Not Enough

He was furious! He fumbled with his wine-red tie, and his impeccably rich, massive ring hungrily absorbed and spitted out the light that fell on it. The ring was firmly set on his thumb, and in the black center of it there were little white letter inscribed ; if squinting one could barely see what they said, “I come, I fight, I conquer”.

He whipped out his jet black phone; special, limited edition, never failed to make him feel smug. Not this time. The diminutive mobile seemed ridiculously small in comparison to his large, engulfing hand. His eyes scanned the screen and he was ready to roar at an indifferent, if not slightly mocking,

“No messages”

Now she’s done it. Like a lion he leaped through the door that he opened, no tore apart from its hinges, and shoved the mail man out of his way. Very harshly. A black flash of anger in a suit from Gucci rushed by the mailman ; the letters in neat, perfectly hemmed envelopes scattered around their custodian , and some of them got tinted with droplets of molten, metallic roses that rush through our veins.

And our black lion, he felt better now that he hurt someone else. His anger-Their pain. An ideal proportion.

He rushed into his large apartment, clapped his hands twice and the light turned on. In fluid, confident steps he went over into his room, scrapped away the intricate patterned Persian carpet and from beneath the marbled tiles produced colt 45. Its moist glittering and the blackness that could scare night molded into a form that fitted his inhumanely big hand well. He traced the curves of the gun, with an icy gleam in his eyes; almost lovingly, almost caressing the dreadful weapon.

Then he took the bullets, deadly teardrops of heavy steel. He slowly slipped them in, one by one. One by one. He stood up, sloppily covering up the floor’s gaping hole. A determined look on his face vanished as he appeared to have remembered something. He went out of the room and came back with a platter filled with milk. A blue bundle on his bed quickly got uncovered and produced a kitten, whose eyes were big and lucid. The orange fluff quickly started to lick the milk. With his hand that did not hold the gun he petted the cat; almost the same way he traced the colt 45, although a bit warmer. It was this stray kitten he found in a cardboard with her, and he kept it for she refused to take it in because it was filthy.

He strode out of his apartment, content with knowledge that the kitten now slept well fed and warm. Colt 45 was like a fire in his pocket. As he neared her apartment he saw a beggar on the corner. With a hand hot holding the gun he fingered a thousand dollar note and not looking at the beggar stuffed it in his can.

With a key he opened her small apartment door. There she stood; as always beautiful. Her silk lingerie clung protectively to her form and he could see the ample roundness of her breasts through it. Her eyes penetrating. He aimed the gun at her and boomed:

“You did not love me enough!”

In the morning news paper a murder was reported. A large business man killed by his lover. Barely clad the only thing she said was
“He did not love me enough”
----------------------------------------------

Tell me what you think! When I first wrote it I thought it was pretty decent but now it just seems so...mediocre? I added a few details about *her* to make it more interesting but I'm not qutie sure.

Well for one. I loved it.

I love how much description you could use to fill it. I was thinking in my head that this much, nai this heavy kind of description could be overkill (and how could one continue it?) for a full novel, but in a short story it is perfect.

Your almost panicked descriptions fit perfectly. setting the mood as we read by the shear amount we have to take in.

There were some small things that didnt fit or could be worked on...as follows:

He was furious! He fumbled with his wine-red tie (why not just burgandy or merlot?),
and (with would work better instead of and) his impeccably rich...,
.... and in the black center of it there were little white letter inscribed ; if squinting one could barely see what they said, “I come, I fight, I conquer”. [/b](you say letter, then you give a sentance. it is humanly impossible to have that engraved on a ring. maybe around the band.. instead of the white parts maybe saysomething about how it was playing peekaboo or part of the sentance was hiding so it;s like it fears him.)[/b]

Ok. so aside from the knitpicks in the first paragraph i, again, love it.

I mean I would make it a bit more meaty, figure out what she did, because there is all this lead up to the end, to the climax, and its kind of like there was no foreplay. i dont even know why he's mad, not even a hint that I can make a larger story up in my head. maybe give some of that as we go along.

