saviour. Oliver therefore wants to leave the village and that is exactly what he does on his 20th birthday. There are, however, some issues that unfortunately distracted this reader. I will share some key anomalies with you and hope that you can appreciate the way in which they tend to impact the enjoyment of your piece.Your story appears to have a decent blend of narrative, action, and dialogue, is unusual and somewhat interesting, @ricardo993. Oliver sees the prophecy as ludicrous and feels that the villagers have lost impetus and motivation to succeed through their own endeavours, as they place too much reliance in the safety blanket of their
(1) Oliver is perched on top of a tree, a couple of hours before dawn. This would make it very dark. It is darkest just before dawn as the light from the sun has not yet become visible over the horizon. How does Oliver therefore observe everyone in the village in the dark? How does his mother see him high up in the tree and hold a conversation with him? Why is she even awake?
(2) In the passage below you suddenly switch for one paragraph from 3rd person to 1st person and it is disconcerting.
I regretted saying that. By my side was the town scribe, Mr. Hive, a childhood companion of mine, but ever since he had learned to write, he had been jotting down every sentence of mine to preserve it for posterity.
(3) Oliver is 20 years old when he leaves the village. He returns 20 years later with his children and grandchildren. Given that he would have had to find a wife and then have children, even if he met someone immediately, we would be expecting his eldest child to be maybe 19 years old and that child would have to be a father for Oliver to be a grandfather. This would put Oliver's son at having kids when he was 17/18 years of age. While possible, it is not immediately as believable as if you had instead made his absence extend to 25-30 years.
(4) With the villagers having such a strong belief in Oliver and the prophecy, we wonder how they managed to switch allegiance to Cool. This part is never explained. Given the emphasis you placed on the prophecy by virtue of the real estate you dedicated to it in your post, it would seem that this piece should at least be explained. A little more story development could have fleshed this out.
(5) Just a consideration: the prophecy could be seen as a somewhat blasphemous parody which some readers may find slightly offensive.
Thank you for writing in The Ink Well. We do look forward to your stories each week.
Hehehe they got me with so many details. The second point they mention, I should correct it, I made a mistake. The story inspired me in Terry Pratchett's style, but something different came out.
I kept the other details to myself, because this story also has more to it. Oliver and the villagers are not normal humans, that's why the jump from the treetop to the ground, that's why Cool was waiting for him so quickly on the outskirts of the village. They are not ordinary human beings, as for the children and grandchildren, it can be explained, but they gave me many ideas regarding that, as well as the story apart from Cool.
Thank you very much for keeping an eye on it, that's why you are my favorite community, those comments are worth gold. Greetings
withholding info because the story will be part of a larger piece one day, fair enough. From an Ink Well perspective though that makes it a little more challenging to curate.We enjoy reading you, @ricardo993. We don't spend this much time on a detailed comment unless we think the writer is worth it. If you are
I've read Pratchett & Gaiman's Good Omens so I get what you are doing now, but even Pratchett lays the groundwork for the reader to appreciate the tongue in cheek humour in his stories by providing a blurb on the back cover, and some back story 😂... I admire writers who experiment and push themselves to create beyond their comfort zones. The time spent invested in providing a detailed response is because I believe in you and care about your work as a writer.