[CloudsCollide]

THE PIANO ON THE HALL
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs47/f/2009/209/e/6/The_bloody_piano_by_huastekito.jpg

The moment my fingertips touched the smooth, ivory keys of the grand piano,I felt a very strange, bizarre sensation flooding inside me....It was as if I had been playing it before... from another time; from another place... sitting on its very own custom chair... deftly and expertly pressing its keys; moving from one octave to another... moving, at first on a slow tempo... then faster... then slower again in a blissful dance of melody and rhythm...


And IT wants me to play it... once more...


Uncertain, I quietly sat on the chair and waited. Should I play it? I asked myself. I know I shouldn't...Its going to happen... the rumors... but deep inside me, the awkward feeling I felt earlier was beginning to turn from bad to worst.


What's the worst thing that could happen? Its just one small touch.


a second past...two seconds...three...

then, all of sudden, a simple, vibrating sound echoed through the empty hall.


"TING"


Without realizing it, I was surprised to find my left pointing finger pressing the lower C key of the second octave. I paused, breath held up, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing.

Sighing, I stood up,shook my head and replaced the chair into its original position. I'm only imagining things, I told myself. Teira and the girls from the club are fooling around with me.


Your'e such an idiot, Shizumi. Tomorrow the whole middle school will surely make a big laugh about this.


"Uuurrghh... those bullies!", I groaned. School life will be a lot less difficult without them marching all over the campus and making hell out of other students' miserable lives.

Grumpily, I grabbed my otapu bag slumping on the floor and proceeded towards the steps leading the exit. I hadn't gone more than a few paces away when It happened.


"TING" "DING" "FRUM"


A series of notes began to resound on the still air surrounding the hall, slowly at first... then accelerating faster and faster.With fear gripping through me, I turned my head.It was coming from that old grand piano. And that's not all.

Blood was flowing all over it.

[CloudsCollide]

Hello. My name is Mimi. Lately I've been building a story based on an urban legend from my old middle school.
Its about an old grand piano that was said to belong to a defamed pianist who apparently committed suicide.
It was said that she was found dead sitting on that piano. They said that she stabbed herself on the heart.
Since then the piano's ownership was passed on from one person to another.
But those who came in possession of her piano all died of unnatural causes.
Since then it was said that whoever tries to play her piano will be cursed to die.

Its just a story... :)

THE PIANO ON THE HALL
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs47/f/2009/209/e/6/The_bloody_piano_by_huastekito.jpg

The moment my fingertips touched the smooth, ivory keys of the grand piano,I felt a very strange, bizarre sensation flooding inside me....It was as if I had played it before... from another time; another place... sitting on its own custom chair... deftly and expertly pressing its keys; moving from one octave to another... moving on a slow tempo... then faster... then slower again in a blissful dance of melody and rhythm...


And IT wants me to play it... once more...


Shivering from these thoughts, I quietly sat on the chair and waited.I gazed once more on its shiny, neglected keys. They longed for masterful hands. Should I play it? I asked myself. I know I shouldn't. What about the rumors? What if they are all true?But I cant resist it. deep inside me, the awkward feeling I felt awhile ago was beginning to turn from bad to worst.


What's the worst thing that could happen? just one small touch.


a second past...
two seconds...
three...


then a sudden, a simple, vibrating sound echoed through the empty hall.


"TING"


Without realizing it, I was surprised to find my left pointing finger pressing the lower C key of the second octave. I paused, breath held up, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing.

Sighing, I stood up,shook my head and replaced the chair into its original position. I'm only imagining things, I told myself. Teira and the girls from the club are fooling around with me.


Your'e such an idiot, Shizumi. Tomorrow the whole middle school will surely make a big laugh about this.


"Uuurrghh... those bullies!", I groaned. School life will be a lot less difficult without them marching all over the campus and making hell out of other students' miserable lives.Grumpily, I grabbed my otapu bag slumping on the floor and proceeded towards the steps leading the exit. I hadn't gone more than a few paces away when It happened.


"TING" "DING" "FRUM"


A series of notes began to resound on the still air surrounding the hall, slowly at first... then accelerating faster and faster.With fear gripping through me, I turned my head.It was coming from that old grand piano.

But that's not all.

Blood was flowing all over it.

[kmtolan]

None of this worked for me, but it took a little bit before I could figure out why. Narrative wasn't the issue here, because we had internalized thoughts and such.

It finally hit me. This reads like a sketch for a short story or scene.

