Welcome to Writers Talkback. If you are a new user, your account will have to be approved manually to prevent spam. Please bear with us in the meantime

Message for Robin

edited October 2007 in - WM and WN

Comments

  • Really enjoyed the story in WN, congratulations, and on the piece in members' news too. It was worth waiting for my issues to arrive.
  • I enjoyed the story too.
  • Soz too busy trying to catch up with Carol's posts.  Promise to read it though.
  • Hi Carol, so sorry it has taken this long to reply.  Thank you very much.  Glad you liked it.  Since the post about winning being to easy or whatever with WM & WN I was a bit concerned about the reation to my piece.  But so far so good.  Glad it was worth the wait, hopefully not just for me.  Also glad you got your post, was worryng for your sanity or that of the postie delivering or not delivering your mail.
  • Robin it was very subtle considering it was the viewpoint of the house.
    I was really getting withdrawal symptons from not having my regular reading material.
    I think our postal service started with the more recent stuff and worked back to the things held up at the start- as the original arrived this Saturday.
  • Robin: no disrespect to you, but there were a couple of stylistic niggles about your piece which I'm surprised the adjudicator didn't pick up on. Having said that, though, the idea behind the story was great. It was original, and narrated with enthusiasm and empathy, which carried "Albert's Place" a long way.

    My first niggle is that there were some huge rambling sentences. OK, you probably know from my Talkback posts that I'm not the most concise person on the planet. But in places I found there were so many words jumbled together that I was losing the point of what Albert was trying to say. Have a look at paragraph 3 (which starts "What, is it the overgrown garden..."). The entire paragraph is one sentence. In magazine print, that's 10 lines! I had to read it over 2 or 3 times to make sure I understood what you were saying.

    My second niggle is that you kept changing tense. Most of the story was narrated in the present tense, but in a few places you suddenly lapsed into past tense in a way that, for me, was very jarring. "Then, as if fate had decreed it the floorboards on the level above creaked" (instead of "creak") and "The next morning was a dour affair" - here you have whole paragraphs which are unintentionally separated from the rest of the story. This left me quite muddled about what time frame you were working in, particularly as there were also past-tense reminiscences interspersed with the present-tense action.

    Apologies if I sound harsh. You're a competition winner, and you have my congratulations for that - it's something I've not managed to do with a short story yet! Your winning story is built on a great premise and it's obviously one that many people have warmed to. Just don't let it breed complacency - you could have improved even this winning story 100% with a little careful editing.

    So - I now eagerly await your next winning story! It's clear you are only going to go from strength to strength here :)
  • Thank you for your constructive criticism, it is taken on board and to be honest I would be inclined to agree with you.  I am my harshest critic and I winced in a couple of places if I am honest.

    Also thank you for your kind words.

    And I will not be complacent, not something I can or will be inclined tro do.  I have svarious stories sent out to comps, another one in WN, and some more to submit.  So no worries on that score
  • How nice to see constructive criticism well meant and well taken!
  • Did not mean that I have another one in WN, but another one submitted to them!!!! Just thought I would clarify...hopefully it will be, but who knows.
  • As I write, there have been 76 looks at this thread.  God.  There's a thing.
  • Gosh *breathes sigh of relief*

    I'm really glad that my comments were taken in the spirit they were meant. Thank you for your thoughtful reply, Robin - as I said, a WN competition win is something really to be proud of, and I'm glad it's spurring you on to bigger and better things. Here's hoping for more success!

    Though perhaps not TOO much of it - got to give the rest of us a fighting chance after all :)
  • Blimey, 115 reads of the thread.  That's quite a few.  I wonder what the most read thread is and what sort of number it chalked up?  This, I think, is a question for Jay.
  • There's one with over 2,000 reads, but Jay may know of one with more.
Sign In or Register to comment.