First time creative

DonnchadhR

Hi

Im looking to be a little more creative and a friend of mine suggested I try creative writing. This piece I have been working on on and off for a while and I have showed it to my friends who tell me its good. I wanted to get more opinions to see if I have any skill in the area.

Please read this Fantasy piece and tell me what you think.

Chapter 1

Darko awakes to the sound of dripping water. He opens his unbruised eye. Dust. Dust everywhere except the disturbed streak where his body was dragged. He finds himself on his stomach and grits his teeth as he looks around. Mostly darkness and gloom, hiding the rats that are only giving themselves away by a quiet scuttling through the dust. The only light is the beams of sunlight flowing into the abandoned factory.

Senses, and memory, drift back to him bringing pain and anger. "That son of a bitch" he whispers to himself in the haze of dark and light. He tries to rise, slowly, but the pain from his arm forces him back to the ground! Winded he lies flat and breathes heavily.

He looks at the stump where his hand used to be. His mind drifts back to the "contest" hall. He winces as he remembers the knife coming down at his hand, the cold fury and pain spreading through him like fire, the scream and the last thrust and the other man's throat spilling his life blood from his body. "At least the bleeding has stopped" He notices that someone has stitched the wound up and wonders if it was that doctor who seems to be behind it all.

Satisfied that he has got his breath back he lifts himself up, painfully and slowly, and props himself against a nearby pillar. His head spins, light fades. Darko passes out.

Movement. Darko hears the faint sound of foot steps and looks up at a figure silhouetted between the beams of light. Darko's eye finally adjusts to the light. "You!" Dr Professor steps into the light. "Your finally awake" he says walking in a slow arc around Darko like a child would a angry dog. "And, your the only one left"..........


Darko watched as the Dr looked him up and down like a mechanic would a rare car. The Dr's lab coat was greying from the brilliant white it was when they first met each other 2 months ago. Old brown blood stains littered the sleeves and it had several rips along the bottom that was black from the dust. His long black hair pulled back and tied at the neck. Darko remembered, with a little pleasure, the last time the Dr got too close to him. A quick flick at his head sent the Dr's glasses falling to the ground cracking one of the lenses.

"What the hell do you want now?" Darko raged "another one of your pointless fights or maybe that vat again? Just get it over with so I can just die"

The Dr's eyes gave nothing away. Seeing that Darko was extremely weakened he chanced a step closer. The swelling on Darko's right eye had gone down but it still remained shut. "No more fights for you Darko" he announced. "Like I said you are the last one left and if you do me a favour or two I might even give you your hand back"

Darko's eye lit up. The Dr remembered all to well the last fight. His best fighter downed by a red headed boaster. He had the hand preserved so that he might try a few experiments later if Darko "happened" to die.

"I want a favour from you if I do give you back your hand" he told Darko. Darko looked up "Can you really do that? Can you really give me my gun hand back?"

"I can make a dog like you come back from the dead Darko.....I AM SCIENCE" The shout echoed through the room and faded in to silence. A few minutes passed.

Darko sighed. "What do you want me to do?" The was a sudden slap on the ground in front of him. Darko waited for the dust to settle before reaching down to pick up a file that was heavy with pages of writing and photos. He looked through it.

"I want you to kill this man" proclaimed the Dr.

"Ossah?" asked Darko "I know that name?"



Chapter 2

The punch came hard and it came fast. Darko is launched back into, and through, a large steel door. Sprawled out on the floor he tries to catch his breath. The tall man approaches him slowly. “Get up Darko” The voice is strong and rich “We are not finished our lesson yet” Darko looks up at his friend “Il beat you yet”

Darko lunges at him but he easily side steps the wild punch and whips his leg around, catching Darko on the back of the knee. “Too slow and too clumsy” snaps his opponent, “you wanted me to train you but you still haven’t proven yourself to me.”

Darko, now down on one knee, looks up at the tall well build man in front of him, Joe is young and strong. His brown hair was matted in sweat but his face doesn’t show any fatigue. His eyes were strongly fixed on Darko and they seemed to show the man’s power and strength even more.

