The Perfect Moment

[underless]

Title: The Perfect Moment
Prompt: Had to end with the sentence "Soft plumes of smoke twisted their way skyward, drifting in the gentle breeze".
Genre: Fiction
Word Count: 2204
Warnings: Self-mutilation.

So this week I knew what I wanted to write, but not exactly how. But finally I realized I wanted to write something with actual dialogue for once. I

Comments

[underless]

Yup, at most I've reached week 2 before, so this is a first. :D

Punctuation seems to be a serious problem for me. And here I thought I was doing pretty well this week. :/ Thank you for the link, I'll take a look at it when I get the chance. Hopefully that will improve things a bit for me. I'm glad the tenses worked, at least. :)

Oops, I try to mix things up a bit, but I guess I wasn't paying enough attention to the writing this time around. I'll keep that in mind. :)

[underless]

Oh no, it wasn't too harsh, it just irks me that I can't seem to get these things straight. It's a bit annoying to have a little comma or something degrade the writing. ;)
I like that you guys aren't afraid to point my mistakes out. :)

[keppiehed]

You have a very intriguing style. I have had my eye on you since you joined us, and in the short time you have been submitting to the Flame, I find that I am surprised and delighted with your work. This is most interesting. Thank you for sharing. I quite enjoyed this tale.

[underless]

Oh, I'm so glad to hear that, thank you for those kind words! That really brightened my day. :)

[leticiae]

I have to say that when this first began, I had no idea where you were going. By the end, though I was entranced. I thought this line was the best: “Are you serious?” a hoarse voice interrupted his thoughts. “A hen? Is that what the world has come to? You offer us a hen to restrict our one night of free passage through the world of Godly Things?” It was both sarcastic and a sense of foreboding.

I loved how you used the prompt to imply the rest of the story rather than do what most others are doing and having it just be a conclusion.

[underless]

To be honest, I had no idea where I was going either. I sat down knowing there would be demon summoning and two kids in way over their heads, but that was about all. And I like my demons either extremely sarcastic or extremely serious. :D I'm glad you liked it.

[silverflight8]

Hello! I'm your frightfully late editor, and for that appellation I apologize. :(

*Your piece is a little strange to read, because you switch between tenses as you write. Most of this is in past tense, but you occasionally slip into the present (usually the city is active, instead of "was"). This tends to distract/confuse people when they read, so just be careful when editing ;)

*the city hold its breath quite like this
-Lovely turn of phrase. It's really effective here.

*“You better wake up. It’s almost time.” He said softly as she gave him a sleepy look.
-Here the "he said" part is a dialogue tag, and is actually almost part of the previous sentence. That means there should be a comma after "time":

"You better wake up. It's almost time," he said softly as she gave him a sleepy look.

For actions that happen after they speak (that is, unrelated to the speech dialogue), then use a period and capitalize the action - that's now a separate sentence.

*She snapped her mouth shut so violently her teeth clicked together. She glared at

[silverflight8]

Oh, and I completely forgot: if possible, try to put an extra line between paragraphs. (LiveJournal is having some problems with the RTE, though, so it may be that you actually do it but it got messed up...)

[underless]

I knew there was something wrong with the tenses, I wrote it in one tense then switched because it seemed wrong. So I might have left some old ones in there. I was hoping I'd fixed it all, oh well.

Ah, punctuation. My new nemesis. ;) No, but thanks for pointing that out, your example makes more sense.

Oops, missed the executed moon there. Sometimes I forget details like that.

I think I had nice paragraphs when I posted this, but LJ just mashed everything up. Sorry about that, I realize it might be a strain to read. :/

No, so far it's pretty isolated. I might return to the same world, because I like it, but it's nothing I've ever written about before.

Thanks a bunch for the editing. :)

[underless]

Well, given the inspiration I just might. ;)