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Unsentimental. I focus on the kinds of craft issues that will keep a writer from being taken seriously and prevent them from fully expressing their vision. For more information, see "Writing Hurts: Review Forum" 
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Analyzing the written word and determining where a piece is not accomplishing what it wants to accomplish.
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Short stories and poetry are my forte. Novels, not so much. Usually I only need to read a chapter or two to determine if it's going to go off the rails. Sometimes I'll keep reading.
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I'll read anything.
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Anything.
Least Favorite Item Types
Pieces from authors who have never considered that writing is a craft, who nonetheless think they're great simply because they have penned the words, and who take offense when I don't agree.
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Useful things don't always occur to me with a given piece. If I don't think I can offer insight into how the writer might become better at the task, I won't say anything.
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Review by edgework
Rated: 18+ | (2.5)
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You say this is a prologue to a fantasy tale, and note, correctly that there is, as yet, no fantasy. That's not the real problem, however.

Before going any farther, get yourself a decent book on grammar and syntax and clean up the technical problems. You change speakers in the middle of paragraphs without even quotation marks to indicate speech, let along starting a new paragraph. There's a spell checker built into the editing windows of everything you write. Pay attention to it. Unfortunately, it won't help you if you have correctly spelled words that are, nonetheless, the wrong words. Of all the problems facing a writer, these mistakes are the easiest to flag and correct.

Having no idea what the larger story is for which this is the introductory scene, I'm just guessing that the community outreach assignment is the gateway to all that follows. If not, then you either need to rewrite this intro, or ditch it. But I'll assume it is. What that means is you've spent well over two-thirds of your chapter on stuff that might be important, but ultimately is not, before getting to the stuff that is important. By that time, we're not sure what's important and what isn't, and so we probably won't get the point. If the purpose of this prologue is to set up the girl's in their assignment, then that needs to be the primary focus of all that is presented to the reader. But keep in mind, the real purpose of this prologue is to get the reader to keep going with Chapter One. If you fail in that, close up shop because you're out of business.

This chapter actually begins when the girls enter the principal's office. With the exception of the interaction between the twins in the beginning when they're getting ready for school, which is inconsequential, this is where things actually begin to happen, in the present, in real time, unfolding in front of the reader's eyes. Everything else is compressed narration, generalized summaries of situations and on-going conditions. Just keep in mind that during such passages, nothing is happening. Things clearly have already happened—that's the point of the summaries, after all—but nothing keeps a reader's attention like things actually happening. And if those things involve problems forcing actions and decisions on the part of your main character(s), then you have the seeds of a character-driven plot.

Back story needs to be measured out carefully. You need to decide what actually needs to be explained in detail, and what can be hinted, suggested or casually mentioned in the course of natural interactions in real-time between characters. Be careful of that last case: nothing is kludgier than two characters who know each other having a long conversation with no other purpose than to remind each other of things they both already know, simply to clue the reader in on what's going on. The whole bit about the near-absent mom in and out of recovery could be suggested in a couple of carefully chosen comments, perhaps a question from the principal, a dubious arching of eyebrows at an evasive answer... that sort of thing. If, and when, the mother becomes part of the present-time action, then you can take the time to show her in all her splendor, but here, she's not the point.

The twins are the point, and the fact that they are having problems. Except, you simply give us compressed summaries of generalized descriptions to deal with the problems, while in the present, all the people who have been giving them problems are busy elsewhere. What's with that? If they have problems, don't tell us. Show us. As an author, you need to learn to delegate your responsibilities as much as possible to your characters. A natural conversation between two believable characters will tell us much more about who they are and how they feel about each other then you tell us from the detached perspective of narrator; or, worse, having a character run through a monologue in their head getting all their emotions out, while the actual conversation is D.O.A. Let us see them in the classroom, let the problems that result be the reason they're sent to the principal's office and then figure out a way for them to have to work a little harder to get off the hook. I know, they're going to work, but that's in the next chapter. You have to keep the reader interested here, in this chapter, or there won't be a next chapter, for them or you.
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Review of A Thousand Words  
Review by edgework
Rated: E | (3.0)
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I enjoyed this. The image around which everything else collects itself is compelling—rain slicked concrete reflecting the sky, momentarily obliterating the sense of a ground plane, the formation of rusted fighters, seemingly aloft one last time before they're shipped off to the boneyard. It's a nice moment captured in descriptive words, a slice of life not without interest, certainly. But it's really just an anecdote, the kind that starts out, "Something happened today that was kind of neat..." The point being that it's just one of those things that you stumble into as you go about your daily life, something with enough impact to cause you to remember it, but really, it's just something that happened. It's close to being a story, but not yet. Why not go the distance and make it one? At the moment it feels autobiographical. If so, keep in mind that when pillaging the various artifacts of your life, or the lives of others, for grist to grind up in your story mill, you owe historical fidelity not one single thing. Unless the purpose is specifically autobiography, or historical precision, you not only allowed, you are obligated to lie, distort, fabricate, steal and otherwise misrepresent anything and everything, if it will allow you to create a compelling read. Your only obligation is to your reader, and if real life, as it actually happened, isn't enough to do the trick (usually it isn't), then help it out.

The effect you're conveying is that this is a special moment, when you (or the narrator) step out of the normal flow of things and are granted an epiphany, a taste of some added dimension. Nothing wrong with that, but for it to become a story, we need to get a sense not just of the moment itself, but of the passage out of the mundane world into that timeless realm. That would give us a reference point with with to measure the significance of what takes place. Even better would be for the narrator to be changed in some way, so that there is a specific arc that begins at point A, travels through a sequence of events and reactions, and arrives at point B. Thats how we know that we have a story, instead of just "stuff happening." The events in a story count for something, they produce a result and that result is measured in the shift we discern in the main character's perspective, condition, or intentions.

Here's an example of the kind of shift you might consider, to give this piece a full fledged narrative arc (an example of the process, not a necessarily a suggestion for a rewrite.) You start out telling us that you have to work late and aren't happy about it. Later you have a quick interaction with some of your co-workers, but for the most part, that entire environment is too unfocused to have any bearing on the proceedings. You might expand that opening segment, give it enough depth and dimension that it becomes the defining problem for our main character. Maybe he's trying to get out in time to meet his wife or girlfriend for dinner. Something that makes "working late" more than just something he happened to be doing. Iinstead of being a minor irritant, it's really cramping his style, so much so that it creates problems with his co-workers, or, better, a specific co-worker, with a name and an identity. And if the work he has to stay late to finish up is involved with the fleet of planes—(it is suggested that they arrived that day, and will be moving on to their final destination), maybe some paperwork, administrative stuff, time-consuming and boring—then we've established an initial condition that stands in stark contrast to the revelation that he shortly encounters, one linked to, and impacted by the planes themselves.

When he briefly goes back inside to try to share his vision with the co-worker, perhaps the reason he is rebuffed is directly related to the opening situation. Perhaps they're both in bad moods, they both want to get out and the bad feelings keep communication from happening now, when he most wants it.

Maybe when he goes back in the second time, instead of ruminating on how significant everything was that he just witnessed, he instead tells his buddy to knock off for the night, he can handle everything. Bingo. Point made. Change has occurred, we know he's come to a different place, and we know why and we don't need to be taken by the hand to understand because we are able to see for ourselves the changed situation.

That's how you turn an anecdote into a story. There are any number of ways to wrap an event like this inside a plot, and you don't need an elaborate plot. All you really need is to give the reader a payoff, a feeling that not only has some type of journey taken place, it was worth the effort.

I think you might consider dialing down the intensity of your descriptions. You have a vivid style and it's not wrong, but you will find that a simple subject/verb/object can usually get the job done much more eloquently, and simply, than layers of description. For instance, this passage:

As I stood staring, I was struck by the notion that the planes were dreaming. I was intruding on a sacred moment. They had gathered to fly that night, as they had that day. But now, no pilots, no rules, they were free. A solemn procession hung in the sky, a private show for an audience of one.

That's nice writing. You are dealing with abstract impressions, but using solid visual imagery to get the job done, and nothing is done to excess. But you follow with this:

I do not carry a camera with me, and never before have I regretted the fact, until that day. I basked in the view, enamored. A thought struck me: do such things happen daily, with no one to enjoy them? The “tree falls in the woods” dilemma. If there is no witness, did it happen? Natural beauty with the power to knock you back on your heels and make you think was a rare thing. To have it thrust through the midst of tedium was a pleasant shock.

You need to know when you've succeeded, and stop. After the simple eloquence of the prior lines, in which you do a good job of evoking that sacred moment, this follow-up makes absolutely certain that we will not stay long in that suspended state. Aside from offering no relevant content, this is simply you not trusting what you've already accomplished and beating us over the head to make sure we get it.

Two more sentences, describing the setting sun and encroaching darkness, need serious attention:

The stars had told their friends as well, more of them joining me. The clouds formed drapes of velvet, only the barest hint of crimson lining their bases.

The bit about the stars is embarrassingly out of place alongside of some of the other stuff you've come up with. You need to go back and reread this, and keep rereading it until you see why. The stuff about the clouds is overkill. Choose the velvet drapes, or the crimson tinged bases. I'd can the velvet drapes for the same reason that I'd can the stars and their friends. But that's just me.

Whatever you do with this, if you choose to expand it, keep in mind that a story is about something that happens to someone. That's the major transformation you'll need to consider. Right now, your narrator is simply an excuse to talk about the planes, and he allows you to get the job done. A story will show how the planes affect him, and show us as well. The planes are interesting, but we don't identify with them. A character who is profoundly affected by them, however, we can identify with effortlessly.
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Review of this,  
Review by edgework
Rated: E | (3.5)
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This poem has some good stuff going on, and some things that are choking if to death. It doesn't need a rewrite so much as a reconfiguration. What's the difference? I don't know, I'm making this up as I go along. It's just that while I believe some of the lines and stanzas could benefit from serious tinkering, overall you need to rethink how you approach this as a poem.

Let's start by playing with some wording. In the first stanza we have an opportunity to remove some filler words, and cut the syllables through some judicious rewriting. As it is now, it reads,

this is supposed to be the beginning,
but the edges of her jacket are grey;
they fray day by day, the stitches
quietly slipping away --

The biggest problem is that the overall sentiment is a little bit of a cliche, but that's not in itself a flaw; most ideas are kind of trite and cliche when you see them unadorned. The problem is that the language is very workmanlike, doing little more than carrying the idea on its shoulders. That's not what poems are about. If the language doesn't crack like a whip and force you to notice it, rather than the subject matter, it's selling itself short.

I notice that you have a rhyme going on with the second and fourth lines, but since you don't rhyme anywhere else, it doesn't mean anything and just sets up an unrealized expectation for the reader. Meanwhile you have lots of unneeded syllables in that opening line. You can't really cut them out arbitrarily, so how about restating it in fewer words?

A beginning, perhaps...

or maybe even more terse,

A beginning?

The second line is passive: ...edges ... are grey

How about a verb besides are? And while we're at it, why not use some enjambment to create some tension in the line breaks?

Yet, her jacket
edges, greyed, fraying
daily, exhausted
stitching
ripped apart like...

Like what? I don't know, I haven't thought that far ahead, but certainly something more impactful than quietly slipping away.

Your second stanza contains a moon in the sky crying tears. Real tears. With no irony. Please, please, learn to smother those kinds of images before they take root. Somewhere in this vast linguistic storehouse of ours, there is a metaphor or image to suggest rain that actually might make a reader sit up and take notice, although rain itself is another of those archetypal cliches that are dangerous to rely on.

