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Nubile Hillock posted:Tensegrity The writing is good. This is close to where you want it to be. There are lots of little things I could say about this, but I'd rather not inundate you with tiny points. I have one big point instead. You. are. too. fast. Like Stone pointed out in the 'dome with your latest story, your prose is white-hot and hard to handle. You aren't so much spoon feeding me the plot as ramming it down my throat at a thousand miles-per-hour. Chill. Your action sequences are already punchy and full of vitality. It feels like you're dropping whole chunks of pertinent info just so you can rush me on to the next exciting thing that is happening. Obviously that is part and parcel of this piece as it is all about being in a hurry. But it is a far better thing to occasionally lose your grip on the rollercoaster ride than it is to leave your readers guessing or lost. Having terse and quick-fire descriptions is a great thing and a skill you clearly possess. Not including descriptions that might be vital to your reader's understanding is less good. I went through this line-edit with this one idea in mind, trying to cut where I could while pointing out things that left me reeling or confused. Hope it is of some use.
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Feb 18, 2013 21:27
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Nubile Hillock posted:This is like the nicest thing anyone's ever said 'bout my writing : ) Yeah it was in my mind that it was intentional, but as a general rule I never give the benefit of the doubt when giving crits. Don't sweat it if some of my points are just white noise 'cos I don't get references/context that your intended audience will. Looking forward to seeing some more of your stuff bouncing around.
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Feb 18, 2013 22:57
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I hope you know the expression you've got to be cruel to be kind.Plank posted:Toben [734 words] There was more I could have got picky about, but that seems like enough for starters. For your first foray into creative writing this is by no means bad, but it isn't going to be winning any awards. For an opener it is cliché with not much that stands out. Really only the metweed and left-right stuff caught my attention in a good way. Grammatically speaking there weren't really many mistakes in this at all, so your next step is to ensure that you can deliver a clear and understandable picture to your reader. I would say your scene-setting was schizophrenic at best, it took me a while to actually figure out how the whole slave system worked. Even now, I'm not clear. They seem to be sitting down, as you describe 'back to back' and then getting whipped from the front for literally no reason which seems like pretty poor business practice for slavers. But in the first sentence you have him shuffle, as if he was standing. And you mention later that he walked through this metweed with another slave. So everything else in the story points to the fact they are actually walking, not sitting. Why else would they be getting whipped? For napping while sitting in a cart? To me it just makes no sense. Then afterwards we get no description of the roads, the forest etc. Just dry action. I don't feel like I'm getting pulled into the world at all. Once you can get into getting your vision across clearly, you then need to work on eliminating clunky turns of phrase and making your prose much tighter. P.S. For the love of Christ don't have gruff soldiers immediately launch into "gentle" and paternal 'lad'-calling. Between the arrow in the bindings as Tiggum said, 'leagues' and fantasy place names, you are painting a big red target on your story that says "I love fantasy books. Let me stick in all those things I like about fantasy books." Hope your self-esteem survives these thirty lashes and comes back with a more polished version.
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Feb 22, 2013 16:29
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Prologue Rain lashed the windows relentlessly, rattling the panes. Lightning blazed across the heavens and thunder rumbled like some ancient evil. General Braunschweig trembled at every noise under his covers. Veteran of a dozen campaigns over his long and illustrious career but never before had he felt a fear like this. The howling wind played the chimney like a whistle while the familiar creaks and groans of his family seat taunted him. It was the waiting he couldn't bear - too much for an old soldier like himself. He wrenched the duvet aside and dropped his feet into his bedside slippers. Ridiculous in nightgown and cap he shuffled to the umbrella stand where he kept his old sabre. As his fingers settled into their well-worn grooves on the hilt he felt some calm return. It looked like tonight was going to be another sleepless vigil. It had been a grave mistake getting involved with those ambitious upstarts. He ambled across to his oft-visited liquor cabinet and poured himself a generous brandy. '54 Leipzburg Reserve, his secret weapon for occasions such as these. He figured it might go some way to stopping the tremors, but even if it didn't; he took a long slug from the tumbler and wiped his mouth . Butter-smooth, as always. He had once joked, half-seriously, that Leipzburg was the only friend he could truly rely on. He sunk down into his old armchair. It creaked and the red leather cushions wheezed and surrendered with a sigh to accommodate him. The firelight played through the amber liquid in his glass, casting warm scythes of light across his trembling hand. He watched it shake detachedly. It was a sobering window into his own past. The missing chunk from his index finger - shrapnel from a misfiring cannon had ripped that away at Alacampha. The dark lateral scar from when that Tarkan officer had gone for him with one of their brutal scimitars. The permanent purplish powder scorch from when a mortar had exploded mere feet away from him at Belkos. Even still, those wounds were slight compared to the savaging time had wrought upon his hands. Yellowing skin, black liver spots and gangrenous looking veins ruptured up from inside, all vying for prominence. His physical appearance was abhorrent to him. Time. One enemy he couldn't fight with conventional means. Perhaps if he hadn't been so averse to aging gracefully he wouldn't have got into this mess into the first place. Hubris and fear had brought him here. He had once remarked that there was nothing more pathetic and undignified than an old man begging for his life. True words – was what he was doing so different? But show him a man his age who wouldn't have taken the opportunity if it had presented itself. Or perhaps his principles had simply crumbled into dust, he considered darkly. He really had grown old. With that, he necked the rest of the brandy. The brandy worked its magic and his sabre stopped rattling in its scabbard. Steadiness regained, if not his total composure, he walked to the door. “Report Corporal,” he barked at the man he had stationed at his door. There was no reply. “Corporal, report,” he spoke a little louder, the tremors edging back into his voice. Still there was no reply. Sabre at the ready, he swallowed, and slowly turned the door-handle until the latch clicked. He jerked the door open in a quick motion, hoping to catch off-guard anybody lying in wait. But the corridor was empty. No guard, no phantom assassin. Just the sound of the rain on the windows and the glow from the gas lamps. Perhaps the Corporal had merely gone to relieve himself. If he had abandoned his post, by God, he would see him cleaning latrines for a full year. The sabre in his arm drooped as he untensed. Then, the gaslamp at the furthest end of the corridor was snuffed out. The General blinked, unsure if his aged eyes were playing tricks on him. He gripped his sword tightly once more and strained to see into the murky distance. The next gaslamp along flickered out of existence as he watched. And then like dominoes they died each in turn faster and faster, one by one, until they had all ceased burning. He took several steps backwards, panic seizing his heart