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8 Public Reviews Given
12 Total Reviews Given
Public Reviews
1
1
Review of Meiko's Story  
Review by ShatteredRoses
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)
First off, I'd like to say that I really enjoyed this story. It's short and sweet, cute, funny and a thoroughly enjoyable read. There's some lovely little twists in there, and some nice pieces of description. Also, the characters are very well done, and even the ones that only make a momentary appearance are very well rounded, which is something that a lot of writers fall into the trap of not doing, so well done there. It's obvious that you've given all of your characters a lot of thought, even the ones that we only see for a moment or too, and that's the mark of a very well developed story.

There are a couple of suggestions I'd make generally about your writing, which, even if you don't want to re-work and re-develop this one, should be useful to you in the future. The main thing I'd say is that the way you word things is sometimes a little too elaborate or contrived. Don't get me wrong here, I'm a really huge fan of descriptive writing. That's not really the problem here, although some of the physical character descriptions are a little unnecessary, they're not overwritten, and that's a very good thing. A lot of writers are tempted to try and tell the reader every little thing about their characters, when really the reader isn't involved enough in the story enough to really care yet, and that can be a really big issue. It isn't a trap you've really fallen into here, and that's a good thing, although you may want to keep an eye on your character descriptions to make sure that you only have them when absolutely necessary, and keep them short and sweet. As a general rule of thumb, the kind of anecdotal things that a character would notice are what paints a character in the readers mind, not the physical descriptions of them. For this reason, I found the description of the captain far more interesting than the description of the doctor at the beginning, if you see what I mean. We're given a description of what the doctor actually looks like, which is all well and good, but the lines about the captain being dressed in reams of purple velvet, and the unique voice he has in the story (which is another way in which you're written your characters very effectively, and isn't very easy to do) paints a much more immediate picture in the readers minds.

The main thing I would say about the elaborate or contrived elements here, is that it's the actual tone of your writing that's getting in the way here. I once read a very good article on how to write fiction that said that the writing itself 'should be transparent'. I gave that one a lot of thought, and I've come to realise that he was right. His point was that your readers are there to read your story, not to read the writing itself. You need to get them to 'fall through the page', to encourage them to lose track of where and who they are and mentally inhabit your storyworld, and because of that, anything that draws attention to the fact that they're actually sitting there reading words, and not a part of the world, causes a problem. In short, it reminds them that they're reading a story, and not actually there seeing these things themselves, which is what a writer really wants to achieve. It's not so much that huge reams of description get in the way and cause the reader to 'jolt out' of a story, but more that the tone in which a story is written should be natural and easy so that they don't even notice it. Storytelling is originally an aural art form. It's something that's made to be heard, and even if your readers aren't physically hearing your work, they're reading it in their heads as they go along.

Let me give you a couple of examples from the story that will hopefully show you what I mean. Take this section here:

“Wow”, he uttered and the sentiments popped out across the corridor like bubble rap as other crew men and women absorbed this startling vista.

Take a moment to read that to yourself. Try reading it out loud. It doesn't sound natural, does it? It doesn't just roll off of the tongue. It's not written as you'd say it, and because of that, you're aware that you're reading something that's been constructed. That's the problem, because that's the point at which your readers realise subconsciously that they're not really standing there next to Meiko as he looks out of that window at the millions of coloured stars, they're sat in their living room reading words off of a computer screen. It's not what you're saying that's the problem, its just the way you're saying it.

Try reading this instead:

“Wow,” Meiko whispered, the word echoing down the corridor like popping bubblewrap as everyone around him looked out into the stars.

Now try reading that one out loud. I wanted to get a pretty accurate alternative to what you'd written, and didn't spend too long on it, so it isn't perfect, but you should see how much more easily that second sentence falls off the tongue. It makes you think about the view these people are seeing and their emotional reaction to it, instead of forcing you to concentrate on the words that are there.

That's the main point I would make with this story. As I said, you may not want to go back and re-work this one, but if you bear that in mind in the future, then your writing will become much more fluid, you'll allow your world, and your brilliantly created characters to shine through, and you'll become a much more effective storyteller.

