HBO Fan Fiction

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Hollow Life: Personal Diary
Posted by Solidus Snake (chikornx@aol.com)
4 October 2004, 12:53 AM

http://halosn.bungie.org/fanfic/?story=solidus_snak.1004040053361.html

[Chuckles]

More than anything else, I liked the poem in the middle. This didn't sound much like a real diary. But you know your character better than I do, so I'll write it off to my ignorance.

You have a good imagination and seem to be a good writer, so don't let spelling and grammar errors distract your reader. Go through your story as many times as it takes. You had some easy words spelled wrong, and a few words in the wrong tense.

That aside, good job.

C.T. Clown

[Solidus Snake]

Thanks, I guess I didn't look over it as well either. Although I never intended for it have spelling errors, but when I start to type so fast I seem to skip words and such. And yeah it isn't a REAL diary but I do have one a bit more disturbing and stranger than this.

[echo3kilo]

i understand the whole ostracized and disturbed angle of the diary, but the language just doesn't seem to fit a 15yr old. Also, towards the end you got better with the first person POV. in the first entry you were doing more telling than showing, a diary tends to steer away from that. otherwise a good story.

[SYSTEM]

I can understand the grammatical errors - I could bet they are intentional - and using conversational use of 'like' would be quite fitting for an average teenager.

Very depressing.

But then again, there are some other errors outside of the journal. Solidus, since you're pretty regular, I'll just inform you, and leave it up to you.



But there's something Solidus captured. Symbolism. The whole diary was symbolic. You can't trust people, you can only trust paper. That kid was unstable, and in some cases, you allude heavily to "Go ask Alice." About the family connections crumbling, and the hard times at school.

And the burn at the end was symbolic in the way that life is delicate, like paper itself - and how it only took a small tick in balance to silence the writer forever - it reminds me of how the ruthless rulers burned books.

It shows that the Covenant once again wish to silence us all - by burning our books.

Almost like Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphasis." and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstien." It wasn't Doc Frankenstein that created the monster - it was society - that led to the death of creator and creation.

Like that famous German Scholar... I can't remember his name, but he said,

[b][i]"...First, we burn our books. Then, we burn our people..."



- Dave.
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"Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one." - A child's nursery rhyme.

"When in doubt, empty your magazine." - Murphy's first law of combat operations.

[MC's Cousin]

Well, your first entry sounded like a prologue to the whole guy's life. If it was the first entry, I could understand, but if not, I would have expected that to have been explained previously. Then, I would have dispersed references to the events throughout many different entries (ie- "Today I thought of my Stepfather, whom I hate..." and so on, why he thought of him and such).
Generally, I dislike diaries because they tend to be boring; not conveying details at all. This was no different; however, I liked this one. Because of the way you included it, it proved to be interesting enough to hold my attention through the end. At a point, I though that there was a good chance the kid would kill himself after a certain entry, or that the Covenant would attack at any time; but I suppose that is what happened.

Overall, it was good. Not as good as a solid narrative, but still a relaxing thing to read. Good work.
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-MCC