and squeezing tight. He felt short of breath. A cold draft blew in from the end of the hall, giving him goosebumps. “Oh God...” he whispered to himself. Whatever good prayers might do for him now. The light disappeared - the fire in his bedroom suddenly extinguished - and he was plunged into total darkness. He drew his sabre with a metalline aspiration and dropped the scabbard with a loud clatter. “Who's there!” he shouted, bravado the last refuge from terror. His words were eaten by the blackness. The only sound was that of the wind and rain. Lightning flashed. In the brief brilliance, something appeared at the end of the corridor. A hunched silhouette of a man, swaying. The light from the flash died away but he could still see something there. A man-shaped illuminance. A peal of thunder grumbled. The silhouette lurched from side to side like a drunkard. Then it moved. It staggered towards him, horribly slow yet with inexorable intent. General Braunschweig was rooted to the spot, hypnotised by what he was witnessing. The light from the figure grew brighter and it became harder and harder to look at directly. The carpet beneath it began to scorch and smoke. As it got closer, the outer edges became indistinct, less and less human with every step. It began to bubble and drip liquid light. The curtains ignited at its passing. “I'm not the one you want!” screamed the General towards it “It wasn't me, I was dragged into this. I don't care about the box or its miserable secrets! Leave me be!” At his shout reverberated throughout the house, the apparition flickered and disappeared like a snuffed candle. The General blinked, agog. Blue and white wraiths danced before his eyes from the sudden absence. For a cruel moment, relief washed over him. Had it left him in peace? He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. As he did, he felt an unnatural warmth behind him. And he knew it was not the warmth of his rekindled fireplace. He turned slowly, dreading. He opened his eyes and was face to face with an abomination. It groaned and burbled, a bright white molten man. The neon effervescence of its skin gave off an oppressive heat and hissed like a snake. The General stared, going blind, into the area where its eyes ought to be. “What are you?” he whispered. The nightmare-being didn't speak. It emitted a tortured screech. The volume and dissonance of it conjured up a storm in the room, ripping books from the shelves and smashing bottles and glasses in a deafening fury. In the eye of the storm stood the General and the monster, stock still. General Braunschweig couldn't see, couldn't hear, but he felt the thing wrap him in its liquescent grasp. In a seething column of smoke and fire, the General burned. This is a Prologue which is the hook for something I am writing. The General is an irrelevant bit-part character and doesn't come up again other than maybe in an oblique reference or two (in my head anyway), so I want this piece to work as a standalone thing that grabs interest while also straddling the line between making the character forgettable but not hollow. Does it grab your interest? Is it crap? Lay it on me.
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Feb 26, 2013 18:56
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Thanks for the input. What happens to the guy is relevant, just not the guy himself. And yes the box is the major plot point, so no worries on that front. I only wrote this prologue as a taster of things to come. I did actually post what would have been the original start of my story as its own thread here months ago, but feedback was that really it was too boring. Since then I have spiced up that chapter a little, but really I want the whole thing to start slow and build up into a crescendo. So the cut and thrust of why I put this in is was essentially "Hey guys! Look! Fun stuff will happen if you wait a bit!" Patronising? Maybe. But I'll hold off before scrapping it. Things that I'll be aiming to change: Redress the whole character issue of the grizzled-but-cowardly general, tighten up first half, cut some adjectives to appease sebmojo and try to nail down a proper tone. It is so, so easy to fall into the trap of tongue in cheek fantasy tropes and really I want to avoid them at all costs, at least at the start. I think impersonal horror would work better overall, so I'll try to cut the Hollywood. Shout-out to Kloctopussy, thanks for the line-edit. I'll be incorporating most of that stuff.
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Feb 27, 2013 12:05
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Prologue - MARK TWO? Rain lashed the windows, rattling the panes and lightning ignited thick swathes of cloud. General Braunschweig looked out gravely. It was eerie, out-of-season weather. He was well on his way to finishing his third brandy, but still he could feel his fingers refusing to be still. The palm of his other hand rested on the pommel of his sabre. It had been a mistake getting involved with those ambitious upstarts. He went to refill his glass from the dwindling reservoir in the decanter and retired to his armchair. The cushions wheezed and surrendered with a sigh to accommodate him. The firelight cast scythes of light across his trembling hand. He watched it shake. It was a sobering window into his own past. The missing chunk from his index finger - shrapnel from a misfired cannon at Alacampha. The dark lateral scar across the back – the scimitar slash of a Tarkan officer. The purplish powder scorch - a chance mortar at Belkos. An ancient map of scar-tissue that you could follow back through the decades. Yet those wounds were slight compared to the savaging time had wrought upon his hands. Yellowed skin, liver spots and gangrenous looking veins ruptured up from inside, all vying for prominence. His physical appearance was an abhorrence to him. Time. One enemy he couldn't fight with conventional means. If he hadn't been so averse to aging gracefully he wouldn't have gotten into this mess. He remembered remarking once that there was nothing more pathetic and undignified than an old man begging for his life. True words – he thought it still – but was what he was doing so different? He clutched his tumbler a little tighter. Perhaps his principles had wasted away like the rest of him. Perhaps our dignity withers and fails like the rest of us. Was he then to be blamed? He felt bitterness rise. Show him the man in his place who wouldn't have done the same, he wanted to shout. Show him what the better man would have done. He necked the rest of the brandy in anger, then sagged. It was too late now for regrets and remonstrations. His dignity knew that much at least. He shook his head and walked to the door. “Report Corporal,” he commanded the man stationed outside. There was no reply. “Corporal, report,” he spoke a little louder, alcohol infused bravado draining from his voice. Still there was no reply. Sabre at the ready, he swallowed, and slowly turned the door-handle until the latch clicked. He jerked the door open in a quick motion, hoping to catch off-guard anybody lying in wait. But the corridor was empty. No guard, no phantom assassin. Just the sound of the rain and the glow from the gas lamps. If he had abandoned his post, by God, the man would regret it. The sabre in his arm drooped as he relaxed. Perhaps the man had simply gone to relieve himself. Then, the gaslamp at the furthest end of the corridor was snuffed out. The General blinked, unsure if his aged eyes were playing tricks on him. He tightened his grip on his sword once more and strained to see. The next gaslamp along flickered out of existence as he watched. There was no mistaking it. And then like dominoes they died, each in turn faster and faster, one by one, until they had all ceased burning. He took several steps backwards, panic seizing his heart and squeezing tight. A cold draft blew in from the end of the hall. He began to whisper a prayer but stopped himself. Whatever had come for Gerhardt and Albert had come for him. And their prayers had done them no good at all. His only source of light - the fire in his bedroom – was suddenly extinguished and he was engulfed by darkness. He drew his inadequate sabre dropped the scabbard with a loud clatter. “Who's there!” he shouted. His words were eaten by the blackness. Still the only sounds were the wind and the rain. Lightning flashed. In the brief brilliance, something appeared at the end of the corridor. A hunched silhouette of a man, swaying. The light from the flash died away but he could still see it there. A man-shaped illuminance. The silhouette lurched from side to side like a drunkard. Then it began to stagger towards him, horribly slow yet with inexorable intent. General Braunschweig was rooted to the spot. It was hypnotic. The light from the figure grew brighter and brighter until he had to shield his eyes. The carpet beneath it began to scorch and smoke. As it got closer, the outer edges became indistinct, less and less human with every step. It bubbled and dripped liquid light. The curtains ignited at its passing. “Leave me be!