CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM THREAD

[John]

Give me critisim...constructive critiscm that is!

I am Night

[Fox]

I think the first two work better as poems  - there's a hint at some meaning beyond the description of action.

The last poem, the maple syruping one, has potential, but at the moment it just seems pure description. I'm left thinking, "yes very nice, but what does it mean?"

Unless the meaning of the poem is that meaning lies only physical actions? And yet there is a powerful transformation happening in the whole process of making maple syrup. If it was my poem and I was having a second crack at it, I would look at what transformations were going on, and explore them a little.

Oh, just read your prose. Now there is some really interesting imagery there, I would think about working some of that into the poem.

Just a suggestion...

[Jingle]

Traveller
Since I already told you what I thought about the first two on the chat the other night, I wanted to add something about the Maple Sugaring poem.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but try taking out the word "the".  Then read it again, and selectively put them back in if they are really necessary.  I think you'll end up with a lot of poetic imagery.  You can take out even more extraneous little words as well to get a thoughtful and powerful poem.

I love the images in your prose about the maple sugaring from the point of view of a tree.  I had no idea that's how they did it, and it certainly must be a scary thing for a tree.  Thanks for expressing it that way! (Always knew there was a reason I don't like syrup)

Edit:
P.S.  The plural of box is boxes, not box's.

[Jingle]

John,
I loved this poem when I first read it and still do.  The images are very descriptive.  You may want to consider running it through a spell checker and proofreading just a little.  Spelling errors can be very distracting in poetry.

Keep up the good work!

[John]

John,
I loved this poem when I first read it and still do.  The images are very descriptive.  You may want to consider running it through a spell checker and proofreading just a little.  Spelling errors can be very distracting in poetry.

Keep up the good work!

Ah spelling...my greatest enemy strikes again

[Skylark]

Somebody to Talk to

http://www.druidry.org/board/viewtopic. ... 721#176721

The problem with this is that the poem at the end is 13 years old, but Alan and Elsa and the account of their meeting are recent creations - does it show?
Are there too many themes? The difficulty of being a good listener/the crisis of faith?
Does it make a complete short story or does it just stop dead?
Critiques welcome!

[Lorraine]

Skylark, I could give you a critique but I tend to be nit-picky on small details (even though I think the story is very powerful).  I thought there were one or two sentences which could be tweaked slightly to make a good story even better.  Would that kind of critique be OK, or did you just want comments on combining the two themes?   I will comment on the latter, for now.

I don’t believe there are too many themes, and I think it’s absolutely fine to have Elsa’s thoughts moving from the difficulty of being a good listener to the crisis of faith.  It may be that you need a little more time and space to develop that transition further, but then that may reduce the impact of the piece.  I would not have known that the prose piece and the poetry were written at different times, if you had not told us.  Now that you have, I get the sense that the poem feels more ‘finished’  than the prose, but that may be with the help of hindsight.  

Lorraine

[Fox]

Skylark, thanks for the background.

First I'd like to say, that separately, I really liked the poem, and parts of the prose. I think the prose was really well written, but I had problems with it.

I have to say it sounds as if you had this poem and then wrote the prose bit to "explain" the poem, or to give some kind of context to it. IMHO, the poem doesn't need it, it stands proud and complex and interesting all on its own. In fact, adding the prose gloss kind of takes away from the poem a bit.

The prose piece starts out interesting, but the join to the poem is too laboured for my taste. Also, I don't really believe the account of Elsa's crisis of faith. It happens too fast in the piece. One minute she's in the office, only half listening to Alan's story, seems pretty distracted to me, and then in the car all of a sudden she is is consumed by a crisis of faith. One reason I'm struggling with it is we are only given a very sketchy idea of what Alan's story actually is. And what little we know we are told about instead of shown.

I think the prose would work as a story if you disconnected it from the poem, and went into more detail about the session, so we can see what it is that upsets Elsa so much. Expand it. Actually go through in detail the pertinent bits of Alans story. I like dialogue, and there's hardely any in this story. Without dialogue, I have a hard time connecting with the characters. I need to hear them speak, to others and their own thoughts to themselves. We hear some of Elsa's thoughts, but are only told sketchily of Alan's.

It's promising, but it's like an outline for a story now.  You need to fill in some of the blanks

Peace and love, sc

[Skylark]

...I could give you a critique but I tend to be nit-picky on small details (even though I think the story is very powerful).  I thought there were one or two sentences which could be tweaked slightly to make a good story even better.  Would that kind of critique be OK, or did you just want comments on combining the two themes? Lorraine

Lorraine, Please make whatever suggestions you think could improve the piece - however picky - and thank you for taking the time!  This is the first time I've tried prose fiction, and if I could get rid of any stylistic bad habits now, it'll be easier than leaving them to ossify.

