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Post by Nemonus on Aug 28, 2010 22:27:04 GMT 1
You have a lovely, confidant writing style that reminds me of the best LJ has to offer. I really like in the first one how Nihlus (RIP!) is compared to Jenkins, and the very concept of Kaidan noticing his alien-ness. Death is like that; it makes you look at the parts instead of the whole.
I love how you've described the star as "the reactor it really is"--another instance of looking at parts. Very nice.
In that same part, I like "gnaw" but felt that last line was just slightly too close to a mixed metaphor, like the sun went from being a mystic thing ("lifegiver") to one with teeth. However, the only word I can think of to replace the slightly unwieldy phrase is "parasite", which is also animalistic. Hmm.
I really like "heavy scars" and "that breaking husk of a face".
Your dialogue in the last one felt a little too much like prose sometimes: in particular "bursting out of the ground" was just a little too poetic. I might use the same words but in a different way-- "the thresher maws came. They just burst out of the ground." It sounds more natural, do you think?
This is fantastic work, and here I am nitpicking it to try and help you the tiny bit. : ) I like your Shepard's voice--professional, but with enough tiny cracks in it that she never seems inhuman. I also like how Garrus is described consistently as a listener and observer. Very good! I'll keep an eye out for more from you. I love little prompts like these.
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Post by lieden on Aug 29, 2010 6:34:41 GMT 1
Hey, thanks, and double-thanks for the nitpicking! Your observations are very astute. I was carried away with and mixed up the metaphors in Star. Not a good thing for such a small bit of text. And I should definitely look into the long chunk of Shepard's talk. I already had in mind it ought to be short sentences -- spoken language doesn't have as many clauses as written one does,-- but apparently I switched back into ordinary narrative style at some point without noticing. My bad, and thanks for pointing it out!
Also thanks for the compliments, they cheered me up! I'm going through a rather bad creative crisis (I get those frequently!) where I doubt EVERYTHING: I think my (in this case) writing is pretentious, insupportably ambitious, lacking purpose, with poor understanding, all just flowery recipe-following etc. etc., and it drives me NUTS. I know that it's an exaggerated perception and it probably is not all that bad, and in fact such crises are good because they make me want to push further. But in the meantime, it's endless frustration. :p
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Post by Nemonus on Aug 29, 2010 6:43:48 GMT 1
Ooh, I've never been in a writing crisis. </sarcasm> I don't think you have to worry about being pretentious--you can really pull this stuff off. I'm glad I could help. ^_^
I don't think ambition can be a bad thing.
You did gradually slide into the narrative style in the dialogue. Man, if writers tried to actually write how people talk--I've been trying to pay attention to that in my life lately, and we'd have to invent new kinds of punctuation to get even close. It's choppy, people don't end sentences...It's amazing how ungrammatical our daily speech can be, but the brain rearranges it naturally so we can figure out what we're hearing.
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