my little skant paragraph. - Writers Forum

sarahdara123 · 12-17-2007, 03:04 AM

The crunched frozen sand before you is sticking to the rims of your jeans as you stand out before the shore on a winters day. you lean down and cup the mixture in your raw, burning-cold hands and gaze into it longingly.
You feel a smooth just below 80 degree breeze whip your way as you turn towards the tingling sun. The sun is setting and grazing into the horizon as the children of summertime are being called in from the tide by their parents. The clouds absorb the pink and cascade across the sky into the slowly fading star. You look down once again at your hands still cupped, holding the sand.
You look up one last time to engrave this moment in your heart forever but instead are welcomed back to reality with the gray miserable skies and a harsh gust whipping at your wind-burned face. Looking back down to your still bowled hands, you see that the sand and iced mixture slipped through the cracks of your fingers leaving them numb and tingling.

ieuan · 12-17-2007, 03:59 AM

my little skant paragraph.

I looked at the old photograph of you on the beach and saw:

The crunched frozen sand before you is sticking to the rims of your jeans as you stand out before the shore on a winter’s day. You lean down and cup the mixture in your raw, burning-cold hands and gaze into it longingly.
You feel a smooth just below 80 degree breeze whip your way as you turn towards the tingling setting sun. And you grazing gaze into at the horizon as the summertime children of are being called in from the tide by their parents.

The clouds absorb the pink and cascade across the sky into the a slowly fading star. You look down once again at your hands still cupped, holding the sand.
You look up one last time to engrave this moment in your heart forever but instead are welcomed back to reality with the gray miserable skies and a harsh gust whipping at your wind-burned face.

Looking back down to your still bowled hands, you see that the sand and iced mixture slipped through the cracks of your fingers leaving them numb and tingling.

Ieuan

wilcan · 12-17-2007, 04:32 AM

Hope you don't mind:

The crunched frozen sand is sticking to the rims of your jeans as you stand before the shore on a winter day. You lean down and cup the mixture in your raw, burning-cold hands and gaze into it longingly.

You feel a smooth, just below 80 degree, breeze waft your way as you turn towards the tingling sun. The sun is setting and grazing into the horizon as the children of summertime are being called, in from the tide, by their parents. The clouds ... absorbing the pink, cascade across the sky into the slowly fading star. You look down once again at your hands still cupped, holding the sand.

You look up one last time to engrave this moment in your heart forever, but instead -- welcomed back to reality with the gray miserable skies and a harsh gust whipping at your wind-burned face. Looking back down to your still bowled hands, you see that the sand and iced mixture has slipped through the cracks of your fingers leaving them numb and tingling....
__________________

With just a few words removed, and a couple added ( Sorry I couldn't resist .. editing) This concept of your's has potential. At least to me.

"Ahh, Memories ... sweet memories." This is what it said to me.

Brevity can be so compelling sometimes, can't it. Just rework it. I liked the statements beginning with "You" and how you reiterated.

Thank you for posting this.. I guess I'm just gettin old.
wilcan

Olly Buckle · 12-17-2007, 04:38 PM

Ieuan:- Just imagine that sarahdara meant to write it that way, the tide is out she is before the shore, where the sand is wet (I am surprised that you didn't object to it being frozen at 80 degrees) before the fore shore. Capital Y for a new sentence, fine. The sun is setting, grazing(up against) the horizon. That same sun is the not any old star.
Like it Sarahdaraand look forward to more paragraphs.

ieuan · 12-17-2007, 05:26 PM

Uhm Olly, I thought it was a great read for a 14 year old, I thought it much better than my own writing, I was trying to help and edited the piece for her, but I always say it's your work and you decide. I though this was a workshop and we were to try to help. I wasn't rude in any way and tried very much to be positive about her writing. I said to her:

I have taken the liberty to cut out some of the wordiness, you don’t have to agree with me. It is your piece and you have to decide if it works in your larger story, but to me I found it to be slightly better as it stands. I hope you don’t mind me messing with your stuff.

I've known winter days of 80 degrees farenheit, and I took frozen to mean dried sand, that sets, like cement, in a hard crust. Grazing means an animal eating grass in the U.K. and thought she had made a mistake, I assumed she meant gazing, does grazing mean looking in the U.S.A. if it does out cultural and language is getting further away.

