I'm no poet; I'm a prose guy. But this is good work. My only suggestion--and it's trivial--is that some of the line-spacing between the poems is inconsistent and worth fixing. E.g., "an appreciation of november" looks as though it's part of the previous poem. And some of the other poems are varying distances from one another. The fact that I noticed the spacing means that it interfered with my enjoyment and so I bring it to your attention.
Hi. A few questions that may help. There is no criticism in these questions but perhaps you will find them worth considering:
1. You use "A"-like character to separate your paragraphs. What does it stand for? And why don't you use one after the first paragraph?
2. You italicize phrases but I don't understand your purpose in doing so. What is it?
3. You have at least four characters with potential story lines: (1) The girl you used to know; (2) your sister being hit by the a car; (3) the anthropomorphized black dog (and his family?); and (4) your narrator (and his schooling?). Alcoholism is common characters 1, 2 & 4. Loneliness and family dysfunction is common to all of them. Do you intend to weave their story lines into one story? How? You could also make separate stories out of them. Whether you choose to make them several stories or one may depend on the length you are attempting. Short story? Novel?
4. I'm not sure where alchemy comes into this. The black dog, the snakes, and the alienation could all lead there, but the connection is not yet clear.
Hi. I'm new to the site and am looking around to see how folks use it. I like epic fantasy and I although I'm encountering this 96 chapters in, I might well go back and read your piece from the start. I hope you'll consider this a compliment.
Since you solicit suggestions for improvement, one passage caught my eye: "a wall of fire descended, slamming over Shadow Water's neck like a wall of bricks." Fire and bricks are very different. Fire has thermal energy but is not solid. They will have dissimilar effects on a person's neck. Also, why use the word "wall" in one sentence to describe two such different things?
Hi. I'm brand new to writing.com so if I'm out of line please let me know.
It took me awhile to understand the problem your protagonists face. Perhaps starting with the following lines would immediately drop your readers into the heart of the situation. Then your narrator can explain why his friends and he were there.
"Is that when you heard the plot? The plan to steal the rare books?" Detective Morrison was impatient with us and our story; he wanted to get home to his dinner.
Hillary spoke first, "They were sayin' something about how much money they could get for them on Ebay. We had to sneak past them to get out of the library, so we saw what they were doin'. They had the case broken, the glass case where you could look at these super rare books and couldn't touch them or anythin'." The detective wrote all this down.
I didn't want her to fall apart and tell everyone that we were hiding back there to do other things, why we didn't want to leave right away. They didn't need to know that part."
Hope this helps.
Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/profile/reviews/scpos2
All Writing.Com images are copyrighted and may not be copied / modified in any way. All other brand names & trademarks are owned by their respective companies.
Generated in 0.30 seconds at 8:58am on Jun 01, 2024 via server web2.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