However, those umbrellas in the third stanza... now there's something with interest. And, by their very nature, they imply rain, without ever needing to say the word. Something else is going on in the third stanza that's interesting—the last line. The second line is a little predictable, but the third line has some tension in it. It doesn't quite make sense, but seems like it should, and so we're going to expend some energy trying to complete the thought. That's good. You want your reader to become involved, to go rooting around in their own attic for relics that can be brought out and added to the experience of the poem, blending your vision and their own experience.

The fourth stanza is okay, though it too could use a serious rethinking of the wording, to reduce the syllable count. Try to move away from narrative language and get closer to the nouns and verbs, bringing them to the fore.

The idea of raindrops removing her skin is nice. But taking off is DOA. How about slicing, carving, flaying... something with echos and overtones?

Then we have the ending. What to say about the ending? It has no relation to what has come before. It jarringly shifts focus, moving us from a broad field down to a narrow particular, and you don't bother to explain why it's there or what it means.

Many writers crank out yards and yards of poems, for years, even, without managing to figure out how to pull off what you did in this ending. Kudos for trusting your instincts. What you did in those last two lines needs to inform every line you write. Your willingness to trust the image, without holding us by the hand and telling us what it all means is the thing that gives this poem its pulse. The ambiguity of those last two lines are what will let the reader move around inside the thing, find ways to internalize it for themselves, to provide their own connecting links.

Another thing about the last two lines: they rhyme. Now that we've gotten rid of the unneeded rhyme in the first stanza, this rhyme pops up unexpectedly, without calling attention to itself, yet subtly reinforcing the importance of what's taking place. That's poetic forms at their best, slipping in the side door, suggesting that it's just a coincidence that the words fall into an order and pattern, that they'd have read that way in any event.

Anyone who can come up with those end lines, can come up with whole poems. Many of them. I'd love to read them when you do.
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Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (2.5)
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You call this "The Classical Dream," and in a way it's appropriate, in that there is a kind of gauzy, indistinct focus to all that takes place. We see things happening, we're privy to interior thoughts, but none of it quite comes together to make complete sense; like finding ourselves in a dream, we keep straining to make out detail that would explain where we are and what is going on, but answers to our questions continually hover just beyond reach. Everything is presented in a slightly detached, meditative voice, almost hypnotic. You could fashion this into a kind of prose music, where we're not sure what's going on, but we don't mind because it's kind of enjoyable just flowing along with the words.

You could. But so far you haven't. You're coming out with some strange stuff here, as well as torturing your grammar and syntax to the point that we can't really hang in there with you. For instance, you'll most likely lose all serious readers with your first sentence which is run-on, the first of many, I fear.

A tear fell from the doctor’s eye, he had never experienced such a solemn birth.

Those are two independent clauses and should each be turned into a separate sentence, although in some cases separating them by a semi-colon is appropriate, to show a closer connection between the two.

It was a strange feeling for the doctor, he had always wanted to feel such a complete peace as this.

Here, the comma could become a semi-colon since there's a kind of Ham & Eggs linking between the two clauses.

You have to get rid of these rookie mistakes, if you want to be taken seriously. Check this one out; it's a four-fold whopper:

The tear still dangled from her chin, he wiped it with his finger, it felt so gentle, it had a silk like quality to it.

This isn't just clumsy, it's dead wrong. Knock it off. When you're offering prose that's difficult and obscure to begin with, you can't afford to antagonize your reader even once with such errors.

Another serious obstacle is the content you're presenting to us. Even though your words have an interesting rhythm and flow to them, the minute we start to pay attention to what you're actually saying, we become disoriented, and I don't believe it's an intentional effect to create that dreaminess I spoke of earlier. I just don't think you're saying what you really want to be saying. Here's a random sampling:

A silent birth without death, and a silent birth without hope. The eyes of the mother showed no glow, she neither seemed joyous nor sad.
(The implication that birth and death accompany each other, and that this birth is unique because it is without death is a questionable premise, to say the least)

He thought it strange, this was the most intense stillness he had ever felt, it seemed supernatural, yet he knew he had felt it before.
Either it's the most intense stillness he'd ever felt, or he'd felt it before. Choose one.

She remembered the doctors face, no surprise, no warmth, but she knew something had touched him, and the tear, if only he could remember that, there could be hope.
This could be cleared up considerably by addressing the run-on problem.

The doctor removed the glove from his hand, it made no noise, for the world seemed at peace.
There's a cause and effect implication here that hasn't been established.

There was a knock at the door, the nurse slowly entered in her usual restrained manner. She radiated a still calmness from her body, a glow of beauty that flowed from her humanity. She seemed young in her years, yet she carried a compassion that stilled the air and radiated a warmth untouched by the ordered confidence of her habits. Her soul seemed perfectly at peace, and her mind at ease with the passing of the days. She was young and beautiful, yet paced and steady. She had a future filled of flowerings, she would not burn brightly and fade, she had an elegant grace. She was the pinnacle of civilisation, balanced and daring, with a splendor that only true craftsmanship can ever hope for.
These are a series of declarations with no supporting evidence. Maybe she is, maybe she isn't, we'll have to take your word for it since you've given us no reason to form such opinions on our own.

And then, there is this passage:

He wished he could forever be enveloped in this feeling, but that was not his fate, his was the joy of routine, the stoic, his nature was lost, destroyed by training. He had savagely raped his nature and was planning to have it executed through the fulfilled dream of his sterile modern life. Why had he come so far from this peace, how did he know that this was both the true beginning and the true end, and that single tear that now flowered form the mother’s eye.

With all due respect, HUH?

Let me ask you: do you talk that way; do your friends? Does anyone you know talk that way?

I didn't think so. Look, I firmly believe you're trying to do something interesting here, and despite the fact that I'm pulling it apart, I'd really like to see you put it back together the way you intended from the start. But that means you're going to have to stop fighting with the language and start using it to simply say what you mean.

Of all the tools English prose offers to convey meaning, the most underestimated construction is the simple declarative sentence. Profound thoughts are not a function of complex sentences and portentious wording. They result from clear statements that convey precisely what is intended to the reader. Simple, direct, concise.

But that means you're going to have to become quite clear about what it is that's going on here. You don't have to necessarily tell us everything, but you'd better know everything or else you won't be able to engineer in the internal cohesion and consisteny that will allow us to remain patient through the confusion until you get around to letting us know what you're up to. If you don't have that foundation, you'll telegraph to your reader that things don't really mean anything, and they don't really link up much either, and we'll go elsewhere.

I'd love to hear a paraphrased account of what you believe is going on here. Simply explain it so that an eighth grader could understand it. Why does this birth affect the doctor so profoundly? What makes this birth so solemn and significant? What's the mother's problem? And her intent? And what's with that nurse? If you're going to take a detour like that, you need to make her part of the proceedings, rather than just feed us a list of her attributes. I think the exercise would be illuminating for you, because you'd have to become specific about the issues of profound peace, hope, sadness, destiny, despair and why the doctor pulled the trigger. You could probably distill the essence down to three or four sentences.

Then go back and ask yourself if each sentence as it's now written contributes to that overall effect. Do your sentence coalesce into paragraphs that each further your intent? Have you set us up to appreciate the various elements as they appear, or do things just drop out of a trap door in the ceiling, then dribble away through a hole in the floor, leaving us interested, but perplexed?

And of all the things over which any writer needs to gain mastery, grammar and syntax are the ones that absolutely can be learned from a book. So get yourself a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and read it, and keep reading it. It's short but don't underestimate it; there's not an unnecessary word in the entire manuscript. A valuable lesson for us all.
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Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (2.5)
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You dropped a review request on my forum a while back, and I do apologize for not getting to it right away. I'm badly backed up and working through them all as best I can. Unfortunately, career and life tend to intrude and bring with them their own demands on time.

First question: why did you bother to write this?

I mean no disrespect, nor does it imply an opinion. It is, quite frankly, the single most important question to be asked of any piece of writing, and, if it isn't asked at the outset by you, the writer, you'll have no compass to guide you.

So, I'll ask again: what are your intentions with this piece, and, more to the point, what effect do you intend for your reader?

I noticed right off that your words are rich and imagistic with a nice solid feel to them, not the type of thing that happens by accident. So I took a look at some of the other pieces in your portfolio and made an interesting discovery. You have some prose pieces there that, while not exactly stories, contain vivid, immediate language that doesn't just describe the events, they actually do a fair job of creating those moments for the reader and placing us in the middle of them.

Sort of the kind of thing you want poetry to do.

Meanwhile, there's this poem. It seems to exist to describe a moment, and it does a good job of it; we know what happened, in what sequence, and we know how you (or the narrator, not necessarily the same thing) felt about those events as they evolved. And when you have finished describing the events, you are done.

This is the work of prose, and, frankly, were you to get rid of the line breaks and stanzas and recast this as sentences and paragraphs, you would alter neither the sound nor sense of what you've written.

This is not a failing of craft. Your words are good enough, although you take a few too many shortcuts. For instance

There is so much passion, so much raw lust,
between us, enough to last both our lifetimes.

is simply a conclusion, you telling us what we're supposed to think. You don't want to do that, particularly in a poem. Instead, capture the moment, from the inside, rather than as a narrator commenting on the proceedings. If your allow your words to go to the heart of the matter (I won't suggest how; the possibilities are endless) and you are honest, we'll arrive at the desired conclusion ourselves, not because we've been told how you feel, or how you want us to feel, but because we recognize the moments out of our own experience and respond instinctively.

But it's not a matter of going back and filling in images for bland descriptive abstractions. I think you need to reassess your reason for making this a poem, rather than a short story; it's not a story yet, but it's closer in intent to a story than to a poem. The language exists to convey a topic, the topic is found on the surface of the words, there is a one-to-one correspondence between your language and your subject, and when you have told the story, captured the moment, created the scene, you are done. None of this is bad or wrong, but in the way that your subject stands out as the point of the poem and the way that your language is marshaled in the service of your topic you are really working through a prose sensibility. While there is definitely movement , it is, for the most part, linear, logical and, well, prosaic.

That's what prose is good for, providing a connection between the reader and some external result, whether a narrative, description, argument or a sales pitch. The language of prose exists to serve a subject, and it is that subject that gives it direction and purpose. As long as your intent here is to describe this moment, and nothing more, you are wandering in the realm of prose.

Poetry is all the things prose isn't. Its energy derives not from some external subject or "meaning", but from the language itself. Poems can certainly be "about" something, but the subject alone does not justify a poem, nor make it memorable. It is the language upon which a poem stakes its sole claim. And if the language restricts itself to prosaic logic, the poem has lost its opportunity to do the kinds of things that prose cannot.

The first thing that stands out in this piece is the overbearing presence of a narrator. Everything is filtered through a descriptive, interpretive voice so that we remain passive observers throughout—the immediacy of the moment is forever hidden behind this narrative wall. You might consider experimenting with the style a bit, see what happens when you remove the narrative distance, make your words immediate, evoking the experience rather than describing it. For example, these two lines,

Slowly, your lips dance gracefully across my cheek,
enough to make me insanly wild with hormonal rage.

tell me what's going on. This rewrite, on the other hand

lips in a soft dance across
my cheek as
hormones rage

while removing all the unnecessary words—hormonal rage is, by definition, insanely wild, is it not?—brings us much closer to the experience itself (the static noun/modifier hormonal rage now becomes a noun/verb, bringing the action of the moment to the fore). Of course, you would probably want to come up with something more precise than hormones rage simply because it, too, is descriptive, telling us an conclusion.

And then, finally, you might consider bringing in something unexpected, something to surprise the reader. As it is now, you follow a predictable path from beginning to end. Young people toy with the word "Love" and all is sweetness and light. But dark clouds always lurk nearby. If not dark, at least complicated. You can allow this poem to open up to a wider appreciation of the experience. Rather than taking things at face value, offer some form of comment, observation, multi-dimensional perspective. It's impossible to say where you might have taken this, to push it beyond the initial set-up conditions, because you haven't taken it to any of those places. And so, what is offered by the title is all there is, and we finish, thinking "Okay..." You want your poem to have greater impact on your reader. There's a rich vein to be mined here, if you're willing to follow it.
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Review by edgework
Rated: E | (3.0)
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Interesting piece. There's good news, and there's bad news. First the good.