Stormcrow - thanks very much for that - you've put your finger on a few things that were bothering me in an undefined kind of way, & brought them into the light for me. Also I agree it may have been a mistake to tack the two parts together. Thanks again!

[Lorraine]

Hi Skylark,

First of all, this is excellent work, very powerful, and I could see the scenes in my mind’s eye which is always a good sign.  So the comments below are only minor nit-picks.  

I think it would read better if you left ‘pensively’ out of the sentence in the first paragraph.  It’s not a mental image I can conjure up and I found it somewhat jarring.  

What was the woman’s name that Alan mentioned?  I found myself (like Elsa) slightly distracted at that point, as I wondered which name was suggested by the description.  I have no idea of the French word for lollipop.  I don’t think you would lose anything by letting us know the name.  

It’s interesting to me that Elsa muses about the possibilities of being a counsellor in paragraph 5, as I had already begun to assume that she was, by this stage.  I’m not sure what it is that suggested it to me.  Is it the formality, in a sense, as Alan tells his story in silence without interruption?  Is she a friend, a relative, a potential lover?  I found myself wondering, but perhaps that is a good thing, having something which isn’t explained, in a short story.

I like the little anecdotal touches, such as the story about the  priest and the Crocodile Dundee reference in paragraph 6.  I feel that paragraph 6, has a couple of points that could be tightened up, though.  

And the advantage of being a counsellor was that you knew how long each session would last: however well the session was flowing, however deeply the client had reached that part of himself that he needed to heal, you could just incline your head towards the clock, arrange your features into a suitably polite expression of regret, and announce that it was time to stop.  That was the advantage of being a counsellor, she mused, but that jarring, dislocating reminder that the world does not revolve around you but around the clock - that must be the worst disadvantage of having one.

”

I love the description of the ‘suitably polite expression of regret’ in the first sentence, but the whole sentence is too long - you could not read it aloud without stopping for a breath.  I think it would be better split into two.  You could just add a full stop in the place of the colon if you wanted to though you might want to consider rewording the whole thing.  It might have been better without the ‘And’ at the beginning.   I notice that the last sentence in the same paragraph repeats ‘the advantage of being a counsellor’.  I think that repetition may have been deliberate and it may work in a rhythmical sense.   However it would be worth rewording the same sentence so that ‘but’ is not repeated.  

Elsa’s delayed reaction to his pain, not the tears, but rather the crisis of faith, seems rather too extreme.  Then again, unlike Elsa, the reader only guesses at the nature of the emotional pain that the other woman has inflicted upon Alan.   I tend to think of crises of faith being visited upon people by events such as wars, but perhaps I am thinking along stereotypical lines.  At any rate we seem to arrive at that point without really knowing why: while we don’t need to know everything, I think we could understand more about the situation than we currently do.

Lorraine

[Skylark]

Lorraine, thank you very much for all of this, it's very helpful indeed. I'm not going to get back to you on every point you raised, but simply take it all in and try to work the advice I've received into future work.

Names and details were withheld to protect myself against someone reading my work and recognising themselves in what I had written, because the characters, including Lollipop, are real people. I know how the world is small (and round!!) - and that name was so made-up as to be practically unique!  I don't want to be beaten up or sued by Lollipop!  If she wanders on to this forum. Of all the bars in all the world, you had to walk into mine, kind of thing. Hardly likely, but what if...OMG!

However, I can see that this kind of coyness prevents me from writing as well as I could if I wasn't trying to be cryptic, which makes me think I ought to look at working on a bigger scale, longer pieces (a novel??) in which I could distribute my raw material over a wider screen. I could turn Alan and Elsa into different people in a different kind of relationship, let's say change them into schoolage kids & one of them is thinking about her career while he drones on about his dire social life etc; and save the crisis of faith and the dark secret for older characters or even for a different story... instead of packing it all into one piece like it was going to be the only one I'd ever do.

So you can see you've given me some helpful food for thought! Thanks again.

[igsaisb]

Your thoughts welcomed:



http://www.druidry.org/board/viewtopic.php?t=17051

[Jingle]

Jason - I think it's perfect the way it is.

[igsaisb]

Jingle - I do so appreciate that! That thing has only gone through about 15 iterations in my head and I am never happy with my work. I feel like I never really finish a poem as much as give up on it.

[Jingle]

Sometimes it's best not to overanalyze.  Sometimes recognizing when something is finished is as hard as starting it in the first place.