An Intruder in the Night

[kromaion]

Hello all,

I've been working on something for the past few hours and I'd like to know how you think it is going and throw in some advice and suggestions if you can. Provided that English is not my first language I'd also like a few grammar tips as well. Here it is:





An Intruder in the Night

Her feet hit the ground in a sudden burst of impact, making a small but loud enough noise to scare the crow that rested up between the branches of a nearby tree. The crow flies over through the night and sings his song, squeaking, probably frightened. Other noises follow the flaps of his wings and soon the wind and the trees are playing their songs too.

“This is bad”, she thinks, almost aloud. Because of the rough fall and the noises that so followed she comes to the conclusion that she needs to create a distraction for the guards and render them useless before it is too late, only this time noiselessly and as fast as possible. Over to the other side of the house there is another tree and even though it is raining it is possible to see that there are a few birds over there, but she can’t tell for sure. By throwing a rock that was lying near her feet she manages to scare the birds and thus create a small – but deadly – distraction that catches the ears and the eyes of the guards who were at the front of the house playing mahjong on a small table the size of a medium markers shield.

They talk to each other and seem irritated by the fact that their game had to be interrupted in such a silly way. Now one of them has to go check out the noise and so they start arguing over it for a few good twenty or thirty seconds until they agree that it is best if they end the discussion with a quick flipping of coins. One of the guards grabs a coin from his left pocket and tosses it in the air. “Heads”, he calls aloud. A moment in the dark wake of night hits a slow motion effect and the rain drops fall chaotically affected by the wind, and the glare of the lanterns that hang around the house make this dance especially beautiful. The coin flips and flips over through the air and starts falling and falling only to find no hands to catch it and so it hits the ground, flips a few more times through the air and finds its rest amidst a pool of blood that was already leaking from the dead guard’s body. Before the second guard can even think of anything or express any reaction whatsoever he too falls to the ground to meet with his friend and the coin and their blood soon join together and form an enormous pool of pure melody, music for the eyes of an assassin.

Proud of the fast and deadly shots she reminds of her days of training and how bad she thought they were and how much she complained about it, every day. “Not so bad now, is it?” she whispers very quietly to herself while studying the best way to climb out to the second floor of the house and go through that half open window, and in the blink of an eye there she is, climbing up a girder and then onto a small ledge. A strange sound comes from inside that room, it is something that reminds her of someone being slowly whipped, carelessly, but no screams can be heard so far. She walks closer to the window and carefully through the ledge working her way and leaning sideward, almost touching her left ear in the window. Now she can hear the whip blows tearing into flesh followed by a few moans, very hard and very lucid. She attempts to peek into the room and from a small opening through the curtain it’s possible to see a naked man, very tall and with dark-colored skin, bald and strong. He’s sweating and groaning and the whip blows are getting harder and faster, and she then assumes that most certainly someone is being tortured and whipped to death and is also probably tied up to the bed and gagged to avoid loud screams and unwanted scandals. The assassin reaches for a small knife attached to her belt, unsheathes it very slowly while watching the movements of the bald man. The knife is beautiful, the blade is pale as moonlight and its grip made with crocodile skin, perfect on her hands. In a split second the knife hits the man on the side of his neck but he is still alive, and that is what she wants. She aimed for his throat in a way that he would still live for a few minutes but wouldn’t be able to talk, only gasp and choke himself to death (of course, she doesn’t want any intruders; the only intruder allowed is herself). The man falls to his knees attempting to remove the knife from his neck while blood starts spilling out of his mouth, way too much of it.

The person he had been hitting lies in the bed, tied up (legs and arms) and completely naked with eyes wet and wide open – it’s a young girl – and she is clearly scared and aching from the whip strokes, “a pain that will never go away” she starts to think. The assassin jumps through the window into the room and slowly walks her way over to the man and unsticks the blade from his neck, looks straight into his eyes and very angrily sticks it again into his stomach, leans forward and whispers into his right ear: “you have something that belongs to me, I came to take it back”, then she removes the knife very calmly and leaves him to the Gods’ mercy – none at all, she hopes and prays.

