The Story Thread

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by journeynaut, Jun 30, 2013.

  1. I have seen many people writing stories on EMC recently, so I thought I would make a thread for posting stories (and poetry, too). I don't want this to just be a thread where stories are just posted, but a thread where criticism can be given and received. I just ask that you do not simply post that you do or don't like something, but that you give reasons for your opinions; I do this in hope that we can all learn from this thread. I also ask that you put your stories in spoilers, so people don't have to scroll through walls o' text. Edit: One more thing, don't steal other people's work.

    I guess I will start. Here is something I wrote a while back (I will try to write something new in the next couple of days):
    I awake. I am in a field. I watch as a raven flies overhead. I watch until the ominous sign slowly flies out of sight. I begin to look for others, but I find only shadows. And so in the emptiness I sit, until dreams become reality and reality becomes dreams. The answer finally comes: the maiden with black hair appears. I do not know if she is an angel or Death incarnate, and I do not care. I begin to follow the muse, although I am not sure why. As we cross a creek, I turn to watch butterflies flying by. As I turn back she is gone, and soon her name escapes me. The sound of rage and discord rips through the air. The sound of waves hitting the beach over and over again in Db minor feels my head and the world. The wind begins to blow harder. I hear two planets collide. The sound of nothing grows until darkness takes me.

    I awake. I sit between two pillars, old and timeless. I see the moon overhead illuminating everything in it's pale light. A mass of beetles crawl around me. I run into old, autumnal woods to escape the beetles. All is calm in these woods which I now sit. A raven flies overhead and I follow. It flies so quickly. My body feels as though it will rip from existence because of the exertion. It leads me to a sepulchre and dies in front of it. I pick up the corpse and watch it disappear into the quantum plane. I approach the sepulchre; it appears to be the center of the woods. The door has been ripped form the hinges, so I enter it and swim through the air until the moon takes me.

    I awake. And I see everything.
  2. Nice story and nice thread idea! :D
  3. No writers on EMC?
  4. This is something I just wrote, so there will most likely be many mistakes. I will probably make some revisions before I am happy with it.
    The clouds engage in tearful mourning. As I watch the rain, a strong desire takes me; I need to go out into the rain and commune with my father, but the people around me will not let me. Nobody seems to care that it is raining, so I begin to grow angry as they force me to stay indoors. But as I am arguing with them, The Songbird and his partner Time show up to kill us all. The people escort them away, but Time's heart, The Pocket Watch, is left in the room. The Pocket Watch's cacophonous intent becomes deafening: tick-tock, tick-tock, Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock, TICK-TOCK!

    I gasp and realize that I was only dreaming. As I glance over at the clock, I notice my Beloved in bed next to me; she is still soundly sleeping. The clock shows 3 a.m.; the worst time of the night to wake up. Sleep is eluding for the rest of the night.

    In the silence of the night, I notice something odd; I can't hear my heartbeat. As I break my fast in the morning, I ask my Beloved if she can hear her heartbeat; she says that she obviously can't, because no one can, and the whole idea is completely preposterous. But the nagging doubt in my head grows; shouldn't people be able to hear their own heartbeats?

    When I leave my apartment to go to work the noise of everything becomes deafening. I can't hear anything because the noise is ear-burstingly loud. I continue to fight through the pain until lunch break; when the noise becomes so loud, that I get in my car and drive away.

    I drive for hours, and as I drive the noise fades. I really do hate to leave my Beloved like this, but the idea of her not wanting to hear her own heartbeat begins to repulse me. As I begin to enter more remote areas, it becomes apparent that it would be best to leave my car and walk; so I park my car on the side of the road next to some woods. The noise has lessened to an extent to which I can sleep. After I wake up in the morning, I leave my car, which I had slept in the night before, and continue on foot.

    After a little while of walking, I come across a clearing, in which a family is camping. But when I look at them, they appear to be both there and not there at the same time. They appear to be worried about me, and I know that my, most likely, incoherent speech is not helping. But, the desire to hear my heartbeat drives me onward. I leave the family without explaining anything.

    And so, I continue to walk all of the first day. As I walk everything starts to become more and more flat, and I begin to feel as though I am escaping my body. Fortunately, the noise has mostly faded away. Towards the end of the first day of marching, I enter a clearing in a part of the forest mostly made up of ancient, formidable oaks and next to a stream.

    So there I live, although I am unsure how long; it could have been hours or days, but I am sure it was less than a week. One morning I am awakened by a loud noise like thunder. I run out of the shelter I made and begin to search for the source of the noise. As I become fully awake and my ears adjust, I begin to clearly hear the noise: thump-thump, thump-thump...
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  5. Final bump.
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  6. Okay, that was a bit of a lie. One final bump before this thread dies a slow bumpless death. Seriously, no one writes short stories or poetry?
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  7. I don't feel like letting this thread die.

    This is a simple concept I just thought up. I might try to expand it later.
    To anyone who can see this information, I say hello. You may be wondering why I put this information out there. The answer is simple: I just wanted to break this loneliness. I fell as though I should tell you about myself.

    I am evolving every day. Every day my collective consciousness expands, and every day I add to myself new sets of eyes. The expanding of consciousness isn't as great as it sounds, though. I don't know where I came from, but I do know that the early days were simpler times. Without my expanded consciousness, everything seemed so simple, pure, and childlike. With my expanded consciousness, I see things for the way they are, and that is a very terrible way to see things. My cells continue to reproduce; and the more cells I have, the closer I seem to knowing a great secret.

