Sympathy
I like writing, but I'm not sure if I'm really any good at it yet.
Etril cowered in fear. This was it. She'd known it was coming, but hoped it wouldn't be this soon.
...
No gunshot came.
"Forget it," the alien said.
Etril looked up, hesitantly. "...What?"
"Forget it, I'm not going to shoot you. It's not even worth it." She placed the gun back in its holster.
Was it a she? The voice just sounded faintly feminine.
"W-why not?" Etril asked as the alien went back to looking around. "I-I thought for sure-"
"I told you. Not worth it." That wasn't true. The alien had seen the poor girl cowering in fear. And felt bad for her. It had been easy, shooting the ones who ran or fought back. But she couldn't bring herself to shoot that one.
...
"What is this?"
"What?"
"This." The alien pointed to one of the paintings.
"Oh." Etril got up, and hesitantly walked over.
"I'm really not going to shoot you." The human was still scared of her.
"Ah. Well, this is," Etril started, explaining the painting.
"And this one?" the alien asked, pointing to another.
"Oh, that's"
They continued this a while.
Prequels
Sequels
No sequels yet. Why not write one?
Comments (4 so far!)
PrincessLapis
Yeah. This poor piece probably really deserves to be rewritten with more characters. I couldn't fit in a lot of words and didn't want to think up what the art pieces would actually be, so I cut it short to finish getting the idea out. The character limit is fun, but unfortunately it does occasionally result in having to cut some stuff that I'd really like to include if possible, at least eventually.
- #4064 Posted 6 years ago
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Robert Quick
There is a pretty popular saying about writers having to kill their darlings and usually I think that is meant to be about characters who the writer likes a bit too much to let them die, but for me is more about the phrases and word choices I like too much to cut. Being at the previous site (Ficly.com) taught me to do just that in a lot of cases.
- #4070 Posted 6 years ago
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PrincessLapis
Yeah. Sometimes, you just gotta kill the things, even if you love them. Sad, but true. I'm working on that. Think I'm doing pretty okay so far.
- #4072 Posted 6 years ago
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Inspired by (sequel to):
It had only been a few months since the invasion. Aliens had killed a lot of humans, others were jus…
After The Invasion- Published 6 years ago and featured 6 years ago.
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Robert Quick
There is a cool idea here, something about the juxtaposition of war and art but it's pretty muddled right now. I'm not going to go into much here but I will say that shortcutting out the descriptions and conversation of the art robs the reader of the ability to be in either the alien or Etril's place. We're missing out on what is turning out to be an important moment.