New Voice
Name/Pseudonym: Tiffany
Critiquing skills
Choose one piece of work from the application of an accepted member or mod and give constructive feedback on it. You may find the 'accepted' tag on the right-hand side of the community page helpful. Let us know which piece you're critiquing.
cerchilaverita's All Our Masks:
I like the beginning's terse sentences that give readers a snapshot zoom-in approach to a horrible scene, but I suggest removing "nondescript" from the second sentence. To me the word is unnecessary since it doesn't add to the scene or the tension being built; without the word, the sentence remains unchanged, and that's enough reason to give it the boot.
Coming from the short fragment sentences, the beginning of the second paragraph feels like a bit of a let-down. This is what the tension from your earlier sentences led up to, so readers will need to apprehend that the situation is unusual. I'd shift "to the left" closer to the beginning of the sentence; its current position in the middle interrupts the flow of the story. We've just come from a bare-bones description of the environment (a house), so that would place the scene and the action exactly (to the left of the house; I interpreted it to mean that it's around the corner from the red door, like B's approaching the house that way). "And then, to the left, a stake pounded into the ground. Ten feet of thick, sturdy oak with 5'5" feet of a screaming Anna bound to it." I removed the ambiguity of "or so," but honestly I feel that they could be included without detracting too much. I kept the sentences fragmented so that Big Oh-Crap detail in P2S2 (paragraph 2, sentence 2) is where the tension really hits home. From there, like a rubber band snapping (from a rubber band gun?), the action starts. It feels more natural to me. [As an aside, B's introduction as a character feels sudden, but I understand that it's a fragment of a larger story and thus assume that B is a familiar name by the time this scene takes place.]
The third sentence in the second paragraph has a similar problem to the first. As a sentence it's fine, but by moving the middle bit ("she saw, almost clinically") towards the beginning, it seems to read better. I alos suggest replacing "rope-tangled" (from the same sentence) with something else; one doesn't bind someone's hand by tangling them with rope, they wind it 'round their wrists. It's an awkward phrase but not hugely important.
I love all of paragraph 3, especially the last two sentences. The action is clear and concise. It's great.
Your last paragraph's starting sentence - is B moving towards the hose as the man falls (that is, after shooting him twice she's already heading towards her next action) or after he's already down on the ground? I assume the latter, but the first part suggests some of the former. The confusion seems to stem from what you've added after the comma. You could take the whole thing out and lose the vivid image of the man crumpling to the ground or you could integrate it into the first part of the sentence (rather than tacking it on). A quick-fix solution would be: "B didn't even glance down as she passed his crumpled body."
P4S3 has two great thoughts and I feel that they should each stand alone. By separating them, the juxtaposition suggests that B replaces her vanished "cop-calm" with whispered prayers in order to cope with the situation. "The steady, cop-calm of her heartbeat was gone, now that the gun had recoiled into her hand and the shots were hanging in the air. She was whispering prayers she would never remember later as she tugged at the hose."
Writing sample
Post 1-5 samples of your writing, up to 2000 words. These can be an extract from a novel, short stories, poems, factual pieces, essays, lyrics...anything you like. If it's an extract, let us know the title of the piece, a brief synopsis, and which part of the piece the extract is taken from
I don't have a segment from my personal work I'd feel comfortable showing, but I will show writing I've done for a different community's prompts. Prompt for this one was "Shadows of the Self."
At your death, creatures called umbraphages scavenge your body for any leftover shadows. No room, no matter how secure, is locked from their explorations. If no other entrance is available, they can slither out from your nostrils, squeezing themselves out of the small tunnels as if boneless. First, they fit one long arm through, fingers pressed together to form an arrowhead. Following that arm is the other, curling around its twin in a twisting embrace. Their fingers extend to form the shape of dog's heads, which swivel around on their wrists to spy if there are any mourners in the vicinity. Being tremendously shy, they do not like to eat in front of people; it is impolite. If there are no witnesses within view of their fingers, they reach forward to grab hold of your corpse's shoulders and pull themselves out.
Once freed, umbraphages stretch their arms high above their heads, fanning their fingers to cast shadows of fluttering wings behind them. Their deep purple skin resembles polished amethyst. From the waist down, their serpentine body is scaleless and tapers to a stubby, blunt tail. From their waist up to their shoulders, they are just like you, albeit androgynous, with an elastic body. Most notably, umbraphages appear headless; their stout necks end in holes, like a hose. Umbraphages interact with your world with their hands, bending and curling their fingers until they create emotive silhouettes of elephants, birds, dogs, or rabbits, each of which indicate their state of mind. Even more importantly, it is with their hands that they feed themselves.
Running their clever fingers around your cold body, they seek out secret tidbits of memories. Strong memories remain with you until they are as fragile as shadows, which can hide in your cavities long after you’ve died. Umbraphages caress your ears and pull from them thick, candy-red shadows of hate. Like magicians they pluck the shadows daintily from your ears and drop the crumbs into their neck funnel, crunching. It tastes like spicy gun metal. They carefully lift your eyelids and feel underneath that tender membrane of skin for morsels of your last vision; sometimes they're lucky and the shadows are caught on your eyelashes instead. They tap your stretched eyelids, dislodging sea-blue, sad beads. They toss these shadows into the air and catch them with their necks as if tears are jellybeans. As they examine the spaces between your fingers, your navel, and your mouth, they throw out any muddy-brown pellets of shadows they find. Those shadows taste like boredom. If they find a delicious shadow, they gesture excitedly to each other, miming with their hands the shapes of yipping puppies. From your mouth they harvest powdery stars, pink and fresh. Your shadows of love taste like bursts of freckled strawberries. Those are their favorite.
