karmadog
Now I'm a drink behind.
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2001
- Posts
- 1,198
Okay, I'm sorry for the wait, TheEarl, real life intruded for a while.
Life is tough for this sportsfan: The Wings were swept, the Pistons are in deep shit, and so is the local minor league hockey team. On the other hand, all of my teams made the playoffs, so I'm gonna look on the bright side. Plus, my awful football team, the Lions, had a good draft. Maybe they'll win five or six games this year.
Today, I'm reviewing From a Boeing 747 by TheEarl.
This story starts quickly, but slightly confusingly. The narrator slams his 'notebook' shut. I'm sure that it is evidence of the proliferation of tech, but it wasn't until he started tearing pages out of it that I realized that the notebook in question was not a computer. It's kind of a minor thing, but perhaps he could slam his pencil down and then snap his notebook closed to avoid confusion.
On another front, the narrator says, "Will you stop reading over my fucking shoulder!”
The vulgarity makes the narrator seem a little unpleasant. The exclamation point makes me think that he just yelled this on a crowded airplane--very likely, a plane with children on board. Of course, his later behavior would come as a greater shock to the kiddies if they saw it.
I did like the idea of the annoying seatmate being a fabulous babe. That creates a nice contrast.
Another bit that rang sort of true was the narrator's desire to be left alone to write and his craving for feedback. However, I never felt it. It's hard to be more specific than that. Really, I never felt this story at all.
Perhaps it was due to the fact that the writing wasn't as taut as could be desired. Some of the word choices seemed ill advised. For instance, the word 'smirk' was used twice. I don't think it was a good choice in either circumstance. It felt as though the author had run out of synonyms for 'smile' and looked in a thesaurus for other words. The problem is that what a thesaurus offers are not always different words that mean the same thing, but words that mean something similar or related.
A smirk is not goodnatured, it is a smug or annoyingly complacent kind of smile. It does not connote good will.
Another technical problem (one that I am frequently guilty of) is that 90% of the paras begin with a pronoun, usually 'I' or 'she'. Starting every para the same way tends to lend a monotonous quality to the writing, almost a drone.
TheEarl also lapses into convoluted sentence structure at times.
It still wouldn't be perfect, but it would be better that way. The story is riddled with these kinds of sentences. I could feel, rather than I felt; she was whispering, rather than she whispered.
This story really disappointed me. I hadn't read anything by TheEarl before this, other than on the BB, and I expected more.
I know that he knows not to make some of these mistakes, so I have to believe that he was lazy in the editing, or that this is an early work.
Life is tough for this sportsfan: The Wings were swept, the Pistons are in deep shit, and so is the local minor league hockey team. On the other hand, all of my teams made the playoffs, so I'm gonna look on the bright side. Plus, my awful football team, the Lions, had a good draft. Maybe they'll win five or six games this year.
Today, I'm reviewing From a Boeing 747 by TheEarl.
This story starts quickly, but slightly confusingly. The narrator slams his 'notebook' shut. I'm sure that it is evidence of the proliferation of tech, but it wasn't until he started tearing pages out of it that I realized that the notebook in question was not a computer. It's kind of a minor thing, but perhaps he could slam his pencil down and then snap his notebook closed to avoid confusion.
On another front, the narrator says, "Will you stop reading over my fucking shoulder!”
The vulgarity makes the narrator seem a little unpleasant. The exclamation point makes me think that he just yelled this on a crowded airplane--very likely, a plane with children on board. Of course, his later behavior would come as a greater shock to the kiddies if they saw it.
I did like the idea of the annoying seatmate being a fabulous babe. That creates a nice contrast.
Another bit that rang sort of true was the narrator's desire to be left alone to write and his craving for feedback. However, I never felt it. It's hard to be more specific than that. Really, I never felt this story at all.
Perhaps it was due to the fact that the writing wasn't as taut as could be desired. Some of the word choices seemed ill advised. For instance, the word 'smirk' was used twice. I don't think it was a good choice in either circumstance. It felt as though the author had run out of synonyms for 'smile' and looked in a thesaurus for other words. The problem is that what a thesaurus offers are not always different words that mean the same thing, but words that mean something similar or related.
A smirk is not goodnatured, it is a smug or annoyingly complacent kind of smile. It does not connote good will.
Another technical problem (one that I am frequently guilty of) is that 90% of the paras begin with a pronoun, usually 'I' or 'she'. Starting every para the same way tends to lend a monotonous quality to the writing, almost a drone.
TheEarl also lapses into convoluted sentence structure at times.
She was killing me; her fingers played along the vein at the bottom of my cock, sliding along its length, teasing the bell-end each time before runnig down to caress my balls. It took all of my reserve not to jerk every time she moved.
It still wouldn't be perfect, but it would be better that way. The story is riddled with these kinds of sentences. I could feel, rather than I felt; she was whispering, rather than she whispered.
This story really disappointed me. I hadn't read anything by TheEarl before this, other than on the BB, and I expected more.
I know that he knows not to make some of these mistakes, so I have to believe that he was lazy in the editing, or that this is an early work.
