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Killing For Colour.


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Postby alleycat13 on Sat Oct 20, 2007 12:45 am

You've gotten alot of good advice already, and it was rightly deserved. This is a well-written piece that deserves both praise and help. I'll offer mine.

You have a great deal of lovely imagery and descriptions. I can see it so well in my mind's eye. But with all of these great pictures comes the problem of overusing words. I present to you--adjectives.

The pristine blue of her eyes shone, encased in the pale porcelain of her skin. The cold perfection of that skin stretched across her face, broken, only briefly, by her glistening orbs. Yet it was her mouth, those two shimmers of blushing ruby, which drew his gaze.

Count them up. I see five (pristine, pale, cold, glistening, blushing).They're all very strong words, but the nouns they compliment are also strong. Not every noun needs to be modified. Its well-written, but sometimes you need to let the images stand (or fall) on their own. By selectively placing your adjectives, you can choose the points of focus and be more dramatic. By the end of this piece, I felt a little overwhelmed by the amount of modifiers. Tone it back a little, just a little.

I don't understand why he is searching for his "Madonna", but I think that adds to the appeal of the story. The end isn't as strong as the beginning and middle, but that's something you'll have to figure out on you own.

I liked it alot. If you could apply that imagery and style to a longer piece or maybe even poetry, you could write some nice stuff. Happy typing to ya!
Calvin : You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes : What mood is that?
Calvin : Last-minute panic.

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Postby Esmé on Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:16 pm

PenguinAttack,

So I finally got to your story. Sorry it took so long. As always, the line-by-line, boring crit will come first, and impressions and the such will be found at the end. You do have a lot of crits already, but the more the merrier, yes? But as alleycat said, it’s well-deserved.


Quote:
The pristine blue of her eyes shone, encased in the pale porcelain of her skin. The cold perfection of that skin stretched across her face, broken, only briefly, by her glistening orbs.
‘Skin’… ‘Skin’… How about a synonym?

Quote:
he felt that if his hand came in full contact with it he would taint it.
He want to touch, yes, yet he know that if he did so, he would taint it. I suggest adding an extra word up there to emphasize that - e.g. ‘yet’ or ‘but’, or something of the sort. It will make the sentence all the stronger, how a more powerful impact.

Quote:
She had a milkmaids complexion;

Apostrophe.

Quote:
He knew it was not her perfection that he sought, he had achieved that time over, it was the experience that he needed.

This is a bit of a run-on sentence, and the way it is, it sounds a tad bit awkward. Consider rephrasing, or perhaps adding a hyphen? (Yes, the vocabulary is by your courtesy…) The last two sentences also have a run-on ring to it, at very last one (of the paragraph, that is). The second is rather awkward, and I had to re-read it to get the menaing.

Quote:
For he saw before him a new perfection, one that was neither hidden, nor apparent

I would get rid of the ‘for’ and comma. Maybe replace ;for’ with ;what’? Just a suggestion, though.

Quote:
Her fierce sapphire orbs, the tangled fire that was her hair, and most of all;
the half-defined smirk of blooming ruby that inexplicably drew his gaze.
Here I would add the ‘for’ *^_^*

Quote:
These features that made her, that drew him, defined the utopia that came with sight.

‘These’ = ‘the’?

Quote:
He felt that without her he would be blind to the world’s faded beauty and not mourn.

Unclear sentence alert, at least after ;and’.



Oooh, interesting, very interesting, Scary. Sinister, dark. Interesting, well-written. Yes, I do like to play around with adjectives. Anyway, we’re done with the line-by-line, lets get on with impressions, like/dislikes, etc. In other words: The Interesting Stuff.

First of all I wanted to say that I’m sorry that this piece was so very short. (Well I always am when it comes to texts that I like… ). But I’ll save the rant for another day, and leave you with this:

I think I already told you this, but I’ll repeat it again: I adore your descriptions. They are so vivid, so realistic… *Jealous mode* *Sighs* Yes, the descriptions are awesome.

The cast. The cast, as in the narrator, because I already said that the description of the ‘Madonna’ rocks. I would like to know more about him, more about him being ‘tainted’. If you ever choose to extend this, that would be a point that should be lengthened and explained.

Because of it’s shortness, I can’t really say anything more right now. Again, it was well-written, and I liked your vocabulary and language - they added to the atmosphere of the story very nicely. It was mysterious piece O_o Other than that bit about the narrator, it was great, especially the descriptions.

Oh, but one more thing: Some of your words are in a paragraph more than once, e.g. ‘grin’, in the third paragraph. It can be easily replaced with another expression. Similar situation in parahrapj number two - the hand.

Well, that’s all ^_^ Lovely piece. I hope that I phrased myself coherently, because it had been proved that I sometimes lack that ability. If you have any questions, please PM me.

Cheers,
Esme
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