Prompt for this next one was "Happiness Is." This is just the first half.
Daniel wakes up one morning to see his eudemon pulling itself out of his chest. He watches its snout poke through a spot just over his heart followed by an angular head and flopping ears. When its whole canine head is out, it pants and waggles its ears, as if testing that both had come through whole. It struggles to free the rest of its body from Daniel's chest. It does not hurt. Then the eudemon lunges forward so powerfully that Daniel is forced to sit up, gasping. Now the eudemon can free the rest of its body by stumbling out of him. Its two tails tickle Daniel's chest.
The eudemon drops clumsily off the bed and sniffs the carpet floor. Then it turns to stare wide-eyed at Daniel. Its ribcage presses against its sides and its skin hangs loose. It is clearly starving.
Daniel gets out of bed to make an appointment with his doctor.
*
His doctor, Abraham, is politely concerned but not overly so. "Oh, it happens to quite a few people, Daniel," he tells him. "Having your eudemon out and about is nothing to be ashamed of; in fact, everybody will have their eudemon come out at least once in their lives, probably a whole lot more often than that. It's a condition that's becoming more common, I believe." The doctor swivels around on his stool to scribble on a notepad.
"What do I do to get rid of it?" Daniel asks, looking at the dog-like eudemon. It looks pathetic in the sterile doctor's office. It would look pathetic anywhere.
"First, here's a prescription for an antidepressant. It's been proven to help. Medically, it is the most I can do for you, Daniel; the rest will be up to you. I know you've resisted taking any anti-depressants--"
"Don't want to be drugged," mumbles Daniel.
"--but I honestly think they would make things easier for you to handle," finishes his doctor smoothly. Daniel doesn't listen closely, it's a discussion they've had before, over and over again. He is devasted to hear that the only professional thing his doctor can do for him is give him pills.
But the doctor continues to talk. "Second, I will give you some brochures detailing what you can do to help your eudemon return to your body. If you have any further concerns, feel free to call my office to ask."
Daniel shakes his head. He gets up off the examination table; simultaneously, the eudemon rises, yawning. He takes the prescription note from his doctor and stuffs it into his pocket.
He follows the doctor out of the little room to the main office, where the doctor stops to whisper to a nurse, Nancy. She nods and looks through the filing cabinet, pulling out several booklets. Gathering them into one neat stack, she hands them to Daniel, smiling genuinely at him. Looking up at her, the eudemon tilts its head to one side, the tip of its tongue peeking out of its mouth. One of its tails wiggles weakly. Daniel takes the pamphlets and nods at her. He is too shy to smile back.
As he leaves with his eudemon, it turns to look back at Nancy going back to her work. Then the door closes.
*
At home, Daniel throws his jacket onto the back of a blue couch. The pamphlets about eudemons are tossed onto the coffee table. Daniel collapses face-first into the couch cushions, one arm dangling to the floor. He sighs. It smells stale in his apartment, but he doesn't mind it enough to change it.
The eudemon sniffs his hand and bumps its dry nose against his fingers. Daniel flicks his fingers to make it stop. He senses that the eudemon is standing close beside him, as it always is now, as it always will forever, possibly. Pills could help, but taking them would announce to the world that Daniel, age 25, needs medication to be a normal person.
"Go away," Daniel says, muffled.
It snorts. Daniel feels it nudge the side of his body. Perhaps if he ignores it, it would leave him alone, he thinks. So he does, even when the eudemon seems content to insistently push against him until the end of time. It becomes a match of wills: Daniel versus his eudemon. When the poking stops, Daniel feels a tingle of triumph.
Then it sticks its nose into Daniel's ear and snorts again.
Daniel sits up, rubbing his eyes and face with one hand. His eudemon is sitting by his legs, leaning against them like supportive pillars. It has a pamphlet balanced on the top of its muzzle, and it is staring at him with a sad, beseeching expression that only a dog could ever properly convey. Daniel decides not to ask it how it managed that trick; he knows eudemons can't talk. He takes the pamphlet and opens it.
The eudemon pants hoarsely then lies down on its side while Daniel reads.
*
It doesn't take long to read everything. Some of it, Daniel already knows. The rest sounds like New Age mumbo-jumbo mixed with questionable science, but it seems to be sincere.
He reads:
Eudemons are a manifestation of our well-being, or - some argue - the corporeal form of a harmless commensal spirit. In appearance they resemble something canine, usually a Labrador, and can be distinguished from normal canines by the presence of their double tails; they are notably emaciated to varying degrees. What a healthy eudemon looks like is debated.
Eudemons will only separate from their human hosts if driven to desperate measures, in this case because they are so hungry for positive emotions that they extricate themselves by a painless process called Eudaimonic Division. Once freed, eudemons follow their hosts until reunification.
Every pamphlet encourages people with eudemons to seek out local support groups. Major cities always have several centers and smaller towns will have at least one. Daniel's doctor is right: the condition is becoming more common. Flipping to the list of support groups, Daniel sees that there is one within reasonable distance from his apartment. It is called With Good Spirits. What a stupid name, he thinks.
Daniel's eudemon sits up and looks straight into his eyes. When Daniel sighs, defeated, it weakly licks his face, right over his lips.
This is my writing journal, so if you require more samples feel free to check it out. :)