At 06:58 PM 2/24/00 -0600, Kevin Callahan wrote:
Everyone had to be okay, of course. The plan couldn't have
failed that badly. Could it? Things weren't supposed to work
this way. Terrible thoughts ran through his head as he struggled
his way to the surface, avoiding currents that threatened to snag
and drag him down into the immeasurable depths below.
While I think the internal rhyme is cute, I think it interrupts the flow
of the sentence.
I actually didn't even notice it before. Will change.
His voice echoed back to him, over and over again. He
waited, called out again--nothing. They're all dead, he thought;
Katsuhiko hates me so much, he had it kill them all, but leave me
alive, because he knew that would hurt me more than my own death.
Eyes already irritated by exposure to salt water began to itch
with imminent tears. Afloat on the ocean, convinced his friends
were gone, Makoto considered his options. He could swim back to
the cutter--Alielle would be waiting, Alielle had to be waiting--
or he could swim to the island; nearly equal distance to either
one. The island had a pleasant beach overhung by cliffs of dark
basalt that threw their shadow lazily across the sand; his eyes
found green forests and traced the dip and rise of mountain peaks
barely visible that called out come to us,
Moving, but I'd put qoutation marks around "come to us." It doesn't
quite stand out as it should.
It wasn't meant to stand out in that way. :)
Panic set in; he thrashed and cried out. Cold, slippery
tentacles of water caught his wrists; another intertwined thick
and violating about his thighs and groin; a final one looped
about his neck and filled his nostrils with a dead-fish-sea-salt
smell. Helplessly struggling, he could do nothing to resist
being lifted out of the water and high into the air.
Get rid of "Helplessly;" it's redundant.
*clickety-clack*
Despite his state, exuberance filled him. He momentarily
forgot his predicament, and called out their names, one by one.
No answers; so pale they were.
Yodaesque, and I think awkward, as well.
Deliberate; meant to show mental turmoil.
Shayla coughed. The thin, weak sound reached out across the
still waters and reached Makoto's ears like a note of joy.
Shayla lived, and that meant the others probably did, they had to
have lived.
Run-on
Deliberate, meant to echo the run of Makoto's thoughts.
Flat voice: "They live." And Lethiaphan rose into the space
between Makoto and his friends.
Uh... well, for one thing, get rid of that "and." For another, can you
explain the reasoning behind the scriptish "Flat voice:" ?
I think losing the "and" is a good suggestion. The scriptish format is
meant to demonstrate the singular obsession of Makoto's senses upon it.
How could human hands have designed something so
alien?
As though in answer, Lethiaphan spoke:
"Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.
The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace seal'd,
The human heart its hungry gorge."
A fanfic writer and poet. I'm impressed.
While I'd love to take credit for this, it actually belongs to William
Blake, who's probably best known for the lines, "Tyger, Tyger, burning
bright." :)
Cryogenic coldness of Lethiaphan's xenolithic presence in
Nice use of consonance! I like the rythm it provides.
Yeah, and I got to use a cool word like "xenolithic", too. :)
his mind bringing back childhood night-terrors, the creak of a
closet door opening due to a faulty latch sending him scurrying
under the covers, unable to stare through the darkness of his
room at the gaping maw within the wall that wanted to swallow
him down... his hand came up as though in rebellion against his
After ellipses, the first word should be capitalized. In this case,
it would be "His."
I think this is a debatable point, actually. If the ellipses are meant to
end the sentence, then, yes, the first word should be capitalized; if,
OTOH, the ellipses are (generally within dialogue, but sometimes with a
character's introspective moments) meant to represent pauses in speech or
thought, the next word isn't capitalized. In this case, though, you're
right, it should be capitalized.
"Don't you have something cleaner?" A wheedling note in his
voice would do it, yes, all those days in the Shakespeare Society
of Shinanome were paying off, he'd seen Jinnai do Caliban two
years ago, he knew how to whine...
Run-on.
Again, stylistic, meant to show thought process.
"You seem different, Ifurita."
"I am."
Nasalasalanasala and
Nasablablahblah, whatyhoo?
Character from a previous chapter.
the boy's attendants moved back from
them, rejoining the circle of their tribe; the blue-skinned men,
Oh, Tizarin. (Let's see someone get this joke.)
Well, it wasn't me. :)
Ifurita stared at the head flatly. "You do not seem to at
this moment. And you are, after all, only a head; hardly in a
position to be any kind of threat to me."
LOL That's hilarious.
And, given what happens soon after, ironic. :)
"Na."
Fade...
Although I cut it out, the "Na" scene totally kicked ass.
Cool.
The Demon-God stopped on a dime above the boat, and
Try to avoid cliches like the plague. :P
I generally do, but it's appropriate in this case. ;p
dropped down to land upon the deck, stumbling on his twisted leg
as he did. The mangled shoulder-stump appeared to have
have been
cauterized; at the very least, it no longer leaked the red fluid
it had before.
Don't think that's necessary, actually.
Dark guillotine fell, severing the connection.
Fragment.
Deliberate.
All around him, the others, Miz Shayla Fujisawa Alielle,
clamouring voices, question after question which he cannot
willnot answer,
Unlike the option of cannot, will not cannot be written willnot.
I know; the joining is deliberate.
and, "SHUT UP! Shut up! Let me think! Leave me
alone!"
They shrink back; they have never heard him yell like that
before.
Why the tense changes?
Representing Makoto's mental turmoil.
Ifurita might meet his past self, but there was no
guarantee, none at all, that _he_ would meet her again. What if
what Gallus had done to the Eye of God had permanently damaged
it? What if the secret of dimensional travel did not lie hidden
within some ancient text? What if he never saw her again? How
could he endure that? How could he live? His soul was cleaved
to hers deeper than flesh to bone. Without her there was no
life.
It's getting harder to read. Certainly it's more emotional, but I'm
getting lost easily.
That's somewhat intentional, giving how deeply the narrative is subsumed
within Makoto's rather tumultuous consciousness at this point.
He didn't have any conscious perception of events outside
his grief; didn't know who reached him first, to touch him, or
how hard he slapped their hand back. Nothing mattered.
Agreement. One hand, one person, no their. Try his or her.
I do this a lot. Stupid English and its lack of a non-gender-specific
third-person pronoun. -.-
Summary: I liked it. You told a well developed story. I liked the
characters. It was emotionally powerful, if a bit grammatically
inept. :P
That's mostly style, I think; grammar is much more flexible when writing
prose. :)
While I have only paid attention to two or three of
the Mortal Engines chapters, I will continue in a more standard
capacity now. Good job, may there be more where this comes
from, and good luck on fixing what I commented on.
Well, near as I can tell, about half the stuff you commented on was actual
grammatical problems, and the other half was style. I'll fix the genuine
grammar problems, but am going to have to keep some of the latter bits in
order to preserve the style I want.
Thanks for the commentary; much obliged.
Ciao,
-Alan Harnum