Sci Fi & Fantasy / Night by Fire (Analysis)
Freshman
It was only the light of dawn, saffron and rose, showing through her window, not fire in the night sky. Jasmine sat up, pushing the sweat streaked violet hair from her face.
She was not only tired, she was tired of being tired, of having the dreams. When she was younger she cried and screamed, but she quickly learned crying only brought the attention of the others, who where far from comforting. She had learn long ago not even to mention the dreams. Now when they came she simply endured and hid her exhaustion.
Her alarm started screaming, signaling that her freshman year had finally arrived. Pushing the exhaustion to the furthest corner of her mind, Jasmine struggled out of her bed, and into the shower, only pausing to turn the water on.
Today was a new year, the same school, but a different part of the campus, far enough away to keep the smaller children from wondering into the forbidden school. It’s hidden deep in the woods, or so she was told. For the kids who were luck enough to pass, the high school was a prize. Even a glimpse of the school was a prize of it’s own.
Today Jasmine finally gets to throw out her child’s colors of pink and royal blue and donees the colors of the higher class, pearl white and topaz. There are some other colors mixed in there as well, these colors were only for today anyway.
The white symbolizes purity, like it does in all cultures, and topaz means something like fresh and calming. These are the colors given for the first day in the new school. The first day is initiation day. the students are lined up according to age and their abilities and are tested. Then for the students who make it past the est are sorted into dorms, based on their skill and their level of skill. Each dorm is made from two people from each skill on the same level as the others. each dorm has their own set of colors.
Without anymore thought then it took to get out of bed and into the shower. Jasmine got dressed in her temporary colors, an packed the rest of her stuff that will be moved from her elementary dorm to the new one. (If she makes it that far.)
The students who don’t pass the initiation test will be sent into a different realm and given a job that their skill level can accomplish. Jasmine wasn’t fearful that she wouldn’t pass the test, she had always been at the top of her class, but the classes in elementary school were just your human basics, math going up to pre-calculus, English, Science (stopping at human anatomy), and history of all the realms. Then for the ones who matured faster then the others the control class. But she wasn’t confident in her power. Jasmine has minimal knowledge of her power. She can barley control it at times, especially when she gets angry, or some other extreme emotion happens to pop up.
The campus bells started chiming, telling Jasmine that her long day has only begun.
“Wish me luck Sanji” Jasmine said to her oldest, and truest friend.
Sanji is a brownie (no not the chocolate dessert). She is a fairy, or what some cultures call a pixie. Samji came to Jasmine when Jasmine was only four years old, when she was orphaned.
Jasmine doesn’t remember what happened to her parents and Sanji won’t talk about it. she keeps telling Jasmine that she will find out when it was tine for her to know. After about the fourth time Jasmine gave up and moved on to trying to find her place in the worlds.
“Bye Sanji, I’ll see you in a few hours. be good while I’m gone.”
“You know I will Jazz, good luck, and trust in your abilities. They’ve gotten you this far.”
Jasmine smiled at the midnight brownie, who was dressed in silver silk which made her dark blue hair seem black and her grey eyes shine.
Hopefully for the last time, Jasmine closed the door of her childhood. she’s lived here since she was seven, three years after Sanji came to be her friend, three years after her parents died.
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Great details in the beginning. I like how you describe the school. Only a few problems:
You start in past tense, for example “It was only the light of dawn” and later go into present tense “Today Jasmine finally gets to throw out her child’s colors of pink and royal blue…” I used to have this problem too till someone pointed it out, so you’re not alone. Past tense is used most often in books, so maybe go with that one. Present tense has been used too, and you use that the most. Whichever you choose doesn’t matter, just try not to switch back and forth.
There were also some grammer problems, but overall the story definitely has potential. Keep writing and follow your dreams!
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Given the title of the piece, I assume that ”... not fire in the night sky…” is a clever piece of foreshadowing. Does it give a clue as to the content of the dreams which torture the protagonist?
”...learned long ago…” you had conjugated the verb in the wrong tense.
”...who were lucky enough…”
By “donees” do you mean “dons?”
”...past the test…” you had a typo.
”...based on their skill and their level of skill…” seems redundant. Writing “based on their skill” implies a variety of skill levels. Unless by the first “skill” you meant the synonym for “talent” in which case using a synonym would help prevent confusion on the part of the reader by using two homonyms so close to one another.
”...barely control it…”
Where does Sanji come from in the scene? Is the brownie already in the room with Jazz? Do they meet in a hall? The character just sort of starts talking from nowhere, so to prevent reader confusion, you should add in some more information.
You write well, and you’re not afraid to flesh out details, so I’d say this has potential, but there’s not enough there to tell if I’d really enjoy reading more or not.
Honestly, I wasn’t crazy about this piece. It was difficult to read because of the sentence structure within.
For example:
Your opening sentence is jarring. ”It was only the light of dawn, saffron and rose, showing through her window, not fire in the night sky.” Your readers get the fact that it’s dawn, so we don’t need the last fragment about the night sky. Rework this sentence so that it’s smooth and rolls right off the tongue. You could do something like this: ”The light of dawn shone through the window in vivid colors of saffron and rose…”
You have MANY, MANY sentences like this; four to five segments or more, all of which are connected by mere commas. Go back and rework your sentence structure. Don’t begin sentences with “then”, “but”, “and”, etc. It’s bad form.
Also, you do not need to keep repeating Jasmine’s name within the same paragraph. One per paragraph will be more than sufficient as long as you stick to the point of view for that character and don’t shift it. Otherwise it gets redundant.
Don’t use parentheses for anything within a story, that signals a author intrusion. We don’t want to hear the author’s thoughts, we want the character’s thoughts, THEIR point of view.
You give paragraph upon paragraph of information on the way these tests are carried out upon your characters. It’s too much at once in my opinion. Consider reworking this.
Take advantage of a spell-checker. For example, you spell “truely” where it should be “truly”.
Bottom line, as I was reading this, I simply hear you telling me a story about something that happened to someone else. I do not feel connected to your characters at all. I want to hear this story from your character’s point of view; to see it from THEIR eyes.
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