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616 Public Reviews Given
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Public Reviews
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Review of Winter's Solace  
Review by ness
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)

I am glad I read this. This death bed story is outstanding. The situation in this, of years of bad relationship leading up to a scene of uncomfortable silence, was emotionally awkward in a way that will stick with me. Torn between being a hypocrite or being a monster to a dying man, that is a very strong situation.

I think the way this was told made it better than a reductive plotpoint list would sound. Not that the sequence of events was weak, but the way you pull us right inside your hero's head makes him real. You split the reader's sympathies by making his feelings understandable, but he doesn't feel unequivocally in the right, and that lends the story tension. The ending, when he said what he did, came as a surprise, given the stream of consciousness he had. But, on looking over it again, you had built up to it when you hinted at his hunger for a rapport.

I've known families with poisoned rifts in them, and this reads completely authentically.
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102
Review by ness
Rated: E | (5.0)

I love this item. A reading list is so in keeping with the writing and reading theme of this site, and yet I don't think I've come across another item that duplicates this: an in + out which offers members the chance to plug pro novels and nonfiction they have recently read. Apart from the introduction to new books, I for one am the kind of snoop who is fascinated when I recognise a handle here and find out what kind of books are that person enjoys. (Yes, I also crane my neck on public transport to see what strangers are reading.)
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103
Review by ness
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)

Present tense is an unusual choice for narrative but you stuck with it consistently and it works. It took me a while to work out that the
"lines in inverted commas" were Tyler's thoughts and
- the lines within dashes - were his dialogue
since usually speech is inside inverted commas, but the context made it clear. I don't like Tyler - he was a disreputable thug and the gaybashing element in him hit my buttons in a bad way - but he's got a distinct voice.

And, to be honest, I think he beats up heterosexuals, too, being an equal opportunity misanthrope.

Some of his vocabulary …I bet it’s completely disfigured! Have I killed him? I hope not, it’s most unfortunate when such things happen. Ah is almost ironically unNeanderthal. It didn't tickle my funnybone that much, given that it is in the comedy genre, but this is an original character and a nonstop action/adventure story.
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104
Review by ness
Rated: E | (4.0)

What a wonderful list of swashbuckling melodramas - a lot of the old ones are old favourites, (Captain Blood! Lion in Winter!) but I noticed one oversight ~

1952 Scaramouche Stewart Granger

If you ever come across it in a video rental, you might enjoy it; it is set in revolutionary France, it has a hissable villain, a frightfully noble hero, thwarted love and the world's longest and most elaborately choreographed duel which goes up and down stairs to end on a public stage. Is the most Errol Flynn film Errol Flynn never made. Brilliant.



One thing that would have enhanced the list would have been a little - even only a sentence each - comment on each film. It would personalise the list.

I used to do RPG, too. It's amazing how diverse are the sources you draw on to create a fantasy world.
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105
Review by ness
Rated: ASR | (4.5)

How easy it is to empathise with your angry man when he's on hold, endlessly, on the phone. His reactions are extreme, but the situation is designed to bring out his weakness and show it in action, making it more vivid to the reader (who may be remembering thinking the same sort of things, last time they were listening to muzak)

This was short and there were no surprises, no story. It was a scene, well described, realistic and uncontrived. I think, given the way you were building this up and the shape of the overall piece, the rant should not have moved into indirect speech as fast as it did. It read truncated, there.

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106
Review by ness
Rated: E | (4.0)

Thank you for sending me the link to this.

I liked the dialect in this - it sounded very exotic from here *Smile* I believed the bits about the furnace were background colour, but when I got to the end realised that they were not.

The first sentence I found a little clumsy. I'll underline the words that threw me (and this is just me reading; other people will react differently) A deep gold antique ring, centered with a brilliantly colored opal, uniquely had a smiling face carved into it. Uniquely was placed in an odd position in the sentence. ..had a unique smiling face..?