“ screamed the General as he backed away “I don't have it, I never had it!” At his shout, the apparition flickered and disappeared. The General blinked. Blue and white wraiths danced before his eyes from the sudden absence. For a cruel moment, relief washed over him. Had it left him in peace? He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. As he did, he felt an unnatural warmth behind him. And he knew it was not the warmth of his rekindled fireplace. Dread filled him. He turned, and was face to face with an abomination. It was a nightmare. It looked like man who had fallen into boiling lead. It stumbled towards him groaning and burbling, thick white gobs of its skin sloughing off onto the floor. It was a living furnace. The General felt his skin begin the blister and his eyes drying in their sockets. The sheer intensity of the light rendered him blind. He swung his sabre wildly, trying to fend it off, but it was useless. The apparition released a tortured wail. The volume and dissonance of it seemed to bring the storm into the room, ripping books from the shelves and smashing glass in a deafening fury. In the eye of the maelstrom the monster and the General stood together. General Braunschweig couldn't see, couldn't hear. He shouted incoherently. He felt the thing wrap him in its melting grasp. And in a seething column of smoke and fire, the General burned. Sheer weight of crits encouraged me to get stuck right back into this. I'd like to think I ticked most of the boxes that I set for myself but in doing so I probably made a whole bunch more boxes to tick. To me this feels tighter and slicker, then again that might just be a case of pride before the fall. P.S. Sabres can totally rattle so  , but I too wondered whether it was too idiomatic.
Jeza fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Feb 28, 2013 |
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Feb 28, 2013 00:35
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Nubile Hillock posted:The rest of it I can't really find fault with, but my fine-toothed comb isn't as fine as some others.  Good calls.
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Feb 28, 2013 00:56
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sebmojo posted:This is much improved, I had a go at the first couple of paragraphs see what you think. You know something works when you read over something and think 'that was what I wrote wasn't it?'. Coincidentally I was reading some earlier parts of this thread and saw that you really have a disliking for Perdido Street Station. Yeah, I definitely think I know what style of writing really pushes your buttons  Might necro my old thread with some of my new stuff on this story. Please though, contain your excitement.
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Mar 1, 2013 22:49
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sebmojo posted:i actually don't mind his style as such, he's a very good writer; it's the pretentiously baroque miserablism that twists my nipples. I should read another of his to see if I like it better. He does tone it down some, but I'd say that is pretty much omnipresent. Could try Kraken though, it is set in London which constrains the baroque and I vaguely remember it as being not being completely miserable. But yeah, less derail and more people posting stuff
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Mar 2, 2013 13:29
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GiveUpNed posted:A story I'm sure what seb was trying to say in his own kind-hearted fashion was that: 1) Not every description needs to be the most contrived bullshit simile. 2) The story is trying so hard to be dramatic and edgy that you can see the tryhard from outer space. Look at how often you use those terrible cliché clipped sentences. You aren't writing a comic book. 3) The premise is done to death (hah.), you have ridiculous description in some places and then totally lack it in others, there is no noticeable characterisation, the grammar is shaky. Here are some choice excerpts for you to mull over: His demons, his pursuers, his, his… - Not only is this dumb as hell, it completely destroys any 'descent into madness' vibe you might once have dreamed of creating. The rustle of her clothing (against the cabins wooden floors) made his cheeks twitch like a sputtering sausage on a grill—hot balls of grease splatting cross his temple. - Can anything even be said about this? And man you are just not ready for parentheses. She was too involved in her thoughts to see the flash of relief accompanied with the dilation of John’s pupils to sense anything was wrong. - I too often look into people's eyes and see whether they dilate as in indication of MURDEROUS INTENT. His rationality gone; it joined his love for her in the godforsaken pit of his stomach. - Barf. What is godforsaken about it? Did he eat too many sputtering sausages? Time to prepare, you can’t murder someone and not be ready. That’s like showing up late to your own wedding. It’s just not done. - This is what should not be done. John examined their carving knife, too dull. His axe; too small. - THIS KNIFE? TOO DULL. THIS AXE? TOO SMALL. THIS LOG? JUUUUUUST RIGHT! No it isn't idiot, a log is a dumb weapon and axe's aren't small unless they are hatchets and even still that is a better murder weapon. Not only that but you have this whole misleading spiel about a table leg which is clearly leading into being the murder weapon then you just loving forget about it or something. What the hell. The red sky glinted through the windows gently and splattered on the walls. Yellow suddenly accompanied them. - Keats eat your heart out. Firewood. He could bludgeon her to death with a log. Perfect. Burnable evidence, a dead wife, and a roaring fire. Perhaps there is hot chocolate as well. - Amazing.
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Apr 10, 2013 13:00
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GiveUpNed posted:Hi there. It's for an entrance porfolio for an advertising program. They provided an image and I'm supposed to write a story based on it. The reason it's contrived, is due to me being constrained by the photo. Is that a joke? Unless this photo is a picture of the words you wrote and you copied them down, then I fail to see how it is relevant. I didn't call your story contrived, although it is a typical 'log cabin in the woods' yarn, I called your descriptions contrived. Foreheads bubbling, Deserts aching, suns drowning, cabins like mold on peaches - this is beyond fanciful. It roars straight through the borders of poncy right into pretension county. If my comments made you feel defensive it is at least a sign you care, but at the same time don't loving bother giving excuses unless you've got good reason. You asked to get torn apart, and hey look, you did. I haven't given you a full and in-depth crit by any means, but that is because you are really not at the stage where a line by line crit would really do you any good. You need to take a day or two away from what you wrote, lose any attachment to it, come back and look at it in the cold light of day. Look at your words, especially the lines I highlighted. Do you read any author who writes like that? That is meant to be a rhetorical question, but if they answer is 'yes', then maybe go to The Book Barn and get some recommendations because, yeah, no.