Frightened and moaning the girl tries to detach herself from the bed and the ties but her bold movements only make the knots tighter and stronger, and she then realizes that the assassin has now turned the attention away from the man and it is now all on her; she gasps. The assassin slowly climbs over the bed while admiring the fact that this girl is strikingly beautiful with those green eyes and her long, black and shiny hair that spreads all over the silky dark sheets. She mounts over the girl’s tied body near her thighs and massages her legs for a few seconds, then reaches for the knife again and strikes her belly as deep as she is able to go, slides it up a few inches through her body and it is possible to feel the screams trying to escape her gagged mouth. The pain the poor girl must be undergoing right now should be almost unbearable, yet she is still moving, trying to free herself. The assassin twists the blade inside the girl’s body to increase the pain and pleasure and still unsatisfied with all the gore she deepens her left hand into the cut she just made, gives off a wry smile and takes her hand away, dripping with warm blood. She spreads the blood all over the girl’s breasts and gently pats her nipples with bloodied fingers, then starts kissing them and licking them, slowly working her way up to the neck and mouth, which she ungags and kisses very kindly until she feels that the girl is finally dead. Not one single breath of life. She climbs off the bed, looks for the man’s clothes and starts cleaning the blood from her hands and her knife with his shirt and in the meantime starts looking through the room, probably searching for something that belongs to her. She runs over to a small desk and grabs a map from it, folds it very carefully and jumps out the window into the forest that lies ahead.


---------------------------


Thanks in advance, stay well. :)

[hillwalker]

This was difficult to get into because all we have to go on is your female character's feet hitting the ground. I'm not sure 'a sudden burst of impact' is necessary since hitting the ground is neither a slow process nor a silent one. And the stuff about the crow (do crows sing?) or the wind and trees didn't add anything useful to the scene in my opinion. You need to grip your readers right from the start.

Who's your main character? Giving her a name might help the reader better engage with her and perhaps care what's going to happen next. Where is this taking place? What circumstances led to her feet hitting the ground? Because you don't tell us, “This is bad” doesn't make sense to us because we've no idea what's going on.

What were the 'noises that (so) followed'? Why does she need to create a distraction? Guards? What guards? And why might it be too late? Your story isn't making sense - presumably it's all in your head and you know exactly what's happening but no reader is going to have the patience to continue reading unless there's something more on offer.

Sadly, there isn't. We have another tree and more birds - a rock that happens to be lying by her feet - and the idea that birds might create 'a small - but deadly - distraction.'
If you were to ask me what was going on I wouldn't be able to say. I mistakenly thought that the main character was being held prisoner. You're witholding too much information to bring any of this to life.
A table 'the size of a medium markers shield'? - I've never heard the term before so I'm no wiser how big it might be.

The bit about 'The dark wake of night...' was quite lyrical and seemed to be part of a different story - but the entire scene where the guards are killed is over-written. It's very stylish, a little long-winded, but doesn't fit the action. I would have expected shorter, punchier sentences to suit the scene.
an enormous pool of pure melody, music for the eyes of an assassin.
That sounds wonderful but what's it supposed to mean?

Presumably the girl in the opening scene is the assassin. But then we have a terribly jumbled section: the first sentence is grammatically suspect -

Proud of the fast and deadly shots she reminds of her days of training and how bad she thought they were and how much she complained about it, every day.

Did you mean something like 'Her skillful shots reminded her of all the training she had been put through. At the time she complained about it. But now...'

and the second sentence is much too long -

“Not so bad now, is it?” she whispers very quietly to herself. How else would she whisper?
while studying the best way to climb out to the second floor of the house and go through that half open window, and in the blink of an eye there she is, climbing up a girder and then onto a small ledge.

I'm sure you are having great fun writing this but it's hard to follow. Some of your paragraphs need tightening up and you need to reveal more of your MC before jumping in too deeply. If the readers are finding it hard to picture in their minds what's going on they're unlikely to keep reading.

H

[kromaion]

This was difficult to get into because all we have to go on is your female character's feet hitting the ground. I'm not sure 'a sudden burst of impact' is necessary since hitting the ground is neither a slow process nor a silent one. And the stuff about the crow (do crows sing?) or the wind and trees didn't add anything useful to the scene in my opinion. You need to grip your readers right from the start.

Who's your main character? Giving her a name might help the reader better engage with her and perhaps care what's going to happen next. Where is this taking place? What circumstances led to her feet hitting the ground? Because you don't tell us, “This is bad” doesn't make sense to us because we've no idea what's going on.

What were the 'noises that (so) followed'? Why does she need to create a distraction? Guards? What guards? And why might it be too late? Your story isn't making sense - presumably it's all in your head and you know exactly what's happening but no reader is going to have the patience to continue reading unless there's something more on offer.

Sadly, there isn't. We have another tree and more birds - a rock that happens to be lying by her feet - and the idea that birds might create 'a small - but deadly - distraction.'
If you were to ask me what was going on I wouldn't be able to say. I mistakenly thought that the main character was being held prisoner. You're witholding too much information to bring any of this to life.
A table 'the size of a medium markers shield'? - I've never heard the term before so I'm no wiser how big it might be.

The bit about 'The dark wake of night...' was quite lyrical and seemed to be part of a different story - but the entire scene where the guards are killed is over-written. It's very stylish, a little long-winded, but doesn't fit the action. I would have expected shorter, punchier sentences to suit the scene.
an enormous pool of pure melody, music for the eyes of an assassin.
That sounds wonderful but what's it supposed to mean?

