Critique #88 Sylvia Volk
Katharine Kerr October 8th, 2006
The dragon in the mountain lay along a vein of air, squeezed beneath the weight of the stone. The bedrock was thicker above her than she was long–and she was very long, her thin twist of tail and the wire of her iron-scaled neck having grown till they filled the whole length of the crevice, which had been a stream eating down through limestone, once. Her head stretched up toward the peak of the mountain. When she was young, she had faced downward; she had touched her mother then, similarly entombed above her in another vein in the rock. The tip of her tail had touched her mother’s fire-hot copper belly. But generations of man had passed, while the two of them lay imprisoned in the mountain’s heart, drinking the water that seeped from the surface far above. The young dragon, cramped for space, had grown and grown till her tail wound around her mother’s haunches, its dagger-spikes piercing her mother’s flesh, embedding themselves in her. Eventually the tail’s point reached the mother’s heart. Blood, slowly dripping, had made its way into the little dragon’s hungry jaws, and she crept and crept and turned herself around–she was small enough then to squirm her way through the rock–and feasted, not knowing what she did.
Sylvia, I know you sent me more lines in email, but the guidelines say 13 for a reason.
Oh dear. My apologies; I read “sentences” for “lines”. Oops.
(hides head under keyboard)
Like your previous piece, this work creates a strong visual image for me, which I like.
I’m not sure about this, but I might look at sentence structure. Maybe find a way to use fewer clauses/phrases.
For me personally, this beginning is too sad–I never could watch Bambi. But that also means that it is succeeding at pulling in me in, and I think most of the people out there wouldn’t stop reading because of this. (I wouldn’t stop reading, I’d just skip past this scene.)
Two of those sentences are pretty long, true. Breaking them up might be something to look at (weeps, contemplating long-time semi-colon addiction) and clarity is much more important than sentence structure, after all; the one is the servant of the other, not vice versa.
And having “grown and grown” at one point followed almost immediately by “crept and crept” … rereading now, I don’t like that.
I like visual images. I’m a visual person, I suppose.
Oops, I’m sorry, I should have said why I thought you might look at sentence structure. I found everything to be clear (I’m jealous), which probably plays a big part in the strong visual images. I was thinking of the pauses created by the commas. My impression was that the pauses might be too frequently spaced, affecting the sense of flow. But I’m really not sure. This is a personal opinion which could differ from others. If you did experiment with taking a few out, I don’t know if you would even have to change the phrases or clauses they came after—If the meaning is clear, does a phrase have to have a comma after it? Now I’m curious, I’ll have to check Shrunk and White.
I also like semi-colons a lot (although my addiction is with dashes). I don’t think you should just give them up. I’m a firm believer that if an element/technique etc. feels right, then it should be fought for (or wooed after).
Everybody’s got an addiction!
I’ll take out some commas, and see how the paragraph looks. This could be interesting. Also rewarding; thanks.
I’m insanely jealous of Ursula Le Guin, because she writes with such clarity; she can do what she does, I suppose, because she knows exactly what she’s thinking, the idea behind the writing, and she writes exactly what she means and then gets out. It’s about clarity of thought. I’ve been studying her books and trying to learn from them.
You know, I had never thought about clarity that way; start with a clear thought! One of those things that seems so obvious afterwards. Lately, I’ve been considering just concentrating on imagining/figuring out the story in the first couple of drafts and not worrying about making things perfect. Then in a later draft I can concentrate on communicating the story. The “clarity of thought” has helped me, well, clarify my thoughts on why this could be good approach. Thanks!
Have you read Le Guin’s Steering the craft: exercises and discussion on story writing for the lone navigator or the mutinous crew? I found a lot of great info in it.
Yes, it’s a great book, isn’t it? And her The Wave In The Mind is amazing, though it’s a collection of essays about a lot of subjects, not just craft. But her analysis of Tolkein’s voice is amazing.
I haven’t read that one, I’ll have to locate a copy. The analysis of Tolkein’s voice sounds really interesting, I’ve been thinking about how voice is connected with the author’s vision. One of my favorite authors, Miss Read, has a passage where she is describing a cozy kitchen. The description feels warm and happy, even though she is describing pots and pans and stuff. One of the reasons for this is she chooses “warm/happy” words over other choices. But I didn’t notice this until I examined the passage in detail.
Hi Sylvia,
Related to clarity for me is the idea of distilling something
down to its essence, and a lot of times that can be
achieved by editing out extra words. This of course
could be a personal preference.
Some examples, once – which jarred me
so far separated from the beginning of the thought. Both then’s, which are implicit in the rest of the sentences. For “embedding themselves in her” I think
in her could go . And a lot of the the’s . Play with those to see if
you like the effect.
Otherwise, I am envious of your clear, long sentences.
I tend towards terseness, so I can only marvel.