a 1000(ish) word excerpt from a new writers 1st effort...

[voodoogator]

Hi! This is my first foray into the writing arena, and i sure would appreciate any comments or suggestions. Thanx for reading my work (if u do read it hehe) And plz, be kind, be cruel..just be honest! Thanx, hope u enjoy what i have so far..

'.. With his chest to the stone, Dorren slid his right hand around the base until he felt the wooden edge of the water bucket. He grabbed the it gently with his fingertips and started to pull it slowly back around the rock towards him. Dorren was torn between the need to be go slowly, and the desire to snatch the bucket and flee back up the hill as fast as his feet would make it. He could hear the overseers boots crunching the dirt and gravel just on the other side of him. His nervessness beagn to manifest itself in the form a trembling limbs and knotting muscles. That soothing drink earlier now turned treasonous as it became sweat that ran into his eyes and burned. Wiping his eyes clear with his free hand, he listened for sounds of the overseer, then continued to pull his prize toward him. "I think I can make it..", he thought to himself as he inched the container ever closer. The Sarrian was raving at its charges with more vemon than before, so Dorren was sure it wouldn't notice anything else. Now he could see the bucket, and his thoughts and eyes started to plan his ascent up the hill. Just a few more seconds and he would be safely back up the hill, salvaged water-bucket in hand. And then she couldnt refuse to tell him her name..and maybe join him for the evening meal..and maybe after THAT...
"What have we here?", was the sound that broke him from his plans and brought the whole world down upon him. The Sarrian overseers' whip cracked and wrapped around Dorrens neck as its booted heel drove down onto his hand. Dorren felt some small bones break, and his fingers go numb as the sarrians foot twisted. He was jerked to his feet by the whip and immediatly knocked back down by an armored fist. "One that doesn't work, eh?", the Sarrian overseer kicked the splintered wooden bucket and sent it bouncing off of the stone with a sharp 'CRACK'. Dorren hardly noticed as he was now gasping for breath, unable to get enough air past the restricting coils of the overseers hold on him.
Grabbing at the whip around his throat with his good hand, Dorren tried desperately to relax the tension, only to have his fingertips torn by the whips wicked barbs. The Sarrian laughed at seeing Dorrens pathetic attemps to free himself. "Since you dont work," the overseer said, "you can die!" A swift, hard kick to the solarplexes and Dorren gave up any hope of ever drawing another breath. He fell to his hands and knees and tried to remain conscious. His left hand had landed on the edge of the now-broken water bucket. He could just barely still feel its grain with his numbing fingers.
No! He would NOT die like this! With a desperate effort, he lifted himself up onto one knee, and swung the hard-wood weapon at the Sarrians helmeted head. He had no thought towards punishment or escape, just the sheer instinct to fill his burning lungs with air. Dorren put every bit of strength he possesed into making this one shot..his only shot, he knew...a killing one. Dorren was rewarded with dull wooden 'thunk' and a sharp metalic 'clang' as he felt the impact sudder up his arm. The splintered remains of the now-useless water bucket shattered in his grip from the impact. A sense of satisfaction entered Dorren at the thought of toppling one of the monsters that lorded over him.
Only, the Sarrian did not fall.
It staggered backwards a step or two, but the iron grip holding Dorren never wavered. Instead, the overseer laughed. A cruel, mocking laugh gaining in volume. Dorren felt his hope drain away along with the last bit of his strength. The overseer yanked on the whip like a malvolent owner recalling a wayward pet, jerking Dorrens body fully up-right so as to laugh in his face. Its laughter was joined by an armored knee to Dorrens groin. Blackness closed around his vision, and bile rose in his throat.
The overseer grabbed Dorren roughly by the hair and uncoiled its whip. Over his gasping, ragged attempts to draw a breath, Dorren heard they overseer say, "I am Kahl U'sarren-drett. You've shown spirit this day, Asheldian. And before this nights moons have passed, I shall BREAK it!" Sneering, he slammed Dorrens head into the side of the large boulder, a small grunt of pain and a large spot of crimson being the results. Dorren felt his body falling slowly; time had him again, as it had when the water-bucket fell. He saw rather than felt his body slam into the hard, rocky ground. His breath would surely had left him from the jolt, had he yet been able to draw one. The last the he saw before he let the abyss take him was the soon-to-be-setting sun. Another hour or so, and he would have been able to rest in its absence. An hour or so ago, this was just another day like many others of toiling in its glare. Now, he knew he may never see the sun again.

One final thought flitted across his mind before was lost to them all...he forgot to ask the water-girl her name.

[voodoogator]

..forgot to mention violence in the thread, and cant figure out how to edit it sorry

[Claire Young]

Your formatting is difficult to read. Paragraph breaks would help. It also has many mistakes that perhaps you didn't catch since you are so familiar with it. For example:

. . With his chest to the stone, Dorren slid his right hand around the base until he felt the wooden edge of the water bucket. He grabbed the itgently with his fingertips and started to pull it slowly back around the rock towards him. Dorren was torn between the need to be goslowly, and the desire to snatch the bucket and flee back up the hill as fast as his feet would make it. He could hear the overseers overseer's boots crunching the dirt and gravel just on the other side of him. Hisnervessness beagnto manifest itself in the form a trembling limbs and knotting muscles.

Nervousness, not nervessness. And why two periods in front of the first word With?

It can also be less wordy. I'd go back and edit this. Good luck!

[John Oberon]

Yeah, paragraph breaks and then post something that at least looks like you ran a spell checker on it.

[voodoogator]

ok, thanks. any thoughts besides editing?

[Debbi V]

I would say at this stage that there ARE no thoughts beyond editing. Unless you polish something as well as you can, and eradicate errors, and format properly, use correct tenses, nouns, punctuation and grammar - well, there is not much point in posting.

It's bad form to expect people to stumble past all the errors to try to get something out of it.

Do the work yourself first, and the critique will be about your story and idea, more than the technical stuff.

Debbi

[John Oberon]

ok, thanks. any thoughts besides editing?

Well, I'll comment a bit, but you really need to fix all the errors.

A big problem is that you posted the middle of a story. Apparently, Dorren is in the process of fishing a water bucket from some kind of crevice for some girl. No clue how it got there or why he's doing it. He's going to risk death over some girl he's curious about, whom he doesn't even know? Don't think so. At least not without some pretty convincing backstory.

You say Dorren's fingertips are torn by the wicked barbs of the whip, but wouldn't he be a tad more concerned about the wicked barbs sunk into his neck? I don't know about you, but I'd say a reflexive action would be to move toward the Sarrian to put slack in the whip to keep the barbs from gashing my neck and stop the Sarrian from literally ripping my head off. You say the water bucket is splintered when the Sarrian kicks it; that indicates a pretty sad condition made worse by the kick - essentially unuseable, I'd think. Yet somehow it becomes a "hard-wood weapon", possibly lethal enough to kill?

That's just a little bit right off the top of my head. I think you need to think it through a little more.

[voodoogator]

thanks, john. thats the kind of feedback i wasnt getting from freinds, and really came here looking for...the editing is the easy part to fix lol

I'll try clean things up alittle better before i post another sample.

[John Oberon]

You'll get more and better feedback after you fix the spelling and grammar.

[alice clay]

Yeah, I feel like I walked into the middle of a manuscript. Probably did. Whatever happened to Smoko, where you could post info justifying a temporary disappearance from the action?