This is real poem. It's not nearly as strong as it could be, but there is a definite attempt to create something apart from mere description and narrative. The language is vivid and strong and contains lots of sense data. A good image can carry many times the load of a gauzy abstract emotion. In your stinging teeth marks, wrinkles of a jacket, coolness of a steering wheel against a forehead and those empty tissue boxes, you provide a solid framework upon which to drape the impressions and reactions from our own experience. This is how you involve your reader, and you're moving towards that nicely. Now the bad, and, in truth, it's not bad at all, just a stylistic approach that I think dilutes the impact. For my money, despite your obvious attempts to break out of prose structures, a prosaic heart beats at the center of this piece, and it restricts both your vision and your result.

When you want to describe something, either an object in space, a condition, or a hierarchy of relationships, you can't beat prose. That's what it was made for, to connect the reader, through the medium of language, to some type of experience that is elsewhere, either in time or space, temporal or metaphysical. Note the lead words of each of your lines—rage, defiance, futility, despair, regret, resignation. What are these if not descriptive words, telling us what is happening, and, more to the point, telling us what conclusions we're to reach regarding our interpretation of each image that you've so carefully crafted.

This is the work of prose. You have a point, an argument, a story, a conclusion—something—and you want to convey this to us in as clear and concise a manner as possible. So, you've done that. We get it. But you've left us in the role of passive observer. We haven't had to get involved at all, and certainly haven't had to invest anything of ourselves into the experience of reading your poem. That's far less than you should aspire to. What you want is for the reader, through the poem, to make your experience their own experience. For that to happen, you need to back away from the language of narration, and, with the language of immediacy, conjure up that experience; create it, rather than simply describe it.

For example, your opening image, stinging teeth marks sunk into a bottom lip does a fair job all on its own of evoking rage, as well as a host of additional sensations, associations and echos. To reduce that vast tapestry to a single word, rage, limits the poem and the readers' experience. Give me the image. I'll do the interpretation, assuming the image is honest, and my appreciation will be all the stronger for it. The opening line to the second stanze likewise has an interesting image, the coolness of a steering wheel against a forehead. Yet, reducing it to the rather insubstantial futility sucks the life out of it.

I certainly recognize that you may have felt that way, or, at least, that the word is sufficient to convey the autobiographical essence of that particular moment. But the image, once set down, exists apart from it's generative energies. It has a life of its own, and you need to gracefully step out of the way and allow it to reach the full range of its potential. In the intro to this review forum I state that the worst possible defense of a poem is "But that's just the way I felt." and my response to anyone who offers it is "So?" Your feelings do not a poem make. They may have prompted you to write the poem in the first place, which is fine. But poems are not biography, nor are they history, stories or journalism. They owe nothing to those prose structures. Poems are language, first and foremost, language cut loose from the need to make a point, convey a meaning or connect to some external experience or reality. They are their own reality. When you evoke a moment through an image, you are using language to open a portal through which the reader can channel their own experience to give the image life, and meaning. When you simply tell us what to think, you close all those doors.

The final point I'd like to make is to again point out where prosaic thinking is limiting you. The entire poem exists to essentially tell us a story about a single thing, the cleanup phase of a failed relationship. As I've already stated, there's nothing at all wrong with using a particular element to evoke the larger context of which it is a part. But by so clearly identifying the situation as this situation, you've necessarily kept your scope small and narrow and denied us access to that larger context. The fourth stanza, the Coda, is primarily the culprit here, taking what might have been avenues to open up the content and forcing them to be simply about this one moment and no others. Like a story.

Cut your language free of those prose restrictions and see what it does. It might wander off into unexpected places, but don't worry; it'll come back. If not, then follow it and see where it's going. Your poems will be stronger for it.
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Review of Tech Obession  
Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (2.5)
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You've created a character with a believable problem, one that perhaps many can relate to. My own father died within this decade, and while I had a good relationship with him, apparently much better than the one Shelly had with her father, I would love an opportunity to pick the memory of someone who'd known him when he was young, before I was born. So I can relate to Shelly's desire to talk to her uncle about her departed father. I'm sure she found the encounter quite satisfying and certainly not without interest.

Alas, i doubt your readers will feel the same way. You said this was a semi-sequel to another story, one which I also reviewed a couple of months back, and I have to say that despite a clear ability to write decent, engaging prose, you have not yet cracked the code that will unlock the mysteries of plot, character development and narrative arcs that will keep your readers engaged, and leave them feeling that the effort they put into your piece was worth it. You're not doing anything actually bad, understand; you just aren't telling a story.

Here's your storyline, such as it is:

Shelly always thought her father liked work more than his family, and always resented him for it, but when she asked her Uncle if that was actually the case, he assured her it wasn't, and she felt better.

Not much in the way of conflict. And that's the problem. Other than the fact that Shelly has been nursing a long-standing grudge all her life (which she abandoned rather too easily for my liking; grudges nurtured that long don't give up without a fight), she's not dealing with any issues that we can identify with and cheer her along towards a resolution.

Now, if she had some kind of legal issue, say, one relating to the estate her father left (I think you were nibbling at an issue like that in the previous story) and her long-standing resentment of her father was causing her to make the wrong decision, then, having someone set her thinking straight would have some relevance, prevent her from doing something stupid and tie things together into a nice little package.

Truth be told, that's not a really great idea and I'm certainly not suggesting you do a rewrite around it. But you'll need to come up with something that breaks Shelly out of her default mode, something that upsets her status quo. If it sends her off on a quest, that's not bad, uncovering truths about her father in the course of trying to solve a problem in the present. But if it's Shelly's story, at its core must be the answer to a question of the form What does she want that she does not now possess? What unpleasant result is she trying to avoid? From what threat is she trying to escape? There are plenty of other ways to open up pathways into a plot, but those questions aren't a bad place to start. They have built into them an implicit need for action. Unless she has to make a decision (leading to action) or take an action (forcing decisions) she has no need to do anything. That need, and events that result, are the basis of your story.

Of course, if she has a problem, and she just goes out and solves it, you still don't have a story (this is pretty much the situation you have on your hands right now). It's the uncertainty that results from not knowing the precise course of action, the unintended consequences that always result, and the need to revise course halfway through that keep a plot chugging along. And, of course, plots are not just a sequence of things happening in a logical cause-and-effect chain; they're things that happen to people, and the ways that the events impact on your characters are what provides a three-dimension experience for the reader.

Without a clear direction for your characters, you'll have no direction for yourself and you'll end up doing what you did here: spend the first third of the story describing computer software. It's an imaginative setting you've conjoured up for your characters; now find something interesting for them to do. And then screw up their lives so they'll have to break a sweat to keep their heads above water.

That'll keep the readers turning the pages.
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Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
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You only asked for a review of Chapter 2, but when I noticed a Chapter 1 as well I went ahead and read it. hope you don't mind. Can't tell if you've junked the first Chapter and are leading off with this one; guess you wouldn't have called it Chapter 2, in that event, would you? So. I'll deal with both chapters.

An interesting world you're working with here. Obviously set in a future we haven't reached yet, but also based on a past that we avoided. So far you haven't really explained the backstory, only let it filter through to the present action as needed. This is good. Nothing kills a story faster than trying to make sure we know everything that took place before the narrative begins. Of course, usually this happens because the structure is whacked—if all the interesting stuff has already happened, there's not much choice other than to slather backstory onto a dead present, hoping to generate some heat through osmosis. You don't have that problem. You definitely have a story cooking here and it's original. Which means that the structural clumsiness on display is avoidable. But you'll have to retool your thinking a bit to get out of your own way.

While you aren't killing the narrative to tell us the history of everything, you're trying to do the same thing in a more sneaky manner. You have conversations between people who already know all the things that are being discussed and so the effect is really the same as halting the narrative. The only reason such conversations take place is to feed information to the reader. Real characters don't waste time reminding each other of stuff they all know that everyone knows. You even try to get away with a cheap trick that Stephen King tries every now and then when he just can't help himself. Every so often he'll have a corny line or bad joke that he knows is too hokey or cliched to use, so he lets one of his characters use it instead, and, to cover his back, he makes sure that the character notes that he's using a corny line. It's cheap and no one's fooled.

Same thing with Andrews' interview with Vanhoeff. You even have Andrews comment to himself that Vanhoeff already knows all this stuff and doesn't need to ask it. So it's just for the readers' benefit. But you're not doing us any favors by spoonfeeding us this supplemental information. Seriously, we'll wait through a chapter or two of confusion, as long as something interesting is happening in the meantime. And here we get to the problem you face. Not much is happening. It's frustrating in any event, but in your case, it's clear that you're sniffing around the edges of a story, but you just haven't figured out how to tell it. We want the unnecessary convesations to end so you can get on with the real business of your story.

Part of the problem is in the way that you are imagining your characters. You seem to be very concerned with the conditions of their existence, the relationships with those around them, and the circumstances that have brought them to this point. In other words, your vision is a static one, with no particular actions being inevitable, necessary or forced by those circumstances.

True, Andrews has no choice about his new assignment, but we still don't know anything of import about him, other than that he is a small cog in a large machine. While that might be a realistic situation for him to find himself in, it's not particularly compelling in a character who is expected to carry the weight of a story on his shoulders. We might know what he's expected to do, and we might get a front row seat watching him do it, but unless you think of him in terms of what it is that drives him, none of his activities are going to coalesce into a meaningful story.

You will have to figure out whose story this is. Your chapters each offer a different candidate, Nick in the first, and Andrews in the second. I think Andrews is your best bet, at least for your main character, the person whose point of view defines the reader's perspective on the story. That means that you have to give him a personal arc, something besides just hunting bad guys (or ghosts). What does he want? What are his goals? He's been at this long enough to have reached a point of re-evaluation regarding his life and career. Is he running from something? Avoiding something? Seeking something? Something he wants revenge for? Someone trying to get revenge on him? You know... those kinds of things that make it easy to figure out what he needs to do next because you know what it is that he wants to do.

You may have already begun this process, but if so, there's no evidence of it yet, and so while we find his professional situation interesting, as a character he comes off as flat and unrealized. Until we know what it is that he wants, on a personal level, we have no way to become invoved with him; there's nothing for us to identify with.

Nick, on the other hand, is too good a character to waste, but if you want to tell both stories in parallel, you're going to have to be more careful about your point of view. In the first chapter, you told the entire thing from Nick's point of view, until he walked out of the room, whereupon you made a jarring leap into Trick's perspective. You can get away with that in a movie script. In fiction writing, it's awkward.

You've set yourself up for a nice two-part structure here, as soon as you come up with Andrews' storyline. Right now your focus has been on the larger story, the objective story, involving Nick and whatever it is that he represents, and why it is that they need to bring him down. You're calling this your "Superhero" novel, so perhaps you have plans for Nick to be the protagonist of this story, the one whose actions and decisions drive the plot. That's all right, main characters don't have to be protagonists. What's important is that both storylines are fully realized. So you would have to run Nick through your character mill as well: what's he after? Who's opposing him? (I see Vanhoeff as the antagonist, rather than Andrews, but you haven't really tipped your hand yet so what do I know?). And, most important, how do the issues with which Andrews is dealing in his own life overlap with the larger story? Think of Jimmy Stewart's fear of heights and how that personal issue influenced his participation in the murder in "Vertigo." Think of Rick's bitter feelings toward Ilsa in "Casablanca" and how they drove his decision in the larger storyline regarding Laslo and the letters of transit.