The opening paragraphs in the narrator's voice have long and elaborate words in them, but the body of the story is much more informal. I read it as the wife's memories, told long after the event, and that was why she used english differently in the framing part.

Oh, I remember getting an opal ring from a junk shop, when they weren't fashionable. Wearing one all the time is a bit of a no-no, though. The superstition is that they're bad luck (ironically, given your story), but that's not it. Opals are very fragile, and the colours in them can be wrecked while washing dishes or some household task.

One thing that would help the reader would be if you made a new paragraph every time a new person speaks. So when the wife speaks, new paragraph. The husband replies, new paragraph. It would break up those long bulks of text on the screen.

Kennedy's death was the 9/11 of its generation. I remember my parents talking about first hearing the news.

I admire so much the talent for writing a tightly plotted beginning-middle-end story, holding the reader's interest, and painting a picture.
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107
Review of Autumns' Flower  
Review by ness
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)

I cannot launch straight into commenting on how this is written without taking time to enjoy how you have shared your memory of your grandmother. Thank you.

The opening was bitter and rundown, which I think is how you intended it to read, with her at a low ebb. The reader rejoices with you as things blossom.

You described how she looked - I am bad about writing visually, and I admire your ability to draw pictures in the text.

I have been told that the easiest way to find the true home of a comma is to read over a sentence and see where the pauses fall naturally. If they break up the sense of what is said, then they get in the way of understanding rather than helping. It's more of an art than a science, and commas are a grey area sometimes, but I think there are 2 commas here which interrupt the sense. Tragedy turned into hope that year, and the new found love, my Nana and I shared, blossomed. The one after year sounds good, but "my Nana and I shared" should run without a break.


my mislead feelings towards her I think that is misled, there.
She had been admonished by most of her family to a life of drunken solitude. admonished is scolded, but this sounds more like she was exiled.
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108
Review by ness
Rated: E | (4.0)

I love fairy tales - thank you for writing this version of Red Riding Hood. It's a fresh take on the story to bring Granny centre stage and end it where you did, and I felt for the poor woman (it has been flu season lately, and of course that may have been what inspired you *Smile* )

The ending was unexpected - I mean, her final thought.

Some wording things struck me:
her fray, fraught hanky frayed, I think. I read fraught in this context as bunched-up, and don't want to argue with alliteration, handy tool that it is, and fitting to a genre rooted in oral retellings. *Smile*
handkerchief.. teeming with wet patches teeming is a word that I would think of as solids or lifeforms, but this line is about liquids, (not to get too graphic) Teeming with germs makes sense by my understanding, but your lady is more worried about reaching the limits of absorbancy. Would another word work for you here?
A Robin’s breast I thought that was her grand daughter arriving on first read. As it is a bird reminding her of the child, capitalising the robin is unnecessary.
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109
Review by ness
Rated: ASR | (5.0)
What an excellent article, thoughtful and thought-provoking. I had not read anything before on the subject of composing those "meet the author" blurbs you find on the backs of books.

I work as a bookseller, and I can endorse particularly strongly the quote about being able to pitch a book in a soundbite if it is to sell. I am not quite so sure about the value of listing one's membership of a genre writers' association, but maybe the trade are more cynical about this kind of data than the public.

The article and the links are wonderful. I especially like the way you give bullet points at the top, then expand on each instruction.
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110
Review of What Not to Write  
Review by ness
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)

I'm going to start with a disclaimer. I do use coloured and font in reviews, mostly red to quote the phrases in your work I'm referring to. I lurk a lot at Wee's reviewing forum, so I know you're unkeen on the colour and the unbridled fontage.

Having said that, while I read this list of peeves, was agreeing with many of your points, although some of them I don't share your strength of feeling on. (Double posting titles is unnecessary, but not worth (IMO) getting upset about. Not that I'm telling you what you should get upset over, am only saying that it's a lesser infraction than, say, txt-speak, u no.


Descriptions: "Great piece" and "Please review"
Wordy Word McWord to that. A dictionary of Word.
Er, I agree.
I detest "please review" more than anything in a brief description, but "a very deep poem, it will change your life" runs it close.

