Kill the Engine prompt from The Flame

[unnameduntamed]

It was cold, even for January. We had been fortunate enough to have a journey free of storms but still it was so very cold. Ice made pretty patterns against the windows and the stars were clear in the dark night sky. It could even have been considered a great night for romance if the circumstances were different. But they weren’t.

I could hear the

Comments

[jamiekswriter]

Hi, I'm new to Brigit's Flame and I wanted to leave you some feedback. Please take from it what you feel is useful and disregard the rest

[rubyelf]

I was more than happy to believe the seriousness of the situation... with the story as short as it is and the way the pilots responded, I got the feeling that the pilots had already explored the other options and none of them were going to work. In a story that's short like this you don't necessarily need the details of what the pilots have been thinking or working on... because the passengers wouldn't know that. As you describe in the story, all they know is what the pilots are telling them.

To make the story more vivid you might replace some of the "was" and "were" with something more descriptive. And I find myself a bit curious about the narrator... I don't necessarily need to know where the plane is going or details like that, but maybe just some thoughts from the narrator... is there someone waiting for him / her? The mention of romance at the beginning kind of hints at that.

I like the finality of the last line; it's very grim.

[keppiehed]

I had not even considered putting the prompt at the end like this. That is really food for thought. When you are of a mind to chill us, you really have the touch. Thanks for sharing this week. I like what you have done here.

[belluminabyssus]

I liked the writing in this piece a lot, particularly in the first paragraph. My only quibble was about logistics. For instance, how on earth is a bomb wired to the engine, and if that's the case, how did the plane get up in the air without anything happening? It doesn't make sense that they can't land or even descend a little bit, but they CAN get up in the air. I don't know much about bombs, but I really doubt that this is possible, and that's what your whole story hinges upon.

I also don't see how killing the engine is the only option. They're high up in the air. Frankly, letting the plane plummet to the ground is a MUCH worse death than an instantaneous explosion. It doesn't make sense that they would immediately cut the engine and die in a crash instead of attempting to descend. After all, cutting the engine would result in definite death, and a bomb will result in death, so the only real option is to risk the bomb going off and trying to land. I get that "kill the engine" was the prompt, but logically the pilot's reasoning does

Edit a-coming

[mermaidbia]

I agree with jamiekswriter and belluminabyssus" that this piece, when you look at it with a very critical eye, has some problems, but I for one don't really care about logistics problems and lapses in logic if the piece itself is well-written, especially a piece as short as this where you obviously are going solely for the gravity and tension of the situation.

That said and looking over the piece again, my own problem with this is is that all the drama feels a little distanced, overly detached, to really strike home. Especially because the protagonist just seems to randomly come out of nowhere right in the middle of the piece. The protagonist merely watches in the first few paragraphs, and it's so passive that it almost slips your mind this is actually first person narrative - it could be an omnipotent third-person narrator for all we know. When you start comparing the little boy's wishes with the protagonist's, it feels incredibly random - like you've only just remembered that you've got a protagonist here. And that protagonist stays kinda detached even through

Re: Edit a-coming

[mermaidbia]

I listened to him list the things he wanted to do - so many things that I hoped he would get. So many things I hoped he would live to see. I didn’t even know him but his desires were becoming my desires and his wants were my own.
See, this comes kind of out of nowhere for the reasons I described above - we never got a real insight into the main character up until this point, and it feels...sporadic, like, 'What? Oh, right, this is first person'. I think you could even this out a bit more by introducing your character more thoroughly in the paragraphs beforehand - explore whether what they are seeing connects to them in any way. Like this, it feels oddly sudden.

The little boy fell asleep, his innocent chattering leaving a quiet panic in its wake.I try not to split hairs too much, but this doesn't make sense either, because "in its wake" to me rings of something that is definitely connected to what came beforehand, like "a storm left destruction in its wake". But the boy isn't really panicked, you say yourself he's innocently