As well... the last bit about aiming the gun at her and it boomed. then your talking about how she shot him. thats hard to imagine unless you say something about A gun shooting. not necessarily the one you have been talking about.

it took a bit of rereading with the newspaper part for me to wrap my head around the fact that she shot him when clearly everything else said he did. you need to leave a bit more mystery to him shooting her. its hard on the reader when you say that he shot her, then the next moment say that she is alive and he is dead because she shot him. hard to follow.


anyways. i already said i loved it twice, but here it is again! yay!

Hi! I'm Lavvi, in for a review.

This piece wasn't exceptional and nor was it terrible. In order for this to be "exceptional", there're only a few things you need to fix. First, I'd like to point out that, however this is a very short bit of writing, there is too much detail. Yes, an excess of description can ruin the piece just as minimal amounts of it can make it extremely dull. I'll explain why.

When you have something overloaded with detail, the reader tends to be focusing on the detail and tend not to capture the general idea of the piece. That said, we don't want to have so little detail we end up with a black streak on a white canvas. So:

Too much information= unable to capture the idea
Too little information= unable to capture the idea

So, with that dealt with, I'll move on. To nitpicks.

You have a few spelling/grammatical errors that are quite minor. Quoted below is the sentence they are in and the misspelled word is bolded and below is my correction.

He fumbled with his wine-red tie, and his impeccably rich, massive ring hungrily absorbed and spitted out the light that fell on it.

spit

His anger-Their pain.

their (no capitalized "t")

Now she’s done it.

She did it. (stick to your verb tense)

I thought there was another spelling error when I was reading through it, but I can't find it now. So this is all for "nitpicks".

Next. Dialogue.

Dialogue is challenging to conquer. Sometimes it seems it can't be tamed and others it just seems like the simplest thing. Dialogue is one of the most important, vicious, annoying and obnoxious things in the construction of a story, to put it simply. I noticed while I was reading your piece that you had trouble with dialogue. Here's a good article written by a YWS member about how to write proper dialogue. I strongly suggest that you read this and fix your dialogue errors.

Overall

This piece definitely has potential. You have a nice good plot worked out, you develop your character, "the mystery man", pretty well. (Oh, and for the last bit, I'm a little confused. Who really died? I thought he was pointing a gun at the lady?) I think, though, you need to give Mr. Description a little vacation (Baad joke, I know). With all the detail you added, I got the feel that it was forced. That you tried too hard. Writing, if you're really passionate about it (as I bet you are), should be almost second nature, with, of course, a few things you try to work on. So. Recap.

1. Less description. More focusing on the meaningful things.

2. Go through the spelling/grammatical errors.

3. Check your dialogue and that great little article I suggested.

I'd really like to see the final outcome of this short story!

Lavvi

DiannePan wrote:He was furious! He fumbled with his wine-red tie, and his impeccably rich, massive ring hungrily absorbed and spitted out the light that fell on it. The ring was firmly set on his thumb, and in the black center of it there were little white letter inscribed ; if squinting one could barely see what they said, “I come, I fight, I conquer”.

He whipped out his jet black phone; special, limited edition, never failed to make him feel smug. Not this time. The diminutive mobile seemed ridiculously small in comparison to his large, engulfing hand. His eyes scanned the screen and he was ready to roar at an indifferent, if not slightly mocking,

“No messages”

Now she’s done it. Like a lion he leaped through the door that he opened, no tore apart from its hinges, and shoved the mail man out of his way. Very harshly. A black flash of anger in a suit from Gucci rushed by the mailman ; the letters in neat, perfectly hemmed envelopes scattered around their custodian , and some of them got tinted with droplets of molten, metallic roses that rush through our veins.

And our black lion, he felt better now that he hurt someone else. His anger-Their pain. An ideal proportion.

