Author: Harshal Gupta
Author
Introduction-
This is Harshal Gupta a.k.a Mischief Manager. I am an 18
year old engineering prodigy who has just entered into the world of engineering
as well as blogging. I started blogging around May 2012, and since then it has
been no looking back for me. I love to listen to hard metal, an avid reader of
Love Stories, Satire works, poetry and humour fiction. I blog at Impressions.
Story
"God
damn Skrillex. What the hell are you doing? The slayer is right in front of
you, can't you see it. Play carefully, or I will ask Dragon Slayer101 to kick
you out of the warriors." shouted Meghana a.k.a
Princess Butcher.
Meghana
was a player of World of the Ancients, a Massive
multi player online role playing game. Maggi by her side, dressed up
in shorts and a loose t-shirt she sat in front of her xbox and slayed and
played the game non-stop after returning from Platina International,
her workplace. She was a Level 89 Princess, and a pretty arrogant
one at that. Her life basically consisted of her office, her xbox and her World
of the Ancients. Sometimes the virtual life almost became a reality for her and
she could be seen trying to take out her sword in times of reflex. Well, let's
just say, virtual life played too much of a part in her life. In reality she
was a beautiful 26 year old, an MBA grad from a top-notch B-school, yet still
unmarried. She prides herself in the amazing strategic thinking she has and the
amount of power she holds at the office. After all she is the Vice
President of Platina. Her only talkative companion in office apart from her
bosses is Arup, a senior IT technician, who unfortunately had to
discontinue his studies due to family stuff, and thus somehow
after corresponding his degree, he landed a job at Platina. Though
Meghana talks to Arup, she only consults him for his IT expertise and not on a
friendly basis.
Dragon
Slayer101-"Good job Princess Butcher for having my back there, I
almost got killed by the enchanted bunnies"
Princess
Butcher-"My pleasure Dragon Slayer101. It is always great fun to
cut-throat these bitches whenever you are around, the other clan people don't
really play as good as you."
Dragon
Slayer101-"That is an overstatement Princess, I am sure they also play
well."
Princess
Butcher-"Well, not as good as you."
Dragon
Slayer101-"That is why I am the clan leader, ain't I? ;)"
Princess
Butcher- "See, I never go wrong. ;)"
Dragon
Slayer101-"Anyway, I better leave now. Got loads of stuff to complete
for my maniac boss. It's always nice playing with you. Tomorrow at 7, meet me
at the Sahara Deserts. The castle has to be owned. Bye"
Princess
Butcher-"Bye Dragon Slayer101"
As
soon as Dragon Slayer101 signed off, Meghana signed off too.
Dragon Slayer101's playing skills, his leadership qualities, his way of finding
out quick alternatives to demanding situations really attracted him. She always
wished she had someone like him in her life. She had always been a lonely girl,
with very few friends whom she could trust completely. Well, all she could wish
for is that the next day could be better than today. And thus she turned her PC
off and went to bed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Arup,
please come immediately to my room, I need you to fix up these server issues,
we have been having lately, spoke Meghana.
Arup-
Yes Ma'am.
Meghana-
See this. The Dell Xenon has not been responding since last two days, and it is
now really screwing up with the office work.
Arup-
I will see to it today ma'am, and will make sure that the issue gets fixed by
tomorrow.
Meghana-
You better.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Princess
Butcher- "Woahh. That was some pretty good way to deal with the guards
of the castle there, Slayer. Great work indeed."
Dragon
Slayer101-"Well, all it requires is how you adapt to situations. Plus,
I waste a lot of time here. That is how I became the Strider."
Princess
Butcher-"LoL, truly said Dragon Slayer101. Didn't your mean boss give
you homework today?
Dragon
Slayer101-"Don't talk about her. She is a big pain in the ass. I have
to completely dismantle a server, and fix it. It's gonna take me a whole night.
But World of the Ancients is important. Otherwise, how will I save you from the
dragons. :P."
Princess
Butcher-"Ohh!! Puhlease!!- I can slay dragons effectively. You only
complimented me the other day. :P"
Dragon
Slayer101-"LoL, we will see."
Princess
Butcher-"Yes we will Dragon slayer, we will."
Dragon
Slayer101-"Btw, where do you stay Princess?"
Princess
Butcher-"Me? Ohh, I stay in Mumbai. Juhu area, to be specific."
Dragon
Slayer101-"What? And you are telling me this now? I live in Mumbai to.
I live at Central though. But still, you never told me. This is not fair."
Princess
Butcher-"Hawww!! You never asked me. How will I know that you are also
in Mumbai."
Dragon
Slayer101-"Well, now you know na. :P."
Princess
Butcher-"Yeah, I do. Btw, give me your number no. I shall call you up
sometime and then we can meet."
Dragon
Slayer101-"Sure, here, 9900990099, Do ring me up. :)"
Princess
Butcher-"Sure".
As
she punched in Dragon Slayer's number into her phone, her phone showed that it
was already saved in her cell by the name of Arup. Confusion took over her, and
she was left mind-boggled. To confirm her state of mind, she chatted:
Princess
Butcher-"Dragon Slayer101, where do you work?"
Dragon
Slayer101-"Me, I work as a senior IT technician at Platina
International. Why?"
Princess
Butcher-"Ohh!! Great. Nothing, just like that. Anyway, I gotta run,
tc, byee."
Mind-bogglin
as it was, she still could not believe that THE DRAGON SLAYER was Arup.
A simple down-to-earth guy who just kept up to his tasks and was an introvert.
