Babel

[CovenantJr]

My latest rush of random ideas and frenzied typing. I seem to be becoming prolific in my old age.

As is often the case with my writing, it starts somewhat clumsily - I attribute this to posting it exactly as it emerges from my head, with little or no revision or editing.




Announcement: This has been removed in my great purge of 31/8/05. I may send any or all of these to genre publications, and I don't want any issues because they're available here for free.

[Incognito]

Cease thy mimcry, knave

[CovenantJr]

Oh, I neglected to mention that this also grew from the following song lyric:

"Blood is a river, flowing darkly amidst the tangled roots of the tall and shining city"

[Loredoctor]

Covenant Jr, this is excellent; it is very atmospheric and imaginative - just full of excellent ideas. There is one paragraph which is superb:

It seemed the tower had been built, as sketchy legend claims, to enable conceited humans in their reckless ambition to reach and match the gods. But that was not the only reason for the construction of the gargantuan monolith. The human world had been a hellish nightmare of dimly-lit darkness, huge crawling creatures spawned by the absence of light, and myriad other horrors including the huge, turgid river of blood, upon the delta of which the city had been erected. Malnourished, tormented by their fears and plagued by attacks from hordes of the mindless chitinous monstrosities, the humans determined to challenge their heartless gods.

I think some of it needs some work. A criticism is that the section about the arduous climb needs to reflect it. Instead of writing 'climbing . . . climbing . . .' perhaps you should include 2 or 3 paragraphs where the pace of the writing and the content reflects the arduous climb. The goal should be to induce us into thinking, understanding, the climb.

[CovenantJr]

Thank you.

Again, I haven't even read it since I wrote it, so it doesn't surprise me that it needs work. I seem to recall I just couldn't be bothered to write a very long climbing scene. An endless sequence of identical staircases and hallways, rising interminably into the gloomy heights of a forgotten subterranean tower is very difficult to write. But I appreciate your comments, and if I was planning to do anything with this I'd revise it as best I could along those lines. As it is, I'll bear your advice in mind for future reference.

Thank you again.

[CovenantJr]

Loremaster: Since I had nothing more interesting to do this morning, I knocked out a 450-word account of the climb. I'm not sure how well it fits, since my writing style demands that it is divided into sections, but I think it's a step in the right direction.