Stan descended the rocky pass into the valley. The efforts of the villagers to dissuade him had only made him more curious. All he could learn was the fact there had been a deadly feud between two families who controlled this valley, and the conflict had grown so bitter everyone else avoided the area. By now, thinking of it as a cursed and dreadful place had become a habit.
The forest ahead was dense and tangled, and it was dark beneath the canopy of huge oaks. About midday, he stumbled upon a heap of stones that might once have been a building. He sat on them, sipping warm lemonade and nibbling bread and cheese from his backpack. A narrow river flowed the lenght of the valley, and he followed that most of the afternoon.
If the sun had not been low, he would never have spotted the tower. It was set back from the river, among the trees, but it cast a broad shadow. He waded through thickets of hawthorn and looked up, noticing the roof soared well above the treetops. Circling its base, he found the splinters of an iron bound oak door guarding the entry. Inside, rusty armour and yellowed bones were scattered about the room and up the winding stairway.
He tested each step as he climbed, but the tower was remarkably well preserved. As he rose, he saw that the inner doors had been hacked down, furniture smashed, and the fallen left to decay where they lay. This must have been the scene of the final battle in the vicious feud that made the valley a watchword for death even centuries later.
At the head of the stair, heaps of jagged armour and splinters of bone crowded the base of an intact door. Studded with bronze, it refused to budge. Stan peered into the keyhole, but it was blocked on the other side. He pulled out his Swiss Army Knife, unfolded the awl, and began probing, carefully. He felt a catch, poked it until it released with a snap, and the door shifted with a sigh and a puff of dust that smelled of long centuries.
He tugged it open and looked into the chamber beyond. On a richly decorated bed, a woman was stretched out as if for burial. She lay with one arm across her chest, and the other close to her side. There was flesh on her hand and face, and she appeared to be merely sleeping. Stan guessed that the style of her gown, headdress, and jewelry were those of the fourteenth century.
Stan stared in awe. She had been, in fact still was, a beautiful woman. Masses of dark curly hair framed a perfect face with full lips that even now were a faint rose against her dusky skin. Long lashes and a chiseled nose gave her the look of a noblewoman. She was slender, but curved in all the right places.
Stan gaped, mouth dry, remembering old fairy tales. No one must have survived, to rescue her. How grateful she would be, when he woke her and told her all her enemies were dead! Step by step, he advanced to her side and bent. Gently, reverently, he touched his lips to hers, which were warm. Her eyes flew open, huge and dark, and she wrapped one arm about his neck, holding him to her. An instant later, he felt a sharp, burning pain in his side.
She released him and he staggered back, eyes on the bloody dagger in her other hand. He could barely understand her speech.
“I told you I would never wed you. Never!” Then she stopped and studied him. “Who are you?”
Stan collapsed, feeling blood leaking from him much too quickly to offer any hope. “A traveler, nothing more, my Lady.” His last thought was that it must have been a bitter feud indeed if a woman who slept for centuries woke ready to kill her rescuer.
Sleeping Beauty - Draft 1 - 662 Words
Read my journal entry to understand my reason for posting this story as I have. I do know it’s not so great. Sorry. It is intended to be a lesson in how to trim a story to fit the word count. Please don’t comment yet on the half-baked story :-) just the aspects you think could be edited.
Miri, 2 months ago
For a first edit my approach would be to pick out main story themes & assign sentences/paras. If it doesn’t add anything to the main story then it goes. So here goes!
- there was a feud & no one goes there & there’s a tower
- brief mention of fight in the tower, brief desc of tower & then the door & the opening
- the woman – pretty, ancient, alive, hand by side
- fairy tale, she’s safe, the kiss & kill
- he sees dagger & she says her killer line
- he dies with his last thought
that would be how i would start. Be interesting if we all edited – what different slants to the story would we have?!
btw it’s a good story :-)
filfil, 2 months ago
If I was editing this story, I would take out some of the details that aren’t relevant to the story or don’t add anything. LIke, “Studded with bronze” in paragraph 5 and “Swiss Army knife.” These details make the story richer, but with the word count limil, they could be taken out.
