New Voice
Name/Pseudonym:EnigmasWriter
Critiquing skills
Choose one piece of work from the application of an accepted member or mod and give constructive feedback on it. You may find the 'accepted' tag on the right-hand side of the community page helpful. Let us know which piece you're critiquing.
Alright, so this is a critique of asilentpart’s Fog and Brine:
Hopefully this critique is long enough for you. I didn’t want to be nit-picky just for the sake of length. :)
First off, I loved the imagery. It was strong but not over-powering. A lot of writing leaves you lost in the descriptions, but I thought you struck a good balance.
I have to say I was disappointed that you used the f-bomb after starting out with such lovely verbage. I felt like it was out of place with the rest of the excerpt, maybe because I got the impression that this wasn’t placed anywhere near modern day. Until that point your wording had felt very deliberate and graceful, and I really think that killed it. Then again, profanity has just always seemed like a cop out to me (no offense), what with so many words out there waiting to be used.
Something about it reminded me of “Til We Have Faces,” but since I’m a Lewis fan myself, that was less than upsetting. Overall, I didn’t feel like there was much wrong with your piece; I quite liked it, in fact.
Writing sample
Post 1-5 samples of your writing, up to 2000 words. These can be an extract from a novel, short stories, poems, factual pieces, essays, lyrics...anything you like. If it's an extract, let us know the title of the piece, a brief synopsis, and which part of the piece the extract is taken from
I’d love to say that this part of an epic novel I wrote, but *sigh* as this is all I’ve got so far, I suppose I’ll have to pass it off as a short story. And also, I’m not so great with html, so I’m kinda praying this all shows up right. Thank you for your patience.
Would she never rid her thoughts of him? She had hardly thought it possible that anyone could shake her world so powerfully. Here at the end, and she couldn't imagine this neglect being anything but an end, she was haunted by thoughts of her first encounter with him. Had it really only been eight months since she first saw him? To this day she remembered with exact detail the very moment she first laid eyes on him.
She had been sitting in an impatient stupor, waiting for the professor to finally begin the day’s ramblings, eager to be done with the last class standing between her and the comfort of her room, of solitude. He turned into the row two ahead of where she sat, and she found herself looking into his face, locked into his gaze, surprised by the expression in his face. He seemed curious- or was it intrigue? - almost startled: both at his own desire to know her face and at the boldness of her eyes as she returned the look. She had never seen such a perfect face; his blue eyes resonated something in her own, enhanced by the color in his wonderfully light yet browned skin, which in turn was complimented by the scruff that covered his chin and cheeks.
She felt a strange longing to hear his voice, though unsure of what it was that compelled the interest that had begun like a flame in her chest. Since when had she ever found snakebites attractive? And yet the expression in his eyes had burned itself into her thoughts, leaving her struggling to reconcile his snakebites- screaming a stereotype of attitude and danger- with the intrigue, confidence, enigma -and was that pain?- in his eyes. She quieted the flame in her stomach and turned towards the professor once again, feigning attention as thoughts began fluttering through her mind.
Tough guy. He and I must be complete opposites. What gorgeous eyes.
She consciously pushed all thoughts of him to the back of her mind and continued the class in indifference. She had learned by now not to trust such sudden impulses; it was the only way she could manage to fight the fickleness of her gender. She had given up on waiting for her knight in shining armor to ride up and rescue her from life, young as she was she had experienced one too many false alarms, and was determined that nothing short of divine intervention would bring her into a relationship of any sort. Perhaps the ease with which she kept people from being in her life should have been a warning to her, a hint as to why the unexplained longing that had taken up residence in her heart refused to leave.
Now as she sat in what seemed an eternity later, she wondered if that had been the first time he had seen her as well. Somehow the look she had seen in his eyes that day, whether in reality or just the haze of hindsight and wishful thinking, had hinted at an eagerness; almost as if he had been waiting to see her face that clearly, so close to his. She was still unable to shake the feeling that somehow the same thoughts had gone through his mind during that brief moment; in that instant, at least, they had both felt the flame, had the same imprint left in their minds. Was it wrong to hope he had been branded in the same way she had? She dearly hoped that it was the mark of destiny; that it would one day bring him back.