Quick defence of the hobby writers, who say "I don't want criticism." When I started here, it took me ages to get fully to grips with how to post an item. All my things are ratable, because that is, I think, the default way to post. And, once I got some comments, I wanted to keep them on record. I fear that if I altered the setting, my record of those past reviews would disappear. (Have long since deleted the inbox copies.) Unratable items tend not to be as visible on the site, so.. Actually, this argument strays from private to public writing.

Ignoring Your Readership
Another think you just shouldn't do thing.

Suggestions:
Using the genres correctly. That would be my peeve, frankly. As a poetryphobe, I loathe clicking on prose to find the rhyming stuff. I thought prose was non-poetry, but am wondering was my definition wrong for years.

Also, it is important - this is mostly something newbies do - to use as many genres as possible (accurately, please: why bother filing your supernatural love story as computer-nonfiction-article?) so that you get exposure to the kind of readers who want to read what you want to write.

Am putting this on public in hopes that others will follow the link back, see this, and maybe give you fruitful ranting topics.

Thank you. I liked the way this was laid out, with the sub headings. And you are a very clear communicator.
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111
Review of Regrets  
Review by ness
Rated: E | (2.5)
The content of this is interesting - an honest account of someone's life can't be anything but interesting - but the way it reads doesn't do you justice.

First, the summary line beneath the title.
Things I would lile to change about me but not worth changing (like to change) This hovers between changing and not-changing, so I don't know which you want.

The body of this article is all one big long paragraph. It would read more easily and look better if you broke it into a few, shorter, paragraphs, with blank lines between. It gives the readers' eyes rest that way.

There are some spelling errors; "quiet" for "quit," "stronggest" for "strongest," "collage" for "college," "indevors" for "endeavours." Wait, you'll want "endeavors." Am writing in UK spelling.

Yet, even from far away, I can identify with what you say. I, too, have less education than my colleagues, and I wish to God I'd paid attention long ago in school. When you're a kid, you don't have the same priorities, and when you're an adult, it's amazing to think back to that mindset.

Are there voluntary programmes, say, through your local parish or some charity organisation, that could use your help? In my experience of working for voluntary (charity) groups, they offer training and support if you can in turn offer to be a reliable adult with regular slots of time. Sunday schools, creches, there are lots of places that are crying out for good and gentle people.
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112
Review by ness
Rated: 18+ | (4.5)
There are a couple of typos - and that's the reason for this not being a five star. Also, for the sake of your readers' eyes, (red-rimmed from sobbing over heartless ladies and faithless men), I would request a blank line between paragraphs.

My, you have suffered. This is almost loving in the way it bashs C+W music. Thank you for the laugh it gave me.

fashion sensible I think I know what you mean, but I think it could be better phrased.
wallow in there own pity, their
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113
Review by ness
Rated: E | (3.5)
The self doubting paragraph that opens this.. please delete it. It drives off your readers. Diffidence is natural when you're revealing a story out of your imagination, but fake a brazen attitude.

The land is overrun by a species of Homans, with a lifespan up to 500 years that have never seen before Good sentence up to 500 years, but what does the sub-clause "that have never seen before" relate to?

The first chapter feels crowded - runon sentences (which read as breathless narration) a lot of information delivered in condensed form, too much to take in. You treat this back story as prologue, and you're trying to get to the story proper fast.

All of which means that these short paragraphs are over burdened with info-dumping. My suggestion isn't to lose the material. It's good and it's plotty, and it's essential to the later development. I would say, pick a couple of key scenes (at least) and make set pieces of this, with dialogue and some visuals of the Ganliks. I had no sense of what they were at the end of this bit, and as a reader I should have.

Mind, this is good story, but it needs to be extended with details and speech and people. It's like a stock cube now; add water and make it into something delicious.

By the way, when you do get going with dialogue, it reads very teenspeak to me. I mean, it authentically sounds the way people talk.

Some their/they're, your/you're, to/too type typos.

