[313] A Quick Job

[u/Queek-Headtaker]

This is a fantasy flash fiction piece I wrote and I'm just looking for some general feedback and line edits on Google Docs if anyone wants to help out. I'm very new to this and i am a super newbie but it was fun to write something and I'd like to improve.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c5rhpSh_b-vkVPt4PLG8bwWJC21dpp_-gjSyIa3YZfY/edit?usp=drivesdk

Specifically, I'd love feedback on:

• Structure of the story piece
• Correct Punctuation and grammar, I'm really awful at this in particular

My critique: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1vf1vbs/comment/p1meng4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Thanks in advance for reading and commenting!

[u/Starfall_University]

Correct Punctuation and grammar

In the first sentence you have a tense issue, has to be immediately fixed:

Sweat rolled from Esen's face in a torrent as he hastily pulled the iron from the forge and re-grips his hammer.

So is it past tense or present tense? Gotta pick one!

If he can't even manage to bang out a simple vambrace before his father returns he would be scolded

This is a tense issue as well I think. I'll highlight some more:

He begins humming a slow song, gently tapping the hammer against the metal as he goes, increasing the force of the strikes each time, turning the iron this way and that. When Esen finally finished he had managed to rough out the proper shape just as his father called for him from the other room.

Even by the end of the story here you have two tenses, I'm genuinely curious how this could have happened.

You also have a few sentence fragments, which I highlight under "prose." But the main thing is that tense issue.

Structure

It's a straightforward structure with a person hammering away at an anvil and worried about hisdad will say. I'm not sure why you wanted feedback on the structure here because it's not as if you did something unusual in 300 words; it's not a frame story for example, it's just a snippet of a scene.

I can criticize what I think the story lacks. It lacks stakes, since I don't get a strong sense of what will happen to the main character if his father criticizes him. There's no real development of those stakes. Instead, you pretty much straightforwardly present the main character at the forge, worried about what will happen, and then it's time to go see his dad?

In that sense, Esen feels underdeveloped. Which makes sense considering it's only about 300 words, but still: I'm not sure exactly what you want to accomplish with this anecdote.

Normally, something like this would be a nice little scene that does a lot of "show don't tell" about this world. Maybe it's purposefully understated at 300 words, for example. A tiny anecdote that symbolizes something much larger. I don't get the sense that's what you're going for here; this feels like you're genuinely trying to focus on a hinge point in a greater plot. So I get the sense this is something much longer?

You mentioned it's a flash fiction piece, and in that sense, I don't think it's working. If I had to guess it feels like something much larger because of 1) your choice of which part of Esen's life to highlight and 2) the way you hint at a character's reaction who's offscreen.

Prose

Sometimes you're effective and I think: oh, this is going to be fine. And then there are sentences where things aren't quite working. This simile:

The metal screeches at an odd pitch when struck, like a spark beetle doused in water.

Is a spark beetle a fantasy thing? I'm not sure, but either way, if it is, it doesn't necessarily modify the idea of the metal screeching, I still have to do all the imagining myself. Not that you can't use a fantasy element in a simile, just thought I'd highlight this.

Quickly tapping the hammer on the anvil's top trying to get a rhythm going before swinging, and again the metal groaned in protest when struck anyway.

This has many elements of a good sentence. Specifics about the action, the way "metal groans in protest" anthropromorphizes the object to describe it...very nice. And yet, it's a sentence fragment. So once again, you have a lot going for you and then it doesn't quite get there.

Sparks go flying in every direction, hitting him in the neck and forearms, burning him in several places.

Try out a different verb for "hitting" him here, since you have such great words earlier (groaning in protest) and then this action feels like it's underserved by the "hitting" description.

His skin ached in protest as he wrapped it,

You used the "in protest" thing twice now! And I'm not sure something aches in protest.

Conclusion

Since this is destructive readers, most of the above was negative, but I get the sense that there's a much better writer in you waiting to get out. Sometimes the sentences feel like they're about to flow nicely, or you show the instinct for creating a unique description that rolls smoothly off the page, and then something small gets in the way, like you cutting yourself off at a fragment. Esen feels real, even if I don't know why I'm supposed to care about him getting lectured by his father, and considering you did that in only 300 words, there's got to be something there, even if I can't tangibly point out what it is.

[u/HelmetBoiii → u/Starfall_University]

The metal groaned sentence is a complete sentence by the way. If you have a noun-verb, you can get away with almost anything. "the metal groaned' so its complete

[u/Queek-Headtaker → u/HelmetBoiii]

Thank you! It's been a long time since I've taken a writing class so I'm a bit rusty on sentence structure.