getting flashes of lost memories back. Or just have them be remembered casually and considered internally while he or she is progressing away from the beach front, no gimmick, just recalling what brought them here while fighting sand crabs or killing the undead off. Having a character that just sits around and broods and thinks is boring, it doesn't move the story along. We want to find out about this character, where they are, why we should care about them, who they are, why they're here, what is their motivation? Who will they meet? What things will they find along the way? What problems will they encounter? How will they overcome them? How do they interact with other people? Cope with loneliness? Fight difficult battles? So think about answering some of those questions and developing a direction and a motion for your character and the story. It'll make everything much less hectic in reading and more smooth for you to continue to write the story, and for the reader to read. I do not want to discourage, though. The only way to get good is to practice, so practice and don't be afraid to share :) My writing/adventures through Path of Exile
http://ryukaki.com | |
" Thanks :D I was hoping you would post in here, I have taken what you said into consideration At this point the story does feel very awkward even to and is prob in rough draft form still. A full rewrite will come when I get to it. Do you mind if I P.M my rough drafts to you from now on? I should have had some of my other friends read through this copy of it and given me more info, but I guess I rushed it a bit to much. Like I said, not much of a writer. (Actually I think this is the first story I tried to write to think of it...) "Look at it this way: The longer it takes before you get your key or the game goes to open beta, the better the game will be when you finally get to play!" quote from Garr0t |
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oh... Rly good;)
http://pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2243
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Well done, sir or madam.
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Great stuff! It might be interesting to include some of her thoughts about other exiles that stands out from the crowd on the boat. Maybe she was brushed aside by a gigantic dark man with tribal tattoos, or perhaps she noticed a particularly handsome swordsman? :)
Keep up the good work! Omnitect of Wraeclast
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Well, I have most of a rewrite of this part done, I had a couple of ideas from the anesthesia part of Ryuks comment. The backstory is now chopped up into discerning pieces that can get confusing for a while. Or at least I plan on it being like that. Rewrite will be posted over the weekend depending on how much I get done over the next two days.
and thanks to everyone who said this was a good piece of writing :D. This kind of response makes me want to work a lot harder to make it the best possible thing I can make. "Look at it this way: The longer it takes before you get your key or the game goes to open beta, the better the game will be when you finally get to play!" quote from Garr0t Last edited by jamesthing on Sep 21, 2011, 6:04:47 PM
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Very cool, and there's lots of good advice too. The best thing I can suggest is just to make sure you aren't limiting yourself. You may not even realize you're limiting yourself but you should give yourself some freedom. The best example I can think of is just because the game may start with a crash landing on the beach doesn't mean the story can't take place a little beforehand and lead up to the crash landing.
The idea of meeting the other exiled heroes is cool too of course. You can definitely let some friendships and animosities form. |
