Week 6 story: House of Fire
House of Fire
I was born under unfortunate circumstances. My father was a king, but my mother was a slave. You can rightfully assume that I was not planned or wanted. However, when this happens in royalty, it causes problems.
My father, the King, also had another child that is supposed to be the true heir to the throne. This child is the one he had with the queen before he cheated on her with my mother. The child's name is Joe. Joe has always been better than me in every way. Everyone loves him and he is good at everything he does. Joe is also loved by his parents and my father makes it clear to us both that Joe is the favorite. Of course this hurts me to hear, but after all of these years I am used to it.
One day, Joe was competing in a competition as he usually does. He was going up against a larger opponent; however, because he is Joe, everyone expected him to win easily. This was not the case and unfortunately, Joe was severely hurt. This caused massive panic among the community and we learned that Joe was going to have long term injuries and a decrease in overall function for the rest of his life.
This news meant I was going to be the new heir to the throne. However, my father did not want that and he immediately sent out a hit on me and issued an order for my death. Of course, my father did not tell me these things; however, my mother found out from another worker around the palace. We went to bed and pretended like nothing happened even though we had an entire plan to escape the palace in the middle of the night.
At 1am sharp, my mom woke me up and we started sneaking out. Just as we left, guards were carrying torches to our room and had a large bottle of lighter fluid and they were about to set our room on fire. We made it to the courtyard of the palace and saw my room go up into flames. Me and my mother had made it! We were running for the gate and were home free!
Just as we made it to the gate, it slammed shut right in front of us. We turned around to see the entire palace in flames and out of the smoke we saw my father. He was carrying a sword. My last thoughts were only about how close we were to making it out. People say your entire life flashes before your eyes but all I experienced was a deep sadness knowing how I was seconds away from freedom and life.
Hey Robbie, I think that I enjoy reading your story and I think that your story give me a sense that was inspired from like Game of Thrones, is that right? I thought about it because I saw the title as house of Fire. In the back of my head, I kept thinking about Ned Stark and his two sons when reading story. If that was not the case, then I must have mistaken and for that your story was composed really well with emotion and appropriate setting.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you have consider telling more about the main character. I did not get the main character name out of the story. I think that the main character name should be your focal point in developing the story. It is great that Joe (the favorite son) was mentioned.
One suggest that I want to make for your story is adding more dialogue. I think dialogue can carry the story on very well. It shows the character emotion and intensity. Just like conversation, we can get a lot of details out of that. A simple conversation among character can tell us as the audience about the character tone and attitudes towards other characters in the story
Hey Robbie! I also struggle with many extensive names in the original stories just because I am not used to them. However, I also appreciate how unique they are! It made it easier to follow along with the story with simple names. I bet it will be extremely helpful for people to follow along if they had never read the story before. It also allows them to understand the base story, then travel to the original story to learn about all of the characters.
ReplyDeleteHey Robbie, I connect with how it's pretty easy to sometimes get caught up in the names with the epics we're reading in this class. In reality for me though it's a love/hate type of thing. I hate how these names are so unfamiliar to me, but I love how it forces to keep me on my toes as a read.
ReplyDeleteDid you consider adding in dialogue to your story? Earlier last week Dr. Gibbs gave me some feedback on one of my stories. My favorite advice she gave me was to add in some dialogue because it really brings your character more to life in order to relate to the reader. Maybe give it a try, I know when I revised some of my stories I enjoyed the dialogue I added immensely.
One minor mistake that i think we're all guilty of when brainstorming and writing these stories so quickly is our grammar/writing mistakes. It's nothing that a couple of revision can't fix!
Hey Robbie,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this story. I understand completely when you talk about not understanding the names. I like how you made them really modern using ones like “Joe”. You did a really good job making the story your own. One suggestion I would make is explain the origin story more in your authors notes so we can understand what you are referencing.
Hi Robbie, I completely understand your sentiment about acknowledging that many people's names in these stories have significance, but that it can be difficult to not get completely caught up in writing or pronouncing. I very much enjoyed the simplicity of the story making people nameless or using minimalistic names as it helped me to focus more on the content f the story. I think that your author's not could have elaborated using the actual names a bit just to clarify what story and the main players as this was a new story to me. Overall well done, and hope to read more from you soon.
ReplyDelete