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Tonsured, I must admit I may not be the best person to critique this - it didn’t really connect with me and I mostly chose yours because it was the most recent text nobody else had already critiqued better than I could.Tonsured posted:Outside the morgue a hawk coasted on thermals above highway 80, the pavement in the parking lot was hot, re-radiating sunlight for the sole purpose of blistering my feet. Outside the morgue, a hawk coasted on thermals above highway 80. The pavement in the parking lot was re-radiating sunlight for the sole purpose of blistering my feet. Also, my English probably isn’t perfect, but I think you missed a lot of commas. I’m sorry if this doesn’t help you much. I just don’t see the point of it. Maybe it just wasn’t for me.
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Aug 12, 2013 13:57
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One problem I see is that it's very incongruent. You're giving him all these faux-colloquialisms, yet he's also using an at times very complex sentence structure and words like "embellishment" and "demon". I also think the story-in-a-story isn't doing you any favours, especially not with all-direct speech. Fundamentally, the reader'll just want to know what's happening or what has happened, and all the tricks you're using to give the guy some earth and bring him down to it mostly stand in the way.
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Aug 13, 2013 10:59
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So now that the mood is all cozy ... This is a snippet of something that'll hopefully turn out vaguely Coen-esque. Please tell me what's the main things I have to work on? My native language isn't English, which isn't meant as an excuse but simply so you know that telling me my main problem is not being a native speaker would be okay. Nobody hears as much awful guitar playing as a guitar teacher, nobody meets as many crazy people as a shrink. Tyler’s was the only place in town to see worse dancing than the school gym during prom. Sometimes, when the last student had left, Ms. Tyler and the night-class instructor would impersonate a beginner displaying a unique, unknown form of talentlessness, such as this newcomer insisting on always wearing cargo pants and sandals who somehow managed to make his Hustle and Waltz look exactly alike, dancing either to a strange three-and-a-half-to-four non-rhythm that awoke in Ms. Tyler an urge to smash in his knees with a bottle of champagne. “I think they’re just checking what we’ll put up with, you know?”, Joseph said after an impressive performance with his left leg dancing in 3/4 and his right one in 4/4. “Just loving with us. Just trying to ... ” “I had a guy here with cerebral palsy and he got more done on his very first day than Cargo Pants after five weeks”, Ms. Tyler said. “Make me a martini, Joseph dear, will you please? Or rather two. One more class like this one and I may as well sign myself up for AA. Pour yourself one, too.” They took the drinks outside, and when they had finished, spent some time watching the ice cubes melt in the warm summer night. Then, Ms. Tyler told Joseph how she wanted to rob Komaki Weizbaum. ”You’re beautiful when you’re confused”, Ms. Tyler said. Which, she added mentally, is mostly. Joseph, eyes closed, was vividly massaging his nasal bridge. ”So we sell her house?” Ms. Tyler nodded. ”Cause she’s trying to get rid of it anyways?” Another nod. ”So why’s it theft?” Ms. Tyler sighed, got up and headed for the bar. She returned with two olives and the bottle of gin. He’s adorable, she thought while explaining to him again what she’d learned last week after the Mambo class, sharing a glass of gin with Komaki Weizbaum. She was a second generation Korean immigrant, married young, husband a heir to a dying family conglomerate, but totally uninterested in it - caring about nothing but surfing and cooking. So Komaki decided to take care of business, and found herself quite amazing at it, quickly turning it into a highly profitable endeavour, and herself into the richest woman in the small town. Then manly, loud, chubby Joel Weizbaum noticed after 20 years that marriage wasn’t his thing but rather, men were, and left for Italy, practically throwing his heirloom onto Komaki in return for a small private aliment. Now Mrs. Weizbaum had spent the last two years living alone in the gigantic mansion all by herself. Twice a week two Mexicans would come over to clean up, and that was it - half of the time she was on business trips anyway. And because there was no reason for a 40-year old, separated, reasonable 100-pound woman living on tea crumpets and the thrill of accounting to own a house the size of a Walmart, she decided to sell it off. It was set at five and a half million. ”So that’s what she’s told me. Now comes the exciting part.” Joseph didn’t look excited. ”Next week, she’ll be out of town”, Ms. Tyler continued. Cut some deal in Detroit. That’s when we’re moving in.” When she was done, Ms. Tyler still wasn’t sure he had understood the plan quite yet, so she mentioned the part about the millions again. The problem was that it didn’t seem to connect with Joseph - as if he was lacking the imagination of himself as a rich guy. Well, maybe that’s exactly the qualities a man needs to dance a Cha cha cha that will make nuns cry and help me commit a crime, she thought, and when she arose to lock up, the room, held back by all the gin, needed a moment to catch up with her, and she hoped she wasn’t making a terrible mistake.
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Aug 13, 2013 13:44
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My take: there's a well-known cognitive principle (going back to Eleanor Rosch, back in the 70s) that we try to keep our categories at an intermediate, basic level. So we say tiger, not mammal or male bengal tiger. Unless it's a lion, in which case we say lion. Warning, musing, venturing etc. can all be seen as hyponyms of saying. Shouting and saying, however, are mutually exclusive. So if it's a form of saying, we say "say", not "communicate" (above basic) or "murmur" (below basic). If it's shouting, it would be wrong to say it's being said, so we say shout. It's the difference between a Porsche, a humvee, a limo (all cars), versus a tank or a bicycle. Also, is the fact that nobody's said anything about my few paragraphs on the last page a sign that I need to go to the THUNDERDOME or what? vv thanks vv Cingulate fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 17:29
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systran posted:lots of helpful words Thank you for the comments either way, there's plenty of helpful stuff in there. Edit: seriously ... I can see how it would be amazingly lame if read as a one-shot where you expect some form of payback at the end. Edit 2: I'd like to keep working on the tone and language first before I continue with the rest of the story. Can I just put it in here again, as the first few paragraphs of what should become a short story, when I've worked on everything you've mentioned? Cingulate fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 21:59
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Oh, that WAS supposed to be the beginning of the short story. I've cut it down by a hundred words, but I'm not really sure how to deal with the info dump paragraphs about Komaki, who's supposed to be one of the main characters. Right now, it looks like this http://pastebin.com/3jjWQ8yh
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Aug 24, 2013 17:39
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I'm not sure if that's the joke, but Germans actually don't say "Sag Käse", since ɛ: is only half open so it doesn't get you smiling; it's still "Sag cheese" in German. ... or was the sound I just heard the joke going over my head? Also, the first sentence of the second paragraph is very awkwardly phrased I think. Finally, if the joke was that Grandma became Hitler, it might have been made a bit more clear to the slow amongst us (me).
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Sep 12, 2013 16:46
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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. Please, somebody explain this to me - which part of the story did I miss that makes this a coherent thing? What is the author trying to tell us?
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Sep 26, 2013 09:55
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