He rushed into his large apartment, clapped his hands twice and the light turned on. In fluid, confident steps he went over into his room, scrapped away the intricate patterned Persian carpet and from beneath the marbled tiles produced colt 45. Its moist glittering and the blackness that could scare night molded into a form that fitted his inhumanely big hand well. He traced the curves of the gun, with an icy gleam in his eyes; almost lovingly, almost caressing the dreadful weapon.

Then he took the bullets, deadly teardrops of heavy steel. He slowly slipped them in, one by one. One by one. He stood up, sloppily covering up the floor’s gaping hole. A determined look on his face vanished as he appeared to have remembered something. He went out of the room and came back with a platter filled with milk. A blue bundle on his bed quickly got uncovered and produced a kitten, whose eyes were big and lucid. The orange fluff quickly started to lick the milk. With his hand that did not hold the gun he petted the cat; almost the same way he traced the colt 45, although a bit warmer. It was this stray kitten he found in a cardboard with her, and he kept it for she refused to take it in because it was filthy.

He strode out of his apartment, content with knowledge that the kitten now slept well fed and warm. Colt 45 was like a fire in his pocket. As he neared her apartment he saw a beggar on the corner. With a hand hot holding the gun he fingered a thousand dollar note and not looking at the beggar stuffed it in his can.

With a key he opened her small apartment door. There she stood; as always beautiful. Her silk lingerie clung protectively to her form and he could see the ample roundness of her breasts through it. Her eyes penetrating. He aimed the gun at her and boomed:

“You did not love me enough!”

In the morning news paper a murder was reported. A large business man killed by his lover. Barely clad the only thing she said was
“He did not love me enough”
----------------------------------------------

Tell me what you think! When I first wrote it I thought it was pretty decent but now it just seems so...mediocre? I added a few details about *her* to make it more interesting but I'm not qutie sure.

----
First of all. I'm going to be blunt and honest, because I believe that's the only way to improvement. And I do dearly hope you do not take any offense to any of my opinions on this piece. (I'm probably just being paranoid. I must admit I'm terrified of telling people when I don't completely like something they do. It's a phobia of mine, really.)
After re-reading I still find myself asking basic questions. Perhaps I'm mistaken - I often make mistakes. But it's unclear as to why they both thought the other did not love the other enough. Was this an ongoing thing? Surely it must have been. This is obviously a deeply emotional conflict that did not just begin on the spur of the moment.

Also, you go into a lot of detail about material things. I sense you did this for a reason. But it can be a bit much at times. Overwhelming. The issue is not men's fashion accessories, but is the fact that he feels so utterly neglected, and is so consumed with rage that he attempts murder. Obviously this man is wealthy, and is at the end of his rope (We can assume this by the fact that he, without sparing a thought, handed the beggar that large sum of money before heading to her place.) He's probably not intended on coming home any time soon, if he does in fact shoot her.

Thing is you've omitted so much, and it's so vague that nothing is really clear enough to deduce what is going on. On the other hand, it captures the frantic madness of his demeanor. He's so out of his mind with rage, and hurt, that he seems to not know what he's doing. He's not thinking straight. And the story reflects that.

I guess what I'm trying to say is he seems scatterbrained, but not too scatterbrained. Perhaps not enough, considering that he's contemplating murder, and all.

But that's not what bothered me. That was just little moral nitpicky things. What turned me off was the ending. I had to re-read it twice before I finally got that somehow the tables had been turned in a Serling-esque last minute plot twist, that everybody has been employing since 1965 - and believe me, I've been guilty of it myself on numerous occasions.

It's not so much the ending itself. It was how it was presented that bothered me. I felt it was too sudden. Too much of a short stop. There was no real climax. It just stopped too early, in my opinion.

But I'd like to say that this story has potential. And I think with some revamping it can really be something. The basics are all there. But do what you want. It is your story, after all.

And you're excellent at description. Description of emotion, description of objects, of setting, the imagery was there.

Anyways I hope that helps, and that I didn't seem too harsh! Best of luck!