There are too many metaphors in this passage. The rain is rioters, soldiers, airmen, and God's finger.

Hands don't sigh.

Pots don't usually break just by being filled.

Rain on a tin roof is loud, which means the scuttling of the crabs would not be audible.

etc.

I think the major problem is you are trying too hard to write with "style," rather than to write a story.

An important rule taken from OSC "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy" is the following: In SciFi and Fantasy, it is an absolute crime to use metaphors in the introduction. We are literalists. If you say airmen are dropping on the roof, then I'll think airmen are dropping on the roof. Fluid soldiers, to me, sounded like an alien race of water demons. I was not prepared to take this as a flower literal work. (And to be honest, even if I was, it was excessively metaphored, as Eric already pointed out.)

I didn't plainly say it was raining, or the *child* sighed because I wanted that to be sort of ambiguous and to passively introduce a human being in all of this. Besides, the whole story is about a hurricane... so I probably should have explained that. And the scuttling and silence was sort of reference to the quite before a storm. Foreshadowing...

So I should introduce people? There are four unnamed kids in a shack, does that work? What should I make the introduction longer?

quote:

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Everyone in the hut held tight to one another, channeling life as if through body heat. "The closer the better," one said. If anyone wondered why, their concerns were muted as the roof turned into a wild animal, ripping apart. Suicidal, it sliced itself to fanning shreds as it desperately threatened to carve the children. Its jaws flew open like the gaping gates of hell and like a wicked beast it howled so deep and foul, the boys and girls scattered in fear of the jagged, flailing fangs. The daggers loomed and lurched overhead, seizing in the wind, shimming with a full vocabulary of horrible speeches. All the children buried their heads into the chest of the oldest holding tight, knuckles brown and soaked as their clothes were ravaged by the winds and glassy sand. What will we do? The platform, in response, decided it was best to leave them all stranded. It began to huff as its knees buckled at the screws and were torn to splintering shards that splashed and sprayed suspended before them, then shimmering, were gone.

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Is this omniscient POV? If it's any other kind, words like 'everyone,' 'one,' and 'anyone' keep the reader at a distance. MHO is that you'd be far better off focusing on one of the unnamed kids (unnamed in that the text doesn't give their names or they don't actually have names?) and letting us experience all this through him/her.

Trying to learn an aspect of writing that you admire is admirable. Figurative writing, however, done well, is usually done sparingly. A little goes a long way.

The key to writing with metaphors is to not let these stylistic devices interfere with your actual plot and characterisation. You say that your story is about a hurricane. What is going to happen? Is the roof going to collapse? What is the catalyst?

Short stories are difficult to write in the sense that you can't have all description. I'm sure that there are some places willing to publish it, but most places won't. To be honest, I've never seen a short story that seems to be written entirely with the purpose of using stylistic devices.

Honestly, to me, it doesn't seem like much of a story to just be describing a hurricane. It is really nice description, and I admire how you're trying to emulate the authors who use stylistic devices really well, but we need a plot. Something to sink our teeth into.

With your second version, I have to agree that I felt like I was running but getting absolutely nowhere. I've read novels where the author spends three pages describing a tree. And I always, without fail, skip over all descriptions over two lines long. Succint descriptions are the best. If you can lessen it, then lessen it.

What is going to happen? Give us some forshadowing of that.

Let's see... who usually puts me to sleep... John Knowles who I needed shock therapy to get through or Erich Maria Remarque who described a cherry tree for about three pages. But mainly I was thinking Poe... it seems sometimes like he's intentionally trying to confuse you. When Poe writes he's usually talking to the writer... in this piece I was trying to reduce the importance of the people and make what's going on around them my focus...

quote:

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I was sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence -- the dread sentence of death -- was the last distinct accentuation which reached my ears....Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe. I had swooned....

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Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum is one of my favorites. I had to reference the story for the punctuation and the part between the ellipses, but this beginning is firm in my memory. I love it.

Thumbing through some of Poe's works, I see a more formal English and lots of big words and intricate sentences. Not the stuff today's editors are generally seeking. Even our period pieces reflect a more modern wordage. Yet not to say the right story couldn't defy the odds.

An editor's red pen, though, would levitate and glow over "we apprehended little danger from the violence of the wind; but we looked forward to its total cessation with dismay." (Ms. Found in a Bottle) I found little figurative writing in Poe. He called it as he saw it in his mind, like "the gloom and desolation of the neighboring city." (The Sphinx) He didn't compare that gloom or desolation to anything. He just wrote that it was. He also didn't write "the gloomy desolate neighboring city" and thereby drown us in adjectives.

I don't think Poe is trying to confuse anyone (wouldn't that be counterproductive for a writer?), but I do believe we can't read him as quickly as we normally read others. It might be interesting to know what the 'ease of reading' level is for his work, but I'm too lazy to check. I doubt it'd be 'high ease,' which means the average reader would have some problems.

I'm not sure what you mean that Poe's "usually talking to the writer," but if you're bent on "reducing the importance of people" and focusing on events, I'd suggest that even event-driven stories are character-based. Imagine Lord of the Rings as only a history lesson on Middle Earth.

By all means, try your hand at all the tricks of the trade and don't let any of us here short-circuit that learning experience for you. But do recognize that any one of those tricks, overdone, makes for bad writing.

The metaphors are fine. I liked almost all of them, and only found a couple to be clumsy or excessive.

But it can only be done in POV. As authorial invention, it seems (and probably is) inexcusable. Begin with a single, named, character. Cast everything as that character's observations. Presto, it is the character that is given to semi-nonsensical rambling, not the author.

This time I was going for something not hooked on any particular person, but it seems as if it's unanimous that this sort of connection is necessary. You guys talk a lot about editors not liking this or that but I sort of intended on just... writing it to write it...

Anyway thanks a Survivor, you're kind.

Kolon I was thinking more of The Cast of Amontillado or The Black Cat, which open as someone, the protagonist, talking to you directly.

Like in The Black Cat, a good Halloween story if you want to sit around explaining all the words to the kids:

quote:

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For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it in a case where my senses reject their own evidence. Yet, I am not mad-- and very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow I die, and today I would unburthen my soul...

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Or somewhere roundabouts... I couldn't remember it all so it could be messed up... well that's the gist.

Or in the The Cast of Amontillado:

quote:

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The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled-- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk.

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Hmm… lucky I had the book for that one.

Anyway, I think I'm going to work on this some more or create a new project entirely. I'm really interested now in exploring first person and perhaps trying out imitation until I can get the hang of all this. I usually prefer to make the environment invite the character to act, not the character to act independently. Like I would put them in an insane situation (storm) then see how they would react. Well… because I think reaction tells you more or at least as much about a person as action.

I don't think I'm going to write as dated as Poe did, though. The point that Poe did not spend a lot of time with wrestling adjectives is well taken, but I am sort of fond of metaphors.

I must find a balance. But first… to bed.

This illustrates one of the great dangers of imitation. We tend to exaggerate the importance of that which we find most unfamiliar and difficult, and thus think that we are imitating the greats when really we're only reflecting those elements that make them inaccessable to modern readers.