The candle lit up and made her eyes sparkle; they took away the darkness. They took away the tension, the fear that was bubbling up inside her like a chemical reaction. As she waits for her destiny; the soft music in the background was breaking through the silence that was surrounding her. There was laughter now and then but she was feeling alone and almost out of place. The sound of her watch ticking became loud and violent as though it was warning her of something, something she was waiting for.
She was slowly tapping her fingers on the table, with a rose in the middle. A red rose. It made the room feel much lighter and more relax. Everyone round her was calm with a peaceful mind; her eyes couldn’t help its urging feeling to look at the-gleaming door. She couldn’t pick up the courage to leave, so there she was sitting still like some statue in a museum or gallery. There was a sense of a mysterious feeling in the atmosphere, her hands was close together, her legs shaking about a little. Time was fading away into the past and still there was no sign of the door opening; of her destiny running in towards her. Her hair was smooth, silky and she moved a bit to the back of her ear. But the way she was feeling inside weren’t smooth or calm. Her stomach was tight, like her inside was twisting itself into a knot. The temperature was rising and the flame of the candle was making it seem like her eyes was burning in fury. Though she still was sitting there in complete- silence.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you've had to wait for a response on this one - things have been a bit huts for me lately. I'm really glad to see it now.
Your imagery is, as always, really vivid, and your description here, such as the watch ticking 'violently' is ace. I can see that you think through your figurative language instead of using cliche as so many writers do - well done.
I would say that there are a fair few little mistakes that you're not normally guilty of here. I won't run through them all, but things not fitting the tense, like 'tense' in fact, instead of tension. Also, I know it's descriptive, but try to avoid synonyms generally, like 'museum or gallery' - they make images vaguer, whereas you should be using similies to futher illuminate (and you do, really well, everywhere else - just bare that in mind).
As another little thing - I think that ending with an emphasis on silence is great for an adaptation of a song - good stuff.
Hope all's good. I realise you must be facing end of term stuff. Good luck with everything, and take care,
Andy
Hi there!
ReplyDeleteYou have some strong stuff in here, and the atmosphere is powerfully established (her watch ticking, the door that doesn't open, the laughter and then the silence)
I think I may have said this before in relation to your work: I think it's most effective when you tie emotional decription to an image, i.e. give your reader something fixed, something they can hold onto, and then build the emotion and atmosphere around it. It's hard to really enter into her world and engage with her feelings when we can't yet picture the scene. It starts well with the candle - a powerful initial image - but then goes striaght into describing her state of mind without giving us a sense of what's going on, what we're supposed to picture.
I feel that the piece would haev more power overall if we had a better sense of what is actually happening here - it all remains very vague. Is she waiting for a date who is not showing up? Is there a reason she seems afraid? I struggled to reconcile the feelings of fear, suspense, mystery, with the scenario of someone waiting for a date who isn't showing - I would expect that to produce embarrassment or anger. So, I think this is great for a sense of atmosphere, but could use work on basic scene-setting, both descriptive (the images) and narrative (the context)
Good job!
Claire
Considering the descriptive focus I asked for with this task, I was not fazed at all by the lack of narrative detail. On the contrary, I liked the vagueness and mystery surrounding the scene you describe - even if a little more narrative detail might have made it a tiny bit more satisfying in the end.
ReplyDeleteLike several of the other pieces this week, I am also noticing an incredibly matured style in your writing, a real sense that you are 'growing up' creatively, and producing stuff which is much more sophisticated than you were a few months ago, which is great.
There are many moments I liked here - too many to mention them all - including your similes, your increasingly advanced syntax (and often correct use of the tricky semi-colon!), and the generally fluent nature of your advanced prose.
Andy is right that there are a few too many technical inaccuracies, but I am not convinced they are careless, and so I shall email you separately with each one corrected so that you can know EXACTLY where you went wrong.
But I return to the fact that this is, in my opinion, some of your best work to date. I am immensely impressed; honestly! :)
Thank you so much for the comments. :)
ReplyDeleteI will work on my scene-setting.