If you just think of your characters in terms of what they do, the only thing you'll be able to imagine for them is doing those things. If you can understand what drives them, what works beneath the suface to influence their decisions, you'll be able to imagine them in any situation and know how they'll react. That makes your job a lot easier.

One other point: while I don't usually like to get into copy editing, there were a couple of places where I think you might want to refine your narrative a little bit.

In Chapter One, as Nick is watching Candy, you have this line:

There was no doubt that this twenty year old girl was looking for a good time based on what she was wearing: a low cut halter top and mini skirt.

Aside from being a bit awkward and wordy, it's almost clinical in it's careful depiction of the physical details, yet seems to miss the point, which is that this is a hot, young babe. Descriptive passages like this offer you all manner of opportunities to not only describe what the reader is seeing, but to also subtly guide what they are supposed to feel. Sometimes SHOWING can be less than TELLING, if what is shown restricts our imagination to the immediate phenomena, with no appeal to the echos and overtones that make writing memorable. A line that is less physically precise, like

She looked good and was dressed to show it off.

gives the reader a lot of room to fill in the blanks, gives some insight into Nick's personna, evokes the hard-boiled genre writing that you are channeling, and honors the maxim that less is more.

A moment later

The girl leaned against the bar giving the man a good view of her breasts.

Okay. Again, we see it, but it's all so voyeuristic. We're given precisely the elements under view, and that's it. Something like

The girl leaned against the bar, nearly spilling out of her skimpy halter top.

In both casesw he difference is that the first versions are solely for the guy at the bar, and they're static snapshots that capture a moment but go no further. The second versions are dynamic, ripe with possibility, and they're for the readers as well. Gotta always be thinking of your readers, and what it will take to get them involved with your words.
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Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (3.5)
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In addition to this chapter, there's a prologue which I've also looked at. Other than the fact that they both have the same name, there's nothing so far to suggest what the connection between the two might be, though, truth be told, I'd be most interested in finding out when you bring this a little farther along.

I don't have a whole lot to say, really, other than I liked both of them. Either piece could serve as a good opening hook, capturing the reader's attention with a nicely crafted scene that promises much more to come. Enough so that I'd have kept reading if there was more here to read. Of course, it's all too common to find a good opening that can't live up to its promise once the development gets going. However, you've garnered enough good will on the part of your readers with what you've written so far, that we'll definitely be ready to give you the benefit of the doubt. At the moment I'd say that your audience is yours to lose... or keep, depending on what you do with this. I'd like to see where you take it.
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Review of The Last Seraphim  
Review by edgework
Rated: E | (3.0)
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Well. You surely can't be faulted for a lack of ambition. Or imagination. High marks on both counts. You use a lot of familiar concepts and names, but in decidedly unfamiliar contexts, as though you've somehow managed to channel the actual historical events from which our religious myths descended in badly truncated form. Another neat trick. Kind of a Book of Genesis filtered through Lord of the Rings with a healthy dose of Star Wars tossed in for good measure. I really like what you're doing here, all of it; but there's bad news: you aren't done. Indeed, you've just gotten started. So roll up your sleeves, put on another pot or two of coffee, send letters to loved ones letting them know you'll be gone for a while, and write the story behind this brief synopsis that I have no doubt you can write.

If you sent this to a publisher, I'd be willing to bet that you'd get back a reply on the order of "Not bad. Let's see some chapters." And that's your problem. You've vastly underestimated the scope of what you've created, taking a massive tale and shoving it into the confines of a brief short story. The result is that all the stuff that would make for damned compelling reading, all the action, descriptions, detail, backstory, relationships, and dramatic tension is compressed down to quick throw-away lines, and all of it filtered second-hand through the narrator who, despite always being front and center, we never get to know. Alas, we never get to know much of any of the things that we'd love to know. What is the history? How have the humans evolved? What is the chronicle of events leading to this war, and what are they fighting over? And, last but not least, what is the story that takes place with all the preceding as backdrop?

The battle and all that leads up to it, is your objective story line, for which you haven't yet selected a protagonist, though Gabriel, by virtue of the fact that he is on stage the most, would seem to be a likely candidate. You clearly have a main character, which provides us with our perspective on the events. But you have given us only the faintest hint of that character's story. I think you have a sense of what that story might be, but in order for it to be meaningful, you will have to begin actually allowing it to unfold in front of us, bringing in your camera close-up to describe the action, show us characters interacting through their dialogue, SHOW the story instead of just referring to it.

It would be worth the effort.
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Review of Fire  
Review by edgework
Rated: ASR | (3.0)
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You call this a semi-sequel to another piece of yours, "Anger," though you point out that this was written when "things were better."

With a lead-in like that, I really had no choice but to check out the accompanying piece and see what all the anger was about. Interestingly enough, that piece, while unquestionably "about" anger, displays none of it, instead taking a calm, measured, almost academic approach, analyzing anger but from a safe intellectual distance. This piece is much more successful, at least in terms of evoking the emotion under discussion. If one feeling comes through every line, it's pissed off!!!

The language is colorful and highly charged, but I'm not quite sure what it actually is supposed to be doing. It's not fiction; nothing is referenced or described beyond the subjective sensations themselves. We don't know what generated this heated response, nor do we really have any sense of any implications or consequences. It's closer to poetry, yet in the way that it focuses solely on one specific topic, never wandering from the immediate vicinity, is much more prosaic in its sensibility. Its lack of connection to a physical reality gives it a dreamlike feeling, but it's a little too focused and directed to really feel like a dream.

So what is it? Ya got me. I enjoyed reading it though. And to be perfectly honest, I'm glad I'm not the one you're pissed at.
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Review of The Metal Box  
Review by edgework
Rated: E | (3.5)
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You say you want this to be contest ready. Not knowing the expectations of the contest judges, I can't say for certain that it's ready, though it's a nicely written memoir. If autobiographical memoirs are what is required, I'd say it's fairly close to being ready.

I noticed a couple of places where your sentences are a little clumsy.

The massive heart attack suffered by my father came as a shock.

There are two things that can be cleaned up in this sentence. One is the passive voice. It has a tendency to mute the action, and forced "my father" into an uncomfortable position of prominence. The heart attack is the point of the sentence, though the subject/verb paring, attack...came is considerably weaker than the event it is meant to convey. ...suffered by my father would appear to be the point, but it's tucked away inside a modifying phrase and so only suggests action, but does not make the sentence an active sentence. Besides, it's really a euphemism, further removing the event from the words used to describe it.

The other problem is that you're piggy-backing two separate elements onto the same sentence—the heart attack, and the family's shock—cramming more ideas of action into a passive sack that can't hold them. If you put the actual event up front, with your subject and verb, you'll be able to dispose of one fuzzy modifier phrase, and give the other it's proper place in the scheme of things.

A massive heart attack killed my father with no warning. We were numb with shock.

Or some such.

Another example of a complex sentence that misdirects the cause and effect relationships being described is

I started to slide the rubber band, brittle with age, off the box when it broke falling unresisting to the table.

Consider this sentence:

I started to buff the lamp's dull finish with a cloth when suddenly, in a puff of smoke and a flash of light, a genie appeared.

Here, both cause and effect and time sequence are clear. In your sentence, the implication is that sliding the rubber band caused it to break, when the defining feature, brittle with age, is tossed in as an afterthought. Turning the dependent clause into an independent clause (and describing the result more precisely) will create a much stronger effect.

I started to remove the rubber band but it was brittle with age and crumbled into pieces.

These are small but crucial modifications. It's not just the content of your sentences that counts, but the structure that conveys that content (particularly in a contest).

The reason I made the point about this being an autobiographical memoir is that, unless the contest is specifically requesting such a piece, you might want to rethink your premises. Clearly, as a true episode, the fact that "this is just how it happened," is important. It's always helpful if true accounts are, in fact, true. But if that particular autobiographical restriction is not a requirement of the contest at hand, then you need to recognize that what you owe to real life, your memories, the people you write about, people's opinions of what you write, and historical accuracy is zilch. Nada. Squat.

What I'm suggesting is that this could well be the kernel of truth around which a dandy piece of fiction takes shape. But that means you'd have to do what authors always do: cheat, lie, strecth, steal, fabricate, denigrate, blaspheme, and just make stuff up, all in the service, not of historical accuracy, but of dramatic tension and conflict. Clearly, that is not present now, and it may not have been your intention at all, which is perfectly fine. It's well written. But it's just stuff happening, despite the personal connection to your own life. There is a suggestion that the box holds some kind of secret, but it doesn't really. It holds the kinds of items that one would expect, and while it's emotionally poignant, there's no real surprise for either the narrator, or the reader. No revelation that rearranges a perspective that has been in place up until the defining moment, no misdirection that the main character must overcome and which can create a sense of progression for the reader. No transition. No story.

But it could be. That, of course, would be a very different piece than what you have written. As I stated, what you've written is nicely done. But in the event that the contest is looking for something more like a story, you might consider pushing past the boundaries of memory and history, into the silly putty world of fiction, where the only thing that counts is keeping the reader turning the pages.
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Review of Dog Days  
Review by edgework
Rated: 18+ | (4.5)
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I disagree strenuously with your premise. You say in your covering blurb:

This is very much a work in progress.

I beg to differ. One of the tasks an author must master is the ability to recognize what is necessary. But equally important is to recognize when you have done what is necessary and stop at that point. This is a perfect short story. Each scene stands on its own, draws its energies effortlessly from the previous scene and hands them off to the next. The aggregate effect is the crystallization of a single element of Liam's life, which, while drawing upon the larger context of that life, wastes no time or energy telling us anything of it other than what is absolutely necessary to grasp the immediate situation.

You leave many blank spaces. You don't bother telling us everything. You only tell us what we need to fill in the blanks ourselves. That's how you involve your reader, and you do it with skill and finesse.

This may well be a fragment of something larger. Fine. Good luck with that larger piece. Meanwhile, this is complete as is. Submit it immediately. Someone wants to publish it, and i don't think you'll have to work too hard to connect with them.
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Review of Petals like Time  
Review by edgework
Rated: E | (3.0)
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You've linked three haiku-like stanzas together, along with a final line, to form a single poem. You use a classic 5 - 7 - 5 syllable line scheme for the standard 17 syllables.

Haiku can be fun, and the restrictions imposed are a useful method to force economy into your language. However, there's a certain arbitrariness to the whole business, given that we really don't have anything in English that matches the elements of a traditional Japanese haiku. The 17 units in Japanese are approximated by our syllables, but they're not really the same thing. In addition, haiku are a crystallization of an entire cultural tradition and world view that we in the west might tap into, imitate, borrow, but can never truly experience.

Be that as it may, there are useful elements to imitate; along with the afore mentioned brevity, the idea of capturing a single moment, stripped down to its essentials, devoid of any interpretive text, is a good exercise. That's how I think of them, as finger exercises, keeping my linguistic chops limber until I get around to actually writing a poem.

I would suggest rethinking these stanzas in terms of the hard actions that are behind them. Get rid of the adverbs like softly and in desperation; lose the abstractions like My mind is entwined and replace them with sense data: things that can be heard, seen, touched; don't get lost in internal reflection--Will we meet again? or Maybe not this time... But maybe the next.

If there is any way to approximate the spirit and intent of a haiku it is by continually pushing toward the concrete and away from the abstract and interpretive. As in Japanese art, negative space is a crucial element. Things left unsaid can pack a much stronger punch than if they're simply blurted out.
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Review of Decietful Mother  
Review by edgework
Rated: 18+ | (3.5)
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This is close to being unreviewable, not for any reasons regarding the quality of your writing, but rather for the content. Against such a gut-wrenching expression of raw emotion, any assessment of literary merits would seem almost an insult. Writing such as this exists to deliver its statement and convey its content, and you do this with admirable honesty. However, its justification would seem to fall more towards the emotional and psychological realms rather than literary.