I complimented her on here work:

You wrote very well this skant (as in scantily clad or short paragraph) paragraph

I also said:

It is a pleasure to read and I imagined these thoughts going through the mind

You lost me with this remark Olly, Does it mean something, I can't fathom it out.

That same sun is the not any old star.

I mean have I done something wrong to try an encourage a young writer?

I know she meant to write it that way, I think my own edit was better, so how do we crit if we are going to be afraid to put our thoughts down, is it going to help the writer? Was I savage in my crit? Well I don't know, I thought I was reasonable.

Did she mean it was 80 degrees below freezing? It wasn't clear if she did.

Why don't you pm me and let my know I feel so embarressed now, as If i have done something wrong.

Ieuan

sarahdara123 · 12-17-2007, 05:29 PM

I had no real plot when I was writing this, I really wanted it to all be up to your imagination. I wanted everyone to interpret it on their own but this was what i thought of:

what was going through my mind when I was writing it was that I was out on this abandoned beach in the winter with snow in the sand. I bend down to cup the mixture, gaze into it, daydream about a summer day and they I'm welcomed back to reality with a harsh wind. I look back at my hands and the sand slipped through my fingers.
(this is symbolic, remembering memories of loved ones)

thank you for the editing, I'm really bad at editing. I somehow always manage to sneak by the spell check with something...
in fact, your probably going to read this and be like:
hmm, wow, she's right, she CAN'T spell.

well thank you!
toodles.

Olly Buckle · 12-18-2007, 03:40 AM

It is a workshop Ieuan, sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel that bad, I know from my own experience you can be very helpful. It was just that I felt you had read poor Sarahdara all wrong and I didn't want her to feel too bad with her first effort. The bit you didn't follow me - the clouds... cascade across the sky... into the fading star - I read the fading star as being another way of saying the setting sun, a particular star.
We all make mistakes, I didn't think the sand was literally frozen, because of the 80 degrees and the children of summertime I read it as the way sand is left by the retreating tide, frozen in ripples like the water. That will teach me to take cheap shots--wrrrong Olly. You are right about one thing I didn't catch, an excellent write for fourteen, I only caught it was her first post. That's two fourteen year olds who have joined recently and can write, have you met impactablade?

wilcan · 12-18-2007, 03:51 AM

In the Eye of the Beholder.

Sarahdara — When I first read “scant, I must admit that I too was a bit confused. My mind was prepared to see it only through the lenses of objectiveness. But in going back and rereading it, the piece became clear only when I realized that this written: to be seen and understood by the heart, “subjectively”. After that, all your words became clear as glass to me.

“Scant”, to me, is like a small unimportant painting hanging obscurely (perhaps in a dark corner) in a great art gallery. When first looked at — is seen to be just so much nonsense, painted by a novice, and one is tempted to dismiss it out of hand and leave it at that, going on to the next exhibition. But upon closer viewing and contemplation, the “method of madness” in the brush strokes of the painter is then appreciated and its message greatly savored. And of course, the thought seen by each viewer would be different and appropriate for only that person.

Ieaun — With respect to you, I don’t really believe that a 14 yr old could ever understand, properly “scant” since it premise is memories. And at that age, everything is appreciated and seen to be in the future usually, not in the past. And the reader, here, really needs a past to draw upon.

This thread, may not be an appropriate venue for these words of mine, as this is a place for criticism not platitudes. Bitter with the Sweet. Salt with the Sugar. Well, maybe I’m also getting too subjective. Again, I liked it. It actually made my morning.

An "old salt" Wilcan

ieuan · 12-18-2007, 04:48 AM

Thanks Olly, I liked her work and think we could have a great writer on our hands and maybe she will teach us, I hope so anyway. I could do with some help.

regards

ieuan

jlstratton · 12-18-2007, 07:24 AM

Sarahdara,

Thought it was wonderful and a great start. I do agree with others in that you might add something about "looking at the photograph" or write it in first-person.

Also, where you say "just below 80 degrees" you could simply say "Tepid" and let the reader decide the air temperature. This way you do not tell the reader but allude to a general feeling and allow the reader to interpret it in their own way. I only say this because I saw your writing as very poetic in word usage and meter.

Later you wrote "The setting sun grazed into the horizon ...." Maybe you could simply write "The setting sun grazed the horizon ..."

These are just my thoughts. I thought your paragraph was wonderful and it brought vivid images to my mind as I read it.

JL Stratton