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This was wonderfully done; the simplicity of plot, the emotion and background given were all superb. However, there were some definite things to be worked on.

A great deal of the sentence structure is awkward; the tone is obviously stark, despite the sizeable amounts of imagery. It's bleak. That's his world, and it's accurately portrayed. I could see you doing this with short, curt sentences, but honestly, it's overdone. I spent half the piece thinking about that rather than the words themselves. I wasn't able to fully register everything until the second read-through, until after I was prepared for your fragments and jarring lengths. Don't give it to us in little bites-- it makes me think that the character's emotion comes in little spurts, little fragmented thoughts like the ones we're getting. It almost feels like you started to expand the sentence length and loosen the flow towards the end as he settled into his emotion and despair and his thoughts are rushing forward, but... it's too abrupt. Make it gradual. Keep us stilted towards the beginning if you wish to, but don't just all of a sudden lead us on stream of consciousness towards the end, lead us in, or the contrast is too unsettling, and it becomes extremely hard to concentrate.

There were a couple of other thoughts I had, more nitpicks than anything else that kind of niggled after me as I read. The sentence structure towards the beginning is stilted, yes, it helps us catch onto the feel of life and everything, but the structure surrounding the dialog is often just awkward. Consider playing with that.

Noah pulls from her touch and leaps from the chair. He bangs open the door to the patio, thrusting himself into the raw air of morning. She calls after him, begs him to come back. The words spill from her lips, their frayed threads thrown after him. Her voice unravels in his wake.

A rustle like wings pushes through Noah’s temples as he darts out of the backyard and through a copse of trees. He runs without realizing he’s barefoot, his face cut by the broken fingers of branches, not stopping until he reaches the edge of the pond, breathless. His heart slips from his throat, back to its hollow in his chest.

This is where I feel that you should really start that transition from quick snippets of thought and description to longer sentences. Also the abrupt violence with which he moves is unsettling. It already felt extraordinarily out of character for me, which is appropriate, but we were given so little time to get to know him that it just felt... jarring. It's the diction in particular-- his actions, yes, they're almost expected in this context, but the change in diction is very, very dramatic.

A quick nit-pick:

The words spill from her lips, their frayed threads thrown after him. Her voice unravels in his wake.

This, after his escape, pulls us directly back to the mother. This is exactly what you don't want; we want the feeling of his abandoning her completely to the memory of his father and the escape from the house and the pity and concern, but we're quickly dragged back to seeing her and then thrown back at him. It's barely a snippet, of course, but, it changes a lot.

Last thing: I feel like your ending is a thematic climax of sorts, rather than that of the plot. I'm still not entirely sure whether I like this or not, but I think that you could relate more to your character in the description of the swans, and it would create a much stronger end. Regardless, nicely done.

Howdy XD

I must say... the writing was outstanding. I saw lots of awesome imagery, and descriptiveness and stuff.

However... there are a couple of things I'd like to address...

Okay, so, the main thing that bugged me was, the way Noah acted. I mean, his mom didn't do much to annoy him, but he just started freaking out and ran out. It's just hard to imagine, you know? Perhaps you could give him more reason; make his mother say something that would REALLY (excuse my language) piss him off. Right Noah just seems so over dramatic...

And then there's your ending...

Here the light is clean and otherworldly. Like it’s from some other realm, like the fabric between worlds has come undone. Some separate world where there are no murmurs in a man’s heart and nothing breaks, where the swans linger over the darkness of the water without ever rearranging a wing. Some realm that no one is born into.

Err... okay, don't get me wrong, this is really good writing and stuff, but it... it sort of separates the reader from Noah. Uhg, I hate to critique this, because it SOUNDS nice, but I don't GET it. I just... I don't think it's a strong enough ending. Maybe, add some sort of thought from Noah... I don't know. I think it would sound better, but I claim not to be an expert. So, do what you think is right, I would change it up, but it's your piece.

I can tell you put a lot of work into it, and the writing is amazing XD

Hope I helped
--
Tabby

PS: I didn't read Persephone's review... she's probably smarter then me, so listen to what she says, and ignore me if you feel like it, because, honestly, as I was critiquing this I kept having second thoughts... oi...

Blackbird!

All right, I liked the story! It was quiet and subtle, it had some great moments of description, I love the focus on the shirt and the mother's reactions to the shirt. I like the description of the swans... I kind of adore swans; in fact that's what got me to click on this story in the first place! So, a lot of good things.

