# Fallout Shelter (174)



## ChrisChandler00 (Dec 2, 2014)

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to post a little something I've been working on. It was originally meant to be a comic strip, which I have adapted into real people words. I am convinced that in rewriting and rewriting I have edited any form of meaning right out of it.

Anyway, here it is ...


Silence.He'd heard nothing but silence for so long that it was deafening. Hesearched the plastic of the picnic table for imperfections. "Iknow that I've been difficult to live with. You know what I'm like. Iget an idea in my head and that's it, I have to see it through. I sawthat report on the news and I had to do it, you know that."


The LED lantern was asbright as the sales assistant had boasted. In this dank, dreary holein the ground it was too bright. "I know that I got carried awaybut I had to do it. For both of you." He scratched at theplastic with a fingernail. "I missed a lot of things. Birthdays.Christmas. Dance recitals. I wish I hadn't, but this needed to bedone, I just hope you can see that now."


His head felt like atwo tonne weight as he lifted it to look at the empty seats acrossfrom him. The gun was a feather in comparison.


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## Mike_550 (Dec 2, 2014)

Not sure I get the meaning behind it. It reads well, but "heard silence so long that it was deafening" does sound a little cliche to me as I have heard it before many times. That's all I can offer I'm afraid.


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## Optiluiz (Dec 3, 2014)

I really liked the idea behind it, and the imagery it invoked, but I think some rewording and editing might be in order.

The opening was good but I think you could skip the first use of 'Silence', it would make the paragraph flow a bit better in my opinion.

Overall, I think it's a good story, and I'm actually curious as to how it would work as a comic strip


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## Savalric (Dec 4, 2014)

I agree with what's been said so far, the silence is a little cliche. That's the only complaint I have. I'm curious to see how this turns out but based on how I perceived it, it seems as though this is story of a neurotic individual with OCD and is a little suicidal (if not entirely). I especially liked the last sentence; it adds just the right amount of darkness without explicitly saying "I'm gonna shoot everyone/myself".

oh! He's in a fallout shelter. That clears up some things lol.


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## ChrisChandler00 (Dec 11, 2014)

Thanks to everyone for the feedback.I agree on the silence bit. I'd been playing around with sirens and cacophony but the wording didn't seem right so I went with the cliched 'deafening' for posting. Will keep working on it!The idea of the story is that he was so obsessed with building the fallout shelter that he had pushed his family away. When it came time to actually use it he was only able to save himself, defeating the purpose of making it in the first place. Optiluiz, the comic strip shows a side view of a table with him sitting across him his little girl, who gradually fades away. The gun thing came into it when I started writing it like this.Thanks again, everyone!


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## Chaseanthemum (Dec 19, 2014)

Everyone else has already mentioned the cliche line. Just a bit of rewording is needed. The melancholic feel is conveyed very well though. The ending leaves the audience knowing what is going to happen without having to directly state that the character killed themself. That's how you know you're doing something right  well done!


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## deadpringle (Dec 19, 2014)

I know that some people think that adding excessive details with regards to the setting is AVeryBadThing(tm). I tend to disagree however. I read through the piece several times, and I'm having difficulty understanding what exactly is going on. From what I can tell, we have someone who is either suicidal, or homicidal, who is attempting to come to grips with something.

Here is my opinion in writing in general: do not be shy about setting up the story's surroundings. It's good to help the reader better understand the "flavor" of what's going on in the writing. Here is an impromptu example of my own of what I'm talking about.
----
The air in the woods was filled with the sounds of late evening. Crickets seemed to be laying down a base noise beneath the occasional taps of light rain striking the ground beneath the pine trees. The constancy of the sounds was suddenly and rudely interrupted.

Jim had been running for nearly an hour straight. The sound of branches being crushed underfoot by his barely broken-in boots was almost rhythmic. His nose and mouth burned with cold, inhaling the wet odor of rain, and pine, as his feet pounded beneath him. The sunlight was fading fast, and he was desperate to get back to Evelyn. Though he managed to find the supplies he needed in the old cabin they had hiked past hours ago, his spirits were low. His mind was tortured with the idea of finding his wife laying where he left her, blue and lifeless.
----

So, the point here is, we don't exactly know *everything* that's going on. However, we can start to empathize with the character. We know that he's cold, wet, desperate to help his wife, and that the two of them are either lost, or were trying to hike back to someplace they know is safe. Details can help to suck the reader in, and get them involved.

