| User | shk |
| Topic | Make it descriptive |
| Message | Very new here and I’m really inexperienced compared to all you guys so it’ll be very easy to critique my writing. :)
I just can’t make it descriptive for some reason. My english teacher said I shouldn’t use flowery language in place of good substance, but right now my inability to describe scenes just doesn’t do my story justice. I’ll post two separate paragraphs/scenes; do your worst. I was named after my grandfather, Vladimir Fyodorivich Kalemskiy. He was a man who gave his all to his work: a bridge engineer for the Uzbek government. And a man who was kind above all else. On a chilly evening in 1983, he walked his regular route home, only to be confronted by three adolescent Uzbeks. They accused him of looking at a passing Uzbek woman. "Scum!" they screamed, as they spat in his face. He denied this, but it was no use; they would have their way. He was stabbed fifteen times for a “crime” he never committed. He breathed his last on the cold stone floor of a merchant road, somewhere between Tashkent and the Kazakhstan border. At that moment, I witnessed the most vivid display of hatred I would ever experience. I saw a man dash at a woman, violently swinging his arms at her face. Rage flooded his face and then overcame his body. The woman struggled to free herself but this was a hopeless attempt. Blood seeped from her face as he lowered his hands, clenched in each a razor blade. I was told, later, that the woman was Russian, but I had known it all along. Those razor blades always seemed to prefer us. |
|| Replies ||
| User | UnderINK | 2007-04-18 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | I think everyone’s critiqued this deeply enough, but I’d like to point out that Fyodorivich = Fyodorovich, please. |
| User | tZar | 2007-02-21 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message |
You need to develop the persons before you throw them into action. If you elaborate on the work he did, how he did it, told about him we get a picture of what kind of a man it is being stabbed in the street. The one you describe could be anyone, and I really could not care less if this guy lives or dies – I have no connection to him! He was a man who gave his all to his work: a bridge engineer for the Uzbek government. (Now you need to pause and somehow show that what you have written here is true. You can try to see this as an argument. You claim something, then forget to argue that this is in fact the truth. The point is that the fact that he was a bridge engineer does not automatically make him a devoted worker. Furthermore a devoted worker can still be a terrible person, which makes these lines obsolete unless you connect them to the following lines.) And a man who was kind above all else. (So you say, but just two lines down he is accused of being anything but kind. You have given me no reason to believe this statement more then the adolescents.) -tZar |
| User | Outlaw | 2007-01-14 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | You need to find a way to start off the stories in a much more proper manner, because to me you seem to jump into things too quickly, and the events are so loosely related that it becomes to impersonal and the reader is just sitting there saying "okay..." and expecting something else to fill them in. You know what I mean ? Like the first one, you have both the description and the events happening in one paragraph.. that’s just... unclassy if you ask me. Cut it right before the on a chilly... Add in a little more emotion from the narrator, some pride, maybe a few historical facts... nothing to push the story forward, or maybe a small detail to foreshadow - like mention that he lived in a more dangerous part of town, where men got dirty.... Also drop the on a chilly... That’s just TOO cliche, as if you’re just writing it to get it out of the way... start it off with something like... He had a routine walk home, BUT.... Don’t add monologues, or dialogues unless you are willing to devote a tangible part of your piece to the talking. Having one sentence said in the middle of a paragraph NEVER looks good. You also don’t need to quote crime, it’s felt emphatically with the follow remark, if you know what I mean...
For the second one... if this is the most vivid rapture of hatred she is/has ever (going) to see/seen, then put some damn emotion into man. Women do not have clear minds in moments like those... They start worrying about their children, questioning death... idea come and go like there is no tomorrow and hysteria takes over.. what are you doing with a spiteful remark at the end? Are you that disconnected from your character? Is she from the situation? Also... avoid leaving unexplained time gaps.. it makes the reader think you just want to skip to the juicy parts, as if there was no tension.. just actions... you know..? You need to allow the reader’s curiosity to climax about something... |
| User | Darke_Valentine | 2007-01-06 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | Just describe the bare essentials needed to keep the scene going. You can always go back and flesh it out later. My personal preference is to use fewer details, the more you type in, the less free reign you give the reader as to what they see in their minds eye.
Not to say that the fewer details the better. If I believed that, then my stories would read something like "Walking. Alarm. Fear. Pain. Knife. Weasels." - Words in sequence with no clarification to give them a meaning, a story. It’s better to describe little and move on to the rest of the story. If you balk at the first hurdles and spend too long trying to get over them, the story will never get to completion. Come back to the scene in question whenever inspiration strikes and add to the detail piece by piece. |
| User | Azuire | 2006-12-06 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | In writing just ask yourself if you can "see" through the writer’s words, that is, the imagery. If you find yourself asking "what happened to this?" or "where did that fly to after something?"
For example, you describe the death by stabbing of a man. We know he was stabbed, but where was he stabbed? Was there blood? Was he attacked viciously or was the knife simply inserted and taken out several times? What did the witnesses think, if there were any? Were there clouds in the sky? Could he see his attackers clearly? Is yes, what did they look like? Was the Uzbek woman related to the attackers? I hope you see what I mean :) Cheers, good luck. |
| User | littlepoet | 2006-11-23 | |
| Subject | be honest |
| Message | just say what you feel be honest |
| User | joeyalphabet | 2006-11-01 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | You need to play up the violent aspect of this. Also, the two paragraphs seem disconnected to me. What does one have to do with the other? |