Published October 19, 2010
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,730 Literary Works • 672,933 Reviews
Hi, I'm Sela! I don't nitpick, and I don't have loads to say, but let's see if I can help you out with this.
It was sweet--really sweet, actually. The emotions were a lot more realistic than what you normally see on YWS, and I liked the characters, as much as I saw of them. I also liked how the song wasn't some random popular one from around now, some Justin Bieber crap or one of those beyond-repetitive Taio Cruz songs. It certainly made the whole thing harder to forget and more unique.
Unfortunately I can't only go on about how I liked it. As with every piece of work, there are flaws. Firstly, the whole I-like-him-and-I-understand-him-better-than-anyone-else-his-girlfriend-is-pretty-but-also-a-jerk is not only completely overused but also a Taylor Swift song and honey, you don't get much more cliche than that. So please, if you can somehow change the story so it's at least a little bit of a variation from that, I'd appreciate it. Maybe get rid of the girlfriend and make something else upset him so your MC has to go comfort him? Or change it so he gets mad at the MC but then she apologizes for whatever idiotic thing she said/did by playing the song? Just please, make it a little less cliche, and I assure you you'll have reviewers and followers crawling all over you. So to speak. ;--)
I know I said I don't nitpick, but before I go on, there's just one thing that was really annoying me.
Whooooaa there, Bessie [or your horse's name of choice]! His whole torso? Okay firstly, 'torso'? No. No no no no no. That is possibly one of the more awkward words in the English language, along with frame and bivouac. And that's just off the top of my head. One does not habitually turn one's torso without turning one's head and therefore one's arms and face, so honestly, it would be a heck (for lack of a better word) of a lot better if it was something like:
Whenever I find myself using excessive words, especially at important bits in the story, I have to remind myself that I'm not trying to add extra words to an essay so it's done faster. I'm creating a work of art, and so are you. And art does not always have to be extremely complicated to be beautiful, does it? The Pieta, to be somewhat cliche, is simple white marble, isn't it? Michelangelo didn't say, "Oh, it's nice, but it needs some swirly bits and neon colors", did he? No. White marble was good. White marble was great. White marble was deliciously understated. Which is what I'd like you to do here. Simplicity at a moment like that, when we discover -- or are about to discover -- his reaction to her song, is amazingly important. Simplicity. Not too simple, understand (because it isn't as if Michelangelo banged his chisel against a bit of marble and then, ta-da, there it all was) but be very careful not to fall into a load of irrelevant purple-y prose, either. People do it sometimes, and I find it excessively annoying.
There. That took a long time. In the end, right now what I want is more, at least in terms of character development. I want to know what your main character is like, what the guy is like, etc etc. On a similar-but-also-different note, I liked very much the way you described the girlfriend. Yes, she was a bit cliche and perhaps a tad predictable, but there was something about the description that interested me, kept me reading even when my finger had strayed to the 'backspace' button. So good job on that, and thanks ever so much for the read. I want to know what happens next! Tell me you don't end it here!
Best of luck, and do keep your chin up, love.
-SELA
So good, I almost started crying. There were just a few minor spelling errors that I caught. Such a touching story!
1. "I hesitated for a second, then went in and si-lently closed the door behind me." I would suggest maybe cutting out the hyphen in 'silently'. I don't think it goes there.
2. "The song had an incredibly difficult guitar part, I could hear that with my violinist’s ears. Not a show-off piece, but a true finger-twister. He must have written it himself. I found myself smiling at a very cunningly used diminished chord in the bridge. (I was very proud to be able to distinguish diminished chords with my violinist’s ears.) The harmony hovered elegantly in the unpredictable, then smoothly glided back into the rhythmic, dissonant verse." I think that the violinist ears bit gets little bit redundant in this paragraph.
Other than that, this looks really really good!