That said, the simple fact that your words pack such a punch clearly demonstrates that you know how to write. You've chosen to deliver your message through sharp language and crisp images. There's nothing fuzzy going on here. All edges are jagged, all rhythms are cleanly defined. In short, it's close to a kind of poetry, and, should you wish to revisit this, you might want to consider the transformation that would take it all the way.

It comes down to priorities. The reason I suggested that it might not be an appropriate piece for a reviewer is that the literary considerations are lower on the list of priorities than the emotional needs. Content is the point, not the form and structure with which that content is delivered. Understand, I make no judgment, no comment at all, regarding the content. I only note that it is beyond the scope of a review of this sort. If you were to gain a bit more distance from the content, however, enough that you could comment on it as well as recreate it, then you would be moving in a different direction, using the emotional charge to drive something that would exist apart from the experience itself. And then you would have a piece that could be evaluated as a work of art because your priorities would be linguistic—how to channel the experience from a purely personal and subjective force into something creative.

The final product might look similar to what you have produced here. But it's soul would be that of the artist, using the stuff of the world—the randomness, the chaos, the meaningless pain, the unexpected joy—to fashion something separate, something that has merit on its own, apart from the experiences that are embodied in it.

I certainly hope that if there is a healing process of which this piece is a part, that it continues to a successful conclusion.
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Review of Deadly Love  
Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
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You asked for a detailed review for this story, I think. Actually, you said I'm persnickety, which suggests that I involve myself in trivial details unnecessarily; if you thought that, I doubt you would have bothered asking my opinion. Perhaps you meant meticulous... maybe demanding... how about thorough... try rigorous... diligent... I dunno, my Thesaurus is running out of listings. Given some of the reactions I've gotten, maybe I should quit with persnickety while I'm ahead.

I think you write fairly well; your prose has a nice rich style, no flabby abstractions, and good movement. You keep things organized in time and space and the idea at the heart of this story is sound. But you need to pay closer attention to structural issues--sometimes sentence structure, sometimes paragraph structure but also with the structure of the story elements themselves--and you have some work to do with your characters and how you've envisioned them.

Careful consideration must always be given to the way that information is fed to your reader. Unlike a movie screen, which presents us with the entire environment all at once, prose is encountered bit by bit, and you want those bits to follow each other seamlessly; you never want your reader to break out of the narrative flow and notice the text itself. One exception might be if they pause and think to themselve "Wow, that was a great image," but unfortunately, most occasions when they notice the text it's because the text isn't doing what it should. What it should do is strap them into their seat, start the ride and not let them think of anything except what you put before them, until you're done with them.

Your first paragraph contains three sentences. Each one conveys a specific image, or idea. The intention is that they build incrementally to a complete effect. Two of the sentences are crisp and tight. The third is clumsy. Unfortunately, that's the one you open with:

Sally couldn't figure out how she got here. She licked her lips with a nervous flick of the tongue. The revolver shook in her sweat-slicked hand.

What you're doing here is commenting on a situation before introducing the situation. Think of it as the one sentence version of giving away the ending to a movie. No suspense, no build. Note the difference in the effect, if you rearrange things slightly:

Sally licked her lips with a nervous flick of her tongue. The revolver shook in her sweat-slicked hand. How the heck did she end up here?

Immediately following, you do something similar.

“Shoot!” Johnny screamed, panic causing his voice to rise an octave. “Shoot, damn you!”

Johnny stood at the service station door, waving his gun wildly at the patrol cars that lurked outside, looking for all the world like metal bugs, their ominous black-and-white carapaces strobed with flares from the revolving red lights. Johnny looked over his shoulder at Sally, eyes wild, his face distorted with fear.

In a movie, we'd see Johnny, we'd see the location, we'd get it all at once. Here, you're delivering the information in reverse order once more, and that means that instead of packing a maximum punch as you intended, Johnny's fevered cry actually drops the momentum, if only briefly. Also, your metal bug image is good, but bugs don't lurk and neither do these police cars. Here's a better arrangement:

"Shoot!" Johnny screamed from the service station door, gun waving wildly, panic causing his voice to rise an octave. Patrol cars swarmed outside, looking for all the world like metal bugs, their ominous black-and-white carapaces strobed with flares from the revolving red lights. "Shoot, damn you!"

You've shown him to be wildly distorted with fear. We assume his face is as well. You don't need to say it. Nor do you need to let us know he's looking at Sally. The juxtaposition of the two paragraphs implies it. Unless you go out of your way to let us know differently, we'll assume he's shouting at her.

What you've done with this opening scene is, in theory, a good idea. Start at a point where the story is under way, in the midst of a moment of high tension, then once your readers are hooked, jump backwards and tell how things got that way. In this case, however, the opening scene is pretty close to the end of the story, which means that you need to make the catch-up material interesting and compelling in itself, since it forms the bulk of your narrative. You could make it a lot sharper, and the problem comes from the way you've created your characters. Johnny, for example; when Sally asks Johnny where they're going, he replies,

“Well, Sally, for right now, we're going inside the store.” He snorted a laugh, his voice cruel and mocking, as Two-Blade snickered behind her.

Then you tell us that she was hurt by Johnny's contempt. You've already told us that his voice was cruel and mocking, so, yeah, we get it, sort of. But if you'd had him say something like this, with his patented bad-boy grin,

If you'd shut up and stop wasting time with dumbass questions, we might get there, and then you'd know.

you wouldn't need those clumsy authorial intrusions to make sure we'd get it. Johnny would be doing the job himself, which is as it should be. Whenever you find yourself having to supplement your dialogue with interior additions or added description, you haven't let your characters say what needs to be said.

Earlier, when she asks what his delinquent friend is doing there, he replies

“Shh, babe,” Johnny replied, winking at her. “You'll find out soon.”

Come on, he's almost being nice to her here. Johnny's a bad guy through and through. Everything he says is nasty, or has a nasty edge to it. I have a feeling that you've given him a gun and put him in a criminal enterprise because you needed him to do that for your story, but you didn't want to go the distance and create the kind of scumball that would make those elements believable.

But to do that, you would have had to make Sally much more three dimensional. Right now she's basically a good girl in an unfortunate situation who thinks to herself "Ooops!" and changes her mind. That's not honest. She's a good girl, all right, but one who likes getting her accelerator stomped by bad boys, and if Johnny is this way now, you can bet he's been this way as long as she's known him, and furthermore, that's okay with her. And it should be okay with you too, because it gives you much more to work with. Ordinary people, the kind of people who look and act like you and the people you know, aren't the stuff of fiction, at least not this kind of fiction. Ordinary people in the real world don't have stories gather around them. They don't find themselves in situations like the one Sally finds herself in, because they're not like Sally. Ordinary people are very difficult to write, because there's not a lot for them to say. It's the edgy, quirky, compulsive characters who offer a wealth of options. Your actual plot isn't off track, at all, but without the characters to go along, it leaves us interested, but untouched.

It wouldn't take a lot of revision, at least with the surface of the words. But it will take a major retooling of your own nerve-endings if you're going to create honest characters with warts and scars and objectionable qualities, because, let's face it, that's the environment you are channelling. If you do, then your story will obtain a subjective storyline to go along with the objective storyline of the robbery and shootings. This arc will have the relationship between the two of them as its focus, and it will offer you a chance to involve the reader. Right now, you start by revealing that, whatever this story might be, it ends with a punch. So then you take us through the flashback, and we're restlessly looking at our watch, waiting to get back to the good stuff with the guns and the cops. If you create the realtionship they really have, that will be the story, and the shootout will be the payoff.

As it should be, because we'll have been given the experience of the scope of Sally's transformation. Right now, we know she's changed, but not really that much. You need to make her change count. That's what will keep your readers coming back for more.
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Review of A.P.I.  
Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (2.5)
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You almost lost me in the first paragraph. Here it is:

The blue dasher drove smoothly down the asphalt road, brown and yellow leaves whipped and danced as it’s wheels sped past them. The ground and road was still wet from this morning’s rain spell, small dark puddles of rain water dotted parts of the road and in residential yards.

I don't wish to play copy-editor with your piece; I'd much rather discuss the things you've done right and the things you have left to work out. But this opening paragraph will serve to illustrate the most crippling flaw in your writing.

Your first sentence is run-on. You should have a semi-colon between road and brown, since both are independent clauses. The word it's is a contraction for it is. The possessive case of it has no apostrophe (Truth be told, I make that blunder myself, in emails and reviews when I'm writing fast, but not in copy that I'm submitting anywhere for approval). In the second sentence, ground and road calls for a plural verb; was should be were. This is also a run-on sentence, although in this case, the connection between the two independent clauses is less pronounced and they would probably be best served by making them separate sentnces (between spell and small.) You have inconsistent phrases in the last sentence. The first phrase (stripped of preposition phrases, which don't affect the subject/verb interaction) is puddles... dotted parts, which leaves the last phrase and in residential yards. hanging out there all by itself with noththing to explain it. You need another verb, as in puddles... dotted parts... and pooled in residential yards. Or else get rid of the preposition in, in which case the structure would be ...dotted parts... and... yards. And since yards tend to be residential, that descriptive word is redundant and should go.

That's a lot of copy editing for what will be the initial impression you offer your reader, which is why you almost lost me. There's a lot of writing here and I wasn't looking forward to wading through a swamp of errors like that. But I did, because it's a review forum and that's what I've said I would do. But, believe me: if you submitted a manuscript like this for publication, it would be tossed by the end of the first sentence. And believe me also when I assure you that such errors abound, throughout. Copious spelling errors, incorrect grammar and syntax and clumsy constructions. And it's a shame, because of all the areas that any writer must attend to as they go about the painful process of mastering their craft, errors like these are definitely ones they can learn to avoid. But it takes homework.

I'd like to suggest two books for you to look at. One is a classic and indespensible: The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. If only one book were permitted a novice writer intent on learning their craft, this is the book that would do the most good. It's short, conscise, and focused on the myriad ways that exist to make writing clear, to keep your sentences lean and spare and able to do what they need to do and not wast time on stuff that gets in the way. My own personal opinion is that it is a book that should be read every four to six months, by any writer, whether they need it or not. They always need it. I'm amazed at what I'm reminded of each time I give it a go.

I'll talk about the second book after discussing the structure of your story.

You've done one thing exceptionally well. You've placed this story in a near future that, nonetheless, is not our own world, and you've managed to integrate the variations pretty seamlessly into the flow of your narrative. I'd suggest one change, though; your opening is misleading, in that you spend time talking about the weather, the road, the recent funeral, the deteriorating state of his father's health, none of which is wrong, necessarily, just beside the point. None of those elements are directly concerned with the plot that develops, whereas the technological differences between that world and our own are crucial. But it's not until the phone call with the doctor, who sends James the video, that we get the first twinge of uncertainty. That's when we realize that we need to retool our thinking and play catch up. And it's also when we begin to wonder what, if any, significance there is in the material we've just covered.

You begin with both a blank slate and good will on the part of your reader. They've made the decision to read the story and they'll be glad to suspend whatever disbelief is required in order to let you do your job. They'll be willing to follow wherever you choose to lead--until that moment when they suspect that you're tossing red herrings in their path, or, worse, aren't sure of their path. Then you lose them. I suggest embedding a clue in the opening sentence, something that suggests that this is not the normal world we all know and love, something that throws the reader off balance at the outset. You will buy time that way, as you discuss the weather and the funeral (which, to be fair, are not totally irrelevant, and they read well. But your story could function just as well without them).

Likewise with your dialogue between James and Shelly. You bring your camera in close, recording all their dialogue, giving us an opportunity to see their relationship in action. However, this story is not really about their relationship. Nothing in their dynamic changes in the course of the narrative, and any relevant information that they exchange could easily be rolled into a later scene.