They are; the Harloquin eighth which is the lowest strata, I’m in that. A Ganlik semicolon has infiltrated your prose to discredit you.

There're a couple of places - the beginning, the end of chapter 2 - where you pause midstream to address the reader directly. This is high risk. Great writers have done it - Thackeray does it a lot for instance, but it's a controversial move, and even the classics which employ the technique get marked down by the literary critics. The reason some readers hate it is that they feel ripped out of the story at the writer's whim then dumped back in again, and the shift in tone cripples their suspension of disbelief.

She wore contacts though she wouldn’t admit it to anyone and perfect eyebrows to go with them. The way this runs I wonder did Maria pick up her nice eyebrows from the same shop she got the contact lenses. Try not to have two different thoughts in the same sentence. Looking at her face, you'd see the eye colour and think "oh, she has nice eyebrows, too." So the one thought led to the other. Put it in the following sentence, maybe? I'm making a silly fuss about a workable sentence, but the thing this made me think was that many times, your sentences would work better broken down a bit into multiple sentences.

Your hero/heroine (don't know which yet, and am in chapter 4) appears to be obsessed by everyone's eyebrows. Quirky. *Smile*



“Yeah, I know that there is no way that I could have heard correctly.”

“Because that would mean EDITED FOR SPOILER REASONS.”

“And that would mean EDITED FOR SPOILER REASONS.” I said slowly trying to come to grips with it.

I hereby let you off fixing all the your/you're (not really) so long as you rewrite this passage. It is your classic sci-fi, people-explaining-things-to-each-other-they-already-know scene. I'm an old Blakes7 fan; I was glued to Dr Who waybackwhen, this is familiar stuff. I know it will be hard to write this so that the reader picks up the situation and the characters don't sound weird, but try. Are any of them likely to be yammering and panicking and while they yammer what they have to do flows out of the, er, yammer?

*o blast unfinished*

This is well worth continuing with and concluding, but there are a lot of typo fixes to do, and chapter one, as I said, needs to be less textbook, more novel. People are all too apt to click out if you don't hook em into your story right away, and this is getting better as it moves along into its action-adventure strengths.




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114
Review by ness
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
Interesting essay. I could see you were angry, but you backed up your statements. A couple of places, you said: "go look this up on the internet" - it might strengthen your case if you put a couple of http addresses in to show your backup.


Not a single Christian has been executed for the purpose of being a Christian. "For the purpose of" reads wrong here. I think that phrase tends to mean a result that was intended, while execution is not something many believers seek out - there have been deliberate martyrs before now, but I don't think that's what this statement is about. I would suggest (tentatively) "executed for their Christianity," or "executed by reason of their Christianity."

Criticism yes, persecution, no way. This is one of those telegram sentences which are clearer if expanded. I read it as "Yes, they are being criticised, but no way are they being persecuted." But my preference for the longwinded is a stylistic thing.
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Review by ness
Rated: E | (2.5)
Good start, needs work.

The ALLCAPS thing is a pain to read. If you do the boring English thing and break this into paragraphs, add commas for breathing spaces and so forth.

Then take another look at the story. What happened before and after the part of the story we see here? What did the other members of the class think of Corky? (Did they think he was funny, or was he the only one to think that?) What was Mr Howard like?
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Review of Myths of Poetry  
Review by ness
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Wow.

This myth debunker piece breaks down a lot of mystique about poetry. It puts obligations as a reader in place of that disengagment - now I can't tell myself that poetry is another country; they do things differently there. I'll have to read carefully, and try again and understand this form.

(*sigh* I find metre very difficult.)
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Review of Dynamic Duo  
Review by ness
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
The Emily Dickenson and Emily Post dialogue - would have a lot of dashes - and death - but with frightfully elegantly presented baked funeral meats - and both Emilies would be terribly polite -

WINKLETT YOU HAVE INFECTED MY BRAIN WITH STRANGENESS: STOP IT.

