Critiques of Trailer of the Temptress by Zoetrope workshop members

Zoetrope online writers workshop is a defunct site that was run by Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope All-Story.

    Greg T. --  i liked the story, but i believe there are some aspects of
    it you could change to make it more affective. dialogue was
    the main problem. you need more dialogue between you and
    the first two characters. without it, they weren`t
    believable. you observed a lot about them (physical traits,
    enviroment, etc.), but i found it hard believing they were
    real people. put life into them. that`s your job as a
    writer. it could be my opinion, but descriptions don`t make
    characters affective. actions do. 
    i enjoyed the incorporataton of fairy tales into the
    encounters with the characters. it put a refreshing twist
    on the story. sometimes i felt it was a little vague.
    incorporation, like the kind you did in your story, is
    hard. to make it affective, is twice as hard. my suggestion
    to you would be to work on clarity and fluidity. 
    your puncuation was pretty good overall, but watch how you
    use those commas. one problem i saw was with placement in
    between adjectives describing a noun. if the adjective
    describes the noun separately use a comma. if it doesn`t
    there`s no need. spelling was also a problem in a few
    places too. i have the same problem. work on it. 
    the best advice i can give you is read, read, read! great
    books are never hard to find. learn from the masters. good
    luck! 
    p.s. don`t take what i say too seriously. i don`t. 


    Victor Z -- Very interesting and
    entertaining story. I specially enjoyed how you mingled the
    magical characters in our more mundane world. 
    Just a couple of observations. There are a few sentences
    that you begin with "and", cardinal sin. There is also once
    sentence that I`ve reprinted below that needs to be
    reworked. You`ve linked to many things together with too
    many "ands". 

    And the shelves were covered with German cuckoo clocks and
    kissing Dutch tots and glass kittens cleaning themselves
    and ceramic figurines of anorexic faeries holding flowers
    and golden angels blowing trumpets and purple plastic Happy
    Meal gorillas and three issues of Popular Mechanics and a
    broken remote control for a TV that`s been gone 15 years
    and more ceramic figurines and glass hearts and fake orange
    flowers and wooden clothespins. 

    You`ve got an imaginative and entertaining style, good luck
    with your story. 


    Betty A -- I like it! However, I do
    find many "ly" ending words and suggest they be removed or
    find a method to use vivid verbs to replace them. Also, I
    noticed many tense shifts as "pull" should have been
    pulled. 

    Overall a delightful story. 


    David E -- Rob, the writing is
    definitely of professional standard. The idea is terrific. 

    But the criterion that matters in any fantasy is the reader
    is able to suspend disbelief during the course of the
    story. 

    Too much weirdness, too quickly, spoils the taste. Somebody
    clever once told authors that they should be content with
    "one big lie" in each story. 

    I was sucked in totally by the troll, but had lost the plot
    by the time I got to the temptress. 

    I genuinely think you`re on to a terrific idea. But I also
    think that any one of your favourite weirdos would make a
    better story than the whole lot put together. 

    Incidentally, I think your last line is very, very good. 


    Michael F -- I enjoyed this story
    because of its satisfactory blending of the mundane and the
    fantastic (meals on wheels being delivered to goblins,
    etc.). I often find the everyday world feels fantastic and
    supernatural when you really look at it in a certain way,
    so there was something pleasing about the way the author
    mixed the two. I also appreciated the author`s basic prose
    skills. Northrup is obviously a very experienced writer or
    a very talented beginner, because the prose flowed smoothly
    and never felt over or under-written. There were no
    howlers, groaners or reaching for effect. It takes either a
    lot of practice or a tremendous amout of raw talent to
    write prose that seems so effortless. What I found wanting
    in the story was -- to put it simply -- a story. Once the
    author set the scene I waited for something to happen that
    would engage me or make me care what was going to happen
    next. I know that many writers are mood or language
    oriented and disdain plot, but I find that the best mood
    pieces have some kind of dramatic tension underpinning
    them, and I felt the lack of that here. Despite the good
    writing and engaging, imaginative locale described, I found
    my mind wandering about 3/4 of the way through, because
    there was no realy story to engage me. However, I do
    appreciate the talent and skill that went into this work,
    and the piece worked for me 75% even without a story, which
    is saying something. 


    Larry S -- 

    Things of note: 
    >this wide flowering shrub 
    A mention of type of shrub perhaps ... this seems kind of
    flat (I do it often myself). 

    >And the shelves were covered ... 
    This is one whopper of a sentence. I could have read it
    better had it been broken up a bit. 

    >Strong girl if you carry goats for me 
    I guess I hadn`t guessed the narrator was a girl 
    up to now. Was that intentional? 

    >The trailers near the front of Sunshine Court 
    This paragraph contained what I thought was well 
    done description. 

    General Impression: 
    You have some passages that give very good description. 
    I think you help engage sparks of imagination in all of us.

    I believe the story may have began better if the troll`s 
    existence was dropped on the reader almost immediately. 
    He/she would then have known right away that this story 
    held something unusual. 

    I didn`t see enough dialog to comment much. The 
    characters could have been described more. I was 
    well into the story before I had any vision of the 
    main character, and only received scant details of 
    most other characters. 

    Thanks for the excursion into the land of imagination. 


    gina F B -- I thought this was a
    great story. Very imaginative with the right abmount of
    reality mixed in to make it totally believable. I thought
    the voice of the narrator was great, the language used was
    perfect. I really liked all the imagery and dialogue. The
    part where you used the run-on sentance to describe the
    trolls nik-naks was perfect, really gave the impression of
    a crowded junk shop. In my opinion the section with the 150
    year old woman and the troll were the best. For some reason
    I didn`t think the middle shut-in was as developed as it
    could have been. I liked your ending, thought it fit really
    well.