# Possessions



## Jo Tampoco (Oct 29, 2012)

*This is my first submission to this website. I know it's a little longer than most other submissions (3 sides of A4). I hope it's worth it. It's very much a first draft, and I know the syntax and grammar a little idiosyncratic, but I quite like it that way. *

The first thing was that Ellie went missing. Her mother was frantic. It was their first morning in the house – early. The sun was only just coming in the windows low down on the seaward side of the house, casting a honey glow on the white walls. It was going to be another beautiful day and Ellie’s cot was empty and the wooden stairs were steep and the back door did not lock properly and there were miles and miles of marshes all around. She could be anywhere. She could be lost. Poor little round-faced Ellie, adventurous, trusting, self-contained. She might have been taken.

Down through storeys, four in all, airy and white, calling ‘Ellie! Ellie!’ No answer. She must have wandered off again, her sister says, to play with the birds. It wouldn’t be the first time. She must be here somewhere. ‘Ellie!’

Chalk white and pinewood boards, watercolours and prints on every wall, originals. Huge windows. Canvas and tapestry, oak and cedar, silks and batiks, paper shades and rainbow kites, raku pots and masks from Bali, aloes and palms, driftwood and sea-glass. Such lovely things, thinks her mother. They loved this place so very much. So very sad. ‘Ellie!’ she calls, ‘Where are you?’

Father carefully moves a ceramic puffin and a carved wooden dragon aside and crouches in one of the deep window niches. He undoes the catch, leans out three floors up and looks down at the ground – lyme grass and shingle, timber and mud, a rotting boat and a rusting bicycle. The single-track road and the shacks further on, the gift shop and the beach cafe. He calls ‘Ellie!’ And a gull comes and holds on the buffeting wind not five yards out, disinterested. He looks up. The October sky all but blue - just a wisp of ice in it. He holds his palm to the white clapboard side. It’s warm to the touch already. Nobody about. ‘Sunday’ he thinks.

The pudgy blue elephant fits in her palm, made of some sort of soft putty rubber. Ellie holds it up to look as her mother rushes in, arms open and gathers her up.
‘Be careful’ Ellie scolds. ‘You’ll hurt Sally.’
Sat across her mother’s lap, one sock on, held there tight, her Mother’s tears dot her brushed cotton shoulder. Ellie holds the little round elephant up for her father to see and her sister goes back to her room, muttering.
The girls’ play room. Of course. They hadn’t thought. Four floors down and Ellie so small and yet here she is. Last night’s arrival, too late to explore. Just a quick story and brush your teeth and then all week to play. But no, Ellie couldn’t wait.

Her father slumps in a big orange cushion and looks out the window. It’s still very quiet. The play room. A heave of nostalgia – the muslin tent ceiling, the apricot glow. Bears and rabbits, books and crayons, posters and stencils, a tinkling mobile. Warm and alive. And now they’re all gone. Unbelievable.
‘Let me have a look darling’ he says.
The lapis blue elephant is hand-hot and sports a saddle and a skull cap in red and white beads, and tiny black beady eyes. ‘What did you say her name was?’ he asks. ‘Sally’ says Ellie and he looks at his wife. Had their youngest ever met?
‘It’s ok’ says the mother. ‘She must have heard us talk about her cousin.’

*

Out all day. Back at five. Tide marks on their feet and salt in their skin. A bucket of cockle shells, a feather and a piece of drift wood with a hole in it big enough to put your finger through. A burger at the café and a paperback from the post office. A sunglasses and fleeces sort of a day. The girls are tired but it’s still light out. Father looks at a shelf of books. Walnut, he thinks. Beautiful. It had only been a few years and the place had been a wreck. His sister Jennie and her husband Mike worked for months non-stop. He had thought them insane but at least it was better than that mouldy flat in the city. What had this place been before? Some sort of warehouse before the river silted up and the curlews moved in, or maybe one of those high wooden structures for drying nets? He’d meant to ask before – before the accident. Jennie and Mike and their two children, Sally and Millie, in a car. So pointless. So stupid. He picks out a book and flicks a page and Mike is there with him, alive, he could swear. He lived for his books did Mike – trains, boats and planes. Jennie was the artist. She is everywhere. He looks about the walls and an orange light floods the room from the west and the shadows move in. ‘Jennie?’ he says, and puts the book away.

‘They’re all still here’ says his wife, in bed. He settles down beside her and looks. The low angled ceiling up under the roof, the girls next door. ‘I can feel them’ she says, ‘everywhere.’
‘They loved this place’ he says.
‘I hope they don’t mind us being here.’
‘Of course not. They’d understand.’

