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/lit/ - Literature

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3254011 No.3254011 [Reply] [Original]

Hey /lit. I have to write a short story in the style of Ray Bradbury and I was hoping to get some feedback on it. Thanks!
First paragraph (I will write the rest in the comments):

Monday morning. Almost seven O’clock. As Aaron lay in his hard bed he started to wake. He felt slightly cold, but didn’t acknowledge it. He leaned over to look at his beige plastic clock, which every minute made a small change and went click, a sound so infinitesimally small. Aaron looked out the window at the other houses, the big concrete blocks just like his. He had never been to another house. Aaron smiled. What happiness in the uniformity, what happiness that nobody could look and say, “My house is better than yours.” Not that Aaron had ever talked to anyone. His voice wouldn’t like that.

>> No.3254018

Aaron watched the clock change to 6:59, and then exactly 7:00. Immediately, his voice said, “it’s time to get up.” Aaron rose out of bed and stood for a second. Softly, smoothly, comfortingly, Aaron’s voice told him “Walk to the bathroom and brush your teeth. You need to go to work soon. You are happy.” Aaron obeyed. He was happy. Yesterday he remembered being happy as well. And the day before that… Aaron’s voice quickly cut off the memory. “Walk to your closet. Your clothes today are grey slacks. Grey Jacket. Brown Shirt. Shoes.” Aaron obeyed. He was very happy, happy about his house, his office job, his nice television, and his nice voice. He didn’t need to see other houses, offices, and televisions. What else made him happy? An image of a woman flashed in his mind. She was talking, and it was warm, he was sitting a clearing, he could feel the grass between his fingertips, and the sun was coming through the trees, raining down bright warmth and glee upon them. Who was that?

>> No.3254022

Suddenly, his voice cut in, “Go to the kitchen. Eat.” Aaron’s flash of memory disappeared to the back of his head, and he stumbled groggily to his kitchen. He pulled down the cereal and poured a small bowl of it with milk. The cereal tasted slightly sour, a dull, colorless sour. He could remember having it every morning. He finished the small breakfast, and the voice commanded him to walk through the door to the lift. It was a small metal box, just large enough to fit him and one other person in it. Aaron walked to the lift, not daring to glance at the person next to him. Aaron remembered looking up once, and his voice had started ringing all around him, causing his body to violently lurch forward onto the lift. After, his voice had again told him that he was happy and that he was never going to look around again.

>> No.3254025

As the lift went loudly down, first to the ground floor and then north towards his office, his voice began emitting music, blasting his ears. Thump, thump, thump, a rhythm deep with bass and a small treble line. Music played every day, and every day Aaron tapped his foot. He looked down and could tell from tiny shivers in the steel of the elevator that the person next to him was listening too. The soft tapping of the person’s foot was lost with his own… tap tap tap tap… perfectly in time… tap tap tap tap… then the music stopped. “Get out the lift and walk to your office.” As he walked out of the lift, and started the long walk down a corridor toward his enclosed cubical, as small space with a plain white computo-mater, some paper and his folder full of work. His voice said to him, “Today you will be working on the expenses. It will be fun.”

>> No.3254028

>>3254011

this is very very far from the style of ray bradbury.

>> No.3254031

Aaron’s walk reached a 50-meter gap between concrete corridors, a space open to the world from one side. It was cloudy this morning, slightly drizzling. But he knew that it was nice weather. His voice had told him that everybody knew that. Aaron had shopped at stores near here, using his company-sponsored food cards. He remembered the vast expanse of the shelves of formally marked boxes of food, losing one of his two cards for the night. Aaron had gone hungry that night. He never went hungry these days, just like his voice had promised. Aaron thought back to that day in the store… if he had lost one card of the two he had, then he wouldn’t have had enough to buy something even if he didn’t lose it. Unless it was cheaper earlier… suddenly, Aaron’s voice blared screaming sirens into his ears, destroying all thought and memory of the store until there was nothing but blank, grey nothingness left.

>> No.3254035

>>3254028
I am trying to mirror the way he uses run on sentences, tropes, and metaphors. But I'm not done yet.

>> No.3254037

Aaron slowly walked across the gap in the corridor, one foot after another, contentedly following in his lines. It happened in a flash, the air sucked out of his lungs, the loudest blast ever heard, the concrete ripping, the glass breaking, Aaron’s voice cut off while telling him how happy he was, and then it stopped.

>> No.3254041

how is this supposed to be like Bradbury? Bradbury uses colorful, evocative language. He uses emotional images and contrasting metaphors. he makes the unusual seem real by comparing it to the mundane.

This is nothing like that.

>> No.3254043

Aaron sat up. He could feel pain, and he started to feel the blood flow out the back of his leg. He glanced around. He saw the massive chunks of concrete, the pieces of metal and what used to be the lift he took every morning. The lift that made the sounds, where he could tap his foot. Aaron saw a small pool of blood near a giant piece of concrete taken from the building adjacent to him. He stared at the foreign red liquid, waiting for something to appear, to make things nice. As his surroundings crept back to him, he faintly heard gunshots far from him, and they were approaching. He heard a scrambling noise behind him, and he was being dragged through a hole in a building near him. Aaron dared not look at who it was, but his head was jerked around. The man was in a red jacket. “Are you alright?” Aaron stared dumbly at him, sounds choking in his mouth. The man slapped him. “Can you hear me? Are you wounded?” Aaron looked at himself, making sure he wasn’t bleeding. He managed to say “uh-huh.”

>> No.3254051

>>3254041
Fair enough. I am not necessarily going for those images (I'm not that good of a writer) but does the story work otherwise? The reason I could weave metaphors and a process as interesting as that is because the story can only be three pages, and I am already past that.

