Reviews for The Mystic Water - FictionPress.com

Yuki Myco
2005-10-25
ch 1,

abuseHi, this is Yuki Myco from FF.N. Well this is quite an impressive short story you got here. It's got good symbolism, and openess to it to analyze meaning and subtext.

No obvious mistakes like spelling or grammar, but I did see that from where the elder spoke of the mystic water, and the girl running to the water was rather fast. I was kind of curious as to what went through her head while she ran to the water. Of course not being told leaves more room for interpretation.

Good choice of words, and nothing plain or grandiose was ever used.

Details were kept to a bare minimum, but it helps this story considerably to do so. If you created too much detail on everything, then it would only be a distraction. Keeping descriptions of things to a minimum and emphasizing details on what you wanted the reader to notice really helps to strengthen this story.

The girl denying she was the creature helps to add realism, and I guess it works because of the length. But with a character like Oedipus from Oedipus: The King he took the entire play to finally accept what he had been denying since the beginning of the play. Of course your doing a short story and not a play, so throwing that in was a good call, and keeping it within a short story length was also good. It also helps to establish a bit of childishness to the girl and youth. So it also doubles as extra description through subtext. Another good call.

Although the whole custom thing of not entering your own home seemed like a tool to use to have her overhear the information that led her to the end of the story. It just seemed like that, but also adding the girl's opinion on it helped to give reader's a voice, almost as if she was saying what the reader's where thinking. Which is a good tactic to make it seem less tool-like and, again, instead another subtext description for the girl.

All in all every part seems to work well, has purpose, and is open to interpretation (which I personally like) and that makes this a good story. I definitely enjoyed reading this. Good job.

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