Here's a trick you need to learn: you've exchanged information between James and the doctor in their initial conversation. The reader knows all that is needed to continue with the story, so that when you take time out for James to bring Shelly up to speed, your reader is tapping his foot, checking his watch and wondering what's on the late show. Here's how you handle that situation:

The dasher rolled softly to a stop, parallel to the suburban sidewalk with Shelly waiting patiently there. James pressed a button on the dashboard and the passenger’s door slid open for his sister. After she settled herself in the velvet gel seat cushion, he pressed the same button again and the door closed back, clicking subtly in place.

"So, what did you want to talk about Dad, for?"

James recounted his conversation with the Doctor.

"Dad wanted nothing to do with cybernetics or enhancing himself. He wanted nothing with that.” James just shook his head as the car turned off the highway and onto the interstate, merging with traffic.

"I have a video to show you."

Just because your characters need to talk doesn't mean your reader needs to eavesdrop on every word. There are sections that call for a close-up accounting of action and dialogue, other places when you need to compress time and get on with the important stuff.

Here's the biggest problem I have with your structure: it's not a story, it's a set-up. And a good set-up at that. But the story is still waiting to happen. That's why you've spent so much time on careful descriptions of material that isn't important--you aren't telling a story, so you aren't sure what's important.

You could easily begin the story at the point where James and Shelly are entering the Doctor's office. Everything before can be easily fed to the audience with concise statements in the course of conversations between your characters that further your plot. What have you really covered in those previous paragraphs? Dad died, a doctor asked for a meeting and they don't know what's up. That's pretty much it. Oh, and Shelly's angry. All of this is easy to convey through attitude and responses, fed in while you're taking care of the important things.

Once you get into the doctor's office things get interesting, but for it to be a story, you have to take it somewhere. The conversation you have between James and the doctor a few days later does not do this. It just postpones the development, which you avoid by ending the narrative.

You have to decide who this story is about. We know James is the main character; he's the one whose perspective defines our own view of the action. But he has nothing really going on that he needs to change. He seems to be resolved to his father's death, no real issues left over, and he's kind of interested in the hologram. Shelly, on the other hand, has a real nest of worms in her head. Unresolved issues all over the place. She's angry on the surface which means she's got serious problems underneath. In short, she's a great protagonist. She's unsatisfied with things as they are and is right at that tipping point where she's ready to fall over and spill everything all over the place. Which means, she ripe for getting a story going.

Clearly her issues with Dad are a running sore that hasn't begun to heal. Having him back all of a sudden, after dealing with his death has to present her with all manner of conflicting feelings. Those conflicting feelings will prompt actions, which will have consequences, which will force decisions, which will lead to further actions, which will generate further consequences (most likely unintended consequences). You can carry it on as long as you like, but you have to carry it somewhere.

I'd be interested in seeing what comes out when you do.

By the way, the other book I want to suggest is called Telling Lies For Fun and Profit, by Lawrence Block. It's not a "How To Be Creative" kind of book, or a "Writing for Dummies" text. It's one of the best books I've found on the simple craft of writing, and the process of turning ideas into product. I read it when I was learning, and it was a major influence on my thinking. He doesn't spend much time on touchy-feely stuff like inspiration and finding your muse. He does have a lot of useful suggestions on what to do with your inspiration, however.
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Review of Introduction  
Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
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I'm giving this a 3.0 because in the WDC universe that's the rating that you give a piece when it does what it's supposed to do. In my own reviewing universe, it's a point along a sliding scale of "Needs work," which, as you point out in this introduction, is an assessment with which you would agree. I've read through all your excerpts, but I'm sticking my comments here.

Based on what I've seen so far, you have the potential to be a fine writer. The stuff you've posted has a strong voice, you handle description well and, far more important, you aren't afraid to let your scenes develop through small details that build sequentially. What's more, you manage to stay out of the way, revealing necessary information about your characters through their interactions with each other, through conversations that sound like they might have taken place between real people. You have a lot of interior monologue with Lexi, but then, it's an interior story. This can be a problem, but so far you seem able to keep track of time in the real present of your narrative. The danger with interior thoughts is that everything in the story stops while they go about their business of unfolding; your thoughts are actually about forward development and so there is still a sense of narrative flow, of movement through time, if not space.

These are all excellent craft traits that will serve you well, no matter how you decide to develop this, and the fact that you have them mastered at this early point in your writing career places you in a small minority of writers. Hats off!

Now. About that development. There's not a lot I can say, since, as you point out in your intro,

I have not developed a full plot outline yet, because it is taking some time and I am having some trouble in fleshing anything out. The characters are there, and the general idea, just not the full story.

Whie the actual timeline is a bit vague, I I'd say it's probably something along the lines of

A young girl with emotional problems meets a musician, falls in love, he dies and she's depressed.

This is not bad, certainly not wrong; however, it's more a statement of a condition or set of circumstances. Problems, in other words, and while problems are definitely elements that drive a plot and determine the kinds of choices that characters make, they are not themselves that plot. What this means is you are going to have a hell of a time coming up with things for your characters to actually do, given that there is no particular goal, objective, quest, or driving force built into the fundamental concept of the story. Without that, whatever you come up with in the way of activities in time and space, will seem grafted on, unconnected and arbitrary. Unless your character sketches evolve from the forces that motivate them, they'll never have anything believable to do or say.

One thing that is missing, so far, is an objective story line, a narrative that occupies your characters, apart from the relationships in which they become involved. While it's certainly not a rule, fixed or otherwise, a well constructed story will tend to have both an objective and a subjective story line. Sometimes they run parallel to each other, overlapping at crucial points until each provides the energy that propels the other through the third act. Sometimes they are organically fused from the start. But you need to be able to crystallize each one in terms of the goals/objectives and the problems/obstacles in the way.

You don't necessarily need a 25 words or less "Pitch" blurb. For example A guy has a split personality, one a mundane, ordinary type, one a secret agent, and neither knows about the other. That's more or less the idea behind that show with Christian Slater this season, which I've never seen or I might have made the blurb more specific; but as an attention getter, it definitely does the trick. Note that this particular pitch is involved with the objective story arc. Within that structure, the subjective stories play out, influencing and being influenced by, the objective story.

You aren't writing an action thriller, so your plot blurb wouldn't need to be that high concept. But at the moment, Lexi has no goals. She has preferences, she has things she likes, she has problems; but they all exist as a kind of static cloud, hovering around her, defining her attitude and world view, but offering nothing in the way of motivation. Without motivation, nothing is going to happen, and unless things happen, you won't really have a story.

True, Conner dies. But you need to have more for your character to do than sit around waiting for disaster to strike. Now, if she had a project in which she was engaged, something that mattered to her, something that gave her a reason to get up in the morning... if Conner was somehow involved... and if his death was not just a personal loss but also a crisis-inducing threat to her life's work... then you'd have the germ of a plot.

I think what you're doing at the moment is making it "real." The initial synopsis statement I suggested at the outset sounds like real life, where people have problems, loved ones die and we must somehow cope. Real life seldom contains stories. The events of real life and the events in a story might outwardly look the same, but a story as movement, either the characters' or the reader's. Stories in some way offer coherence where real life is just stuff happening. Sometimes stories wrap things up in a nice little package, sometimes not, but stories that endure will offer us a glimpse of a character confronting the senseless events of life and struggling in some way to find purpose, or at least understanding. In some way, they strive for something, and whether they succeed or fail, the act of striving itself can often be all that is needed to inject meaning and coherence into the proceedings. But however you proceed, you can't simply hand us back real life, because we have quite enough of that ourselves, thank you. If you want us to invest time and effort reading your story, you have to take a stand, take control, arrange events in a way that may not be "real," but which can offer us something quite real in terms of how we receive it.

William Buckley, who enjoyed some success with a fiction series about a CIA agent, observed once that a writer should never strain the reader's credibility more than once, but that they should always stretch it that one time. That stretch is the difference between fiction and real life, that point where "What if?" questions take us outside the unexceptional daily routine, into a place that looks like our own universe, but is actually a place where lessons might be learned, insight might be gained, and, if we're lucky, we might arrive at a place of completion. You haven't done that yet, but I have no doubt that once you do, you'll have no trouble writing about it.
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Review of Becket  
Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
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A mixed bag here, and a disappointment at that. I thought for sure this was going to be a 5.0 for a while there, which, if you've read the intro to my site, you know I give out sparingly, if at all.

As it is, you definitely get a 5.0 for the quality of your prose. It hits all the right notes. You manage to evoke the historical period without shoving a lot of archaic constructions down our throats. A few well-chosen words do the trick.

You balance dialogue with internal reflection and external action effortlessly; the reader is never left wondering about the sequence of events, even when you slip in crucial backstory elements. This is pure craft, and when it's done well, no one notices, which is as it should be.

Only one sentence stood out as inferior:

Suddenly, a door slammed, the sharp report jerking Elspeth into alertness.

We all have our pet peeves; mine is "-ness" nouns. With the exception, perhaps, of wilderness, they're all upstart adjectives that don't know their place. Whenever I see one, I immediately think of the time-honored sportscaster cliche: Boy, he's got some quickness, don't he?" when He runs fast. would do so much more, for so much less. Also, jerking feels off to me. Maybe ...jolting her to attention. Or else rewrite the sentence in a way that lets alert be the adjective it was born to be.

You don't do this much. With such uniformly good prose, anything clumsy will stand out all the more.

Now; let's talk about story, and maybe get one started here. When you attatch your main character's arc to a known historical event, you can go a couple of different ways. One approach is to be Disney-cute and have an unsung or unwitting character, heretofore invisible to history, turn out to be the actual catalyst through which the great event unfolds. Not bad for young readers. Not appropriate here. The other option is to have your main character's story be impacted by the events to which she is either an observer or a participant. What this requires is that there be an actual story for your main character, so that such impaction might take place.

You don't have one. She slips away from Editha, she watches some stuff happen, she runs back to Editha and tells no one for the rest of her life what she saw. While the impact of the great event is undeniable, the fact that nothing comes of it, in the context of your main character's life, means that it doesn't add up to much at all. What you're trying to do is borrow the drama of Becket's murder, but this is not Becket's story. Nor is it Henry's. It has to be Elspeth's, and that means that you have to start with what it is that she wants, what's in the way of her attaining it, and what she does to overcome the obstacles to her fulfillment. The only thing you've managed to come up with is she wants to evade Editha's parental hovering, which is a good enough set up, but unless it gets her into trouble, and threatens to mess up the status quo, there's no story.

Here's a possible plot: Right now, good ole Reggie is the poster child for Wasted Character Syndrom. However, if he were to be cast as a legitimate suitor for Elspeth's affections, and, rather than having her "chafing" under Editha's watchful eye, we instead see her scheming to sneak away for some one-on-one with the good knight, we get to involve ourselves, not with a described situation, but with a bit of a life unfolding before our eyes. Never a bad thing.

Then, when she slips into the Cathedral and sees Reggie doing the deed, it packs a punch, both for Elspeth, and your reader.

If, as a subplot, you also illustrate her relationship with King Henry, show him, perhaps to be a loving father, who she then must reassess in the light of her painful enlightenment, (sort of like Meadow and Tony Soprano), then you'll have a three-dimensional character forced to make decisions, perhaps less-than-perfect decisions for a less-than-perfect world. That's the kind of character we'll remember, because we'll realize that she's a lot like us.
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Review of Sinister Ink  
Review by edgework
Rated: ASR | (2.5)
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You requested a review on my forum, as well as the "Invalid Item" , in which you refer to this as prose, and I'd agree with you, though I have to wonder why it's presented in centered lines rather than sentences. It seems to be drawing on elements of both prose and poetry, so I'll flip back and forth.

