Criticism on robertreams' excerpt [Split from another SF thread]

robertreams

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Here is an excerpt from one of my stories. I challenge you to show how it is "bare" or "textbook":

QUOTE: "The lowering dusk paints the sky in hues of gold and scarlet and crimson, mirrored in the black glass of the river's surface. The two young men, their bodies aglow, stand side by side, awed by the miracle, the backs of their hands touching lightly. They return to their fire as night seeps from the river, swallowing them in its starless darkness."

Yes you are almost correct. The selection is terse, precise, saying what it means and nothing else.
 
Here is an excerpt from one of my stories. I challenge you to show how it is "bare" or "textbook":

QUOTE: "The lowering dusk paints the sky in hues of gold and scarlet and crimson, mirrored in the black glass of the river's surface. The two young men, their bodies aglow, stand side by side, awed by the miracle, the backs of their hands touching lightly. They return to their fire as night seeps from the river, swallowing them in its starless darkness."

Yes you are almost correct. The selection is terse, precise, saying what it means and nothing else.

Don't get offended Robert, an excerpt isn't isn't the whole, and florid speech doesn't make great, but your minimalization of everything can take away the fun from read, can harm the connection a person has to the characters and the overall feel that you are reading about real people in real situations, there is a balance that needs to be found, like anything else. You prescribe to one ideal in an extreme way it seems, I find it it limiting in the way a person tells a story. And to give that kind of extreme advice can hurt the natural sound a person has when telling the story they are writing.

Before you get crazy, I do believe in the 'less is more' theory, but I don't believe in 'least is best' theory.


Edit: I tried to read one of your stories Robert (a straight one) I couldn't get into it, this was back when we first started talking.
 
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Here is an excerpt from one of my stories. I challenge you to show how it is "bare" or "textbook":

QUOTE: "The lowering dusk paints the sky in hues of gold and scarlet and crimson, mirrored in the black glass of the river's surface. The two young men, their bodies aglow, stand side by side, awed by the miracle, the backs of their hands touching lightly. They return to their fire as night seeps from the river, swallowing them in its starless darkness."

Yes you are almost correct. The selection is terse, precise, saying what it means and nothing else.

Not to be a dick, but where's the emotion in the above paragraph? How did this advance the story? This feels like half a paragraph from a 70s romance novel. You can write all the flowery prose you want, but if it doesn't give us insight or help build a scene, it's just more wasted words.

We all have to find our own voice when we write, whether it be with flowery prose, or not, but we'll never all write the same way, and it's a good thing too, or literature would get stale pretty quick.
 
Not to be a dick, but where's the emotion in the above paragraph? How did this advance the story? This feels like half a paragraph from a 70s romance novel. You can write all the flowery prose you want, but if it doesn't give us insight or help build a scene, it's just more wasted words.

We all have to find our own voice when we write, whether it be with flowery prose, or not, but we'll never all write the same way, and it's a good thing too, or literature would get stale pretty quick.

I agree with the second paragraph.

As for emotion shown in the example, I think the two standing in awe of the sunset with their hands touching shows emotion--not quite eroticism, though. That said, I don’t think a sentence lifted out of a body of work by either the author or the critic makes a relevant point on the body of the work by either the author or the critic.

In this particular case, just what is in the the example doesn't pin down something for me in terms of sensuality, so it doesn't include enough for me. "Their bodies aglow" cries out to me to have "naked" thrown in there if this is trying to evoke eroticism. If it's a sexual situation, I want that pinned down. This, in itself, doesn't go beyond just two guys on a camping trip when the sun goes down and wearing clothes that pick up the dying rays of the sun.
 
If you don't see the emotion, the sexual tension in that excerpt, then you don't know how to read. It is a single excerpt, one graph taken only to show that it isn't striped "bare". There is nakedness, skinny dipping, shyness, embarrassment, eroticism, light touching before this scene and great sex afterward. In the story the reader already knows they are naked. Anyway, I don't need to defend my work, I was only showing that it isn't "bare", or even, "minimal".
 