Darko stood up, his chest ached, the pulled muscle in his arm was beginning to twinge and the back of his knee throbbed. “Fight with your head as well as your body” Joe declared for the millionth time. “I’m getting sick of that saying” Darko mumbles as he concentrates and eases himself into the basic jujitsu stance.
Nothing. Darko thinks of nothing and relaxes his breathing. He looks at his opponent, looks for that weakness that Joe is always telling him to look for. “He’s fast” Darko ponders “but I can be faster”. He rushes in with blinding speed and brings his hand up to deal Joe a blow on the left shoulder. Joe, surprised with the sudden burst of speed, whips his own up to block the blow but Darko changes direction at the last second and aims for Joe’s neck. “I have him” he revels to himself but just as fast as Darko changed direction Joe brings his right arm up and blocks the blow, grabs Darko by the wrist pulling him close and drills his left fist into Darko’s side, bruising and tearing muscles. Darko goes down in a heap.

“That was better but you are not watching your left side” Joe muses, “Again and this time....” A blur approaches from the door they came through. Darko is hit in the side by what feels like an iron bar and is launched eight feet and into a wall across the room. Everything goes black.

The world spins. Darko rubs dust out of his eyes and lets his hearing slowly come back to him. He hears two men talking. Then he remembers. He struggles to focus his hearing. “....and what’s worse is your still training weaklings” A deep voiced man is arguing with Joe. “You still think that it’s worth a damn. You were once the most brilliant fighters our squad ever knew and now you roll around on the floor with the dogs” The deep voiced man spits. “I have bigger plan now Ossah” Joe replies “and I’m not throwing it away for a quick murder spree” Darko has known Joe for almost two years now and has never seen him angry but now the man is trembling all over with rage. “You think that your line of work is what I still want to do? The rumours are true then? You have gone mad.”

Ossah is tall and well built and has a no nonsense air about him. His long black hair runs down his shoulders and has a large scar on his left arm. “Oh I’m not gone mad, I just see everything differently now.” Ossah flicks his long hair away from his head. “Raiding the old fortress was never my idea. I led the boys and let them do the work themselves.” Darko gets up to his knees “He stirs” Ossah says looking at Darko. “He may have potential after all, not many survive my kicks” Darko tries to talk but he is still too winded. In a blur Ossah is in front of him, “but can he survive this?” Ossah prepares a blow.

In a blink of an eye Joe is in front of him. “Leave, or Il make you” Joe threatens. Darko is looking at Joes back, he hears a loud thump and Joe is flung into the wall behind him, crashing through the wall into another room. He doesn’t stir. Ossah laughs a viscous laugh and is gone.

The memory fades. Dr Professor stares closely at Darko. “Will you take the job?” Darko looks up at his tormentor. “I can always just use you like I did the others that ah... let’s say, displeased me” A crooked grin crosses the Dr’s face. Darko recalls a man screaming in pain and the Dr’s wild laughter. Darko sighs, “I have no choice”. “Fine Dr Il do your job” Darko says regretfully. There is a small pause.“This pleases me” the Dr says to himself and the madness in his eyes deepened. “Take him.”

A shadow moves in the corner of Darko’s vision. Two masked men appear as if from nowhere. “This is number three and number five” the Dr introduces them. “Bring him to my lab” the Dr orders as he turns and leaves “Wait” Darko shouts but as he does so he is grabbed by the shoulder by one of the masked men “mmhghyy mmigh” The man mumbles. “What?” Darko asks in confusion. “He said “nighty night” the other explains as if telling a child. Suddenly there is a syringe in Darko’s neck. The world blurs and Darko blacks out to the men laughing and hitting each other.


TO BE CONTINUED

pickarooney

On the strength of the first few paragraphs (no time to read the rest just now) I would say that yes, you do have a definite writing skill. The beginning of the story flowed and disseminated information at just the right pace to keep me reading (time constraints aside).

pickarooney

I finished it and found it interesting, although not quite as captivating as at first, and here's why...

