So I’ve been making this exhausting effort to improve my writing this last year: classes, writer’s groups, books on writing, writing websites, and the like. After a lot of sacrifices and a lot of hard work, I think I’m finally starting to see some results. Check out these two excerpts and tell me how I’m doing.
One is from when I thought I was good enough, the other is current – now that I know how much is left to learn.
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2nd draft
Everything here was made out of rope and rotting wood set against rock that was so gray it was almost blue. A cluttered town pressed in on her from all sides, hanging overhead, tumbling many levels beneath her, and unrolling a great distance to her either side. It’s height and length were immense, but strangely enough, the town was not very wide across. The reason for this was obvious. Less then a hundred feet in front of her, the ground ended and the namesake of this brugh began.
The entire town was built between the faces of two massive, opposing cliffs. Where she was now, the buildings were carved out of the grayish-blue rock of the cliff, yet the bulk of the town hung on a dubious network of ropes and platforms in the center of the endless chasm. Blocks of living structures dotted the open air of the chasm, some tilted awkwardly, and others hanging at weird angles, but all of them looking as though they could simply snap and drop away at any moment. Sagging catwalks criss-crossed between clusters of shabby buildings, woven together on a spider’s web of dangerously frayed ropes. Xierna suddenly felt like it’d be safer to turn around than to go out across the swaying, decaying bridges. She quickly checked the pass-warde, and just as she expected, it pointed out across the tangle of sloppy buildings hanging in the abyss.
(236 words)
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5th draftShe was in an alley, between buildings carved from rock so gray it was almost blue. A short distance away were a few wooden structures that sagged in disrepair, and beyond them, a dark, wide open space with many more buildings that seemed to be slowly rising and falling. Her first thought was that perhaps she was at the shore of an underground sea and that the far buildings were floating in the surf. Then her eyes found a distant wall in the darkness and she realized that she had entered Chasm-brugh; the town swayed because it was hanging on a network of ropes and platforms, strung between massive, underground cliffs.
Even from a few blocks away, Xierna could tell that the shabby houses and shops were simply tied together, dangling in the open air like a ton of garbage caught in a fisherman’s net. Sagging catwalks and rope bridges criss-crossed between the buildings and joined them to the edges of the chasm, but they looked unstable, untrustworthy. A slight breeze fondled the torch-lit structures, causing them to gently twist and bounce to the sounds of creaking ropes. It also carried the unmistakable odor of mildew and moist wood.
Everything here was decaying.
(203 words)
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I feel a little like Happy Gilmore. In the movie, he had this amazing slapshot that translated into an amazing golf drive, but his efforts on the green were pathetic. I think I have a strong creative gift, which translates into tons of cool story ideas, but my writing skills have totally been holding me back. Now that I’ve learned to see where my mistakes are, and can wrestle them into basic functionality, I feel like Happy did when he told Shooter McGavin, “Uh-oh, somebody learned how to putt.”