But I agree with Miri, it would be interesting if there was a story everyone had the chance to edit. It would show differendt points of view. reminds me of the theme song for “Arthur”.
Anyways, I liked the ending, it was funny and caught me totally off guard.
KelseyD, 2 months ago
Don’t you DARE change a THING until I’ve read it.
Er….please?
Angelic smile.I’ll be back from the gym and from various errands (my mom’s going to buy me stuff) later today, so I should read it tonight.
-Kay Dee
Natella2020, 2 months ago
That’s really nice of you to do this. I read your journal, and I liked the tip about keeping your eye on the word count. That really is important, and I can see that you reached 600+ on purpose here. My Star Twisters and Flash fiction don’t usually reach more than 350, and I expect you’d say something similar.
I think Miri has summarized the chopping process very well. If this was my tale, I would worry about keeping the attention of the reader (which includes myself). Defintely dealing with the wordiness, making the sentences shorter and crisper. Also, building the tension and developing the mystical/mysterious mood of the tower and the path leading to it. I liked his last words and last thought.
I’m now going to have to wait your re-hashed version! If you had entered, I think this tale (the edited one) would have been one of my favorites. :o)
WanderingAuthor in reply to Miri’s comment, 2 months ago
It is an interesting idea – a number of writers editing an original draft. I’d like to see how widely they diverged myself. Of course, if someone came up with a better version than mine, I’d be crushed. ;<) (Thanks for the compliment, by the way.) :<)
Seriously, I do wonder what the Copyright implications, for example, would be. Would I need to place this story in the public domain for this to work? Would each editor credit me as a collaborator? What if two versions ended up very similar – whose would be the “definitive” one?
I won’t rule out the idea, later, but there are too many things to think about to leave me comfortable doing this off the top of my head. While I think, I do have an idea. What about our old “friend”, Bulwer-Lytton? If anyone ever needed editing, he’s the man (although, in fairness, if you read anything from that period, your fingers will itch for a blue pencil). Copyright has lapsed, and his work is in the public domain. As long as we credit him as the original author, I don’t believe we’d be harming him, or doing anything wrong.
I do think we should think even this idea over, but if it seems worthwhile, we can define a chapter, or find a short story he wrote (B-L “short” story probably equals 80,000 words, of course :m just tossing it out to see what everyone thinks.
WanderingAuthor in reply to filfil’s comment, 2 months ago
Thanks, and the idea is an interesting one. See my comments (above, mangled by some RedBubble formatting glitch I can never quite figure out).
WanderingAuthor in reply to KelseyD’s comment, 2 months ago
Would I do that to you?
evil grinSeriously, I’ll wait until you state – in writing – that you’ve seen it. :-OWanderingAuthor in reply to Natella2020’s comment, 2 months ago
Thank you. Yes, you’re right; until I wrote this and deliberately let it run over, my worst first draft was 386 and most of them hovered between 280 and 330.
WanderingAuthor, 2 months ago
General remarks: I’m deliberately not going to comment on anyone’s editing suggestions until I actually get down to it. That allows anyone who comes along in the meantime to form their own opinion without my influence.
I also will be producing two final versions of the story. Why? Because an exact, and very small, word count such as 250 is somewhat arbitrary. Learning to reach it is valuable exercise, don’t get me wrong, and a few publications will set a limit for submissions that is as tight as 250 words. But most will set categories, and won’t set a limit under 500 words at all.
Therefore, I’ll be doing the “edit this story until it is as good as I can make it, with no fat” version and the “trim it down until it would have been eligible for the contest” version. I think seeing the differences in those might be helpful to some of you, as well.
WanderingAuthor, 2 months ago
Please see my newest journal entry on this project. I am delaying posting my edited version to allow those who are interested time to think about this. I will be posting permissions to take part in collaborations on this story; to edit this version yourself, on that journal entry.
George Yesthal, 2 months ago
Whoa! Sucks to be Stan. Great short. Could easily morph into something longer. I wanted to keep reading. I wouldn’t worry about editing issues. While it’s important to a degree I think some folks lend it too much weight. Just so’s ya know, I think the reference to the Swiss army knife was right on as it is something that all explorers and most guys in general would carry into the bush. The awl would have been the most applicable tool. Just write. Good job.