Pick a tense and stick with it. You jump back and forth constantly between past and present and it's off-putting.

The dialogue is stiff. It's a bit of a John McClane cliché, but a couple of witty rejoinders from the beaten-up Darko wouldn't go astray.

The fight scene drags a bit. Visually, this all happens in a couple of seconds and can be quite aesthetic when done well. On paper/screen, it takes much longer to read through and the reader (me, at least) finds himself having to choreograph the moves in his head which is a little tedious. It's incredibly hard to do this well, I find, but describing it more from the point of view of the person on the receiving end of the blows can help. You do this well elsewhere in the passage where you describe Darko's physical reactions.

Misuse of your/you're and the abbreviation Dr should never be used outside of a direct reference to a title.

But that's small stuff. Keep it up!

DonnchadhR

Thanks for the pointers. I'm working on a small 3rd chapter at the moment so when its finished il post it up and maybe you can read it too. I'm trying a new approach and I hope its good.

shawn_gg

hello donnchadhr,

good writing style indeed! i thought the story was fast-paced and action-packed. as a fellow writer myself, i focus on guiding the reader into a certain pace with a build-up of emotions. Since I write and publish a few travel articles, i thought i could offer a few comments from this perspective.

there are some parts i would have preferred a slower place and the build up. Your actions scenes were definitely vivid, but because there were 1 then 2 and then 3 character, I lost a little of my focus and was trying to figure out where the story was heading.

The cliffhanger was definitely a good way to end the chapter! Just another pointer to be a little more careful, since I thought you might want to include a little more paragraphs so that this important scene wouldn't seem too abrupt.

hope i made sense with these comments! looking forward to chapter 3 of your writing!

shawn

DonnchadhR

Its a pity I can edit the first post1 (or can i?) here is the first look at chapter 3 havent it finished yet so its very short!

Chapter 3

"Wind.....I can feel wind" Darko slowly opens his eyes to the sounds of hard rain and thunder. He’s lying on a table in a small gray room with a tiny block window. The breeze is coming through fast "must be bad out today" Someone has thoughtfully wrote "get well soon" on the wall to his left. After further study Darko notices that the message is wrote in blood. "Nice, i wonder if that’s mine" he thinks idly. Flash.
He runs his hands through his hair and starts to get his scenes back. "Wait..... hands??" The empty space where Darko's left hand used to be is filled with dark curved metal and wires. Pain floods into his arm. "What the hell is this!!" he shouts. He pushes the monstrous stub away from him. Bits of metal start to move and twitch. There is a strange red glow coming from near where its connected to his arm. "WHAT IS THIS?" his voice has a hysterical edge to it. Mad laughter fills the room. Flash.

"I didn’t think you would awaken for a number of hours yet Darko" Thunder rolls. Dr Professor steps out of the shadows. His lab coat is covered in blood and what might look like oil. "I’m not finished working yet" He walks over to the open window. "I had to step out for some....refreshments" Darko notices a small blood soaked knife in Dr Professors left hand. "It will be a number of hours before your hand is finished. Does it hurt?" "God yes" Darko almost whispers. "Everything is starting to go a little blurry". "That would be the drugs kicking in again" the Dr chuckles "Before you slip off Darko there is someone I would like to meet. Flash.
A shadow moves in the corner behind the Dr. "Would you step forward Clone 1" the Dr croons. The shadow obeys. Darko squints in the darkness. Dr Professor starts to laugh again. Flash.
Darko sees red hair. Horror fills his mind. Darko is staring at himself standing across the room. "What? What’s going on?" Flash.
Again Darko sees himself. "What have you done Dr?" Darko is getting weak "Damn drugs! What have yooo....." Darko starts to drift off. Laughter fills the room again and fills Darko’s head with bells and echoes. "What.....haaav....yooo....." Darko slips into nothingness. Flash.