If you don't see the emotion, the sexual tension in that excerpt, then you don't know how to read. It is a single excerpt, one graph taken only to show that it isn't striped "bare". There is nakedness, skinny dipping, shyness, embarrassment, eroticism, light touching before this scene and great sex afterward. In the story the reader already knows they are naked. Anyway, I don't need to defend my work, I was only showing that it isn't "bare", or even, "minimal".

It read like a set up for a movie scene rather than an actual scene.

A narrator taking us in on the action before it starts.

It's like the prologue of Romeo and Juliet, it tells you what is going on, but you've yet to experience it.

It's good, but it's not what you think it is (but most of us are like that, I imagine).
 
If you don't see the emotion, the sexual tension in that excerpt, then you don't know how to read. It is a single excerpt, one graph taken only to show that it isn't striped "bare". There is nakedness, skinny dipping, shyness, embarrassment, eroticism, light touching before this scene and great sex afterward. In the story the reader already knows they are naked. Anyway, I don't need to defend my work, I was only showing that it isn't "bare", or even, "minimal".

Don't get pissy, you put your work in as an example, and you even asked for someone to challenge it. Please explain where the sexual tension is in the paragraph. (Not graph, that's something different, and it's stripped not striped unless you're right and I can't read.)
 
If you don't see the emotion, the sexual tension in that excerpt, then you don't know how to read. It is a single excerpt, one graph taken only to show that it isn't striped "bare". There is nakedness, skinny dipping, shyness, embarrassment, eroticism, light touching before this scene and great sex afterward. In the story the reader already knows they are naked. Anyway, I don't need to defend my work, I was only showing that it isn't "bare", or even, "minimal".

That's not really fair, Robert. You provided the excerpt yourself--and, no, as I posted, I didn't get enough of a sexual connotation in just what was posted. One added word would have done it, but you're the one who provided just that sentence.

I read that one criticism being discussed was that you were too spare in your edits. From what you yourself provided in this example, if you wanted it to be erotic, I think you were too spare by at least one word.

And, again, one passage out of your body of work that you select yourself isn't an illustration of the body of work.

An overall observation on much of the critiquing being given on the Editorial Feedback forum. Much of it does strip away the author's voice and substitute that of the one giving the critique and much of it also changes the original meaning. Neither of these is what an editor should be doing.
 
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An overall observation on much of the critiquing being given on the Editorial Feedback forum. Much of it does strip away the author's voice and substitute that of the one giving the critique and much of it also changes the original meaning. Neither of these is what an editor should be doing.

That's a statement I can agree with completely.
 
Once again, in the story the reader already knows the two men are naked. To say it again WOULD be needlessly redundant IN THIS CASE.
 
Once again, in the story the reader already knows the two men are naked. To say it again WOULD be needlessly redundant IN THIS CASE.

You're being a little hardheaded on this Robert. You provided the example. The responses were on what you provided. We can't be expected to track down a fuller paragraph you didn't provide to try to make your point.
 
Once again, in the story the reader already knows the two men are naked. To say it again WOULD be needlessly redundant IN THIS CASE.

Saying it twice in one paragraph is redundant, saying it twice during a scene is perfectly fine. If you feel it's redundant, that's fine, but telling others they shouldn't do it, that's not so fine unless you make it clear it's your opinion. You tend to spend too much time telling people how to reword things the way you'd write it, and that will never work.

I know you'll take this as an insult, which leaves me dumbfounded every time, but you can't tell someone they should write in your voice. Help them by being a reader, not a writer, and learn to take criticism as well as you give it.
 
Saying it twice in one paragraph is redundant, saying it twice during a scene is perfectly fine. If you feel it's redundant, that's fine, but telling others they shouldn't do it, that's not so fine unless you make it clear it's your opinion. You tend to spend too much time telling people how to reword things the way you'd write it, and that will never work.

True, but irrelevant in this case, and I'd like to see the light bulb go on over Robert's head on this. It's irrelevant if he pinned it down in the fuller paragraph. It isn't in the passage he chose to post as a example. For the example he was trying to use, what's in what he didn't provide is just irrelevant.
 
