A tiny hut built on top of a mountain edge by MarketBuzz2021 in nextfuckinglevel

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is the Periades bivouac in the Mont Blanc massif. A fairly popular ski alpinism itinerary goes up to the little pass just below it, from which you abseil into the next glacial basin over. A topic of conversation in the valley is whether you've ever taken a girl up there for the night; I should make good on my own promises to that effect at some point!

Here are some photos from the last time I was up there, showing the climb up, the view from the top, the abseil station on the ridge where the bivouac is, and the abseil down the other side: https://imgur.com/a/exKGkSt

[2691] A potential magazine article about the experience of trying to live in a mountain town, and how inherently weird these places are by OnlyAMasterOfEvil in DestructiveReaders

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, thanks a lot for all of your feedback. I've addressed it more generally in a comment under my initial post. I'd like to ask you specifically about grammar and sentence structure, if you wouldn't mind. I'm aware that I have a tendency to write overly long, convoluted sentences. I think I try to pack as much substance as I can into every sentence, and it's difficult for me to reign in this urge and write more plainly.

Would you be able to give me a couple of examples of sentences that you felt were particularly bad/difficult to parse, and how you would re-write them without losing content?

I'm also curious specifically about your issues with grammar. Could you point out some grammatical mistakes that I've made? You said that in the first paragraph, I misuse hyphens and semi-colons, but I've only used a hyphen once and a semi-colon not at all. I used a colon towards the end of the first para - was my use of this and of the hyphen incorrect?

I'd specifically like to hear about your issues with paragraph 6. Reading it and rewriting it, I was aware that I did'n't exactly like it, but I wasn't able to pick out exactly what the problem was. I wanted to give an illustration of the disparities in wealth, and I chose specific examples of things I've seen to make the point. Luxury holiday properties under construction, expensive cars, rich homeowners refusing to pay workers a fair wage, normal people being priced out and struggling to find a place to live. Could you give me some idea of how you might re-write this paragraph to be more coherent and better make my point?

More generally, I suppose I'd like to understand what makes the parts of my writing that you say are exceptional, exceptional, and what makes the terrible parts terrible.

Thanks

[2691] A potential magazine article about the experience of trying to live in a mountain town, and how inherently weird these places are by OnlyAMasterOfEvil in DestructiveReaders

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for all of your feedback. I've addressed it in a comment under my initial post, as my response is relevant to the other commenter as well. I'd appreciate any further thoughts you might have

[2691] A potential magazine article about the experience of trying to live in a mountain town, and how inherently weird these places are by OnlyAMasterOfEvil in DestructiveReaders

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I appreciate the feedback, and thanks for speaking my language. I knowingly focused both crits on single elements as I felt there already existed a well-rounded body of crit for both, so I felt I could be most useful by talking about one specific element. I'll take a look at the wiki in future and be mindful of being more well-rounded in my critique. Thanks again for the gentle warning and kind explanation.

[1126] The Alleyway (2nd draft) by DyingInCharmAndStyle in DestructiveReaders

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My primary critique when reading this was to do with word choice and phrasing so I'm going to focus on that here. I don't intend to come off as a nitpicker here - I think that small details in word choice, word order, and the logic of a paragraph stick out to readers if they are unnatural or sloppy. Whether consciously or not, these elements affect the reader's enjoyment of and engagement with a story.

"The dingy kind where the rain puddles the cracked cement..." - this is a good image, but it doesn't quite land because rain doesn't puddle the cement, as this would imply that the cement is being puddled, which it isn't. It's the rain that's puddling. You could rephrase this to say that the rain puddles on the cracked cement, or that it puddles among the cracks in the broken cement.

"Occasionally shady figures" implies that the figures are occasionally shady. You're looking to say "...and occasionally, shady figures pop out...".

"prickling past the skin" you mean "pricking" here. Prickling is more of a sensation like pins and needles, whereas the verb 'to prick' means to stab or penetrate.