I'm not sure what to make of it, actually. It's a short personal statement of intent, and so as prose, it gets the job done. You prefer the dark side of the soul to sweetness and light. Point made.

As lines of poetry, I note that you have a strong rhythmic undercurrent, not quite regular enough to be called fixed meter, but most of the lines scan nicely into four or five feet. These, for example:

I want to be possessed with the muse of grief

This flame that grows within you has restored me

are nice lines of iambic pentameter. The trick is to make the scansion work in a natural reading of the words, which these lines accomplish. Likewise, these lines:

Darkened soul that inspires my prose

I find no pleasure in composing joy

fall into four-foot scansion with no effort at all. Elsewhere, however, you have

This flame that grows within you has restored me

And severed me from the comfort of sinister ink

which, while also falling into five feet, do so with much less elegance, and this line

I want to feel my blood spill from the tip of this pen

while rich with strong beats, doesn't quite know what it's meter is.

One thing you don't have is loose, flabby lines with lots of weak beats, lines that could only be scanned by forcing emphases on syllables that really can't take the pressure. So while there's no evidence that you were consciously striving for any coherence in the scansion of your lines (too regular for free verse, too random for fixed meter), your inner ear hears the proper beats of the language, and seems to naturally fall into good rhythms. A little conscious attention to the various kinds of metrical feet that you are using, a bit more control, and you'd have something serious going on.

Your content presents a different kind of problem. As prose, of course, your purpose is to make your statement, and you've done that. But the poetic aspects are in dire need of attention. Subject is not what will make a piece memorable, unless it's to be published on the Op-ed page. Memorable writing harnesses all those elements of structure and form, those things that exist apart from subject, that serve it, embellish it and add color and meaning to the surface content, creating words that ripple out beyond the narrow confines of your subject, words that have legitimacy in their own right, apart from their service in the name of your subject.

For instance, this line,

Penning a smile feels deceitful, artificial

is a simple, straightforward statement, not particularly imagistic, but certainly a decent line. It is followed, however, by

A betrayal of my loyal, forgiving pain

and that's where you get sloppy, settling for an abstract generalization instead of looking for the image that would make the deceit and artificiality come alive for the reader, give them a moment to experience themselves, so they might share the experience, rather than simply process it. It's a cliche, the kind of line that sounds profound, like it's full of meaning, but which is nothing more than an empty shell. Try to find the sensory input that accompanies this line. You will find the effort futile, because it's not there. You may well know what it is that you had in mind, but you neglected to put that into words. Go back and do so.

And then do the same with muse of grief, darkened soul, and that flame. These are all placeholder images, the kind of thing you put in place until you find the real image instead.

I'm talking, of course, about a different piece than what you've presented, a piece that would require you to bring honesty to the task, to rip the truth of you intentions from within you and give it a life of its own. Right now, you are referring to that piece of work, without actually offering it to us, and so there is nothing memorable. We know, instinctively, that you are taking shortcuts, telling us that deep emotional responses exist, without going through the pain and sweat of recreating them for us.

But that is what makes writing memorable.
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Review by edgework
Rated: 18+ | (2.0)
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You lost me at the outset. You've committed three deadly blunders that would guarantee that whatever you've gone to the trouble to write will not be read by those most able to be useful to you: editors.

1. Your first paragraph is in present-tense. Your second paragraph is in past tense. It wouldn't matter what else you've done, that alone would confirm a special reservation for your manuscript in the waste basket.

2. When her father asks where she's going, she responds "For a walk. I haven't went for one in almost a week." The reader can only assume that such glaringly incorrect use of the English language will no doubt continue, though they most likely will elect not to be an accomplice to the butchery.

3. And, while this next error wouldn't immediately stop a reader in their tracks like the previous two, the fact that your first paragraph goes to great lengths to inform us that nothing happens would immediately raise suspicions that not much else will happen either, no matter how far we progress. You inform the reader that stuff has happened, which is not at all the same thing. Readers like to have a story unfold in front of them. Simply assuring them that a story took place, is taking place or will take place, is the difference between a rip-roaring car chase, and the police report after the offending drivers are finally pulled over.

You are going to have to do more homework and delve more deeply into the mysteries of grammar and syntax. Then you need to explore the mechanics of narrative, and how telling a story is different from telling about a story. Read the writers that you already respect and enjoy. Read them as a writer, not as a member of an adoring public. Take them apart. Copy them. Plagerize them. Rewrite their scenes as your own. Figure out why they wouldn't have made the mistakes I mentioned, and why an editor was willing to read them all the way to the end, then publish them. And then, learn to recognize those mistakes before someone else sees them.
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Review of Blood Red Wine  
Review by edgework
Rated: E | (3.0)
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You're about halfway to having a really good poem here. All you need to do is bleach the rest of the prose out of it (you've gotten off to a good start with that), exploit the line break more (something else you've started to do) and let it wander a little more freely, the way you do at the end when you bring in the bugs.

You've recognized that poems don't need to spend the same amount of time a prose, explaining things and setting them up so that we "get it." Sometimes, with poems, there's nothing to get, so much as there's something to experience. For that you need to close the distance between the content of your words and our appreciation of them. Get rid of any hint of narration, because that necessarily implies a narrator, and that's nothing but a filter between the experience unfolding and our own experience which we might bring to it. For example, you say

This glass of wine, sat potent
as a bomb.
In front of me.

The broken syntax doesn't change the fact that something is being related to the reader with decidedly prosaic intentions, whereas something along these lines

This glass of wine, this potent
bomb
before me

is simply a moment of apprehension in itself, language capturing the mind as it perceives. Do more of this, and you'll find you want to bring more elements in to replace the unneeded elements you've taken out, and here is where you're poem gets to push past the bounds of prose, take detours through reason and logic and make connections that abandon cause and effect.

One thing to pay attention to is your line break. Nothing like it exists in prose, but if you are only chopping up prose sentences into arbitrary lengths, you're wasting the single most unique element of poetry. In your last stanza, you both blow and opportunity, and capitalize on an opportunity.

An empty glass.
Beside my bed.

This is nothing more than the content suggests. Each line is a nugget complete in itself; not a flaw, but you can use the break to suggest shades of meaning, leave holes that the reader gets to fill in with their own experience. (I'm just going to use the words you've provided, but, in truth, once you begin playing with lines and line breaks, all manner or revisions suggest themselves).

An empty
glass beside
my bed

Has a certain counterpoint between the rhythm of the line beating against the sense of the words.

This would be better:

An empty
glass by
my bed

and this takes even greater liberties:

empty
beside my bed a
glass

The next lines do it nicely on their own, though I'd lose the unneeded "of".

Its dregs a trap
for all
those unwitting bugs

and if you want to play with sense and meaning and offer up some ambiguity

Its dregs
a trap for all
those unwitting
bugs stumbling
from my sleep

but that gets weird.

You need to get a little weird, though. If you have a story to tell, a moment to describe, an argument to make, prose is your medium of choice. English prose is unparalleled when it comes to managing hierarchies of importance, meaning or objects in time and space, whether internal or external. Poetry is what happens when language is cut free from the need to convey a subject and proceed in a linear fashion from beginning, development, conclusion. Poetry is language itself playing the dominant role, with subject and content racing to keep up and not always mattering that much.
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Review of Smolder  
Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
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You have good instincts and a strong narrative voice. This is both blessing and bane. I was so captivated by the sound of your prose in the opening section that I didn't notice until the second reading that you'd committed some serious blunders. Usually blunders of that nature result in bad prose right out of the gate. But you manage to keep the flow moving, whether you're describing external action or roaming around inside Kemal's head, a neat trick and one not even imagined by many, let alone mastered. Unfortunately, (this is the bane part), when you slip out of that voice and lapse back into stock Romance prose, there's no way you can hope to get away with it. You've already tipped your hand: you're better than that.

You seem to have created a good set-up for your characters, fulfilling one of the requirements of the romance genre, which is to force your hero and heroine into close proximity under circumstances not exactly of their choosing. That these circumstances are neither tortured nor unrealistic is a definite plus.

I'll confess that it's been a long while since I actively researched the Historical Romance field to figure out what was publishable. I don't know for certain what conventions are considered carved in stone, and what situations offer flexibility. At one time it was almost a sacrament that the stories be told from the heroine's point of view throughout. The hero and his story were crucial, but only as they impacted on the heroine. So you're off the reservation from word one. Personally, I'm just fine what that, but I'm not a publisher, so I'll leave it to you to make the shifting points of view work. It's a respected device in genre fiction though I find it much easier to work with when there are major scene breaks, as in the break between Kemal in the desert and Wynn on the boat. It gets a bit stickier when both characters are in the same scene. You haven't done it badly, but I'm not sure if it's possible to do it elegantly, without the form calling attention to itself. One solution is that strong narrative voice, the story's voice, one that has the power and authority to manage both points of view equally. That's a very different narrative approach, however, but quite efficient at bouncing back and forth from mind to mind.

The relationship with her father is a little confused, but I'm willing to allow that there is as yet unrevealed information about him, and the nature of their trip, that will fill in a lot of gaps. For one thing, despite her endless worrying about his mental health, every time you let him open his mouth, he sounds downright jaunty. Even impish, as though he knows far more about his daughter than she's guessed about him. The hint about the sketchbook leads me to think there's more to the old boy than meets the eye. Perhaps enrolled in the work of Empire, disguised as a member of the National Geographic Society? Or, as with Sherlock Holmes' brother, Mycroft, The Diogenes Club, some expedition of which always managed to show up to study local archeology just at the time the rabble were fomenting revolution. That would be cool. We'll have to wait and see.

But it's a decent set-up; running with this set-up and fashioning a plot with it is, of course, a quite different proposition. I believe you have a good plot in mind. Whether you will be able to tell the story, I'm not yet sure. There are some red flags which I will wander through in no particular progression or sequence.

First, a point about unintentional meanings creeping into your sentences. What I liked about your opening scene was the economy of your sentences, how they did exactly what they were supposed to with clarity and precision, one of the reasons your dialogue, narrative and exposition all balanced so well; when everything does its job, things don't get in each others' way. The following examples stand out, and you really don't what them to, but it's what happens when you don't keep track of what you are referring to.

WHAT I MEANT TO SAY, WAS...
Almost as soon as her feet had touched the dock, they were accosted by a gentleman with a turban and a great beard.
A foot fetishist? Personally, I hate it when guys in turbans accost my feet.

Kemal's keen eyes picked through the crowd of people and pack animals that moved through the busy port, hunting for white skin.
White slavers, all? Now that's a nasty crowd! Though maybe we should let the pack animals off the hook.

This one is just scary.
It took an incredible amount of self-control for Wynn to keep her bottom lip attached to the top, such was her shock at the ease of her father's consent.
Besides, why the self control? Her jaw dropped in shock.

This one's not a howler, but could be much clearer.
"My darling, I know you speak only out of concern for me, but please put at least enough trust in your old Papa to look after our finances."
Syntax suggests that he's asking her to look after the finances, which is silly in context. Much clearer is:
"My darling, please trust your Papa to look after the finances."

In these sentences you seem to be objectifying elements that are really qualities.

He scowled at the path his thoughts had taken.
"Bad thoughts... bad thoughts. Now stay... stay..." Maybe he should put them on a leash.

Hunger began to gnaw at him,
And he just sits there and passively takes it?

Mr. al-Malik returned to them, success evident on his face.
That bit about success is a far too interpretive for me. Show him in action, let your reader figure it out.
Mr. al-Malik returned, clearly pleased with himself. "The deal is made."

Her father frowned, causing a shadow to pass over his face.
How about Her father frowned.

Now to the blunder in the first section, which, as I write this, I'm not totally convinced is a blunder. Or, maybe I'm not sure what blunder it might be. As I observed, the entire section might be a violation of the Romance code, which seems not to bother you and certainly doesn't bother me. But in that case, you don't need to hurry through it just to get him hooked up with his future inamorata. You can use this section to actually tell his story, which you haven't done now. You've referred to it. Not the same.