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Apr 10, 2013 16:12
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Welcome back. Let's begin.GiveUpNed posted:Memories OK friend. Here are my general pointers for the writing: - Stay the gently caress away from adverbs if you can help it. - Assess your overly long sentences. Read them out loud. Are they stilted and flow poorly in speech? Then they flow poorly on the page too. - While you assess this, consider whether the information you are providing contributes to the narrative. Does it give colour/flavour, does it add something? No? Then loving cut it. Here are specific pointers to this piece: - The premise is incredibly simple, but you have verbal padding where it is totally pointless and then lack it where it is necessary. Use your words more judiciously. - The conclusion is truly atrocious. I'm sorry, but pretending like the realisation that the wren is dead is somehow meant to make me go 'woah, deep man' is deeply flawed It fails to capture what you wanted (I imagine), which is this kind of slightly heart-warming life goes on vibe. If you wanted to change the piece for the better, I would suggest working on the emotional front. Get him surprised/hopeful at the start at seeing the bird, have him reminisce happily about his nurturing of Jack (BETTER NAME PLEASE) and then chastise himself for getting his hopes up but not being sad because he enjoyed Jack's presence while he was alive. My 2 cents. EDIT: Forgot to say that this, as you might put it, has a kernel of a good idea in there somewhere if it was substantially reworking and realigned. Therefore marginally better than last time. Take the crumbs of praise, take them. Jeza fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 19:06
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Obeah posted:Rebel Yell Disclaimer: You seem completely literate and able to competently string together sentences. Good for you. I don't have any problems with your English save a few fiddly bits and I can't help but think ellipses look dumb nearly 100% of the time. But you didn't post this for boring stuff, so from my perspective, here is what worked and what didn't: Good - You mostly imitate a neo-noirish narrator effectively. - The punchy end to Chapter 0 works well. In fact I think it is the best part of the piece by a long way. - There are some rather cute turns of phrase, 'peanuts for pleasantries' etc. Bad - The weakest point of this is the effete, grandiloquent tone. What might have cut it as semi-rambling but still incisive noir prose flops because of ridiculous dreck over and over, thanks to constant narrator qualification to statements (at least, I hope, I guess, I suppose, perhaps - there is that one paragraph where you have 'perhaps' five goddamn times in quick succession) and thanks also to eye-gougingly pretentious musings interspersed throughout. 'I was truly the clitoris of men' - OK, I burst out laughing. But after the completely deadpan and serious tone set up so far, especially after the oh-so-cool 'I am Rebel Yell', this was the worst thing in the world. And it doesn't stop there, every time you could just be pithy and dry you paddle so far up poo poo creek you go back up to the poo poo springs and down into the making GBS threads source. Everything stone related about Morgan Stone, everything about the animal symbolism, everything about motherfucking dreams and everything about sleep - it is all affected cliché trash. I'm sorry, but that is what it is. You shoot for dark mysterious guy who is so blasé and sardonic and in control but you end up with megalomanic buffoon, like some villain explaining his plans all along while he has the hero at his feet only to get shot mid exposition. - Really, everything else after that seems a little minor - but you are setting yourself up for a fall with two antagonists called 'The...' something. It is incredibly overused. Try and innovate. The nationality one is especially common. - Try and avoid fantasy-lite things like 'I am one no longer', 'like the dragons of old', 'cast him into nothingness' etc. - I really can't stress enough how jarring the narration is to me, so I'll say it again. You aim for something crass and amusing, and a wiseacre jimmie (jimmie?) but in reality you seem to have got shafted with a pretentious weirdo. Instead of the route you go down, if I wanted to achieve what you set out for, I would make my character dismissive and cocksure and then have lots of exposition about seemingly irrelevant small details - essentially boasting about how much he knows. - Oh yeah, just remembered. Starting a story with a quote is personal preference and sometimes objectionable. Starting with two is pretty unusual and almost certainly has good reason. Starting with three, well, that just means make your loving mind up and choose which one fits best. Don't just browse google for 'cool quotes about beginnings' and stick the coolest top three in because you can't choose. For me this was a strange critique, almost entirely bound to personal taste rather than 'objective' error. I don't know how far people will agree with me, but if anybody goes and gives you a line-edit, I can only imagine them finding the places to cut being the long meanders into pseudo-philosophy.
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Apr 13, 2013 17:13
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Cervid posted:Hey, sebmojo. I am taking all your criticisms into account because I know I have a lot to learn as a writer. The following is me trying to answer your questions, not dispute your judgement. If you or anyone else would like to show me how to get these points across effectively, I am all ears. Sebmojo is a busy kiwi and has many crits. Here I will shine some light on what you think, what he said and what you wrote. You thought: It was heavily implied that to speak of the demonic ship would mean doom for the teller in your opening. He said: Your entire opener was wiffle. You wrote: A long, overwrought opening. You do not effectively establish this implication because there is no concrete or subtle allusion to the fear of reprisal. Our man Jan's reticence is far more plausibly attributed to having witnessed something so horrible it has mentally scarred him. He does not want to talk about it, like 'Nam vets don't want to talk about it. Readers are loathe to go back and reconsider past matters, especially in a short story. First impressions are your last impressions - we only hear about the reprisals in the last few lines as a mysterious occurrence which is just as easily thought of as suicide driven by the haunting horrors he has witnessed. You thought: You established shipmates acting in a disconcerting and elusive manner which would make the reader suspicious. Also that he ran to religion as a means of resistance to their simple giving in to demonic powers. He said: Wha? Who? You wrote: A middle section without any crew to speak of. Beyond the captain who is neither seen nor described and the faceless deckhands (oh, how could I forget 'a pale, thin hand'!). This is the section where you build up your desired 'atmosphere'. All that comes of it is confusion. You pique interest, you build tension, you have creepy pay-off - Horror in a nutshell. You have some form of hook and some form of pay-off but both are ruined by the sandwich filler. Really, your central section is a complete write off. What wager? Why all the saintly foreshadowing that leads nowhere? From boarding till the end of the voyage is the shortest part of your story while in reality it IS your story. The rest is just winding up and winding down. The balance, therefore, is broken. The religion thing is also another case of Occam's razor. Any normal reader will assume he sought refuge in religion as solace from his horrifying experience, as yet unrecounted in the prose. Not whatever you hoped. You thought: Your opening paragraphs established interest and developed Jan's character. He said: Wiffle. You wrote: Wiffle. You do sort of achieve what