There are another couple of smaller points I'd like to make, since I'm here and all. Again, you may not find them useful here, but they may be of use in the future. The other things that occurred to me while I was reading this was that, although it's a very nice story, and very well told, it does take a little while to get going. I realise that the action isn't really the focus of this story, but even then it doesn't hurt to start with a bang to get your readers' attention and drag them into the story, forcing them to read more whether they like it or not. In this case, it could be as simple as a couple of lines of snappy dialogue between Meiko and the doctor right at the beginning to replace the piece of description about him waking up. It's an unfortunate product of modern living that if you don't have your reader by the balls from the first sentence, then a lot of the time they just stop reading, so it's important to start off with something that grabs hold of them and lets them know how great this is going to be. That way, they'll put up with a lot more description and explanation later on, because they already know that they're reading the kind of story where things happen. If not, they're left reading a story and thinking “Is anything happening yet? Why is nothing happening yet? When are things going to start happening? When is this going to get interesting?”

The last couple of minor points is that this could really do with a couple of proofs for grammar, punctuation and spelling (I noticed you spelled Meiko as Maiko at least once). It's boring, but unfortunately it's a necessary evil to make sure your story is as great as you can get it before you hand it over to someone else. It's just showing a little pride in yourself and your writing that gets passed onto the reader, and makes them take you more seriously from line one. And, the final thing I'd say is that I think that this story could have done with a little more time and/or substance when it comes to Meiko and Loola's relationship. Because this relationship is at the absolute centre of the story, we really need to believe in it. It's kinda like Anakin and Padme in the three later Star Wars films, you know? Because their relationship is the fulcrum on which the whole story rests, it really, REALLY needs to be convincing, and I didn't quite feel it was given enough room to breathe here. It was almost as if you started off talking about Meiko waking up, which you really enjoyed doing, and then rushed through him meeting Loola so that you can get them back to his room and get to the ending that you have planned out and you're looking forward to. It wasn't badly written, or anything, it's just that we didn't really get a sense of real affection, or attraction, between them.

I get the idea that the story would have benefited from another scene or so for them when we really get to see them falling (either in love or in lust) with each other. We need to be shown how they're feelings develop for one another, not told. That way, by the time we get to the end of the story we don't only care about the two of them as individuals, but also for them as a couple, and the ending will have a lot more impact for it.

Anyway, I think I've gone on more than long enough. I hope I've brought up some ideas that you find useful, because this story is genuinely really fun and interesting, and the characters are brilliant and entirely believable, and that's a huge achievement. If the tone in which it was written had just been a little more transparent, I would have been so drawn into it that I really don't think I would have noticed anything else.

So, when do I get to read more of your work? Soon, I hope. *Smile*

http://www.romanticunderground.org
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Review of Nothing remains  
Review by ShatteredRoses
Rated: E | (3.0)
Hello there, just thought I’d take a few moments to give you my feedback on this poem. Hope you find it helpful!

Overall Impressions
The themes and ideas behind this poem are all pretty sound. There are some very nice images and turns of phrase in here, such as: ‘watering all my failed dreams / all now are the tears that pour / devoting birth to the dead rose’. However, the one thing I’d say this poem really suffers from is a lack of professionalism that is going to stop your readers really engaging with it. Fortunately, it’s not something that’s too difficult to fix, and once you start putting it into practice with the new things you write, it’ll be no trouble at all!
I’ve outlined a few of the points below which, personally, got between me and the meaning of this poem. Hopefully these will help you a little with both this poem, and with any future poetry you write!

Poetic Conventions
The first thing on the matter of poetry is that it’s subject to just as many rules, guidelines and conventions as anything else. Just as you need to drive on the correct side of the road and not turn without using your indicators, poetry has the same kind of rules that, if you follow, you will find gain you a lot more respect from other poets.
If you can, I’d suggest you take a look at Stephen Fry’s ‘And Ode Less Travelled’, it’s a fantastic, funny and fascinating look at various poetic conventions and styles, and he makes the very valid point that ignoring the rules is fine, so long as you know what you’re ignoring. I, personally, tend to believe that you should obey poetic conventions unless it is a large point of why you write that you think those conventions are outdated. For example, if you’re writing a poem about how poetic conventions are pointless, then I’d be the first one to praise you for ignoring them within that poem, but everywhere else, I more or less just consider it polite and general good practice.
In case I’m being a little vague, the main poetic convention I’m talking about here which you don’t use here, is the capitalisation of the first letter in each line. Yes, some people don’t like it, but the way I see it, it’s something that’s been developed over thousands of years, and if I was good enough for Byron and Shelley, then it’s good enough for me *Smile*
Also, somewhere between this point and the next, I should mention that you don’t capitalise the word ‘I’ either. This, unfortunately, is one of my real pet hates. I love poetry and the care and attention that needs to be paid to refining and polishing it. A twenty-line poem, for me, should be something that takes as long to write and finish as a five page story, if not more. That’s the whole attraction in poetry, the way so much is summed up in so few words, and when I see a poem that’s missing all its capital letters, it doesn’t matter if the poet has spent ten years on that poem, it still immediately makes me think that it’s been dashed off with very little care or attention.

