Reviews for Santa Ana - FictionPress.com

With Love and Squalor
2007-02-15
ch 1,

abuseI really enjoyed this story. It's rare for me to find a story on this site that can keep my attention for more than five seconds, but this was not the case for your particular story. The way it is told is very original, but there were some grammatical errors.

Good job.

Shadow Stalkr
2007-02-15
ch 1,

abuseI fell in love with this story the moment that window popped up on my screen. "If this one knows how to make dialogue, too, I'm grabbing myself a favourite." Alas, this is not the case, yet.

All right, then. First impressions come first, but other things last. If I were to make a graph of the pleasure I received from reading it, it would start off rather low, rose up for a moment. Stayed in place while the dialogue lasted and shot sky high near the end. Ironically, I would like to complain about your speeches and not the introduction.

The dialogue is dry. You use a single schematic that is barely upkept.

"Hi," she said.
"How do you do?" he asked.

etc. Everything is neat and folded, but it's bland and colourless. You capture the emotional side in this first-person perspective well, but you forget about the world. I want to see the faces move. I want to see them interact. You portray it all in a fog, a blur. It feels like losing sight, slowly. That is a horrible experience. Wake up one morning and find that everything seems liquid in your perspective. Rub your eyes and notice that it didn't change. Scary, of course. Don't scare the reader. By the way, the comma after the closing quotation mark means no capital.

Your character interaction is fast-paced, and the readers can't notice their own eyes dance in the accord of your text. But if you speed up, don't you ever hit a dead end. That will hurt you more than the reader. Since certain words really pick up the interest, people are tainted etc. "sex without THE **" sounded off to me. I don't know. That article looks like a concrete wall in your adventure. You were so fluid, so natural, informal, and then you turned back to proper literature language (unused by the majority). Keep yourself close to one style. Flakes crumble, don't be one.

You're an odd kind of person, I can say. I haven't read a story so emotionless, yet so perfect. If you wanted to make it emotional - total failure, I tell you. But, that might be actually a positive point. The audience follows line after line, but the moment they are about to yawn, they can't stop reading. There are dry drinks. They don't quench your thirst, but they have a taste, some are very good. I'd say the same thing about this work.

Oh, and before thinking that I'd call it a quit, I checked how your paragraphs begin. Bad news, colleague: most of them start with an I, the pronoun, wriggling in long rows. There goes my appreciation for you.

If only I hadn't done the previous task. You'd be happy, I'd be a pleasant reviewer and it'd be a win-win. Alas, the pronouns ruined our day. Kill them, I say.

Have a nice, abuse-free day.

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