Now, there were two things that I noticed that I didn't quite like. First was the emotional detachment. Now, don't get wrong... I love emotional detachment. But this seemed to be so emotionally detached that the characters didn't really seem to be participants in the story, which is a problem. For instance, you have a very subtle line in the beginning which goes like this:

He shoves himself into a faded pair of jeans, grabs a shirt from the last hanger in the closet. It%u2019s dark flannel, and it%u2019s too big for him. The sleeves hang from his arms.

So, in this case, you're describing the shirt and everything. It's the last shirt in the closet (from what the description seems to tell us) and the last shirt that he has to wear. But, it would be nice if he hesitated or something. That would be detached, yet still give a clue as to who he is. So, you don't have to go into a long character monologue or whatever... that would be bad and detract from the beauty of this piece! But it would be nice to see even the tiniest smidgen of more emotion here.

On a similar note, the birds in the beginning of the story. You describe them tittering away and you say that Noah is already up, but it might be nice to have a quick note of why he is hiding in bed, despite the fact that he can probably hear his mom puttering in the kitchen, etc. Right now, you have no clues at all. I mean, I do like the sparseness on one hand... very Hemingway! But, I would like to see him respond to his environment, even if it's just a hesitation or a groan.

The other thing that I don't quite like is you have two seemingly unconnected images, and I would really like a bridge of sorts -- the swans and the shirt. They are connected, kind of, through the dad, but it is a weak connection and I think you can do better.

Best of luck!

Little mouthfuls of birds open

You're referring to the birds' mouths here, but as written now, it sounds like there are folks somewhere with birds inside their mouths and are opening them up to the world. It's just a little odd. Rewording, perhaps?

That first paragraph felt a little purple-prose-y to me. It actually sort of made me want to put off reading the rest of the story a bit (an impulse I am happy to say that I ignored). I don't want to say to skip that entire bit, since it does manage to set up the style of the story and that Noah is sort of disconnected from everything, but as is... meh. It just felt like a bit much and not really fitting the rest of the story.

I loved the description for the most part through here. The odd verb usages, the way the description itself is described, is just plain wonderful. It's odd, and the oddness helps set up the mood quite wonderfully.

And mood is here in heaploads. Imma have to disagree with Snoink and say that I actually really loved the emotional disconnect. It drew me in, letting me supply the emotions that the actions so very clearly suggested. It helped create that feeling of drifting that Noah is going through.

Now, going to play broken record and agree with some reviewers ahead of me:

TabbyGirl points out that the ending paragraph seems odd and weak. It seems to me like it just sort of gets tacked on. There isn't much lead up to it and it doesn't seem to have much bearing on the rest of the story. I wasn't quite sure what point you were trying to make, or if this was symbolic of some sort of healing or break down on Noah's part. It just... didn't make much sense, lovely as the language might have been.

Also, going to second Snoink in asking for a bit more connection between the shirt and the swans. They are the two main symbols of this piece and they... don't really relate to one another all that well. Both make lovely symbols and both of their bits are well-written and pretty much self-contained, but neither is a self-contained story. They are both part of the same story and one doesn't lead all that well into the other.

All in all, I really liked this. It was sparse and odd, but it really worked for me. I was fascinated by the style and the emotion was quite strong for me. Very nice.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions!

~GryphonFledgling

first of all, loved it.
second of all, great use of words!
But it didn't quite do it for me. I mean, the story was great! And it sort of left me wanting for more. But it seemed as if something was missing...
But I loved it overall. I can't use words like you do, but I think I can learn from reading your stories. (Words hate me... )

I liked the use of words. The first two paragraphs, especially the first, lack adjectives; somehow the sentences do not seem to flow but rather feel tagged on to each other. Like the reviewer above I was confused about the mouthfuls of birds. Since the title of the story is Wild Swans I assume you want to paint a vivid imagery of the boys life through his memories/interactions with swans. However, I did not feel that there was enough correlation present between the two and that image of swans somehow was lacking for me. At the end I felt the character relating more to pond water that is always calm and dark; even after the swans suddenly cause ripples in the water the pond calms. I liked the way you wrote the story in the present tense, it added novelty, but maybe because I am used to reading material in the past tense, it felt a little awkward.
Great effort. Keep writing.