I like the passive aggressive chap in this script.
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Review by ness
Rated: E | (4.5)
Thank you for this article - inside track on the mysterious ways of publishers is always worth knowing. *Smile* The made-up names in the letters amused me, too.

The last time I was in a publisher's office, the thing that awed me most was the sheer size of the slush pile of manuscripts sent in on spec. Vast, threatening to topple over. And one anxious man hunched at a desk overshadowed by them.
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Review of City  
Review by ness
Rated: E | (4.5)
Why is it called City? It is about one person. I don't know who. This poem is about the inside of that person, and their outside is a mystery.

I don't know the meaning of this. I've read it over, (and I love the asides within brackets) and I love the way the words sing. But I don't feel as if I know what happened. Perhaps that is the point.
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Review of Medieval Soldier  
Review by ness
Rated: E | (4.5)
Your soldier has a very modernly cynical outlook - though I suppose soldiers always had cause to be cynical. The comedy of this really worked. I think your hero probably fought like Shakespeare's Falstaff. That is, his battle was not magnificent or at all risktaking, but the account of it he gave down the pub afterwards was terrific.

The bit about arrows landing three feet in front of the enemy reminded me of old Cecil B DeMille films, or things like that William Wallace film a few years back.

Cavalry are the mounted troops. Calvary is the hill Jesus was crucified on.

I’m the king of the world” those Calvary guys think I think a sentence ended at "world." so that would be of the world." Those cavalry guys
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Review of Little Things  
Review by ness
Rated: 18+ | (5.0)
I loved this, and laughed out loud (in a public place: they're looking at me weirdly now). I can't think of a single thing I'd suggest to alter it.

At this point, I usually go into copyeditor mode, to see if I can say constructive stuff. No, the spelling and grammar and presentation were perfect as far as I could see.

The suggested responses to Murphy's Law covered it all. You have a wonderful droll style.
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Review of The Martha Files  
Review by ness
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)
The Steven King novel etched on a pyrex dish is an image that's going to stay with me. I don't want it to, but it's there for a long stay.

This is five stars for the comedy value, but the presentation lets it down a bit at some points. It looks like a cut and paste job that chopped up some of the paragraphs brutally.

There are a couple of places where the flow hiccups. Hmm, not phrasing that at all well..
Opening paragraph. My husband is insane. doesn't really connect with the rest of the paragraph, and the bit about weather doesn't tie in with the (barbeque) rest of the piece.

The ending was very abrupt - and you know, I wouldn't see that as a flaw if I hadn't been enjoying this so much. This was very entertaining, and it read like someone talking, a great storyteller talking.

I want to read more by you, because this was addictive humour.
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Review of Tough Love  
Review by ness
Rated: 18+ | (4.5)
This read emotionally true - your Ron was thoroughly unpleasant, but you wrote him honestly, with his own compulsion to behave the way he did. He talks with remarkable stiltedness - What love can exist when you will not compromise yourself to my needs? but this is a rehearsed scene for him, right?


The interior of this - the stream of consciousness - was much better than the external scene setting, I thought. The dropped in data about eye colouring, and "her perfect face" jarred a little for me.
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124
Review by ness
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)

How do you manage to write an actual fresh vampire story - I thought they'd all been done! Your elderly gentleman is oddly sweet while still being macabre, the combination being funny in an Addams family way.

I was curious about the dynamics of the vamp family he ended up in, where he played patriarch to all the youngsters (were they not older than he?) You mentioned that household, but I wanted more of that.
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125
Review by ness
Rated: E | (5.0)
This was to be of his many major public fasts, Missing word here? This is from the paragraph opening "Owing to his poor health.."

One of the things I most liked about this was the way you gave the quotes first, then the chronology of his life, with very little editorial comment (though temptation must have been fierce), then gave your personal response to Gandhi in the appendix in blue. I knew less than I ought about him, alas, only the Attenborough biopic and the story of him being asked his opinion on Western Civilisation. He said, "I think it would be a very good idea."

Thank you very much for this item.
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