posted
The still Atumn night hung lightly throughout the Forest, its trees drained of green and infused with red and gold, dimmed under dark heavens drunk on clouds. The greatest tree of them all, The Great World Tree, seemingly fell from that sky with its soaring height, and drove deep into the ground with roots like molesting tenticles. And at the base of its mighty trunk, grotesquely beautiful, was a woman, naked, nipples erect to a slight sudden breeze. Her hair like autumn, her face pale as the now eager moon, she was frozen in suspended animation, held longfully, nurchured through an attachment of her veins to the vascular cambium of the tree.
Posts: 3 | Registered: Oct 2010
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posted
It's a very intriguing premise and I would read on -- after your publisher had gotten an editor to clean up the capitalization and spelling errors. Also, "longfully" is not a word, as far as I am aware, and if it is, then I don't know what it means (which is a bad sign).
The thing about spelling errors is that they give the reader the impression the writer won't be able to tell a good story, however erroneous this impression is. (Ability to spell is pretty low on the list of things you need in order to be a good writer, IIMHO--a spell checker and a decent editing friend can fix that.)
I love some of your imagery: dark heavens drunk on clouds, face pale as the now-eager moon...
The erect nipples sends up a warning flag to me ("Alert! Teenage boy writing story!"), and though it wouldn't stop me yet--because your writing is otherwise good and I like the premise--there had better be some reason why mentioning her nipples is important (which, to be honest, I suspect there is not).
I suggest you fix the spelling and capitalization errors and repost.
posted
I agree with what GL said. Words and phrases to look at: Atumn (autumn), longfully (longingly?), nurchured (nurtured), tenticles (tentacles)...all spotted by Hatrack's built-in spellchecker.
Also, "grotesquely beautiful" doesn't mean anything to me. It sounds like 'hotly cold.' Perhaps 'beautiful in her grotesque setting'.
I stared at the sentence beginning with 'The greatest tree of the all,' trying to decide what bothered me about it. I think the verb choice/tense is a bit awkward.
The greatest tree of them all, The Great World Tree, seemed to have fallen from that sky, its roots driven deep into the ground like molesting tentacles.
posted
Thank you. I will work on it. I'm dealing with note pad on this computer. I miss microsoft word. I'm embarrassed of the word 'longfully'.
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DRaney
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posted
I like the 'voice' you are using here, but wonder if you are going to maintain it through the entire story. A non-Hatrack critter (can't spell critiquer very well) tried to explain something to me once about the need to use 'fantasy-speak' in fantasy work. Honestly I never fully understood what he was trying to get me to do. Recently, I read the Cherryh fantasy novel(s) The Dreaming Tree/Dreamstone and it became staggeringly clear. If you haven't read that... you should. It was awesome, but more to the point it is a great example of 'fantasy-speak' so to speak. (Words, don'tcha love'em).
One other point. I feel the darkness of the forest from the 'dark heavens drunk on clouds' (nice phrase) followed closely by the 'now eager moon'. The word 'dimmed' may not be strong enough to allow the opposites to coexist. This from the first reading. Reading it through again helped but rarely, if ever would I do that in a published book.
Okay so one other minor point. You might consider working on the 'fell from that sky' phrase to strengthen the notion that it fell eons ago.
The premise is way cool. I am interested, as a fantasy reader in the woman attached to the tree... hooked me. Peace!
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