Summary

“A story about nothing” is about ailing person dreaming they are a pony. Or about an ailing pony dreaming they are a human. Or about you, dreaming both. It’s a simple story that doesn’t want much. Let’s find out if it manages to accomplish it.

Review

It’s unlikely that a writer’s bio bears much consequence to any story. And in a very strict sense, that holds true for this one too, yet I feel it’s advantageous to ponder on it in relation to the story. 

“Write with intent behind every word.” 

A noble goal, if a bit idealistic. I think the writer managed to live up to their ideals reasonably well.

One problem though:

Sometimes the story could have also used some of that intent. 

I can certainly see how certain elements of the story are supposed to do certain things, but each one of them is so self-serving and so disjointed from the others that they never really add up to one whole story. 

In effect I doubt this is even meant to be a story, there’s certainly no plot to speak of, things don’t really happen, the characters we don’t even know in the first place, don’t go through anything, and that obviously doesn’t change them in anyway whatsoever.

I think this is more of an attempt at poetry than anything else, trying to convey feelings not through characters experiencing stuff in an imaginary word, but through pictures painted by words not necessarily meant to mean anything strictly coherent.

Whether I’m right or wrong in my assessment, this story fails at either.

It fails at being a story, by not telling one, and it fails being poetry by saying nothing, and doing it in fairly annoying fashion, that simultaneously manages to be painfully pedestrian, and purposelessly pompous. Just like my failed attempt at alliteration.

Take this for example:

Tired-- that was the feeling. You were tired.

This sentence is like the third paragraph. I get that the author is trying to convey a sense of confusion but they’re going for the top self at the first opportunity. Tiredness is not a terribly confusing feeling. We’re all pretty familiar with it. To believe that someone is in such a puzzled state that they can’t even understand that they are tired, the reader is going to need some justification. 

Maybe something in their life went terribly wrong. Maybe something astronomically unexpected happened. Or something of that ilk that balances out the extremities the writer went for in their description.

Another characteristic of poetry is the very nuanced use of language. Just take the poems of Rudyard Kipling, or the songs of Marshall Bruce Mathers III. Though they are/were from different eras and in general I would be hard pressed to find any similarities between them, apart from the fact that they choose every single one of their words very carefully. This story doesn’t have this, and instead it provides us with gems like this:

The creak of your door catches your attention, but you remain still. Was this an intruder? Were you about to be robbed?

What’s the purpose of that tense shift? I could maybe justify the second sentence, but that still leaves one. I get that tenses are hard. They are just about the only widely used part of English which is really hard. But if a writer is not utterly proficient at using them maybe they shouldn’t attempt writing in a style that accentuates linguistic proficiency. You can get away with sloppy prose in novels if your stories are good enough. (If you don’t believe me, just read some late Asimov when he was running out of great ideas. It’s not pretty.) In poetry? Not so much.

The last thing I couldn’t wrap my head around is the use of second person. It forces the reader in such an untenable position. As much as I want to applaud the writer for writing scenes many people can relate to, I can’t because they still failed. And it’s not their fault. There is no such thing as universally relatable event. Not to this level of intimacy.

Every reader will have their differences to the character and when those arise, they will feel alienated from not just the character, but the story. My such moment was when the character is struggling to sleep. I don’t. Ever. I know it’s unusual, but nevertheless when a story suddenly tells me that I have trouble sleeping it unsuspends my disbelief

Also I don’t know what exactly provided the second person narration over a third or a first person one. I could name possible ways, not even bad ones how the second person narration contributed to certain scenes, but none of those contributions are big enough to justify the drawbacks.

I think this story ultimately tried to sacrifice substance on the altar of style, losing both in the process. It was an ambitious project, by an author not yet aware of their own limitations. (Before one can push their limits, they have to know where they are.) And despite the results there is something inherently fascinating in individuals banging their head against boundaries. I believe one day - after a lot of headaches - when they figure out what is the best way to approach certain situations in writing, I will have a lot of enjoyment reading their work.

Not yet though. 3/10