*

In the morning the father goes down to the car and fetches some of the cardboard boxes, a big bundle, flat pack, he can hardly handle them. His wife makes coffee. The girls play in the decomposing rowing boat at the back with toys from the play room. Ellie builds a house for the plastic farm animals from bits of wood to keep them safe while her sister sets up a spa for Millie’s Barbies. Her spa specialises mostly in mud baths. She thinks Millie would like a mud bath. She saw it in a programme once. The ladies came out all clean and relaxed.
The father stands in the middle of the living-room-come-dining-room-come-kitchen that fills the entire third floor and looks at all the things his sister and her husband collected. His wife hands him his coffee and looks too. Two hours later they are still looking. It’s not that nothing has happened. They have tried to take down the pictures, to wrap the china in tissue, to bag up the books and records - Uncle Mike’s jazz and Auntie Jennie’s classical. They just can’t seem to be able to do it. They have tried to prioritise. They have tried to think just one thing at a time, but as soon as they start the room looks so forlorn, so lost without them, as if it just doesn’t understand why its things are being taken away. So they go back where they live and the father and his wife stand, fresh coffees in hand, and can’t decide what to do. Even the kitchen utensils object.
‘If only we could take the whole house, just as it is’ he says.
‘We’ve talked about this’ she says softly.
So the things go back where they belong.
As it begins to get dark the girls come in and take the Barbies and the farm animals in the bath with them and wash them scrupulously and dry them and put them back where they live. They’re never so careful with their own toys at home.

Tuesday is the same. The girls play in the mud and the adults try to make a start packing up. The autumn sun illuminates Uncle Mike’s carefully worked and polished banisters and furniture, and Auntie Jennie’s intricate needle-work and neither of them can bear to take any of it away. It’s as if it doesn’t understand why anybody would want to come in and change things. It doesn’t seem to understand what’s happened.

*

It was early on the Wednesday when the break-in happened. Nobody had ever heard Ellie scream so loud. She’d sneaked back into the play room in the small hours and was there when the men got in through the window. Her father appeared in the doorway armed with a golf club and managed to crack one of the intruders hard across the back of the head as he fled. In the quiet aftermath Ellie was understandably shaken in her mother’s arms but more than anything she was worried for her cousins. The intruders had left a terrible mess. Ellie had hidden among the bedding when she first heard the breaking glass and she’d witnessed the kicking about and trampling that went on. She only screamed when they talked about heading up into the rest of the house and her mother told her she was a very brave girl indeed, for raising the alarm but it didn’t console her. Her cousins’ things were torn and smashed – the dressing-up box, and Sally’s paintings. One of the men had stood laughing and weed on them.

The father phoned the police and in the morning the window was boarded up. Ellie, her parents and her sister sat in the lounge with their breakfast drinks. The room in the dim morning light seemed to cower down around them. Ellie said something about Sally being hurt and wanting to go down to help her. Her father said that where Sally was she couldn’t be hurt any more but they all knew it wasn’t true. Jennie was down there in the playroom holding her crying children as Mike stormed about the place - his normally placid face wrung with anger and disbelief, and the entire house and everything in it groaned in pain and humiliation with them - every blanket, every spoon, every paperback book. In every speck and button they lived, and now it had been defiled, their refuge, their nest, their lives’ work, and there was nothing they could do about it.
And they knew it would continue to be defiled. They knew, even if not by criminals there would be estate agents and developers, letting agents and art dealers, house clearers and refuse collectors, come to break it up, break it down, over the coming months, gradually tearing it apart, this thing they had made, that had become them, with their love and optimism, and turning it into just a pile of random stuff to be bought and sold or thrown away. It was impossible.

*

Just before dawn of the following day Ellie, her sister and her mother were standing a safe distance along the road beside their car as their father walked briskly toward them from the house. He was putting something in his pocket. Already black smoke was beginning to waft from the garage door and pretty soon an orange flame emerged too. They stood and watched as, for a while nothing more happened, and then there was a rush of fire from a first floor window and after that the fire spread rapidly up into the rest of the building. By the time the fire engine arrived there was nothing to see but a tower of flames fifty feet high. They all stood and watched together. The girls cried a little but there was no need to explain that this was the only thing to do. They understood completely. The police tried to move them along but the father insisted on staying a little longer just to see that his sister and her family got away safely.

*


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## garza (Oct 29, 2012)

I'm going back to writing policy papers for MinAgFish and robbery reports for the six o'clock bulletin. 

This is an unbelievably beautiful piece of writing. Thank you.


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## Jo Tampoco (Oct 30, 2012)

Well thank you. I wasn't sure it would make sense to anyone else.


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## Abbey08 (Oct 30, 2012)

Jo Tampoco said:


> Well thank you. I wasn't sure it would make sense to anyone else.



I just finished reading this and I agree with Garza. The intertwining of the two families made it very evident how close all the members of the families were. And the ending was unexpected, at least by me, and made perfect sense in that it was perfect closure for the two families.

