Comments | write_away: Opon an Arc of White

mm511 in write_away

Opon an Arc of White

Feb 08, 2007 06:20

So, this story's triggered from the Monday Word-of-the-Week. I don't know how I feel about it, partly because the story I had envisioned when I first got this idea and the one you are about to read are two wildly different things and partly because I just don't know how well I do with tragedy. I've taken some liberties with Arachne's myth, but then ( Read more... )

user: mm511

Comments 5

smeddley February 8 2007, 15:45:13 UTC

First impression: it feels a bit like you’re switching tenses in the beginning, between phrases like ”She had expected it two days ago” and ”Arachne does not want [to get] caught in the flood”. It just feels a bit… off. Later in the story I didn’t notice that, just in the first paragraph.

Later, though, I did notice a few phrases that seemed out of place because they were far more casual. The tone of your prose is overridingly formal (which I think is good for this type of story) but a few things jumped out at me later:
”Annoyed at another visitor come to admire her work, she snarks, “Yes, yes, mine is better than gods’ work. Yes, yes, I know.” ”

Hmmm, well, I thought it was a few more, but only that line really strikes me that way in the reread-through.

In reading your comments I can see this would be one of the ‘modern day’ portions. But the rest of her is still too old-world, and it jarred me.

”At once, the goddess sees the beauty and the life in the weaving and knows that she has been bested by an immortal.”I think you ( ... )

mm511 February 8 2007, 20:39:47 UTC

I think you are right about the tenses in the beginning. I started the story in past tense and decided to change it to present towards the middle, and so I don't think I need all the pluperfects in the first paragraph. For some reason, I'm a big pluperfect fan. I have no idea why ( ... )

smeddley February 9 2007, 01:18:17 UTC

Oh, you lost me a pluperfect... No, seriously, I will be the first to admit I couldn't diagram a sentence to save my life. I don't know the parts of speach at all. And yet, I manage to write fairly coherently. I think it's from reading so much. It's a matter of knowing what is right without knowing why, I think. It's like they tell you to never try to learn a language from a native speaker. It's much easier from someone who had to learn it the way you need to. That's probably more than you want to know about me, though.

Okay.

The dialogue in this piece is tricky, because you're right - it's a very distant narrator. However, you do a fine job with the goddess's speech, especially:

“Your hubris offends the gods. A contest shall determine if what you speak is truth. Prepare a tapestry to compete with mine, and we shall see what you fate shall be.”That has a very... haughty feel to it, and fits well with the tone. Emulate that for Arachne and her lines will blend ( ... )

lemurstew February 9 2007, 14:10:13 UTC

I think I like the lack of dialogue, it lets me feel the same disconnect with this piece that the childless woman probably feels with the village women around her.

Other than that I find, especially in the first graph, that your sentences run on far too long.

She has not moved from the chair in the main room of her house, and though she refuses to sit at her loom, has refused to sit at her loom for two days, her hands move slightly, unconsciously, almost imperceptibly, tossing a bobbin through the warp, lifting the heddle rod, weighting a warp thread.That's just and example, but I think one of the best. I spent a lot of my time inserting my own periods and semicolons to break it up the reading ( ... )

mystik_serena February 11 2007, 22:21:15 UTC

It moved really fast and parts of it seemed jarring and completely different from the rest of the story, but the ending is lovely, and the word choice at the beginning, connecting terms associated with pregnancy and what Arachne wants... I liked it, but you could try to slow it down a bit.