Story: 'The Painter by the Lake.'

[fanfa 10]

Oh my goodness......thank you so much for this....thought my story had been wiped!!Am about to read criticism now

 

Thanks again

[fanfa 10]

Thanks for those really helful points, Mantaspook. Will work on them

 

Interesting you thought the gull was perched on a corpse....I hadn't even thought of that!! In my mind's eye the gull is resting on a rock that is about 20 metres from the shoreline

[fanfa 10]

All the bits you have picked out are exactly the bits I wasn't happy with! Thought the passage with the inverted commas 'feel' et al was too cliched

 

I think because I know this story so well I needed fresh eyes show me the bits I had failed to explain adequately

 

Love the idea of the gull sitting on the corpse....there is indeed a corpse somewhere in the story

 

 

Thank you agin. Your time is much appreciated

[Mantaspook 14]

Because you've stated this is part of a longer story its not within my remit to speculate too much where you are going with this, however, if this was simply a short story here's what I would have done. Please feel free to incorporate any of these elements into your story if you think they will fit.

 

Alice sits down by the lake, racked with indecision about her painting ability.

 

She notices the seagull, apparently floating on a log, it is drifting towards her, yes! that is the final piece of the composition, something in the foreground to add interest, she works in a trance, frantically trying to capture the scene before the light fails.

 

The skies darken, she notices distractedly that the gull is pecking at the log but is to busy to take much notice. Gull number two appears overhead, swoops down to attack gull number one, there is a bit of low level aerial combat, Alice's easel is knocked over and the gulls crash into the box containing her paints.

 

It starts to rain; she takes down the easel, grabs her paint box & other belongings, shielding the painting under her umbrella she makes a run for her car.

 

Once she is settled in the car she relaxes, she knows the painting is good and that she hasn't lost her ability. She looks at the painting on the back seat and notices, with horror, that the gull was sitting on a submerged corpse.

 

She thinks she is losing her mind, (it could be implied this is not the first time this has happened.) She decides to correct the painting straight away, opening the paint box she finds a human eye staring at her!

 

Anyway, that's how I'd do it.

[coyleys 10]

Oh my goodness......thank you so much for this....thought my story had been wiped!!Am about to read criticism now

 

Thanks again

 

Beware the ellipsis, for they curse the narrative.

 

To clarify, when using an ellipsis, you only need three dots, like this … not five or six.

 

Nice to hear from you Mantas, and thanks for tidying-up my mess.

Edited February 24, 2010 by Mantaspook
Fixed Vb tags

[Mantaspook 14]

thanks for tidying-up my mess.

 

You're welcome...........again. That's 11 dots

Edited February 24, 2010 by Mantaspook

[Ron Blanco 10]

What impression hae you got of Alice? Want to se if 've managedto get across what I need to

 

I think she's quite intriguing. Her tendency to put everything in inverted commas could become annoying, but apart from that she seems to have some interesting frailties which I find reassuring, making her human not robotic.

 

I'm not sure what all this talk is of corpses. I didn't get that at all. There's a bit about a figure staring intently back at her, but do corpses stare intently? I wouldn't have thought so. Instead, I got the impression that the figure was not a corpse, but related to someone else who we don't know about yet. Maybe herself, but that's just a wild guess. Her mother would be my second guess, followed by her sister, daughter or lesbian lover (in that order).

 

And then there's the anxiety and panic. I like this aspect but wasn't sure what was causing it. I assumed this would come later - maybe when we find out more about her past.

 

Is she a professional artist? She seems to feel under pressure to produce works of art, to churn them out, as if her livelihood depends on it. Personally, I would feel short-changed if I paid for a painting that had been created in that way.

Edited March 2, 2010 by Ron Blanco
removed silly comments

[fanfa 10]

Hi, Ron

 

I wasn't thinking of her seeing corpses either! I know what she has seen but not going to reveal that just yet! [but it's none of the people you listed]

 

She's an art lecturer - not really a jobbing artist. Surrounded by talented young things whi makes her increasingly unsure of her own abilities. This is partly the cause of her anxiety, it is partly caused by the figure she sees, partly by somthing else

 

Thank you very much for the feedback. I love tat different people see/find different things.

 

I shall refrain from the use of 'inverted commas' in future