Presumably the girl in the opening scene is the assassin. But then we have a terribly jumbled section: the first sentence is grammatically suspect -

Proud of the fast and deadly shots she reminds of her days of training and how bad she thought they were and how much she complained about it, every day.

Did you mean something like 'Her skillful shots reminded her of all the training she had been put through. At the time she complained about it. But now...'

and the second sentence is much too long -

“Not so bad now, is it?” she whispers very quietly to herself. How else would she whisper?
while studying the best way to climb out to the second floor of the house and go through that half open window, and in the blink of an eye there she is, climbing up a girder and then onto a small ledge.

I'm sure you are having great fun writing this but it's hard to follow. Some of your paragraphs need tightening up and you need to reveal more of your MC before jumping in too deeply. If the readers are finding it hard to picture in their minds what's going on they're unlikely to keep reading.

H

Hello! Thank you very much for the suggestions, they were really helpful and indeed, I guess most of story was still in my head. Some of it though, was intentionally left without any explanation because it is meant to be part of a bigger context later on, so there are a few things that will be explained and events that will unfold later on. Anyway, here is the new version, after considering some of your ideas and critiques. I hope it's a little bit better. :)



An Intruder in the Night

Jumping off a tree the assassin decides it is about time she starts moving, it’s already dark and there are only two guards left in the night’s vigil this time. Her feet hit the ground in a sudden burst of impact, making a small but loud enough noise to scare the crow that rested up between the branches of a nearby tree. Frightened, the crow flies over through the wind and the rain, squeaking and flapping his wings strongly while dodging the trees.

“This is bad”, she thinks almost aloud, for the noise could most possibly draw the guard’s attention into her direction. She needs to create a distraction and render them useless before it is too late, only this time noiselessly and as fast as possible. Over to her right side, near a tree and under a big rock was a smaller one - fit enough to be thrown away - and that would work as a perfect distraction for the guards, if she could toss it in the right direction – which, of course, she did.

Nia was a skillful assassin, trained by her master since she can remember and so through her knowledge, since she was born; the art she was taught was the art of killing, cold heartedly and without remorse. She didn’t like it at first, but she learned to enjoy it eventually. Now she’s been sent on a mission to recover a map and kill a very influent man from the court. It’s her first official mission and she ought not to disappoint her master.

Right now the guards are playing mahjong under a small tree, over a table that is not very big, yet just the right size to accommodate the wine, the candle and the board. “Wha’s that noise?” says one of the guards while looking everywhere around, puzzled. “Tis the wind you dumb bastard, now go, it’s yer turn!” says the other with a tone of impatience in his voice. “No ‘tis not, ‘tis a big noise, let’s go look!”. “Ye? And who’s gonna look the noise? I am certainly not gonna, I betcha! I was winning the game”. They start arguing for about half a minute until they finally agree that it is best if they stop wasting time and cease the discussion by a quick flipping of coins. One of the guards grabs a coin from his left pocket and tosses it in the air. “Heads”, he calls aloud.
Nia decides that this is the right time to act and quickly reaches for a blowpipe and a small dart that is attached to her belt (a thigh belt); she hides behind a tree and aims carefully before shooting. The coin flips and flips over through the air and starts falling and falling only to find no hands to catch it and so it hits the ground and spins a few inches away until it stops. The bodies of both the guards fall on the ground with darts stuck in their necks, looking still alive but paralyzed from the poison.

Now she needs to reach for the second floor of the house where there’s an open window to a room inside which probably is her final target and the map she’s been looking for. Nia knows that because she had been observing the house for the past few days and would often find her target smoking a pipe over there, or sometimes she just saw something moving about that resembled his shadow – and it matched the description her master had given. She runs through the trees to the side of the house and starts climbing up a girder and then jumps onto a small ledge near the window. A strange sound comes from inside that room, it sounds like someone is being slowly whipped, carelessly, but no screams can be heard so far. Nia walks carefully through the ledge with her hands attached to the wall and leans sideward over the window casing in an attempt to peek inside. Now she can hear the whip blows tearing into flesh followed by a few moans, very hard and very lucid. She stretches her body trying to look into the room and from a small opening through the curtain it is possible to see a naked man, very tall and with dark-colored skin, bald and strong. He’s sweating and groaning and the whip blows are getting harder and faster, and she then assumes that most certainly someone is being tortured and whipped to death. She reaches for a small knife attached to her belt, unsheathes it very slowly while watching the movements of the bald man. The knife is beautiful, the blade is pale as moonlight and its grip made with crocodile skin, perfect on her hands. She throws it through the opening between the curtains and in a split second the knife hits the man on the side of his neck. She aimed and planned the strike in a way that he would still live for a few minutes but wouldn’t be able to talk or scream – a very common but really useful skill she had learned years ago. The man falls to his knees effortlessly attempting to remove the knife from his neck. Blood spills abundantly from his mouth, way too much of it.