The amazing leadership skills and the mind strategies Dragon Slayer101 was
using were actually his. Holy Mother of God. I think I have to change my
perception of people an not judge them by their academic backgrounds or their
level at the office. I think I need to improve.
I really liked the idea of the conversation. It was very interestingly done. Overall structure and flow was good. There were a few language issues. CS would be pointing out I guess.
ReplyDeleteBut my only grouse against you would be the length. It is too short - 950 words. Think next time on we should enforce lower word limit as well.Because the skill we are trying to learn is to maintain interest over a greater word length. That is where x-factor and all comes in. It is easy to hold a reader's attention for 1000 words. But what about 2000 and 3000 words. If your ultimate dream is novel, you should hold attention for 50,000 words.
Thank you TF for the valuable input. I myself think it was a tad bit short. I intend to make my next entries longer.
DeleteA nice attempt. I have a lot of issues, however.
ReplyDelete1. Meghana is supposed to be thinking of Arup as a top corporate honcho. It is unlikely that she would do so after chatting with him about his dismantling and fixing up servers. If this were the first time, you should have described her surprise about hearing that.
2. After hearing Strider bad-mouth his boss and when she realizes that Strider is Arup, the first thing I would expect her to feel was anger about being the person who is being bad-mouthed - not a realization about her own mistakes :)
3. I can understand the chat being written in the form that you have written. To write the regular real life conversation in the same manner, however, is normally permissible only in drama not in short stories.
4. The English issues. I shall not say anything about what is in the dialogues and chat - after all, your characters are not expected to speak in impeccable English and even in chat :) You, as a writer, are expected to do so. So, concentrating only on your narrative portions (a)There is no need to give quotation marks when you write dialogues like you have done. (b)"She prides herself on her strategic thinking"; "the only person she talked to other than her bosses"; "completing his degree by correspondence"; 'next day would be better than today" etc. should have been used instead of what you have used there. (c) You are mixing up past tense and present tense in the description. Stick to one. (d)Spelling mistakes or typos - you seem to skip the last letter at the end of a lot of words; must be all that chatting :) In one place, you have mis-typed 'him' instead of 'her'.
Thank you CS for the detailed review of the post. :)
Delete1 and 2 were the things I left loose in the story, I shall be careful about them from next time onwards.
3: For the fact that it was written in a chat form, I thought that the short stories could be written in a conversation styled manner.
4 - I skipped the proof-reading of the post this time. I will keep in mind about this. :)
All have missed one important thing,harshal has declared himself a prodigy....:)
ReplyDeleteThank you Asteria. :)
DeleteNote: Everything below to be taken in the right spirit.
ReplyDeleteI like how you've created a whole story through conversations. I was going to write my first line of feedback and then realized Suresh has already noted it down as #2. If someone was bad-mouthing me I would be pissed off too, realization of my mistakes might come much later when I'm not in a reactive frame of mind. With respect to the plot: Per TF, Meghna's supposed to be in her early thirties, not 26 :)
As far as language goes, I don't know if I have seen :P in published books. Unless you count Chetan Bhagat where it might be there, but I personally don't consider him to be a good author.
Also towards the end you've changed the point of views. The entire story was in 3rd person talking about Meghna and Arup from a third person's point of view. The last couple lines switched to 1st person. If it had been 1st person from Meghna's point of view it would have been OK. Like 'I need to improve' thought Meghna. But it seems to be a direct point of view of the author.
Thank you Deepa for the review. :)
DeleteAnother loose end regarding Meghna's age. I am sorry.
I used the smiley inside the post as they were chatting online and such smileys are a common thing in the chat world, therefore I included the smiley.
That was a drastic change in voice. My bad.
"Mind-bogglin as it was, she still could not believe that THE DRAGON SLAYER was Arup. A simple down-to-earth guy who just kept up to his tasks and was an introvert. The amazing leadership skills and the mind strategies Dragon Slayer101 was using were actually his. Holy Mother of God. I think I have to change my perception of people an not judge them by their academic backgrounds or their level at the office. I think I need to improve."
ReplyDeleteJarring change of voice don't you think?
Writing is like wine, it gets better and better with age :) When I was 18 I did a few chat based stories too. The good thing about this style is it has a direct connect with readers, with not much ornamental bullshit to wade through. Executed correctly, this tool can be powerful. You will find this style of writing in books written by prisoners, drug addicts etc. and they make for very compelling reading. You have held it reasonably well here.
I also like how you use things like "enchanted bunnies" and "fun to slit throats" kinda humour. Very smooth. I really like it.
Yes Sandy. Very drastic change. I regret that happening.
DeleteThank you for the reading and reviewing the story Sandy. I shall keep in mind all the things that have been corrected here. :)
ups
ReplyDeleteGood to see you the conversation style of writing.
Downs
yet still unmarried - Use either 'yet' or 'still'
She prides herself - should be in the simple past tense.
family stuff - Words like 'stuff', 'crap', 'bullshit', etc, should not be used in narrative. They can well be used in dialogues, but not in narrative.
he landed a job - landed?
having my back there - ?
There are some more which I have not pointed out purposely as the list would look long. Another thing about your style of writing is you should either stick to drama style of writing or narrative style. Mixing up both is not recommended.
Hey Diwakar,
DeleteLanded a job is a normal idiom very commonly used.
I have read 'he has my back' also in books a lot, which is also a common idiom, but I don't know if it can be modified to 'having my back'. Anyone?
Nope it cannot, as far as I know!
Delete