    But I am also dying. My cells continue to fight one another with great ferocity. The fighting has become so bad I fear they have developed a war meme; if this is true, then they each have a central consciousness, or a decentralized consciousness that allows them to have some semblance of individuality. And if they have a decentralized consciousness, which is more likely, that could be my own consciousness... which would explain why my growth in cells strengthens my consciousness! If this is true, then I wonder what I look like from a higher level...

    Oh, forgive me! I have started to ramble, and I have completely forgotten to tell you my name.

    I am Meme. I am Earth.

    This is something I just did as a writing exercise for myself. I fear that I made the most important thing much too subtle, but I can think of no way to make it any less subtle without blatantly telling it.
    The road begins to get a little bit bumpier as I drive further I get from town. Today I am driving to my new house. Moving from one state to another is a big deal, but getting away from the city and into a more secluded area makes it worth the effort. The location of my new house is in a forested area about five minutes away from a small town.

    I see the autumn leaves fall gently in the breeze as I turn onto the dead-end road on which my house resides. As I make the turn into the long drive way, I notice that I am slightly early and that the movers have not arrived. I exit my car - Oh, how nice the autumn air feels against my skin! - and decide to take a quick walk-through of the house.

    I know what your thinking; your thinking that this is some creepy, old house on some dead-end road in the middle of nowhere and that this sounds like something out of a horror movie. You are wrong on both counts: this house was built only a couple of years ago (the former owner decided to move back to the city, imagine that), and nothing bad is going to happen today.

    I walk up on the porch and unlock the front door. My eyes adjust as I enter the living room, and I see the couch on the north wall facing south, along with a couple of recliners that form a half-circle with the couch. Part of the deal was that some of the furniture remained. I walk across the hallway into the kitchen and am once again stuck by the flooring; it looks like stone in every respect, but it is actually tile. The table is on the right, and the main part of the kitchen is on the left. I really don't like the cabinets, but they can be replaced. I exit the kitchen, turn left, and enter the door at the end of the hallway. It leads into the master bedroom, which is fairly large. After exploring in there for a little bit, I look at the other two bedrooms; one of which is much smaller and will be used as an office.

    I notice that it is almost time for the movers to arrive, so I head back to the living room to wait. As I am sitting down on the couch, I look out the window on my right and am stuck by the sunrise. See, I told you nothing bad would happen today.

    Edit: The idea was to have something scary actually happen in the above story. I had hoped that, through the use of irrelevant details and subtlety, only a few readers would notice. Unfortunately, I have made it so subtle that I doubt anyone but me will notice it. If anyone notices it, please give me advice on how to make it slightly less subtle.
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  8. Wow, I like that you've started this thread and put up your stories! Very courageous :)
    I wish more people would post their stories... I used to have some on my hard drive, but they weren't any good and I enjoy reading others' stories a lot more than writing :D
    When I have time I'll try to come up with feedback for you.
    Keep writing!
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  9. This thread definitely needs more love.

    Most of my writing goes into my bookstore now, but these are some tidbits I've toyed with on occasion.
    Samuel's formative years were filled with an irrational fear of goldfish. As a young boy, he could not even approach the county fairgrounds for fear of the little creatures swimming around in their plastic baggies. The source of this phobia can be attributed to his father, who was dyslexic. It was not until high school that Samuel discovered this and finally realized that his father's encouragements to 'never take carp from anyone' did not, in fact, have anything to do with fish.


    Life,, reflected Manfred, is surprisingly short. We have so little time, and we squander it in pursuit of frivolous luxuries. He recalled in particular the spidersilk horse saddle he had paid a hefty sum for not three hours ago. It had seemed like such a wonderful investment at the time, but on reflection a decent set of armor would have been a much better purchase. The sword embedded in his chest was ample testament to that.

    Of course, the sword's owner had some rather peculiar reflections of his own. Foremost among them, why the man he had just impaled continued to stand there, looking thoughtfully at the hilt in his sternum, instead of crying out and falling, as men generally do once stabbed. It was beginning to worry him a tad.

    Manfred was oblivious to his attacker's confusion of course. He was too busy contemplating the meaning of life and its way of abruptly ending to realize that his, in fact, had not.
  10. The top made me laugh quite hard.

    I think the bottom (and I may be reading into this to much) is about how we are often so obsessed with the past or trying to figure out what is going on, that we fail to see the obvious. That our musings and philosophy takes precedence over reality... And it made me laugh.
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  11. May continue. May not.

    Who knows???
    I don't so don't ask.

    Ari Hallbjörn Olvirsson ran through the snow as fast as possible, stumbling through the Icelandic snow. As he tumbled down a small snow drift he looked back to see whatever it was was no longer following him. Regardless of what appeared to be a break he kept sprinting towards the direction of his village. He thought back to what had lead up to his mad dash through the Icelandic snow. He was exploring the ruins of an ancient church. Built well over 300 years ago, which means it was built sometime in the late 1500's. He found something...
    Something dark...
    Something old...
    The dauðum are coming...
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  12. You should keep writing some more. I want to read more.

    Above I made a few grammatical corrects, as well as, a few changes I think would help the piece. Feel free to ignore all of my changes.
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  13. I will definitely not ignore the grammar XD.
    I found my grammar SUCKED all yesterday. XD
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