In my opinion, I think that extract one was most appealing to me. It grabs the reader’s attention because of the way the atmosphere is described, “a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it.” This makes the reader want to read on and find out the ‘mysterious’ ending, “she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” In this excerpt there is a great deal of imagery, which brings the whole scene to life, “the houses were humming out into the darkness,” “a secret place above the trees.”
The red rose sat still on the bench, the same one where she met him last summer. Her tears were warm though frozen like ice on her cheeks; she had trouble in seeing the truth, a kind of truth which was hidden in the mist of lies. The space around her suffered from silence, while beyond her people walking past were full of laughter and nothing else. The sound of the cars behind her, the dogs barking, none of that could interfere with her stunning silence.
She wanted to leave but the beauty of confusion had control of her and there was no sign of it vanishing soon. It started raining and people were running to find shelter, the place became lonely, its only friend was her silence. She saw his face in the raindrops; she held her hands out and looked at the water that dripped down her hands. The feeling she felt when she met him for the first time, it suddenly crawled inside her for a second time, she thought it might have been a mistake but it wasn’t. He stood not far from her but there were a distance between them, a distance that neither of them could avoid.
He walked towards her and sat down beside the rose. Nothing occurred, nothing moved, the silence was still sharing the space where they sat. She felt his tender warm flesh on her hand but didn’t react to it, he moved closer to her. Then it happened, it was meant to. The view of them together broke the silence and filled it with the sound of the stars.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI like your logic with the Fitzgerald piece. The atmosphere is great. You really get that sense of an almost oppressive amount of beauty - that anxiety and excitement (the anxiety in particular).
I also like that you've achieved some of the same with the figurative language of your piece. In 'filled it with the sound of the stars' you get that sense of expanse - of how important this all is. I think you've done well to focus on the emotion behind the action rather than the imediate sensation of the action, as in the example that inspired you.
I also enjoyed that sense of spacial flux that you created by having distances between things emphasised. You could play up on a futher sense of disparity between what is actually there and what that space feels like by introducing aspects of vertigo towards time as well - so have the narrator digress a little about how long this all takes - maybe her lengthy thoughts are the act of a moment, maybe the two lovers come together sooner and remain close but unacting throughout the narrator's stream of thought, for a huge length of time.
Those are just to think on anyway - it's a good piece to read. There's the odd bit which could be made tighter - so try not to repeat 'feeling' and 'felt' in the same sentence - picky bit like that.
I really enjoyed the desciption of people filled with laughter and nothing else - I felt it got across that sense that she's not sharing/appreciating anything deeper with these people - she's just focused on herself and her distance from that one other person.
Very well done. Good to read your work. Take care,
Andy
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI find the opening to this piece a little ambiguous. Are you describing a rose, as in the flower, or a Rose, as in a beautiful girl? If it’s the latter – and I think it is, given that we’re introduced to a woman straight afterwards, added to the fact that you’ve used the humanizing verb “sat” – then I think it would be better to make this clear from the outset. I see that you’re taking up the image of woman as flower where Fitzgerald left off, but just at this early point in the story, it’s a little too obscure.
Again, I think there’s a confusion in the next sentence: I like the fact that you’re playing with paradox, but I don’t know if tears CAN be “warm” and “frozen” at the same time: you need to make it clear whose point of view this is. To the outside observer, they are normal tears, but to the woman, they feel frozen, right? So perhaps just simply “her tears felt frozen” would do.
The space round her “suffer[ing] from silence” is good – a little bit of subtle personification, and of something as difficult to define as a certain place. “Stunning silence” is good, too, as is the sense of people’s obliviousness, or even emptiness, deftly conveyed with the phrase “filled with laughter and nothing else”. “Beauty of confusion” is also interesting – you’re taking risks with your metaphors, which is great to see. You could lose “and there was no sign of it vanishing soon.” You’re telling the reader what you’ve been careful only to hint at in the beginning of this sentence; and I think “the place became lonely, its only friend was her silence” is over-egging the pudding a bit! The silence has already been highlighted, so don’t rely on it to tell your story.
I like the arrival of the male character; but again the “rose” is confusing, and the final sentence, “The view of them together broke the silence and filled it with the sound of the stars”, is trying a bit too hard. You’re mixing the senses of sight and sound – this is called synaesthesia, and can be incredibly effective in this sort of dreamlike writing – but because of the alienating effect of the image of stars, the reader doesn’t quite follow you with this one.
This has some very good Fitzgerald-like hallmarks, though, and you’ve captured the yearning quality of the writing well; you’ve also very neatly fulfilled your own criteria of atmospheric, mysterious writing that is full of imagery.
Well done,
Penny
Hello again,
ReplyDeleteI find this a very intriguing piece, and to my mind the strongest of your prose offerings. The reason I feel this to be the case is that I felt that in your last two offerings you were attempting to change and compromise the distinctive style of your WRITING in order to fit the genre you were given.
Conversely this piece works so well because you have instead subtly changed and refashioned the GENRE to fit your own style of writing.
What you have therefore produced is a piece that is exemplary of the strongest of any of your poems without compromising or ignoring any of the rules or conceits of Romance. Indeed not only would I say you have fully succeeded in fitting your poetic gifts to a specific genre here, I would say you have fully achieved transferring the brilliance of your poetry into the medium of prose.
What I mean when I say that you have subtly reshaped the Romance genre, is that your piece is not self-consciously romantic; for a start it deals largely with but one person, with the man turning up at the end to provide the emotional climax. Therefore until this point the writing seems to be aiming more towards a psychological character assessment rather than straightforward romance.
The thing of it is, however, that this is still proper Romance, because love very much permeates the piece; it is quite clear to any reader that the angst of the central character is caused by love, but this is never explicitly stated or referenced; where most Romances fail is because the writer is explicitly attempting to write a Romance and this often comes across, rendering the work hollow and derivative...but reading your piece does not feel like you were explicitly attempting to write a Romance (even though you obviously were because that is the point of the exercise) it rather feels like you intended nothing other than crafting a realistic, 3-dimensional, well-crafted and likeable central character who just happens to be caught in the middle of a tumultuous romance.
To cut a long story short, I'm basically saying you have very successfully managed to show rather than tell.
What you also manage with aplomb is to make your story work on many different levels, and this is mainly achieved through your customary mastery of imagery.
The main Romantic conceit you seem to be using is that whole notion of there being 'no one in the world but you and me'...and you wring so much romance from this notion by presenting it in an area where there ARE more people than just 'you and me'; they're just insignificant, therefore capturing the poignancy of being 'alone in a crowded room'.
There are a few other contradictions you use to good effect, such as the idea of having tears which are 'warm though frozen like ice', and all of these serve to illuminate the transitory and unpredictable emotional extremity of love.
All said I just feel you have once more exhibited your confidence as a writer by creating a very believable world, but you have done so using very heightened and dramatic imagery, and thereby conjured a highly palpable vision of love without ever feeling the need to even use the word.
Well done again,
Eoghan
Thank you so much for your comments everyone, much appreciated. :)
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