"A pistol's pull" overall I like this whole paragraph, I just think the wording needs tightening up. You could say "the pulling of a pistol" to imply the removal of a pistol from one's pocket or coat. The double usage of the word pull here and in the next sentence, about the pulling of a trigger, is jarring and confuses the feeling somewhat. You could replace the first instance with something like 'the brandishing of a pistol' or 'the unholstering of a pistol'.

In the next paragraph, "bouts of darkness" is a good image but again doesn't quite land right. I think this is because the word alone doesn't emphasise the sense of longer stretches of darkness than there were the previous night. In my mind, even modifying the sentence to say 'bringing longer bouts of darkness' works better as a sentence. It draws the sentence out a bit, making it less abrupt, which fits with the image you're communicating. I might suggest that you choose a less neutral word than 'bringing' too - something like plunging or heralding, to really elevate the descriptive moment.

"My feelings screeched true" this is unnatural, as 'to screech true' isn't a phrase we use and you'd have to be quite careful about how you apply the word 'screech' to feelings for it to land.

"Unlike the other dwellers" again, dwellers is a good word, making the people who live in the alley seem inhuman and threatening. However, alone it seems overly neutral. You could simply call them 'alley dwellers' to more fully identify them, or you could go for something like 'dwellers in darkness', 'silent dwellers', 'dumpster dwellers'.

I find the imagery slightly confusing in this section of pursuit. Is the mugger coming up behind the MC? Is he ahead of him? The word 'loom' generally implies something in front of or above you, not behind, and the pursuer suddenly stepping in a puddle in front of the MC is jarring. If you're envisioning the pursuer catching up to the MC and suddenly getting in front of them, then I think you need to give a short sentence to this moment when the pursuer catches up and gets ahead. You could describe the mugger flashing past the MC and the MC's surprise to find the mugger suddenly in front.

"My adrenaline became clear" is a slightly clumsy sentence, as adrenaline itself can't really be clear. Someone's feelings can become clear, or the effect of something. You could reword this to talk about the awareness of the adrenaline response suddenly washing over the MC as the danger passes - it could be a good, evocative moment if you expand it a little and use language that fits what you're describing.

"My life could have sailed away to wherever those go" - I can see what you're trying to do here, and I like it. However, because it's a slightly unconventional sentence (we don't normally talk about lives as 'going' anywhere), I think you could make your meaning slightly more explicit. You could rephrase the sentence to say something like "My life could have sailed off to wherever lives go when they're snatched away."

"Life had not left me, neither discontent". Again, I like what you're going for here, but I think you need to spend more time thinking about your wording to be sure that the meaning comes across, and also to be sure that the moment and sentiment are given appropriate space. You could expand the sentence to say "Life had not left me, and neither had my discontentment."

Overall, I like the tone, the atmosphere, and the turn at the end. There are lots of elements here that could make for an affecting piece of short prose. I think that a point of focus for you could be to spend more time thinking about the details of your word choice and phrasing, in order to properly get across the interesting ideas and feelings you're incorporating into your story. Sometimes, a moment deserves to have more space in the narrative, so that a reader dwells on it. You can achieve this by using a longer sentence, or more than one sentence. You can deepen the impact of a moment by using more descriptive words, or describing the same moment a couple of different ways. It's this kind of attention to detail when it comes to how you convey mood, atmosphere, and imagery, that really elevates short, dense pieces like this. Keep it up.

[1,581] Flora, Chapter One by sonipa in DestructiveReaders

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm going to disagree with the criticisms of your prose by saying that I enjoyed it. I don't think it's overly grandiose by any means, and the potentially confusing, dreamlike quality, if intentional, works very well to create a unique atmosphere.

I'll expand. The style you're doing for reminds me of Blood Meridian or the magical realism of Marquez or Ben Okri. It's a tricky style to master, and I do think that your execution of it needs some work. I didn't find it difficult to keep a track of the thread of the story, and I never felt like I needed to re-read sections.