>> No.3254052

Aaron stared back at the man, taking in his grizzled features. His hair was black as soot, and almost shined. Aaron couldn’t tare his eyes away from those features, the first facial features he could remember seeing. The posters of city guards Aaron had seen scattered around the city showed a proud tall man clad in a blue uniform, which this man looked nothing like.

>> No.3254054

>>3254011
It feels REALLY clunky. I'm also having a hard time picturing what you're describing, I'm not really sure what a "big concrete block" is. Also, you like to explicitly tell the reader things, there are more creative ways to explain other than through telling. "He had never been to another house." The gray constructs outside the window were comfortingly similar, yet incredibly foreign. In this simple statement you tell the reader that he has positive feelings about the uniformity that you reference later and you also subtly point towards the fact that he's never actually been in one, without pushing it into the reader's face.

You have some nice variety in the sentences, and you're by no stretch of the imagination a bad writer, I think you're just trying a little too hard to fit his style. You have to let it flow into a mesh of your own style AND his style, otherwise you end up with a rigid, robotic piece of writing.

>> No.3254058

Then, abruptly, Aaron heard a loud burst of static, and he then heard his voice in his head. “You are fine. You are happy. Everything is alright.” All the voices were drowned out, the gunshots, the faint moans of pain. All was calm and happy. “Pick up the glass.” Aaron was staring right at a large, sharp shard of glass. He picked it up and gripped it tightly, and the cuts on Aaron’s hands went unnoticed, the calm remaining. His voice said, “Put it through the red coat.” Aaron complied, and started for the red coat. Then Aaron stopped. This man with the soot-black hair, he had saved him, and Aaron had seen his face, the only line to other men Aaron ever had. The red coat, the soot-black hair. Sound started blaring in his ears, but Aaron stood his ground, stubbornly thinking about it. Aaron’ voice went deeper into the depths of his mind, and in a commanding but threatening tone his voice said, “You are happy. Put the glass in the shirt. He was bad. He hurt you. The blue uniform saved you.” Aaron thought back, trying to remember… More flashing sounds crushing down on him. Aaron’s voice rose to a yell. “Stab the glass through the red coat!” Aaron angrily, fervently obeyed, submitting to the command. He heard the man with the soot-black hair moan, but as his coat seemed to grow wet, Aaron could feel the life seep out of the man. Aaron quickly turned away, letting the thought of what he had just done slip away from him.

>> No.3254056

Aaron stared at the man with the soot-black hair, and saw the door open behind him, the blue uniform step through, and pull out a black contraption he had never seen before. In the twitch of a hand, there was a flash from the black contraption and a loud bang toward the soot-haired man. The man with the soot-black hair fell, hitting the ground hard. As the blue uniform walked pass, the man with the soot-black hair pulled out another black contraption, and with the same deafening blast, the uniform fell forward.

>> No.3254060

“Get up.” Aaron got up. “Walk down the corridor.” Aaron walked down the corridor. “Everything is fine, everything is nice. Nothing has happened. You are doing expenses today.” The loud rhythm played in his head as he walked down the corridor. Aaron marveled at the simplicity of this corridor, this concrete, this wall that said strength, duty, and Aaron stared into the blank, grey nothingness of the walls. He was a very happy man.

>> No.3254072

>>3254043

>He saw the massive chunks of concrete, the pieces of metal and what used to be the lift he took every morning. The lift that made the sounds, where he could tap his foot. Aaron saw a small pool of blood near a giant piece of concrete taken from the building adjacent to him. He stared at the foreign red liquid, waiting for something to appear, to make things nice.

man you really suck the life out of a piece of descriptive imagery.


Pieces of the lift, pieces of the wall. Pieces. Like a bawling infant of some cyclopean race had spilt it's gargantuan bowl of gray concrete cereal chunks and scattered the mash of them with it's tree trunk fingers into a mush of chunk and block and a choking haze of dust.

Aaron rocked back on his hurt-numbed and quaking limb, away from the thick tarry red creeping out from beneath a ripped tangle of lichen-colored tuff and tangled sheer. A voice was behind him and a hand crawled like a persistent crab up his tunic to his shoulder."

>> No.3254074

>>3254054
Thanks for the help!

>> No.3254129

You're really not making me feel this. if you're going to use that many words, try to make somebody a little sympathetic.

>> No.3254141

>>3254129
I don't think you've read Ray Bradbury

>> No.3254158

>>3254141

I've probably read all of Bradbury a dozen times. I've worn out copies of ""Dandelion Wine" and "Golden Apples of the Sun". His ability to make you believe in a person, and in a place as real and to inject humanity into the most distant and sterile environments and ideas is why he has such universal appeal.

This has no feel of Bradbury at all. It's closer to Malzberg than anybody

>> No.3254257

>>3254158
The metaphors and the tropes, the small breaking from society... idk. i was trying to put a little 1984 at the end, though i didn't really succed.

>> No.3255533

Anything else? I need more criticism!

>> No.3255557

>>3254129
Are you saying that they should feel sympathetic to Aaron?

>> No.3255712

Slightly related note here. I love that paragraph where Montag begins crying over the fact that he wouldn't cry if his wife died.

One of my favourites.

>> No.3256344

>>3255557

We should feel sympathetic to everybody. that's the point of this kind of fiction. we need to understand them, and be able to share their viewpoint even if it's abhorrent to us.

>> No.3256398

>>3256344
How should I do this? I am new to writing

>> No.3258460

Bumping cause i need moar! (suggestions)