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Writing Critique General
Isaac Hill
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James Ortiz
Will reciprocate
Henry Lee
Is this an engaging opening line; and is the emdash the most appropriate form of punctuation where it's used? Or should it be a colon or comma?
>I'll never forget the first time she walked past me in the Starbucks on Glen--that soft brush of air stirred by her movement carrying with it the faint aroma of lavender mixed with embalming fluid.
Elijah Garcia
I don't understand the purpose. Perhaps some of your exaggerated details are important or cursory; I can't tell though. Specifically the keen attention to the old man's skin. Format wise, it reads fair enough, kept me engaged--if not out of curiosity, and was grammatically sound.
Joseph Ortiz
Does the speaker smell her hair, or is some strangely omnicient narrator intrude here and tell us what her hair smells like? If the characters are in smelling proximity, flesh it out. What does the closeness of the queue feel like for the speaker? He's in line, she's in front of him. What does the cafe bar sound like? How does she hold herself while waiting? Does she lift one foot onto the other? Are her arms crossed?
Write better, nigger. Worry about punctuation after your prose becomes readable and interesting.
Julian Ward
pretty meh, a few too many adjectives. final two words are nice for their surprise effect
it's well-written like the style is clean and simple, but it doesn't feel alive. i feel no sympathy for the passionless narrator or his bibulous hamster. Franzen says he writes about familial relations because a lot of the emotional legwork has already been done, but I still feel the need for more flesh on these characters, especially the narrator, who seems more concerned with describing sights and colors than with his own dying wife. Yeah, I get that doing emotional / interpersonal stuff can be sappy and trite these days, but it's still possible. Have you read Lydia Davis's story "The Old Dictionary?"
Logan Morales
Where are you getting hair from? It's perfume. I can only put so much in one sentence. I'm asking if the sentence would warrant reading to the next, which would, I feel obviously, go into the detail you're talking about.
Thanks for the tip
Gabriel Wright
I was wondering if it needs a bit more emotion. Checking it out now, thanks
Eli Bell
I float through the city exactly two feet off the ground.
Above black spots of gum. I never step in dog shit.
My legs are weak and my feet have no blisters,
your bed is some wild medicine.
Two feet off the floor my neck snaps every train ride,
my hair gets caught in chandeliers, my crotch gets headbutted,
and every door frame breaks my nose and chips my teeth.
I have scrapes on my back from your ceiling.
There’s gold in my ribs and soup in my valves,
and I have lungs filled with warm friendly tar.
Seven inches below that
are pipes filled with human shit.
If you split me down the middle though,
I don’t know what would spill on the floor.
You could crack my collar bone, drain my veins,
and you might get glitter and silver or salt and iron.
When I’m hauled into a grey building to pay
For the tar and cum and bloodshot eyes I’ve found,
they’ll pull my skin back,
and tally the debris in my tubes and ropes.
My whole catalogue of minerals and fluids will be laid bare,
things naked eyes have never laid on:
muggy days and bad nights and cold mornings spread on a table.
Deijman's stern hands will note all the dirt on my mind.
Bentley Watson
Gonna give some feedback, bear with me just finishing Gravity's Rainbow for the first time