Consider this line:

The man called out behind him, "You ought to watch your step, boy. This city is crawling with my agents. If I have my way, you'll be dead before sunrise."

In a scene that threatens to spill over into action, this is a cruel thing to do to your reader. It's phony foreshadowing, since nothing comes of it, a gun that never gets fired It thwarts expectations in a most unsatisfying manner.

Now consider this line that follows shortly after:

This slave trader was only one of the many enemies he had made in Tripoli. All had threatened him in a similar matter, and sooner or later someone would follow through.

This is the heart of the blunder, the DUDE, YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE EARLIER WHEN SOME CRAZY STUFF WENT DOWN flaw (as well as more phony foreshadowing). Kemal has been busy since he's been in town, but to pick up his story here, in this way is like a Post-Game Wrap Up show that talks about the 80-yard kickoff return, the goal line defensive stand and the winning touchdown pass in sudden death overtime, without showing us any video.

For that matter, the missing prolouge that's begging to be told is years behind us. It doesn't need explaining (that will come later), but to actually show the defining scene of Kemal's mission, where his parents are killed and his sisters taken, would sure kick things off to a rollicking start. And catch your readers' attention. After that you cut to Kemal in Tripoli, where, instead of telling us about his quest, you show him in the midst of it. It's a story in its own right, this exploration he goes through in each new city, learning who the usual suspects might be, planning his moves, going through the steps, each one of which escalates the action, his risk, and (need I remind you?) your readers' growing involvement in his situation. And then, as with all stories, you make it all count. You give it a third act (everything needs a third act), when one, or two, or perhaps an unaccustomed alliance of rivals decides to kill him, and he has to fight his way out of a situation that makes the reader wonder "Wow, what's gonna happen next?" It's the only question you want out them, and you never want them to stop asking it. Having him slink passively out of town at night, not having to avoid threats because they never materialize, isn't going to hook anyone.

One last red flag, then I'll shut up. This is what I call the STAND BACK, I'LL FIX THIS flaw. This passage is as good an example as any:

"What good fortune!" said Papa, a light in his eyes like she hadn't seen since the onset of Mama's illness. "The only dragoman in the Levant not working for the Sultan, and he has come to our personal rescue! Good fortune, indeed."

Mysteriously good fortune, in Wynn's opinion. She didn't mention that if he had planned as thoroughly as he should have, they would not be in need of such a luxury as a personal dragoman.

You do this a lot, and, in fairness, so do most Romance writers. Doesn't make it good, and if you really want to break the conventions of the genre, start here. What you've done is neglected to create a three dimensional interaction with three dimensional characters. To compensate, you, the author, are stepping in and telling the reader what they need to know, since your characters aren't doing their job. Just because you pretend that it's their internal thoughts and contemplations doesn't change the fact that in the real-world present of your story, your characters aren't coming up with the kind of interactions that let the reader intuit their natures, their relationships and their inner motivations.

Here's a much more blatant example:

"It's magnificent, isn't it, darling?" he remarked, beaming at the scene. It was the most words he had strung together in several days. And Wynn might have agreed with him, might have been able to admire the wonderful oddity of the port, had she not been so preoccupied with her concern for Papa's mental state. She had always dreamed of traveling the world, of seeing strange things like the scene that was laid before her. But this was not an adventure, and certainly not a holiday; this was her father fleeing from his grief, and dragging her along with him.

"You aren't still sulking, are you?" he asked grumpily, when she failed to respond. She bit her lip as her heart clenched at the unfairness of his remark. She was not, and had never been, the sulking type. They had exchanged angry words when he had first mentioned his ill-timed Levantine expedition, but once she realized he wasn't going to change his mind, and that there was no way she could let him go alone, she quietly accepted her fate.

Come to that, she had done nothing but care for him the entire journey, bringing him food, keeping his cabin neat. He hadn't once acknowledged her; every time she went to him he was absorbed in his sketchbook, typically mumbling to himself. Whenever she tried to make him speak with her, he put her off.

"No, Papa." Let him see how he liked being answered in two-word sentences.

Two passive, non-committal words for four paragraphs. Lots going on, mostly thinking. How much more engaging, to have a conversation like this (note that I don't completely do away with the explanatory embellishments, but with a real conversation, there's something to embellish):

"It's magnificent, isn't it, darling?"
"I suppose," she muttered, staring ahead. Of course it was a beautiful view, but it just made her angry.
"You aren't still sulking, are you?"
"Sulk!? I don't sulk."
"Well, then, whatever word you wish for whatever you are doing."
She sensed an unaccustomed sarcasm in his voice, as though he was teasing her.
"Well, I must say, you're suddenly talkative."
"And what do you mean by that?"
"You've spent the entire voyage in your cabin. You've hardly spoken to me at all."
"You haven't been the most pleasant company, my dear. Perhaps I felt you wanted to be left alone."
"That's not fair!"

That's enough. I'm starting to make stuff up, but that's what happens when you let your characters take over the job of being who they are. Pretty soon they're doing unexpected things; they're making their own decisions and dealing with unintended consequences... you know, sort of like a plot.

I suggest you go back to this story, and train yourself to recognize all those points where you are stepping into the scene and doing the heavy lifting for your characters. Imagine what the scene would look like if your characters were expressing their feelings to each other, rather than you just expressing them to your readers. It would mean that you'll have to flesh out their motivations and drives, not just as abstract descriptions of what they want and don't want, but as qualities that drive each action they take, each word they speak.

They might surprise you.
199
199
Review by edgework
Rated: ASR | (2.5)
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Good enough teaser; but then, just because you can coax them into the theatre doesn't mean they'll leave entertained. The true worth of a prologue is measured by what follows. So far, there's no way to know.

But you might as well clean up the clumsy errors, since you don't want anything to intrude on the mood you're trying to create.

whether we be the lowliest janitor, or a powerful dictator.

These two elements are not exact compliments of each other. On the one hand, the janitor is the lowliest; there are none lower. He's at the bottom of the heap and can't go any lower. The dictator, well, he's just a run of the mill powerful dictator. Not the most powerful. Just one among many. Perhaps "lowly janitor" instead. But then, dictators and janitors don't exactly run in the same circles, do they? I'm sure that dictators probably have janitors lurking around somewhere, after hours, to clean up their messes, but you don't think of them as different degrees of the same class. "Lowly janitor or Chairman of the Board," perhaps. Something that suggests we're moving from one pole to the other within the same context.

what edges us on to greater heights.

You mean to say "...eggs us on..."

It is our cause, our dream. Our purpose if you will.

Better would be "It is our cause, our dream, our purpose, if you will."

The reference to Ernest Rutherford is not only obscure to the point of losing your reader, it is wrong. Otto Hahn and Fitz Strassman split the atom in Berlin in 1938, one year after Rutherford's death. True, Rutherford made numerous contributions to physics and helped formulate a model of the the nucleus, but who cares? The point is, you could find numerous examples of people whose accomplishments yielded unintended consequences, many of whom would actually be familiar to your readers and who would fit more seamlessly into the kind of flippant, hip, pop culture tone you are establishing in this whole prologue, which is definitely leaning towards the MTV side of our culture, whereas Rutherford and his ilk are firmly ensconced in the PBS side of the divide. Need to keep things consistent.

This sounds like it's been written before you really know what it's leading into. It's also difficult to know if you are intending to follow up with a serious dramatic piece or something a bit more casual. You leave both possibilities open, but that just weakens your ultimate result. This is your hook, with which you are going to snare your reader. If he takes the bait, don't disappoint him with something different than what you teased him with. That means you need to be focused on what it is that you are introducing. You may well be, but I don't sense it just from reading this.
200
200
Review by edgework
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
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It's hard to know what to say about an introduction like this, since so much depends on where you take it. I will say that your prose has a rich, robust tone to it; you seem comfortable with the environment and I'd guess you have a good deal of the special requirements of this universe worked out in your mind. A few niggling glitches with sentence structure showed up, which I'll get to in a minute.

Here's something that I noticed that may well suggest a pattern in your thinking that you'll want to recognize and edit out. You've hinted at a complex backstory, which is cool; backstories don't need to be spelled out, top-to-bottom. If they're consistent, the events rising out of them will hold to that consistency, and you can reveal salient details as you need. You've also foreshadowed ominous events up ahead. This is all good, catching the action in midcourse, jumping right into a rushing stream instead of waiting around for things to kick off.

Except, in this moment, we seem to have falling into a small side channel where things are fairly static. There is no question that the topic of conversation is filled with significance. But, for the reader, the experience of two people discussing momentous events is, well... two people talking. That's it. Then Penny slips beneath the water, which is action, I guess, but then she's gone and the water goes still, metaphorically and literally. The focus of all the talk is completely out of the picture until the end, when we glimpse him asleep. Finn moves some furniture, but that's about it.

You can tell us all you want that the situation is serious, laden with metaphysical, historical and personal significance, that much depends on what people will do, yadda yadda yadda. But showing us a simple set of actions, where the characters are engaged in serious activity does everything with far more efficiency. If a character is simply telling us about another situation or condition, second-hand, our only reaction is "Yeah? Okay..." We're really never called upon to assess the actual situation. We never need to suspend our disbelief, which, believe me, your readers are all too willing to do, if only you'll give them a chance. In other words, don't tell me a beautiful woman is really a vampire, show her sucking blood; don't tell me that old man is really a powerful wizard travelling in disguise, let him turn a highwayman into a toad.

I have no idea what you might have done in this scene to provide that missing dimension, but you've given yourself a few options. For one thing, there appears to be

a vast audience concealed from view in the surrounding trees and shadows, a thousand eyes observing unseen from the forest waiting impatient for what was to transpire

that remains totally unused, save for a faint rustling as they leave. These unused thousands are simply an example of your larger approach to your material: telling us stuff that's supposed to be important, but neglecting to actually allow us to participate in that importance. It's your intro. Hook us here, you'll have our good will (and our willing suspension of disbelief) up and running for whatever comes next.

Some grammar/syntax stuff--

Watch those run-ons.
“I supposed you would expect me to look after him for you?” interrupted the man bitterly cursing his words even as he spoke them, his companion remained calm.

What you have here is a run-on sentence, two sentences punctuated as one. The comma between them and his should be a period.

Learn about semi-colons.

Penny glared at him stifled tears sparkling in her eyes again he felt ashamed by the venom in his voice.

Actually, there are a couple things wrong with this structure. There should be a comma between him and stifled. Then, again he felt ashamed by the venom in his voice is an independent clause, which is to say, a complete sentence. It could be separated from the preceding by a period and turned into a separate sentence, but much better would be to use a semi-colon instead. It accomplishes the same thing, allowing the clause to stand on its own, but a closer linkage to the preceding sentence is suggested by joining them with a semi-colon.

Who is he, anyway?

“I have to lead him to a place he can’t follow.”

I assume he and him are different beings, but you couldn't tell it from the sentence structure.

And in that last excerpt I quoted, impatient either has to be an adverb modifying the verb waiting, in which case it should be impatiently, or it's an adjective modifying the noun eyes, in which case it needs to be offset by commas. I prefer the second option, but you'll need to choose one or the other.

You don't need these kinds of rookie mistakes cluttering your manuscript. They'll send the subtle message to your reader that your writing is not to be taken seriously, and they're so easy to weed out. If you're not sure, pick up a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. If there could be but one book offered to writers in pursuit of their craft, this would be the one. It's short, readable in one sitting, but as a reference to the correct construction of sentences in English, it has no equal. And chapter 4, an essay on more subjective aspects of style, should be read every 6 months by every writer. No excuses.
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