you want, but you achieve it in an affected and circuitous manner. It does not take a quarter of your story to establish a prematurely aged, reclusive and God-fearing man with a story to tell. Speculation on whether he might have had a wife, what his friends wondered, what I, as a reader, may or may not have guessed, his cluttered home etc. are irrelevant. You thought: The narrator was a useful addition and rooted the plot in a town's curiosity about this old man. He said: If he's just a conduit, cut him and tell the story directly. You wrote: A first person narration that in turn gives another person's first person narration, for no benefit to the story whatsoever. The narrator is stilted and roundabout in his mannerisms, to an extent that invites comparisons to parody. Without any development to the narrator as a character beyond that he is a nosy priest, we receive the bulk of the story as reported speech in the guise of direct speech in the past tense. It is meaningless. Also, none of town seems to come into the plot at all, or at least in the way you seem to think it does, so the narrator's motivations are opaque. I would have rather seen the opening and conversation occur in the present, where you are freer from the temptation to add things like editor's notes or musings on Jan looking back. You can then conclude in the past tense if you so desire. You thought: You shot for atmospheric horror when the prompt was directed towards graphic horror, and this was a mistake on your part. He said: Not much, but you do kind of write a Lovecraftian atmosphere. You wrote: Some atmospheric horror, with problems as outlined above. Your choice was not wrong and the brief did not point towards graphic horror. The reason many chose to do so is innate writer's instinct for writing along the path of least resistance. 1200 words is not many words, and atmospheric horror requires suspense and tension building - which 1200 does not well afford to any but the most clinically precise and clear writers. You took on a sheer mountain without climbing tools. You didn't make it, but it doesn't matter. You lost very little other than your time and some pride you didn't need and have hopefully gained some insight from what I and others have written. If all we wrote was useless, at least take away some super-simple freebie tips: Never use ellipses in a doomed attempt to create dramatic timing. It always looks amateur and never actually works. Think about your the basic structure of hook, tension, pay-off. Wait a day after writing and then come back with less rose-tinted eyes. Cut what adds nothing - if the best you can say about a sentence or clause is a weak 'it kind of adds flavour', get rid of it. Avoid melodrama (I'm looking at you, final sentence.) If something is dramatic, it will speak for itself. Don't feel the need to end a story on a deep, resounding or philosophical note. Nine times out of ten, cutting off closer to the end of the action will serve you better than piling on more post-scriptums that tie up loose ends.
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Aug 15, 2013 02:53
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or 
. The reader can decide for themselves. That's why they acted weird but said nothing to the protagonist and that's why the protagonist was claimed when he did tell. His desperate scramble to religion was his way of fending off those feelings of being the walking damned that the others simply surrendered to.
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Helsing posted:stuff First off, I'd like to point out that you are a better developed writer than most of the people who wash up on the shores of TD. Your dialogue already seems solid - enough that I wouldn't blink an eye to see it in a published work. Your descriptions, from those two pieces at least, can err on the side of heavy-handedness, but I can already see glimmers of subtlety and good flow. Given you've just come back to writing after ten years, I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. As to your question of "how the hell do I write something short?", the answer is probably one you might have feared: it really does vary from person to person. It is possible you are more suited to writing longer pieces, and yes, short stories do come more naturally to some people, but I wouldn't immediately close off an entire avenue of writing just on a hunch. I've written a whole bunch of TD entries and a number of short stories to word limits outside of SA, and even from the very off I've rarely ever gone more than 200-300 words over the given limit. More often than not I finish very close to the word limit without any editing whatsoever. I don't have a silver bullet solution for you, to me it comes very naturally and I have lots of experience of writing to word limits for years and years, but I might have a few helpful suggestions. - Don't spend much time thinking about world building. In flash fiction the name of the game is faking it, not making it. You don't have the space to wax on about the background or the world your characters inhabit. You are creating and resolving a single scene, you only need as much extraneous detail as make the background not ring hollow. It doesn't matter if things are off the cuff or unexplained, the human brain is brilliant at parsing over stuff that it doesn't understand while taking in general impressions of "ooh, sci-fi" or "oooh, words in latin". - If you're worried about coming to a single idea and then being unable to stop it unfolding out of control, stop yourself. You've come up with an idea: now, what is your ending and what is your beginning. Know how you will start and how you will finish and you will have total control over what happens in between. You may change some of it, you may change all of it - what matters is that you write under that belief during first draft. Write from goal post to goal post and you should find yourself with a much more manageable story. If you don't know how it ends when you start, you don't know when it ends either. - Finally, because overloading with info is never helpful, if you are writing a story and you can't help that it is balling out of control - you're on a roll and can't stop writing down the good poo poo - just let it pan out. Once you've finished your thousand-word-over-the-limit draft don't even think about line editing. Just don't bother. You need to step back, look at what you've written and decide: how much of this opening do I need? It doesn't matter how well written it is, if you can still make sense of the story from 500 words further in then move the beginning 500 words further in. Can you cut it off more abruptly? Are there some irrelevant paragraphs? Take your Historical Horror story for example. You said you had trouble keeping it under the limit. As an unbiased outsider, I can already see ~200 words that are easily cut from the start. The scene description of the battlefield is nice but irrelevant in the grand scheme. In fact, I much prefer to start with the dialogue. It is punchier and much better a hook than plain description. Even a casual glance over it and I can see at least two or three hundred more words that could be creamed off, not at any cost to the story and even sometimes to the improvement of it. NB: Next week's TD should be good for you; dialogue focus is already playing to your stronger suit.
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Aug 28, 2013 21:35
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systran posted:I may read and crit this later, but for future reference everyone: please make sure that the formatting of what you post looks godd in an SA window. If you c/p it from wordpad or something it's going to look like a mess. Either give us a google docs link or format it before you submit. I don't know if this bothers anyone else but it just kills me trying to read stuff with no white space. Yeah, now I just write my stuff for the forums naturally like that. Line break every paragraph, line break every instance of dialogue.
