storytellers

eleison · Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 9:13 pm Post subject:

I am SO going to line by line this critique, because I know you’ll be a good sport about it.

When Maria was a young war bride, a witch lived in her house. It was noon and the bread was soaking in spices in the black overtypo—the oven her grandfather had bought as a wedding gift—as Maria leaned on the green window frame.

She gazed lazily at the red poppies smudging the field that rolled over itself to the black feet of the mountains, one hand toying with the pins in her hair.feels out of place in this sentence… maybe tack it to the beginning of the next one?She stared at the road as if it might bring her husband home if she bothered it long enough.
Instead, a knobby old woman in a red shawl came towards her from the direction of the village. At her side she pulled a white baby goat who clipped at the grass growing in the middle of the road.
The old woman made no inclination that she would stop at the house until the goat pulled towards the faded fence of the garden on the other side of the road, sniffing at the air with each tink! of the bottles hanging from the laundry line. Maria’s mother had hung them there, saying she would have no skinny scarecrows in her garden. “They work no better than a bunch of bottles anyway,” she would say, always reminding Maria that scarecrows looked like skeletons in mourning clothes, which she was certain could only be a sign that death was coming. LOVE this bit

Maria ran to her oven cursing gently aschange to for and slightly reword the sentence, “As” makes it sound like something that has never happened before, but I do not believe this is what you meant. the old iron door fell open at the slightest touch, the bread jumping forward like a bloated, mocking tongue. She huffed and dropped the pan on the stove. When she turned around, the old woman was standing in her open doorway, holding Maria’s bicycle. The goat seemed to expect something.

“I’ve been thrown out of the village,” the old woman said, bumbling around the kitchen table, never bothering to look at Maria. “They say I put a curse on the innkeeper’s wife. She should be so lucky.” She turned to fully address Maria for the first time. “Has anyone ever told you that you look just like the young Madonna?”another fun line, especially considering her name.

Alright, so that’s all I really have… as you already know I love this piece. Hopefully I will be more useful with the next installment.
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Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.
~Sigmund Freud~

Intricate_Icicle2197 · daydreamer Joined: 10 Dec 2007 Posts: 41

I love the parallel between looking like the Madonna and the name Maria. The old woman's random..ness..? is awesome too. I LOVE her goat. XD I think my favorite line was "She stared at the road as if it might bring her husband home if she bothered it long enough. " I also like the tidbit of her mother and scarecrows - how she views them and her alternative.
Yay Fitzgordon! ^_^
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~If it hurts to look back and it frightens you to look forward, just look beside you and I will be there.~

Colonel Fitzgordon · Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:26 am Post subject:

Thank you to both of you for your critique and your wonderful words of encouragement! The next instalment will be up in a day or so.
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"There was a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile." --Marcus Aurelius, Gladiator
Shall we whisper, you and I?

jesse · daydreamer Joined: 29 Jan 2008 Posts: 33

This piece is colourful! Every descriptor, every action, is dripping with flavour. (Though that could just be my synesthesia acting up.) It reads a bit like a fairy tale and a bit like a period piece, with the best aspects of both. You do use a lot of basic colours (green, red, black) as adjectives in the first two paragraphs, and they stand out like the red objects in an Ozu film. This could be good, except that you stop doing it after that. I'd say keep doing it later in the story to create a consistent seasoning of those words and play up the fairy tale aspect, or change them in the beginning to something more like "bottle-green" or "crimson" to fit in better with your other descriptors and play up the historical aspect.

Lastly, " Pacha laughed as if it were a well-known joke" is just a brilliant line. I love it.

Keep going!

<3

-Jesse

Colonel Fitzgordon · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:35 pm Post subject:

GeneralArnold77 · Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 12:29 am Post subject:

It's brilliantly writtian. I can definately see this converstation taking place between two women in a country where all the men have gone to fight. I especially like the part about the horn sounding like a dying crow, that was awesome!

I shall be going on to read more!

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“Fixed fortifications are monuments to man's stupidity.” ~General George S Patton Jr.