måndag 9 maj 2011

taking that brave step and initiating this blog...

Hot vapors quietly lingered above the shiny surface. It was a silent day, a rare one, as the heat had nested itself in the soil of the burned fields. Unexpectedly, an invaluable shadow had settled over the room. Heavy black hands spread out and devoured their own: an upholstered sofa aging of negligence, continuing along the greasy fibers on the dusty carpet covered by Polaroids which had brought happiness once upon a time, until they reached that deep scratch on the desk. That was the place she was standing in, silently watching the sky disappearing into nothingness through the glass pane. A wrinkle which had long ago settled itself at an angle above her nose appeared, as life had become much harder at this very moment. She carefully watched what was happening in front of her, behind the vaporized glass , how life presented itself as vastly peaceful. She thought of Zach, the little life that never seemed to confirm her presence, the boy that she did not know. The Zach who made her even more concerned about future incidents. It was he who tainted the idyll.

3 kommentarer:

  1. Nice, intense description. I like it; describe a bit more of this idyll that Zach taints. Is it the woman described that thinks this, or is it what people in general think?

    Why is she concerned about future incidents? A good, intriguing start.

    SvaraRadera
  2. this really does a good job of building up a tension, which in turn resolves itself with one or two unanswered questions (who zach is, for instance). which is good, keeps the reader curious, hungry for more. a word of caution though. It's not that big of a problem in this but just be careful when using adjectives/adverbs. of course, they have their place in writing, but using too many can detract from what you're trying to say. this is especially true of adverbs, which can be usually be dispensed with entirely. getting rid of adverbs will often give a text a better flow, as well as making it sound more professional.

    SvaraRadera
  3. This reads like prose poetry. That's both good and bad. The good is that it's got nice rhythm and does an impressive job of creating atmosphere; I agree with the previous commenters that it is both tense and intense. Oppressive even. And you waste no time introducing the problem: Zach. We don't know much about him yet, but we sure are curious.

    Now the bad. The description sounds good, but I have trouble understanding what much of it means. She's looking out the window and we can see some of what she's seeing, but then, even more vividly, we see the room. I'm not always sure what is what. What is the shiny surface? The heavy black hands are the shadow I guess, but what do you mean by their own? Do the sofa and the carpet belong to the shadow? That's hard for me to process. What does it mean when the sky is disappearing into nothingness? I might buy that kind of vagueness in a poem, but in a short story I want to have a clearer picture of what is happening. I was a bit surprised to learn that this scene was supposed to be idyllic. I read the encroaching shadow as rather threatening. Finally, to nitpick a bit about word choices (but this English class), I think you need to look up invaluable (I don't know what you intended that to mean) and vaporised (I'm guessing you meant fogged up).

    I'm very curious to find out about Zach.

    SvaraRadera