Comments on: OLAF 3

By: Olaf

Olaf — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:16:26 +0000

Green eyed monsters are what we call dogfish. We also call them puppies or doggies.

By: Kaylie Jones

Kaylie Jones — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:30:04 +0000

Very cool way to bring a “dog” death into the picture. Watch out for the summation, though. A lot of the short, staccato sentences are covering an awful lot of ground with little detail that explores the character’s true motivation.

By: Auggie

Auggie — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:20:35 +0000

definitely a stretch on the death of a dog challenge. but good writing, like a melville fishing lesson.
so is that what they mean by dogfish head ipa?

By: Jodi Cleghorn

Jodi Cleghorn — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:34:27 +0000

I’m coming in to agree and disagree. I felt this didn’t keep up the momentum and promise from round two.

While I am with Dan in loving the backdrop of a fisherman’s life, there is some jargon in there which lends authentic texture, but as someone who doesn’t know anything about fishing it can be disorientating – terms such as “chummer”

“He always said he couldn’t tolerate the whole Facebook scene. Now he was its poster boy. He shut down the desktop.” … I’m not certain about this and think you probably could have left it out, cashed in those extra words for something else. I’m wondering if you meant your MC (main chracter) had never wanted to be sucked into the whole FB thing and now he was. I’m also not sure on the timeframe … as your MC says it was his neice who set it up from him last week.

I felt it was just a bit disjointed after the beautiful flow from round two.

however, I’m with Dan on liking the spareness of your writing. You say quite a lot in very little and don’t burden your story down with heavy metaphors or anything like that. And there is a balance of short and long sentences which give the narrative a good flow.

I liked the fact your dog was a fish with evil green eyes. The green eyed monster staring back at him through the eyes of the fish?

And you’ve left dangling another hook. As if we’d except anything less from a fisherman?

By: Olaf

Olaf — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:54:52 +0000

If I remember right, Hemingway said writing should be like a glacier. You see part of it above water but you can tell from what you see that there’s a whole lot more below.

Well done on your latest outside participants entry. I liked the bit about coke and chips being a staple holiday diet for English kids. I didn’t realize we shared common ground.

By: danpowell

danpowell — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:23:18 +0000

I like the sparseness of this. Keeps things simple and too the point and the actions give us the feelings. Also, the insight into all things fishing is an interesting backdrop for this tale.