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Sep 5, 2013 13:33
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the posted:Currently Untitled Work, Chapter 1 Spare the rod, spoil the child. I regretted going into a line-edit on this pretty quickly because there is too much for me to correct but maybe in the end it's for the best. This is slapdash - there are tense errors, grammar mistakes and clunkiness throughout. The premise is cliché (did I mention that?), you reuse vocabulary to the extent that it is noticeable and the story itself doesn't have much going for it yet. This reads like a muddy medley of popular culture, a little bit Deus Ex/Judge Dredd/Matrix/Fallout. I realise this is flash fiction (though 100% part of longer piece, right?) and nothing in it feels original, individual or inventive. Key homework: - Avoid telling. cf. too much info about augments, diamond level. Work it into your story gently - don't overload reader but especially don't break immersion by clearly having a character act like a dictionary. - Avoid qualification of statements. This is such a common amateur mistake and is an instant red flag. There is no shame in doing it because every writer does it, especially if they are unused to writing prose, but try your best. This includes things like 'began to...', 'realised that...', 'felt like...' etc. All of those from a quick scan over this piece, there are more in there and hundreds more you can use in writing. Always remember to take the shortest route to the character's thoughts - Be careful to stay in your character's head. Too often in this story I can feel omniscient narrator coming in and filling blanks that the character can't possibly have known yet, given what the reader has been told. - Read over your work, twice, to check for sense and continuity. Unless this was you on a really bad day, you aren't at the level where flow comes particularly cleanly. Every sentence is a stepping stone and when you are writing action-type, non-literary fiction like this you want to keep each one as close as possible to make it easier for your reader to stay abreast of what is happening. - 'That's' is not a contraction of 'that was'. It is present tense, don't use it in stories written in the past tense. Jeza fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Sep 5, 2013 |
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Sep 5, 2013 14:30
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the posted:Regarding the cliche nature, if I'm writing a piece of genre fiction, how can it not in some way be cliche? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I'm genuinely asking. I've been wanting to write a cyberpunk story for awhile, and I figured the best way to start it would be to drop the protagonist into a hard-boiled situation where he's being roughed up against his will by some nefarious corporation (which I didn't make specifically clear, yet), and also play on body horror imagery with his body being changed against his will. Glad to see you didn't get put off by a mauling - it is 100x more useful to you to get a proper critique than it is to get some ego-assuring lies. Cyberpunk as a genre comes with a few strings attached, certain boxes that are often ticked or expected to. Including stuff that others have done before is simply unavoidable and there is nothing wrong as a writer to tread on old ground, so long as you make that old ground your own in some way. I pointed out 3 things in your line edit as cliché: 1) The first one was a language issue: Phrases like 'adrenalin coursing through veins', 'a shiver ran up her spine' etc are very derivative and played out. I was nit-picking, perhaps, but to get into the habit of avoiding that sort of thing is a good one to be in. 2) The opening line of 'You survived, excellent'. How is that cliché? Well if I put that into google in quotation marks, half my results are truly cringeworthy fan-fictions. Does that make it clear enough? It is uninteresting - I feel I have heard that kind of opener so many times it makes my head spin. It's so...obvious? Be more creative. It seems straight out a corny Bond movie. 3) My final line-edit cliché was again a different kind (this turned out surprisingly well). This time I was complaining about the scene setting itself. OK, we have unknown protagonist being tortured/modified by...a thin man in a suit, sitting down with legs crossed and hands steepled. Again, this is so very Bond villain. It might as well be Mr. Burns. It raises a million preconceptions and this harms your story. It is a shortcut to reader comprehension, using tropes, but it also turns a reader's brain off. Been there, done that. This makes for a poor story hook - you're writing not genre fiction but generic fiction. tl;dr When I whine about cliché, it isn't that you're doing stuff that has been done before, it's because you're doing stuff that has been done before the same way. You need to put your own spin on it and make it creative and novel. Twiddle 'dem knobs.
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Sep 6, 2013 14:41
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Lying in bed and going through the dregs of a massive quantity of words of varying quality produced in a questionably fuelled marathon writing thing. This is one of them: none of these things have any titles, so whatever The sun breaks over the Arldale crags like molten glass. It bubbles languorously over sheer-faced limestone bluffs and drowns the whole valley. Barns like ancient rocken tombs grow up from the corners of dewy fields, crossed and crossed again by the grey striations of the walls that time built. Sheep float down blind-eyed highways like cotton-whisps on a slow wind and nobody can remember a time when it hasn’t been that way. Geological ages have passed and passed away here. It possesses bleak beauty, the kind that ruins have, the kind cathedrals gain when reduced to baser parts; columns and buttresses, masonry blocks with family names and the weathered eyes of gargoyles all succumbing to grass. And still, you haven’t seen it until you’ve seen it in the rain. The rain there is the most beautiful in the world, when the fog rolls in over the mountain tops and wraps the valleys like a shroud. You know it only when the grey light of afternoon seems everywhere and the moss whispers to you in morse drips against the susurrance of millions more, only when the rain slick slates pick out the staring chartreuse eyes of lichen and you can just smell damp woodsmoke settling on the breeze. I remember hearing as a child some plea or prayer, a wish that we might be understood, as well as understand. It comes back to me under the rain in Arldale, with the fading ring of hymns and organs and I think that maybe, just maybe, all the world’s problems could be washed clean, if only everyone could spend just one day under the rain there - because it’s really something, the rain in Arldale. It really is something. I haven't written seriously purple stuff for a while. I got rid of a few of the words I seemed to have invented while writing, though I left 'rocken' in because it sounds baller. How bad is it? Also Arldale is not a real place, though it is kind of based on a real place I guess.
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Sep 13, 2013 03:37
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Schneider Heim posted:Thunderdome homework as administered by Bad Seafood: OK, so the story is OK. There's been better, there's been worse. It roughly meets the prompt of being a middle chapter. Your technical skills are mostly proficient. Things to work on: Your scene setting I felt was weak. I hardly ever felt rooted, it felt like the whole story was occurring quite abstractly from any actual place. Don't neglect sounds, sights, and general tactile feedback. Even a small amount goes a long way. Your flow was erratic. Lines should roughly be following one another unless you have a good reason for that not to be the case. This is especially true for writing action. Don't spend time having internal rhetorical questions during a chase scene unless they are relevant. p.s The more I read over the bit where the woman comes onto the feed and starts talking about leaving the house, the more confused I get. What actually is happening?
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Sep 16, 2013 20:35
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M. Propagandalf posted:Exile Vilify This story is at a stage where I don't think a line-edit will do much, and I don't mean that in a negative sense. I didn't notice any glaring errors or actual difficulty in expression, so no worries on that front. Does it meet the target you were aiming for? Does it resonate with me about the human condition, is it poignant? Well yes, it is poignant and I reckon it portrays at least some part of the human condition as I understand it. If I was judging it in TD, I would say it hit the prompt. Now I'm done with praise, because nobody should really be coming here for that. On a micro level, your story is fine but I have problems with it on a macro level. The actual poignancy of that story really occurs towards the end, in what is the obvious affection between siblings being torn apart by religion. The hand twitching is a very cute touch. Other than that though, the character of Jessie does not cut a very sympathetic pair of eyes to be looking through. The character seems impassive and uncaring until the very end, an incredibly passive victim of circumstance - to the point that it undermines the sadness of the circumstances. More macro problems, I feel the first half of the story is meandering and fluffy. We get too much wind up about Les preparing to leave and too much on the consequences that happen in the house without her around. The thing about the pictures is really the key to this story for me, with far greater impact than details like Gramps giving fire and brimstone about Eve and deleting blogposts. To me, that stuff only waters down the overall impression. I don't think the right strategy was quantity but quality. Focusing on the excision of Les from their family, I think you can do better than a blog. Was that a case of following a real-life story too closely? Because it feels like it. To summarise, to kick this story up a notch, the narrator has to become more actively involved in the tragedy and demonstrate the conflict they have between loving their siblings and being loyal to their family. There needs to be more focus on one or two things that happen after Les leaves, and less time spent having the story establish itself.
