Feedback & Advice please

[UnseenChagrin]

My first short story The Wind was approved. I would love to hear not only feedback on the story itself, but also advice on how I could adapt my personal writing style to make a better story. Thanks ahead of time.

 

[cloudy]

Hi Unseen,

First, congrats on your story posting!

The only thing I had a problem with in your story was the imagery. Its nicely written but it was almost a sensory overload for me. To the point where I almost missed the actual "story."

I would break the paragraphs down a little too, just for ease of reading here at Lit.

Hope that helps!

 

[Rainbow Skin]

This is very good: you know what you're doing, and how to get the effects. There needs to be a little delicate trimming of the profusion, some of the adjectives being weak, but this is minor compared to what does already work.

pale legs... quick leap The first one I thought unnecessary was 'pale', and then 'quick' reinforces the feeling that too many of the nouns have adjectives. This continues with warm metal... calming rhythm... white cheeks... ominous tension.... Each by itself is fine, but none of them is strong; it doesn't add too much to the description: we could presume as we read the story that she is pale, for example, and that the car she leans on is warm, so saying so isn't crucial. The effect of these weak modifiers mounts up. If you do need to say specifically that the metal is warm, or her legs are pale, that is if it isn't just painting the picture, then take time to give it a clause of its own. Not every time, just enough to offset the repetition of simple Adj N pairs.

like a bad margarita This clunks, as does the other simile like a wife whose husband had not come home for dinner. They seem out of place. You shouldn't need to put literal comparisons like this in what is otherwise done by subtler allusions.

Several of your images seem not quite right, as if you've got the idea, and you've got a word that fits it, but on hard consideration the word isn't actually the one you need. First is relinquishing to her insistence. For one thing, you can't relinquish: it needs an object. Next, insistence is what we say figuratively about winds doing, but since people can literally insist, it doesn't seem appropriate for her to do it to the wind. (Later it might, as the wind becomes a more real persona.)

a master's unwavering staccato Technically yes you can do staccato without wavering out of time, but this sounds wrong: staccato can be understood as a constant wavering. You want a single word for 'not missing the beat', and I can't think of one -- 'unvarying' isn't it. 'Unhesitating', 'unstumbling', something of that kind?

gazed cautiously at the cemetery gates What about the gates is there to attract a cautious gaze, or the length involved in gazing? You might mean this, but I wondered whether you meant 'through' rather than 'at'.

full force of her frail figure. Falling A separate reading aloud for sound instead of meaning should pick this up.

In the absence of any reality, her feet had followed the urging push The word 'reality' (which you used just a line or so before, so this is probably an editing error) doesn't convey what's absent in being pushed by the wind: you mean something like solidity or or firmness or firm intent or real intention.

The cold, hard marble melted her anger Marble, being cold, can't melt anything, and calling it both 'cold' and 'hard' enhances the literal sense of the marble, so makes it impossible for it to be read also as the realization, the words, the effect, the touch, or some such abstract thing that might figuratively melt her anger. Try 'disperse', 'dissipate', perhaps 'expel'.

Well I hope all this detail hasn't made me sound captious. To stress again, this is fine-tuning, polishing of a very well-made work, and I hope the sort of comment you were after.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

This is very impressive and would make an excellent poem, but as a story I think it fails. The reason is that everything that happens happens internally. There’s hardly any objective action, and so there’s nothing really to tell.

While I appreciate the intensity of the feelings and emotions expressed, I found the story very difficult to read after a while and I’m afraid I had to skim to the ending, looking to see if anything was actually going to happen in the story. Aparently not. All the action in this story was internal, except for the wind blowing up her skirt, which hardly makes for compelling reading.

You’re a very good writer, and much of the prose is lovely; but for me there was so much density and the prose was so fraught with such emotional weight that I felt claustrophobic reading it. It wore me out. I really longed for the relief of some action, or just a breathing space where I could be out of the whipsaw of her emotions. Your character never seems to feel anything gentle: no sweetness, no wistfulness, no mild regret. Everything is turned up full blast, and it gets exhausting to be with her.

Descriptions of emotional states are the purview of poetry, in my opinion. My own theory of fiction says that fiction seeks to find meaning in the things that happen around us, or to us. Emotion is conveyed through dramatic action. That doesn’t mean that there’s no room for descriptions of internal states, but that it’s always better to have your characters act them out or express them in action and let the reader interpret them than it is to just go inside their heads and tell the reader what they’re thinking and feeling. The main problem in fiction is finding those little actions and events that express what they’re feeling. As the reader tries to understand a character’s actions, they’re drawn into the story.

I understand the difficulty you had in this story. The change she undergoes has to be an internal change, but still, I think it would have been better had you been able to find some way for her to express externally what was going on inside her.

On a more mechanical note, I must admit that I had a hard time understanding the combination of a hot day with a cold wind. Maybe that just doesn’t happen where I live, but it had the feel of forcing a symbol into a story whether it made sense or not.

I know it must seem like I’m coming down on you especially hard, but really, that’s not my intention. Parts of the story verge on real brilliance, and you obviously are a very talented writer. I just think you picked a topic that didn’t give you enough story to sink your teeth into.

---dr.M.

 

[UnseenChagrin]

Thank you for the comments cloudy, Rainbow Skin, and dr_mabeuse! I welcome the praise, but you can never improve without criticism. Aside from poetry, this is my first attempt at anything literary since middle school, maybe even high school. I really appreciate the time and effort you took to read and comment on my work; that was really wonderful of you!

cloudy- I will try and break down the paragraphs more; I thought I had done so enough, but then again, what's good for me isn't necessarily good for others.

Rainbow Skin- I thought maybe I was going on adjective overload, but was constantly told everything sounded amazing. I really do see your point and will definately try in the future to do more showing rather than telling. I know I did a little, but I could have done more; you're definately right about that.

dr_mabeuse- I knew writing it that there was little action in it. For me there was too much to it for poetry, but maybe there wasn't enough for a short story. I had submitted it under Non-Erotic Stories because there is so little action, but it was approved for Erotic Couplings; to me that creates the promise for more erotic action than there was. However, for future works that require such an internal view I will think longer on how to make the actions more external in nature while still allowing the internal to show.

Oh, and colder winds do happen on warm days; it's VERY strange. Though, for the purposes of the story I exaggerated the temperature difference a bit.