Punctuation
The next thing I would say is that you don’t seem to be using nearly enough punctuation in your poetry. The thing you have to remember is that the meaning in a poem, that is, whatever it is you are trying to convey, is, by the very nature of poetry, spilt equally between what you are actually saying, and how your reader interprets it. This is much more the case with poetry than with prose, where a lot of the time, you have a lot of space to convey and reintegrate exactly what you mean. In poetry, you don’t have that luxury, so you need to find other ways of conveying exactly how your reader is interpreting your work.
If you’re anything like me, then you’ll love the way poetry sounds, the delicate ins and outs of the way the words flow together, and the way placing a pause in two different places can give you two completely different meanings to the same few words. Now, leaving a little of that to the reader so they can relish it, is a good thing to be doing, but you need to give them some kind of idea of how they should be reading your poem. I read a lot of poetry out loud, and to do that, I need the poets to give me cues for when I should pause for breath, and the parts I should emphasise. The way you give your readers those cues is in punctuation.
You commas, hyphens, ellipsis and full-stops are the only tools you have in controlling the pace at which your reader reads your poem, as well as being your only tools in influencing what they take away from it.
If you’re unsure of how you should be punctuating your poems, because, lets be honest, it’s not easy – I’ve spent the last 5 years studying literature and even I still struggle with it. Anyway, if you’re unsure of how you should go about it, remove all the line breaks in your poem, and read it over as if it’s prose. Read it out loud, think about where you’re pausing to breathe, and which parts you want emphasised, use your punctuation to bring that in, and then put your line breaks back in. It doesn’t matter if you have commas, hyphens and full stops in the middle of lines, a lot of very good poems do, and you already write very nicely structured unrhyming, so you shouldn’t have any trouble with this.

Proper English
This last point I’ll make, I’ll make briefly because you’re probably utterly sick of my going on about punctuation, grammar, capital letters and poetic conventions.
However, this last point is possibly the most important on in making your poetry appear much more professional, and it’s also one of the easiest to implement. Briefly put: You should make sure you use full, real words and proper English. There’s several lines in this poem, such as ‘n watering all my failed’ and ‘ma face hit by rain and squall’ where I’m not sure whether the incomplete or incorrect words are intentional, or whether they’re typos, either way, they’re something you should try and keep out of your poetry. If you can do that, then your writing will start looking far more professional and far more carefully devised in the blink of an eye!

Emotional Response
All of that said, the groundwork of this poem is all pretty sound, the last few lines are very, very good and leave me with a slightly bitter, hollow feeling. The kind of thing that gives you a bit of a shiver. The emotions here were very, very nice indeed and there are a couple of really interesting turns of phrase and slightly unusual language that make me think if you watched your punctuation, English and poetic conventions, your poetry would be really rather enjoyable.

I look forward to seeing how you progress with this one, and with your future work!

Roses
3
3
Review by ShatteredRoses
Rated: 18+ | (2.0)
To be honest, I'm really not sure where this piece is going. It just doesn't seem to have much of a point, to be honest. You seem to spend several hundred words going over and over the same ground: There's this guy Jake, he's in the desert, he's running from the cops, he needs a beer.

Plus, I'm afraid that the whole exposition in the last paragraph really rubs me up the wrong way. I'm a big believer in showing rather than telling.

Aside from those general points, I'll raise some more specific issues that may or may not help you out in reworking it a little. These are mainly punctuation and grammar problems, and I'm not actually very good at these myself, so there's probably a fair amount that I've missed.

Your first problem is your sentances. A lot of the time, you have multiple sentances all side-by-side which should in fact be one long sentance. You should always remember that a sentance should make sense on its own, so, for example, the sentance "Like an outlaw, staring fearlessly in the sheriff's eyes, jaw stiff, Jake walked defiantly through the door and into the tavern." makes sense when you read it out of context, when you read it, you have some idea of what's going on and what all the parts of it mean, it's complete. However: "He just liked pretending to be one." isn't a sentance because we don't know what it is he likes to pretend to be, it doesn't make sense.

