200 Words - Round Two
“Karna was hungry & looking for food and was a little annoyed when he first heard the roaring in the sky. The day had been fine & clear but he looked for thunder anyway and annoyance became puzzlement when he saw no storm, only serene blue sky. The roar from the sky was getting louder when he looked directly up and saw a new sun moving slowly through the blue above him. It was moving slowly towards the sunset and seemed to be getting larger. It took long moments before he put the two things together & realised the new sun was coming down towards a spot near to him & he felt frightened. He moved to nearby cover but then curiosity held him for the new sun was now quite near & in spite of the roar he felt suddenly calm. There seemed to be no heat from the sun as it touched the earth only a couple of spear-throws away & this seemed to cool the new sun for the roar & the shine slowly faded. When his eyes could see properly, Karna saw the sun was gone & had left a glowing white egg behind.”
The first thing that stands out is your use of the ampersand (the ‘&’ symbol). I don’t even have to start reading before all of them stand out.
Watch your use of “was�. Something doesn’t read quite right in the first sentence, and I believe that is it. Karna “felt� hungry instead of “was�. You could cut the one sentence into two and make some sort of action to show he’s annoyed. “The roar from the sky was getting louder� – try substituting “started� or something else for “was�.
“Long moments� sounds awkward. However, you might be using the slightly strange voice as a stylistic choice. With the limited amount of text, I can’t be sure.
“Put the two things together� – This sounds awkward to me and could be put in a better way.
“The day had been fine and clear, but he…�
Congratulations on not being a comma addict, but I would look over this piece for places you didn’t put them in. Commas may be a menace a lot of the time, but they can be useful for natural pacing in reading.
Would I keep reading? Probably. This has a “prologue� feel to it, so I’d likely skip ahead a bit and see what was happening a few pages in.
April 16th, 2007 at 9:35 am
My first thoughts (and I’m purely an amateur) was there were too mnay mentions of sun and sunset, alternatives could have been used in some instances.
Also the text needed breaking up a bit, it was too much of a solid chunk to make me enjoy reading it.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I agree with you when it comes to it being posted this way, but keep in mind it looks like a regular length paragraph in a word processor.