I'm beyond jealous of your writing style. This is amazing.
June 23rd, 2013 at 01:47am
First off, I love that your summary includes the contest title. That's very clever of you.
I read the first line and started laughing. That's brilliant. That's just so bloody brilliant. The way in which you phrase things in such an extraordinary manner, such normal things at that, so that sometimes you really have to read it twice to know what the simple meaning is reminds me of my favourite lyricist and I have his words tattooed on my body so that's among the highest of compliments in my mind.
They were solely puppets in desire's marionette of demand.
Not so keen on this line because while I understand what it means, the word choice is what bothers me. It's a bit oddly phrased. I can picture the image of them as metaphorical marionettes with desire as the puppet master pulling the strings, I'm just not sure that sentence is really stating that. It's implying that's what you mean, but the words itself aren't exactly saying that. I'm not sure that makes sense and I wish I could explain it better, but basically it's a syntax issue I'm having with it.
Provocative disquiet was another one that stuck out to me, especially because you go on to say that his heartbeat you're describing is the one noise she cares for. Why would it cause her worry then? Disquiet is a feeling of anxiety, unease and it sounds like hearing it is something she desires and that comforts her so it didn't make sense to me that you'd describe it as disquiet when it doesn't appear to have that effect on her at all.
So many utterances could have been used to describe his smell; cigarettes, whiskey, musk, and devotion.
I did love this line most of all because I actually know that smell. It may seem unrealistic, but it's true, it exists and reading it reminded me of him. It's not necessarily the dream smell girls want guys to have, like of spray on deodorant or cologne, but there's an odd comfortable feeling to the smell of whiskey and cigarettes because it isn't something you're going to smell on every guy you meet. It's a unique reminder and I like that Dimitri has such a distinctive scent to her that she'll always be able to pick it out.
It was difficult to tell where he began and she ended.
This reminded me of Basic Space by The xx. "I think I'm losing where you end and I begin." It's probably a total coincidence, but reading that and making that connection brought a new aspect to the story for me. It emphasised these feelings of belonging with each other, of knowing each other intimately, of being part of each other essentially.
where ink stained her skin.
Not a fan of a tattoo being called a stain. It makes it seem like it's something unwanted, like getting ketchup on a white shirt so it's now ruined. Her skin's not ruined, she just has something unique on it now.
I loved that you described her hair as dirt-brown. I feel like so many people go out of their way to come up with glorifying comparisons for brown hair colour, like honey brown and chestnut brown and sometimes it's the colour of dirt. No shame, that's just how it realistically is. You often use such blunt but truthful comparisons like that and I think that's something that just makes your writing style so enjoyable to read.
Sometimes I really love your poetic descriptions and they flow wonderfully. Other times they feel a bit forced and I feel like direct speech would be so much more powerful. Reading the bit about being Lucifer's slave at the end didn't seem to mesh with the rest of the piece for me. Here you've been describing the two of them wrapped up in each other, something that's second nature to them by now, and it's clear it's love, but it's not romantic, it's been realistic. What I like so much about your writing is that the relationships you write aren't these perfect fairytale romances that everyone imagines. They're not gushing with lovey-dovey description and feelings from the characters. They're different kinds of relationships. They're no less valid than Cinderella and Prince Charming, they just function in their own way. It's not gentlemen opening car doors for their princess traditional storybook love. This love is more of an understanding of each other. The whole flowery Shakespeare Romeo underneath Juliet's balcony deal with the stars and the gods kind of makes me feel like you were trying to get the point across of it being love by putting into that stereotypical category and it just kind of took away the beauty of this imperfectly perfect relationship for me.
That said, I think you might be one of my favourite authors on Mibba. I just love the way you describe things in such a unique way most people would never think to describe something and I adore that your characters smoke and drink and have sex without there being any shame. You can write all that and never portray them in a bad light. I like to see that because that's the closest thing to my life I've read on Mibba. All that usually gets a bad rap and the characters who do that are considered either bad people or emotionally troubled, but people are capable of having a drink, or a cigarette, or admit they're sexually active and still be normal, decent human beings. I think that's what makes your writing stand out, that's why I love it, and I hope you never stop writing like this.