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Sep 16, 2013 21:30
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Schneider Heim posted:Thank you for the critique. Yeah, OK, I mean I did veer towards that in the text like I say - but it felt like the view was immediately undermined by there being no consequences to the sudden jarring change of reality. And since the original plotline recovers so quickly, as a reader I am forced to doubt my own conclusions and make a back-step. While I think the whole 'off his meds' thing could probably make for a more interesting story overall and I realise you were trying to make the story deeper under the surface, it feels too clunky in comparison with the rest of what you've got. If you removed the whole part of it, I don't really see the story losing much while keeping it dilutes the focus. I would say it's comparable to the protagonist J9 receiving a phone call saying "JIM, THE TESTS CAME BACK. YOU'VE GOT BRAIN CANCER." Then J9 just says, essentially, gently caress off I'm busy and continues what he's doing. It's a form of adding artificial depth and detracts from the piece as one cohesive storyline.
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Sep 18, 2013 06:46
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inthesto posted:
I probably shouldn't be critting in this thread, but whatever. Procrastination rules. I'm on a timed internet thing in a coffee shop, so I'm just gonna give you some general comments and thoughts: - Macro-wise, you say you're deeply torn up about the narrative break to play out a memory. I don't think you should worry about it too much, in fact, I rather enjoyed the lurch back into reality suddenly cutting into the play-by-play. You could italicise it if you wanted to make it obvious separate, but I don't see a pressing need to. - As an introduction to a story, it is a bit played out (fantasy prison break) but that doesn't matter a great deal, so long as it goes interesting places soon after. It's fast paced and exciting and already establishes a bit of character background and interest (dead sister) and (Imperial soldier). Elder Scrolls anyone? ahem - Most of it is combat description. You aren't too bad at that, I guess. You don't drop the ball too often, which a lot of fantasy writing goons really do. If anything, it impressed me with its brutality. But I worry that, and don't be offended, that because most amateur fantasy fiction tends not to write unsympathetic protagonists (especially female protagonists), that perhaps it wasn't entirely intentional. I mean, you establish some kind of Laurel and Hardy style gaolers and then massacre them pretty viciously. Shiv in the eye, stamping on said shiv, head chopping beyond the call of duty. I mean yeah, these aren't nice people, but there isn't enough space or you don't use it well enough to establish them as entirely deserving in my opinion. We get a line about them taunting her I suppose, but that's as far as it goes. Feel free to ignore this if you're establishing your protagonist (if it is) as vaguely amoral or callous, because you succeeded and that is way more interesting than your standard fare. - Aaaand micro-wise. Sadly, there is a whole lot for me to complain about here. I'm not even sure where to start. - Your non-combat writing is inelegant and awkward. You take 10 words when 5 will do, almost as a rule. I don't need to cherry pick here; take your second paragraph: "instinct dictated that she shield her face", "she could suffer an irritated eye", "iron bars framed every stolen glimpse". This manner of writing comes across as very formal and stilted. Sometimes it is OK; I can imagine that final line fitting in alright, but when it happens again and again it undermines your flow. I'm sitting here thinking of what kind of mini-rules you should keep in mind to try and avoid this type of writing. You are most guilty of it when you are being roundabout or too precise. There is no need to tell us unnecessary details or beat around the bush. The shrew, who is always chuckling to himself "at something that only he finds humorous" - well, no poo poo I guess? Only accept further clauses on suffrance: only if there is something that doesn't make sense without it. Her shins "bony from so many weeks of starvation". Yeah, the reader can understand given the previous mentions of scraps of food, one meal per day etc, that she is starved. Her bony shins is plenty. - Still, no need to cry about that. I've seen much worse, and if you don't write much it is understandable. What I perceive as the greatest weakness of this piece is a serious issue with lack of sense. Really, given the type of fiction that it is, I should be finding none to almost no points where I don't understand something. For your 800 word piece, there are far more than that. Stuff like: Reliving a memory thirty times on repeat is ridiculous and incredibly weird. "Only a shard of splintered wood guarded her against the cell floor" - what? "They had no jeers today, as sound of her voice mumbling silenced them in an instant." - what? Sudden introduction of gravel to a cell which has been previously illustrated as being bare stone. "Her shins, bony from so many weeks of starvation, hit the stone" - why? I can't visualise what is happening. "she kicked the wood sliver into her other hand"- eh? "Her victim convulsed, only driving the stake deeper into his socket" - ?!? edit: there's more but time running out, will finish this later Jeza fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 16:04
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Helsing posted:a story I like it. I can see Sitting's point about a passive narrator, and maybe you flirt with that a little too closely in this case, but I mean, this is a diffident character so I think it can be forgiven. I'm not convinced by the case that it must be more emotionally direct and less neutral, but then again that my be own personal preference leaking in. I understand Anathema's point about maybe a little too much investment without pay-off at the start, but I believe that the establishment of Claire as a figure towards whom the narrator is envious, financially speaking, is important for the culmination of the piece - what I took to be the narrator considering being an escort once again. This might change should you choose to extend the piece and pull the floorboards from under this. As to your question; the only narrative jump that jars is the one that introduces 'Collin' from nowhere. It is apropos of nothing and, actually, the whole intro of the character somewhat spoiled the ending of the piece for me. I was reeling, trying to work out whether this Collin was someone new or the old man from the restaurant. This is compounded because it seems like Collin owes her money, and I got caught thinking how stupid it would be for an escort to get paid via credit card. I worked it out soon enough, but the immersion was already broken. As to any critique on my own account, I felt the sex scene to be a little bit...off? The use of the term 'thing' I am a little iffy with, and given the importance/anticipation of it earlier in the story, it seems rushed like you were uncomfortable writing it. It could stand to be longer and more fleshed out. I know you might think this might threaten the narrative distance, but I'm sure you could pull out a sentence or two more and see what it looks like. Not much else to say. There were a few niggling details that I don't consider worth pointing out because I'm sure other people would disagree in equal measure. I didn't feel convinced by the hospital talk, the point of the character of Alice, the use of the phrase "...I'm not that strong". Overall I think a lot of things could be improved/fixed by filling in gaps and writing more. Sadly I don't think this comment will help you get over your own feelings regarding your own potential for writing flash fiction.