Just my $0.02.


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## LadyGrumps (Dec 19, 2014)

I really liked this. I think the title is integral to understanding what is happening. I agree with the cliche comments above, but overall I enjoyed it. I like the comparison between weights of his head (ie, his thoughts, his memories and his decisions weighing on him) to the gun, which implies suicide or homicide which may have been a much easier course than what we had already put himself through.


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## Nixrp (Dec 20, 2014)

I love it, so vivid. Post more!


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## ChrisChandler00 (Dec 31, 2014)

Thanks for the replies!

Deadpringle, I get exactly where you are coming from. When I write, I find that I usually go a little overboard with the description. Or maybe I'm just paranoid! I'll post an example at a later date to see what you all think. 
This was partly an exercise in trying to remove anything that I felt was unnecessary, but I fear I nosedived into the other end of the spectrum in places. This was also an adaptation of a comic strip I planned to produce which was very minimalist also. (When I find an artist stupi--good enough to draw the thing I'll share it for comparison. Anyone an artist who likes working for free?) 

Thanks again for your comments, always very much appreciated.


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## SethVonDoom (Apr 30, 2015)

Short but it was certainly interesting to read, I enjoyed.  Hopefully you decide to post some more.


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## ChrisChandler00 (May 12, 2015)

Thanks for reading, Seth!

In response to comments here and elsewhere, I tried to correct the cliche and give a better understand of the setting. 



He had been living in his own head for what felt like months. Years. In reality, he'd been underground for little more than a day or two. The silence had warped into a deafening cacophony of sirens, wails, buzzers that bore down on him relentlessly. There was no escape.

The LED lantern was as bright as the sales assistant had boasted. In this dank, dreary hole in the ground it was too bright. Every detail of the ten foot by ten foot pit was painfully clear. The concrete floor that he'd poured. The remnants of a lasagne dish poking out amidst a spattering of pasta sauce and mince meat frozen solid into the flooring. He remembered his wife throwing the dish into the hole as if it had happened moments ago. The anger in her face. 

He hated the memory of her anguish but at least it offered a break from the image of his daughter as she stood by the hole, her pink tutu and ballet shoes darkening as the rain quickened. Watching her daddy dig. In her childlike innocence she understood why daddy never looked up.

He wasn't sure when they stopped coming home. He wasn't sure when his daughter's room was emptied or when his wife's clothes vanished. He carried on.

His head felt like a two tonne weight as he lifted it to look at the empty seats across from him. The gun was a feather in comparison.


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## Silence (May 13, 2015)

Trying to figure out what is happening in the story. In your first paragraph. I recommend you replace the second silence with it or get rid of the first one and see how that works.


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## Harper J. Cole (May 13, 2015)

Nice piece, I think that it improved a lot with the rewrite. Adding details about his family adds to the sense of loss, and the opening lines are more engaging now. A good example of acting on feedback!

HC


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## jambleshiroshima (Sep 1, 2015)

It's neat, but a little stale and much too short. Missing spaces in some places, so that's not good! I would recommend fleshing this out a bit, correcting some of your grammatical mistakes as well as adding some much needed detail. The title is also a tad confusing, what's that all about with the "Fallout Shelter"? Good luck with your plans with this, I'd love to see this when a bit more thought is put into it!


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## Tbird0000 (Sep 1, 2015)

I saw the title and I thought to myself "Hope this isn't based off the Android/IOS game" LOL. But I like the idea and I think ideas like this can go anywhere. I recently watched a movie called "Air" made by the creators of the Walking Dead TV Series. And this short passage kind of had an "Air" feel to it. Stories that take place in shelters is always appealing, at least to me personally.

Reading it, I was able to piece everything together. But if I had not known the title beforehand, I would have been lost so I think some descriptive writing is needed to really let the reader know what's going on. I didn't get that the character was homicidal, rather, I understood the character to be lonely and depressed. The gun sitting in front of him on the table is like his imaginary friend ya know. I think that would be a good twist. He talks to himself a lot but really he's talking to the gun because he's grown a tad bit crazy from being by himself the whole time.

I dunno, just my 2 cents. Keep it up.


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