The person he had been hitting lies in the bed, all tied up and gagged, completely naked with eyes wet and wide open – it’s a young girl – and she is clearly scared and aching from the whip strokes, “a pain that will never go away” she starts to think. Nia jumps through the window into the room and slowly walks her way over to the man and unsticks the blade from his neck, kneels down to him and looks straight into his eyes; her eyes cold as ice, his eyes shouting in despair. She strikes him again with the knife (a fast puncture only), this time in the stomach, and whispers to him: “you have something that belongs to me; I came to take it back”. The man is left lying on the ground, gasping and bleeding. It amuses an assassin to watch a man die; To Nia, it’s like music in the background.

Frightened and moaning the young girl tries to detach herself from the bed and the ties but her bold movements only make the knots tighter and stronger, and she then realizes that the assassin has now turned the attention away from the man and it is now all on her. She gasps. Nia slowly climbs over the bed while admiring the fact that this girl is strikingly beautiful with those green eyes and her long, black and shiny hair that spreads all over the silky dark sheets.

She mounts over the girl’s tied body near her thighs and massages her legs for a few seconds, then strikes her belly with the knife to cut as deeply as it is able to go, slides it up a few inches through her body and it is possible to feel the screams trying to escape the girl’s gagged mouth. The pain the poor girl must be undergoing right now should be almost unbearable, yet she is still moving, trying to free herself. Nia twists the blade inside the girl’s body to increase the pain and still unsatisfied with all the gore she deepens her left hand into the cut she just made, gives off a wry smile and takes her hand away, dripping with warm blood. She spreads the blood all over the girl’s breasts and gently pats her nipples with bloodied fingers, then starts kissing them gently, slowly working her way up to the neck and mouth, which she ungags and kisses very kindly until she feels that the girl is finally dead. Not one single breath of life. She climbs off the bed, looks for the man’s clothes and starts cleaning the blood from her hands and her knife with his shirt and in the meantime starts searching the room for the map. She finds it over a small desk near the right side of the bed, grabs and folds it very carefully and jumps out the window into night.



--------------


Thanks once again.

[hillwalker]

I can see you have changed this and trimmed some. But at times it still reads like a set of stage directions rather than a story. That's partly due to the fact that it's written in present tense - which normally makes an adventure story more real. But in this case it doesn't work. The reader is discovering everything as it happens but that's it. There's no foreshadowing or character development. You're listing events like a newspaper reporter rather than having us experience them through the assassin's eyes. This happens - then that happens - then something else happens...
That's not all that story writing is about. It's nowhere near enough to keep us interested. We need something that can allow us to understand the main character's motivations or emotions. But you don't give us much.
It looks as if you're writing this off the cuff - you know where the plot is heading and you just want to get everything down on the page as quickly as possible. But it pays to go back a week or so later and read through what you have written again with a fresh set of eyes. Look at ways to quicken the pace and polish the descriptions.

You can link certain images, for example, so we can see why you've chosen them. Why was the assassin up a tree in the first place? Had she climbed up there, wary of disturbing the crow that might warn the guards of her approach? Did she somehow share the crow's feelings? Here up on the branch surveying all below? Was her jump to the ground intended to scare the crow away and provide a distraction? If so then the fact that it didn't work sets up some conflict right at the start. Without that, her 'This is bad' thought doesn't mean anything. We have no idea what is bad, or what her intentions had been from the start.

It's one thing to reveal plot elements bit by bit as the story unfolds, but to keep the reader in the dark for too long (without any logical reason for doing so) is likely to stop them reading. This was a bit like watching those cheap horror movies where most of the action takes place at night in such poor lighting that it's impossible to see what's happening or to feel any suspense. The last paragraph was probably when I sat up and started to become interested because we're almost inside Nia's body as she kills her victim. Perhaps that's something you need to think about exploring earlier in the plot.

H

[kromaion]

Hello once again!

Thank you so very much for all the tips, I really mean it. It's so hard to find people who really help nowadays! I'm tired of "awww this is very nice, keep going...", if you know what I mean... So thank you for the honest suggestions and critiques, and I will think about what you said, concerning the last paragraph. Perhaps this is really the road I should be taking. This is the first real attempt I make in writing a story and I'm already learning so much, which is what makes me feel like I'm in the right direction. :)

[hillwalker]

This is the first real attempt I make in writing a story and I'm already learning so much, which is what makes me feel like I'm in the right direction. :)

You are - keep writing, but also read as much as you can. I'd suggest you devote 3 times as many hours to reading as to writing.

H