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Sep 23, 2013 01:30
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Kwasimodick posted:dangling from his groin was a tiny, golden bean, with a street value of approximately 1 million US dollars. 
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Sep 25, 2013 22:36
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inthesto posted:I can't tell if this is the world's worst metaphor for discovering your sexuality or a post-modern retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk. All I know is I want to find out what happens next. The scene I'm currently envisaging is that the character's Dad been mean to him and/or repeatedly molested him, and, in order to repent for his sins to his son, he pretends to be re-enacting another bath-time rape scenario when in fact he has somehow hung a million dollars worth of hyper-dense gold bullion in the shape of a bean from his pubic hair as a kind of make-up gift to discover when he leans in to give steamy father-son head.
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Sep 25, 2013 23:57
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Gau posted:Winter 1939 I see when I click preview post that a bunch of stuff has already been posted. Ah well. Three main things need work in this piece: the ending, your more stilted turns of phrase and most importantly your 'flow'. I found way too many instances of sentences that don't follow each other well at all, and a few times where you set up a construction that demands satisfaction which you fail to give. What I mean by that is writing a sentences like "Billy was a good kid - he helped old ladies cross roads and volunteered at his local soup kitchen, but he also had a dark side. He was walking down 5th Avenue to see Jenny..." Can you see the double whammy in effect here? Not only does the sentence follow on poorly by nature, but a reader expects some exposition on what his dark side is. The bait is laid but there is no trap. Here is one from your piece: "While the sun stayed in the sky, it was my world. At night, I imagined that the monsters came out..." A reader naturally expects some reference to it no longer being his world. And you do that, sort of, but it parses badly. An example of what I mean: While the sun stayed in the sky, it was my world. But when the sun set, it wasn't mine anymore. Monsters rose up from the ground and took over, forcing me to retreat to..."
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Nov 5, 2013 02:26
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Anonymous Robot posted:In Hell (500 words) Overall this is fairly solid, and what I've written above is most of my criticism. The weakest part of this piece is that it is hard for me to feel 'grounded', which is almost certainly a consequence of it being only 500 words long. But if I was taking it as a standalone piece - the scene setting is lacking in a bad way because I can't visually pin the action down other than the crumbs I get from graffiti and rebar. oval office OF HELL tunnel entrance just keeps making me think of defaced circus tunnel thing as well. I'm weird. On top of setting there is also a lack of grounding for the characters too. We get a little repartee of a two partners, but the tone wavers between scavenger/police officer too heavily. Of course, nothing stops those things being mutually exclusive but I find it incredibly unlikely that police officers wouldn't already have guns of their own? The whole handgun in the trash leading to suddenly very deep water introspection on suicide is also from left-field and too early, given the reader knows next to nothing about Alan. Too intimate, too quickly.
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Nov 10, 2013 12:16
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Optimus Prime Ribs posted:I have a short story that I'm working on. My first chapter is nearly at the point of me not being able to find any flaws or things I don't like, so it's almost ready to post in here. I haven't posted any critiques though, so it wouldn't be fair for me to ask for feedback without giving some first, but there are no recent posts for me to even critique (other than the one by TheRamblingSoul, but I would just be repeating what has already been said). It's fine.
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Dec 1, 2013 01:34
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Most acceptable contraction of "He had had" would just be "He'd had". Very little reason not to use the latter. Also going to put it out there that there is nothing wrong with the opening sentence. To find it jarring - that's either your quirk as a reader, or a symptom of critiquing the story piece by piece rather than as a whole. A lot of things open in media res and open with a reference to something which as reader we aren't aware of, in the knowledge that the gap will be filled soon afterwards. God Over Djinn, you say your reaction is wait, what bastard? - well, that is the intended reaction. Also, I'm no linguist, but I just spent like an hour reading up on this. Feel free to tell me if this makes sense: in the opening sentence, "the bastard" is acting as an 'R-expression' while later on in the story "the motherfucker" is pronomial. So in this story, "the bastard" could be replaced with something like "Mark", while "the motherfucker" is just "he". So, like, "the bastard" contains a noun that is known to the narrator but not yet to the reader. side note: linguistics is hard
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Dec 1, 2013 09:04
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jeffLebowski posted:And here it is, presented for the thread's summary brutalization: I could probably have formatted that less confusingly. Nevertheless, maybe some useful words in there. I think it mostly looks good though.
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Dec 4, 2013 00:10
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Palisader posted:The Move This is a reflection on the passage of time, and a kind of musing on perhaps the less-innocent times we seem to have today. Most of it is washed away by a flood of trivialities. There isn't really a story here and the writing level is very simplistic. I'd be tempted to chalk it down to getting into the little southern girl mindset if it wasn't so signposted that that was not your intention. In the cold light of day, this piece is like one of those anecdotes that goes nowhere, where somebody strings you along feeding you details only for them to conclude flatly, leaving you kind of confused. This will probably seem overbearingly negative to you, and I suppose it is. Don't get too depressed about it though, because I think at least a fair few of your problems in this piece come from the fact that it was written almost more for yourself than for any audience which made it sort of inevitable that it would fall flat when presented to an audience.
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Feb 19, 2014 00:47
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Starter Wiggin posted:It’s late. Already you’re gone, It's nice, but it clearly has an audience of one if you know what I mean. Some parts are flat-out unpoetic, i.e. tired vertebrae, while other parts jar me unnecessarily like the needless personification of the arm. It waxes on the better side of being a bit adolescent. Romantic fluff is not the easiest to do well. I always treat description one of two ways: Either I play it realistic, in that I want my readers to picture what I'm talking about, or identify through experience. Just a nice landscape painting. Or I go impressionistic, and throw some curveballs, leave a lot implicit and do a lot of fancy literary stuff. Mixing both is difficult and dangerous, because if a reader is expecting to envision rather than "get a feel" for what is happening, weird descriptions like "unasked questions in its veins" (and the repetitive "unspoken question pulsing through it" reads like meaningless word-wankery, especially when you play it po-faced and straight 90% of the time. A reader only gets jarred when something deviates from the norm, so if you set a standard it is best to stick with it (unless you contextualise something as an acid trip, fever dream etc. and yes I am aware this story starts off with drugs but the narrator seems pretty lucid so OK then)
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Apr 15, 2014 00:57
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