First off, thanks for all the nice comments. I really appreciate them, I just didn't reply earlier because I'm afraid I'd end up replying to every single one of them and spamming the thread and stuff.
Hm, I didn't like this story at all. It starts with a cliche (Fate being a cruel mistress) and then just piles them on from there. I know you've got great talent Fawriel, because i still remember your WWYP entry very well. This one just doesn't do it for me.
Like a mallet to the face. Hm.
I'm not really sure what to tell you. I don't see the cliche. Of course, "fate is a cruel mistress". But I do think I treated that ancient idea in a quite different way. At least I don't recall anyone calling fate cruel because it's boring and doesn't care for human ideals.
*gesticulates vaguely*
I dunno. I get the feeling you misunderstood it, but I can't really point out what it is if you just tell me that it's full of cliches and I have no idea what you mean.
I'll just link you to an article explaining briefly what a
reconstruction is (though I don't doubt that you know this already), and hope you'll see where I'm coming from.
1) Well...the story was a decent read...but there were a few things that bugged me. As Jam said, the story basically started out as one big cliche. Now, normally that wouldn't have bugged me too much, but in a story as short as this, it really isn't healthy for the story when you show with a big neon sign what the theme of your story is. Now if you had, I dunno, saved it for the last seconds of your story as some type of discussion, it might have meant something to me, but that's aight.
The theme isn't "fate is cruel". It's the reason why it's cruel which I only allude to in the opening that is the whole idea behind it.
2) Being nitpicky here on this point...but when you say
"As Mrs. Jaime F. receives a call on her mobile phone while cleaning the windows of her apartment, a series of insignificant events causes her to lose her balance and fall out of the window".
I don't know, I just found "insignificant things" to be a little too vague. Mind telling me, or at least implying, what some of those "insignificant things" are? Like I said though, nitpicky.
I suppose it kind of clashes with the detailed tone of the rest of those segments when I just allude to "insignificant things". I just couldn't think of anything else to call it. In order to fall out of a window by accident, I suppose there would have to be some thing to stumble over, you might bump your arm against something, do some sort of wrong movement, etc...
3) Some of the "scientific dude's" (as I like to call the coldly logical perspective we see), was a little too emotionless, describing the fall in scientific terms, which to me, seems like something that contradicts the tenseness of the situation. Also, some of his insights focused on some rather insignificant things like...
I beg to differ. If I had told these parts in a dramatic tone, they would've been exaggerated and hard to take seriously. This way, you just get the cold hard facts. Also, it's a little misleading to call the speaker there "scientific dude". I leave open who or what the speaker is, but they signify the coldness of fate and all those predetermined forces of nature that we can't do anything against.
Yeah, I found the breaking her bones thing pretty much just stating the obvious. And as for her "acquintices" physical condition and the texture of the road, what about them? Does the dude have diabetes? Is he winded, tired, breathless, is that his physical condition? And what about the road? Is it bumpy, slippery, does it somehow slow him down? Again, the scientific viewpoint just kinda started talking without even giving us an introduction to what was going on.
"without even giving us an introduction to what was going on"? What do you mean?
I considered those details to be rather irrelevant. The speaker just knows all those facts and describing them would be unnecessary.
"Despite their irrelevance in the act of running, the emotional stress causes strain to be put on the man's facial and manual muscles"
Ya could have just said that the emotional stress caused his face to become strained ya know...
Can I blame that on my Germanness? =<
Uh...what "current calculations"? Is the "scientist" typing this all down onto a computer or something? I mean honestly, it isn't until the "scientific dudes" very last entry into this situation that he actually paints a picture we (or I) could actually connect to and feel emotion about.
That's because you aren't supposed to identify with that speaker, or rather, the speaker doesn't want you to identify. It just describes the situation. Depending on how vivid your imagination is, that might help you identify with the character because of the few details concerning his emotional state. Other than that, the emotion's supposed to come from the diary.
4) The boyfriend of Jaime F. Now his entries are my favorite part of the whole story. He's a likeable dude, we get a really good view of what he's like, and I felt good about him. His entries were sometimes funny as well (loved the whole "disillusioned Santa with a beer bottle" picture). I can't really see much wrong with his entries.
Yaaay.
5) Now the ending...frankly it's one of the things that bugs me the most. Now you pretty much spent almost the whole entire story talking about how cruel fate could be and pretty much making making Jaimes death irrefutably certain...and the boyfriend saves her. And there's not even any given or implied reason for his sucess despite half the story drilling it into our heads that Jaime was about to die. Well, I guess we can just through that part of the story out the window then.....
Wait, since when is it bad to have a twist at the end of the story? It seems kind of unnecessary to write a long story about how someone's falling out of a window, and then, in the end, lo and behold, hits the ground and dies.
Yes, there's no reason given why both are alive at the end.
So, why are they? It must surely have been impossible. How did they manage? Are there any clues?
6) As bad as I'm making these flaws sound, it's not really anything that cripples your story...I think what was really this stories biggest handicap was the length. Personally, I think between the introduction, half the story being coldly logical, and how often the story switched perspectives, I think this story was built in a way that doesn't really leave a more than average taste in our mouths. I actually can honestly say that were the story longer, I probably would've cared a lot more for the characters despite the flaws in how the theme is portrayed.
So... basically you want me to make it longer.
It seems kind of odd to me to make a story about three seconds in the lives of two people an opus of 20 pages. If I had made the story too long, it would've lost all sense of urgency.
7) The final verdict is...this story isn't bad, the writing is good, and you obviously have talent, there are just some things about the story that take all the impact out of it. Disappointed in yourself for this bad review? Depressed? Don't be pal, there's nothing about this that can't be fixed. I actually did enjoy reading it, just work on some stuff that's all.
Well, I can't say I'm happy with suddenly getting two overwhelmingly negative reviews after even the guy who criticizes EVERYTHING I do conceded that it's a good story, but such is life. I apologize if I'm sounding terribly defensive, but I'd be seriously sad now if I got too emotional, so you'll have to deal with defensive Faw.