Perhaps it is because we haven't had time to appreciate the piano nor its history. Same with Shizumi. Instead, the piece plows right into the horrid event itself.

This needs fleshing out - time for the reader to sympathize with the character and get to know her. Time to feel creepy about the piano well before it begins to reach out. That odd glance at something out the corner of her eye. A slight sigh waking her in a cold sweat. Give us time, and build to the horror.

Kerry

[owlcroft]

The moment my fingertips touched the smooth, ivory keys of the grand piano, I felt a very strange, bizarre sensation flooding inside me....

The moment my eyes hit that sentence, I felt an excess of adjectives flooding my mind. The moment I touched the keys, I felt a bizarre sensation....

I won't undertake a sentence-by-sentence analysis (I used to get paid to do that). But--being brutally frank--the passage reads like a hasty first draft. I forget who it was that famously apologized for the length of a book manuscript he had submitted, remarking that had he had more time, it would have been half the length.

[CloudsCollide]

thanx for the comment I'll rewrite this as best as I can.

[Eliot Wild]

If I tried to pretend that I was a literary critic or creative writing expert on this forum or elsewhere, I would most certainly be revealed as a fraud in an instant. So, in that regard, I can give you neither professional nor academic advice and criticism, but I can tell you as a reader what I like and what I don't like.

First of all, I personally find the constant use of adjectives to be tiresome, especially if they seem unnecessary, redundent and/or vague. Of course, everyone is welcome to describe me as "hypocritical" for using no less than five adjectives in the foregoing sentence.

Again, keep in mind this is just my personal taste and opinions and may be well off the mark. But it seems your use of adjectives in the excerpt was a bit excessive.

For example, "smooth" keys seems to me to be unnecessary. Are there any other kind of piano keys? I suppose there might be "rough" keys, but that wouldn't be normal and adjectives seem, at least to me, better used when describing the unexpected rather than to describe that which should be expected. "Rough" or "Uneven" piano keys is something one might describe because that would be unusual; "smooth" keys is the norm.

"Strange, bizarre sensation" falls into both the "redundant" and "vague" catagories. Strange and bizarre are essentially interchangeable words, right? What is the difference, really? This seems to me to be unnecessarily repetitive.

Finally, as descriptive elements of the sentence, "strange" and "bizarre" seem a bit vague to me. A strange sensation could be a creepy feeling in the back of your mind or it could be an unwanted hand on your leg. So, in that regard, as a matter of personal taste, I just think you might have chosen a more exact way of describing the "strangeness" of the sensation. Perhaps you should take a little more time in the narrative to explain what makes things seem strange? Was it strange because the character was doing something dangerous or reckless in playing a piano that reputedly has supernatural powers to cause death? Or was it strange because the character could sense another presence nearby, perhaps associated with the instument? Or was it strange because the character sensed absolutely nothing at all coming from this piano which is legendary for killing musicians attempting to play it?

That is my "two-cents worth". Take it for what its worth, a lot less than two cents.

[Eliot Wild]

Oh, and by the way, I suppose I should write something encouraging as well. It is easy to find fault, and I know that's what you asked us to do, but I also want to point out that I like the idea of centering a scary story around a piano.

Again, this is just a personal opinion of mine, but I have always found tales of horror to be all the more gripping and frightening when an author takes common, seemingly innocuous items and makes them the centerpiece of a story.

It is relatively easy to scare people's wits out when your killer is a shark or a malfunctioning robot or a crazed masked-man with a machete. But it takes a talented writer with demented skills to terrorize readers with a piano.

Good luck.

[bobnagga]

Another thing, you might give some thought to getting to know some musical terminology, but the 'lower C key of the second octave?' is that Cb? or lower as in physical position, which would make it Cnatural... Of course that's only nitpicking, but you're sure to find those people who go "What is this guy talking about?" And these others here are talking about adjective quantity, but what about adjective agreement? The shiny, neglected keys... what's the urban legend? A phantom maid cleans the piano, scaring the bejeezus out of anyone who happens to happen by. If anyone sees her, she slaughters them with the jagged remains of a feather duster, then stuffs them into the top of the piano. It's their writhing spirits that have kept the piano in tune all these years... I mean sorry if I sound harsh. It's just what goes through my mind before that little censor kicks in and sugarcoats my words. It could be good. Elliot's right. If you can scare people with a musical instrument, you're just talented, plain and simple. Try a xylophone. The Xylophone of Bone, mwahahahahahahaaaaaa!

[owlcroft]

A thread (http://sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?p=562203) possibly relevant to this one appears on Writing forum here.