It was a warm, moonless night in tribal Africa. We were sitting around the fire singing. To my friends it was a time of immense enjoyment, but for me it was a moment filled with sadness and regret. I could see him glaring at me through the fire. 'You could have saved me' he said. What could I have done? I was just as ignorant as he was. 'You heard the gowl. You could have stopped me!'
All of a sudden it began to rain. It was just like that dreadful night, when I lost him, my best friend.
Hi there!
ReplyDeleteSorry it’s taken me so long to comment on this!
I love this piece, especially the twist you’ve put on the word “fire”, not having a dangerous fire, but just people sitting around a camp fire. Your setting is great too—I’m not sure about describing it as “tribal Africa”, though, as coming from that perspective your narrator probably wouldn’t describe it in that way, although I don’t quite know how else you would put it… perhaps “It was a warm, moonless night in Africa. Our tribe were…” etc.
It’s brilliant how you bring in the ghost or imagined friend, yet we don’t realise he’s dead until right at the end. It’s this sudden surprise at the end of your writing that I’ve come to really look forward to!
Your contrast between the enjoyment of your narrator’s friends, and his/her sadness really brings out the emotion of the piece too, something which is so important in such a short piece.
I don’t think there’s much I can say to improve on this really; you have such control over your language and you seem to know exactly what you want to write before you start, which really makes your writing outstanding. Well done!
Can’t wait to read the next piece!
Katie
Wow, I love this piece. Lovely description (you set the scene and the tone in the very first line), and I love the last line, too. It contains a story, but it is all in retrospect. The action is in the past, but the protagonist is reflecting. It works. Well done.
ReplyDeleteHey there...this seems to be a reoccurring line on my part – but I’m sorry I late. I do always have genuine excuses, but I won’t bore you with them.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great piece. In some ways this is a lot stronger and you have certainly taken into consideration a lot of the things we suggested, but I wonder if in doing so you have started to play things slightly too safe? I miss some of that the intense action on the last piece and I wonder if you are ‘telling’ too much instead of ‘showing’. I understand, of course, that there’s a word count (and I always seem to get really excited about your work!), but is there any way you could rephrase things to show the enjoyment of the friends (perhaps a description of laughter?) or the speaker’s ignorance? Heck, your writing is so good that I wouldn’t say no to a memory describing the murder!
Katie is right about everything though – and this is brilliant and the twist ending was epic. The contrast of reactions that each character has to the fire is also wonderful and consistently you have us craving more. Don’t forget those nitty gritty’s though – new speech on a new line!
Great, great work! ~ Avani