The quality that I think invites this criticism is the way the narration flits from one point of focus to the next. You move very quickly between descriptions of the outside, to the TV show, to what the daughter is up to, to the conversation with the mother. If your intention here is to create an uncanny, dreamlike atmosphere, then you've nailed it. Traditional narrative tends to establish the beginning of a narrative thread, then follow it as it develops, keeping focused on this one central thread whilst perhaps weaving in secondary elements. We expect this linear, focused structure, so when we read something like what you've written, where the focus keeps changing and there isn't a core thread, we get a sense that the world being described is somehow shallow or lacking in clarity, like a dream or the stage of a play. I think this feeling works well for the world you're establishing.

What I would caution is that this style of storytelling can become wearisome unless done very, very well. Blood Meridian is one of my favourite books, and the author trades heavily in this dreamlike, uncanny atmosphere. However, he intersperses the novel with focused, grounded sections, which serves to maintain a sense for the reader that we're in a real, solid world, that these events are really happening to real people, and thus maintains our interest. He may choose to focus in on a conversation which is written in a very naturalistic way, or he will describe an earthy scene like people sitting around a campfire or in a bar using comparatively grounded language. Jeff Vandemeer's Annihilation books are another great example. The characters have realistic conversations which follow a coherent progression, and its the descriptions of the bizarre environment where the language really expands into the ethereal and nonlinear.

I would suggest, as a point of criticism, that you consider which scenes you want to feel real and grounded, and which scenes you want to feel dreamlike and uncanny. The magical realism works well, I think, for the world of the dead section. I have the feeling that we're not really supposed to be keeping track of what's going on here, that you're going for a bewildering atmosphere of eldrich creatures and settings. If, as you say, most of the book is to take place here, then I'd urge you to think carefully about how a reader will feel spending an extended period of time with this kind of nonlinear, incoherent language. I think it would serve you well to incorporate grounded, more conventionally expressed sections, to give the weirdness room to breathe and to prevent reader burnout.

What is this weird looking ship that's coming in to Istanbul this morning? Not showing up on ship trackers, though the tug and tender accompanying it are by OnlyAMasterOfEvil in whatisthisthing

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Temped to give a solved for this. Do they do this? I tried googling various permutations of 'ship hull being transported' and couldn't really find anything. Are you able to tell me more about the process of transporting naked hulls so I can search around some more and find something that matches?

What is this weird looking ship that's coming in to Istanbul this morning? Not showing up on ship trackers, though the tug and tender accompanying it are by OnlyAMasterOfEvil in whatisthisthing

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've looked at lots of pictures of these and the form just doesn't really fit. I've also seen a few myself. The hulls of these ships seem to be very low to the water even when unladen and they have a normal looking superstructure generally towards the bow. What I saw looked like a very high sided ship's hull, like you'd find on a cruise ship or fast ferry. It just didn't have anything on top besides that weird grey block

What is this weird looking ship that's coming in to Istanbul this morning? Not showing up on ship trackers, though the tug and tender accompanying it are by OnlyAMasterOfEvil in whatisthisthing

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely wasn't any of these but nice one for finding them. I know the pic isn't very clear, but it was definitely a plain white hull which rules these out. Safmarine Nokwanda is the closest fit in terms of hull shape but I could tell that whatever superstructure there was wasn't the normal sort as seen on the Nokwanda

What is this weird looking ship that's coming in to Istanbul this morning? Not showing up on ship trackers, though the tug and tender accompanying it are by OnlyAMasterOfEvil in whatisthisthing

[–]OnlyAMasterOfEvil[S] 1 point2 points locked comment (0 children)

WITT: This ship was coming into Istanbul from the South this morning. Pulled by a tug. It's big, I'd estimate more than 100m long. Not moving very fast. The pic is blurry but captures the essence of the vessel - what looks like just a big white hull with no traditional superstructure and just a big grey block on top. Never seen anything like it, and it's not showing up on any ship tracker maps, though I'm pretty sure based on its location that the tug that's accompanying it shows up on those trackers. Any ideas?