A lot of the time, you're using lots of small sentances when you should just be breaking up your clauses with elipsis or commas. Let me give you some examples:

Now even in Blue River. In the middle of the Nevada desert. In 110 degree heat. It was just Jake and his Hemi.

Should be:

Now even in Blue River . . . in the middle of the Nevada desert . . . in 110 degree heat, it was just Jake and his Hemi.


In the searing sun, unsure of whether he would be more comfortable moving into the shade or just continuing to stand right there. Hands on his hip and nonplused expression in his eyes

Should be:

In the searing sun, unsure of whether he would be more comfortable moving into the shade or just continuing to stand right there, hands on his hip and nonplused expression in his eyes


Too bad the bar looked like it hadn't had a bartender for a while. Would have been nice if he could suck back a few Buds as he waited to be handcuffed in air conditioned comfort.

Should be:

Too bad the bar looked like it hadn't had a bartender for a while, it would have been nice to suck back a few Buds as he waited to be handcuffed in air conditioned comfort.


There are plenty of other examples of this as well, but I'm going to move on to make my next point.

This one's to do with the way you organise your lists, such as:

The liked the get up;the boots, the hat, ripped jeans, and the driving around in a two ton pick up. And he liked the feel of the weight of a gun in his hand.

Now, the correct way of writing that is to begin your list with a colon (:) and then seperate each item on the list with a semi-colon (;). Also, you'll want to take into account what I said earlier about sentances needing to make complete sense. Then, the sentance would look like this:

He liked the get up: the boots; the hat; ripped jeans; the driving around in a two ton pick up; and he liked the feel of the weight of a gun in his hand.

There's a lot of other gramatical issues that I can see with this piece, but I'm not going to go over each and every one of them, as this review is already getting very, very long, and if you really want to rework it from the start, there are probably people that are better suited to helping you with your grammar than I am.

Anyway, I'd just like to finish by saying: I don't think this piece is utterly awful or unsalvagable. I know I've been a little hard on it, but it's not one of those pieces that I have utterly no hope for - You just need to sort out your gramatical problems and really think about what your story is saying, and, if it's not really saying anything or getting anywhere, if you're more or less in the same place at the end that you were in at the start, then you should really think about adding something more to a piece, something that's going to interest your readers and draw them into reading it.

Hope I've helped anyway,

Roses
4
4
Review by ShatteredRoses
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
Oh, this one's good. It's sort like a modern-day 'Darkness'. That considered, I was always going to like it now, wasn't I?

There's a few things I'd like to bring up individually one way or another, so strap yourself in, here we go.


"They lay, and slowly rotted
Like houses."

I love that metaphor. Really, really love it. It's one of those interesting, unusual ones that doesn't-quite-fit but at the same time really, really does. That's the kind of thing I long to achieve in my own writing.


"They rotted,
Inside slowly decaying and outside
Weather-beaten away."

This section doesn't quite make sense to me. The meaning's a little confused, I think. If I were you, I'd probably change it to something like:

"They rotted,
Slowly decaying inside
And beaten away by the weather
On the outside."


Moving on:

"The streets lashed with silence
Brought the children blinking into the dark,
Their eyes swollen and sallow,
Alien to the city their parents had made them."

The first pair of lines here are fantastic. Really nice. The last line however is again a little bit confused for me. It doesn't quite make sense. If I were you, I'd change that last line to "... the city that their parents had made for them".


"In the allies and gutters they gathered"

You should probably be aware that that's 'Allies' as in 'Allies and Contacts'. I'm pretty sure you mean 'Alleys' :)


"And the birds and beasts a fiction
They took from each other."

This one really has me confused. I don't know if you mean 'And fiction', and, if you don't, what the hell that sentance means. I'm going to have to hold my hands up on that one, I'm afraid.


"The moon watched them fall.
The screens and lights, unwatched,
Grew weary with nothing to call to but each other,"

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'screens' here, or later in this poem, but I do kno wI love this part :)
Only thing I'd say is that maybe it would read better if it was "...with nothing to call on but each other", just to prevent the repetition of 'to'.


"Their skin hanging like rotten cotton"

Again, fantastic metaphor. Nothing to add to that, just wanted to say how much I love it.


Anyway, I think I've pretty much said everything, aside from the meaning being a little confused in places, this is damned near perfect.

Well done!
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