I posted the sample as a sample of not being bare, but am being challenged on the one paragraph example not telling the entire story. The editors I worked with in the past often referred to paragraphs as "graphs"

If I provided two paragraphs someone would say that still wasn't enough. if i supplied the entire story, then the story would be critiqued. but not the point I was making that the "graph" is not "bare". (especially for a single paragraph.)

Now as for cutting. It is not authors voices I seek to cut, and obviously it is my opinion I am expressing, who else's opinion would I give? For the most part I advocate cutting out phrases such as "She looked at me, (with her eyes)" or "He opened the door, walked through and closed the door before going downstairs."

Now obviously there might be some artistic value to all this opening and closing, in some instances, but when not, the reader would generally assume the door was opened before the character went through. Something like" He went downstairs, " might be sufficient without damaging any art.
 
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No, Robert, you were being challenged for basing your argument, on the one hand, on just one sentence you selected as speaking for your entire story file and, on the other hand, our not taking into account passages that hadn't been provided to us.

You're being dopey and an embarrassment. Just give it up and get over it.
 
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You're being dopey and an embarrassment. Just give it up and get over it.

Yep. (I cut that down from 10 words).

I'm all for rearranging clunky sentences to make the rhythm of the sentence flow. But why describe a sex scene when I could write 'they had sex' or a sword fight when I could say 'he killed him with his sword' ... I know, extreme example, but sometimes imagery is nice to have. Even if it's just an open door you walk through.
 
I think Robert overthinks, seems a huge waste of creative and mental energy to get this worked up over a 'graph'

I just cut it loose and see where and how it falls. I know, it shows sometimes:eek:, but at least I'm not wasting time or getting frustrated with it.
 
I think Robert overthinks, seems a huge waste of creative and mental energy to get this worked up over a 'graph'

I just cut it loose and see where and how it falls. I know, it shows sometimes:eek:, but at least I'm not wasting time or getting frustrated with it.

I think Robert takes himself way too serious. There's nothing wrong with admitting you're wrong once in a while, but he'll argue to the death rather than give in.

We won't be seeing any light bulbs going off any time soon I'm afraid.
 
This is my last post on this issue. No one has given a single example of how i suggested edting out anyone's art or soul or style. It's all blaather. And obviously, some people must think i am important with all the attention i am getting because one writer did't like my suggestions . If you look at the original post in this thread, i was not alone in my suggestion to eliminate dead wood.
 
If you don't see the emotion, the sexual tension in that excerpt, then you don't know how to read. It is a single excerpt, one graph taken only to show that it isn't striped "bare". There is nakedness, skinny dipping, shyness, embarrassment, eroticism, light touching before this scene and great sex afterward. In the story the reader already knows they are naked. Anyway, I don't need to defend my work, I was only showing that it isn't "bare", or even, "minimal".

LOL why am I not surprised by this? Robert you have a Hitler mentality and I can only imagine you were a highly disrespected and disliked English teacher. Probably by your peers as much as the students. You seem to have room for YOUR opinion only, even though you ask others for theirs. Such a tightly closed mind which contains such a big ego is reflective of your inability to teach...because sir, YOU feel as though you have nothing left to learn. I think you are more or less trying to prove something to yourself rather than take to heart the critiques that people try to discuss with you. You are looking for conformity and trying to control peoples' opinions, getting defensive when they have their own. But hey...it's funny as hell to watch this all unfold lol....much better than your actual stories. :D
 
This is my last post on this issue. No one has given a single example of how i suggested edting out anyone's art or soul or style. It's all blaather. And obviously, some people must think i am important with all the attention i am getting because one writer did't like my suggestions . If you look at the original post in this thread, i was not alone in my suggestion to eliminate dead wood.

Oh yeah....Duh!! lololol
 
And obviously, some people must think i am important with all the attention i am getting because one writer did't like my suggestions . If you look at the original post in this thread, i was not alone in my suggestion to eliminate dead wood.

Robert swings and misses the entire point of the thread ... I like how he got in his evident self worth that all of us ALREADY know he has, but it's good to get that out there just to be sure we do.
 
Good thing Bard split the entire thread. All teh yammerings coming close to two Lit pages.


There should be a Story Feedback Blurt thread, where all the off topic comments should go instead of getting deleted. Things might be interesting.
 
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