Lorraine


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## Jo Tampoco (Nov 2, 2012)

Thanks Lorraine. I was as surprised as anyone how they turned out - the two families I mean. They just sort of came to life before me. 
I was wondering where I should go with this piece (and the rest of my writing) next. I do have this idea of getting published somehow. Should I perhaps resubmit in a different place? I do genuinely appreciate the two comments here (although i can't believe you have no criticisms) but I'm left thinking - ok, now what?


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## Cran (Nov 2, 2012)

Jo Tampoco said:


> Thanks Lorraine. I was as surprised as anyone how they turned out - the two families I mean. They just sort of came to life before me.
> I was wondering where I should go with this piece (and the rest of my writing) next. I do have this idea of getting published somehow. Should I perhaps resubmit in a different place? I do genuinely appreciate the two comments here (although i can't believe you have no criticisms) but I'm left thinking - ok, now what?



Patience, _grasshopper_. Your piece has only been up for a few days, 
and despite the potential that has appealed to those who have commented 
(and others), deeper crits are on the way. 

As a rule of thumb, the longer and more complex the piece, the longer it takes
to get balanced feedback. 

At first sight, formatting issues, compound sentences and associated punctuation
already stand out, but as it's after 5am here in the West Oz Wheatbelt and the 
brightening day requires attention, details will have to wait.


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## Abbey08 (Nov 2, 2012)

Jo Tampoco said:


> Thanks Lorraine. I was as surprised as anyone how they turned out - the two families I mean. They just sort of came to life before me.
> I was wondering where I should go with this piece (and the rest of my writing) next. I do have this idea of getting published somehow. Should I perhaps resubmit in a different place? I do genuinely appreciate the two comments here (although i can't believe you have no criticisms) but I'm left thinking - ok, now what?



Hi, Jo. Just wanted to let you know that this piece has been nominated to Motley Press for publication. The nomination quotation is 





> QUOTE=garza;1572174]'Possessions' by new member Jo Tampoco. A bit of cleaning up is needed, but only a very little bit.[/QUOTE


 It is important to note that you need to clean up this piece to get it up to par for publication.

As Cran has said, it hasn't been up very long. It's hard for me to thoroughly critique fiction since my fields are poetry and photography/visual art. I hope you get the critique that you are looking for.

Lorraine


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## Cran (Nov 2, 2012)

garza said:


> 'Possessions' by new member Jo Tampoco. A bit of cleaning up is needed, but only a very little bit.


If you click on the little blue button [>>] inside the quote, it will take you to the original post.


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## Cran (Nov 3, 2012)

> *It's very much a first draft, and I know the syntax and grammar a little idiosyncratic, but I quite like it that way. *


Apart from poor formatting, random punctuation, an over-developed tendency to list, and poorly constructed compound sentences alternating with sentence fragments, the story has a continuity or clarity issue.

Basically, it is two stories cobbled together. In the first, a little girl goes missing and there is no clear mention of her being found or why she disappeared.

The elephant and playroom pars are perhaps intended to be the solution*, but they read more like a flashback leading to a possible search target which was inexplicably overlooked during the four-storey descending search. This impression is reinforced by the window-viewing pars immediately before and after the elephant and playroom pars.

*If that is the case, then these scenes are simply a diversion from the main story, which is about arson as the solution to winding up a family estate.

The suspension of disbelief is stretched beyond limit with one hundred and fifty foot high flames from a four storey house, and people and police standing on the edge of the house block to watch. Flames that reach the height of a fourteen storey building (ie, 150 feet) would lead to the immediate forced evacuation of the entire block, headline news and official enquiries.

........................

*Possessions*

*By Jo Tampoco*


The first thing was that Ellie went missing. Her mother was frantic. It was their first morning in the house – early.[C1]  The sun was only just[C2]  coming in the windows low down on the seaward side of the house, casting a honey glow on the white walls. It was going to be another beautiful day and Ellie’s cot was empty and the wooden stairs were steep and the back door did not lock properly and there were miles and miles of marshes all around.[C3]  She could be anywhere. She could be lost. Poor little round-faced Ellie,[C4]  adventurous, trusting, self-contained. She might have been taken.

Down through storeys, four in all,[C5]  airy and white, calling ‘Ellie! Ellie!’ No answer. She must have wandered off again, her sister says, to play with the birds. It wouldn’t be the first time. She must be here somewhere. ‘Ellie!’

Chalk white and pinewood boards;[C6]  watercolours and prints on every wall, originals[C7]. Huge windows. Canvas and tapestry, oak and cedar, silks and batiks, paper shades and rainbow kites, raku pots and masks from Bali, aloes and palms, driftwood and sea-glass. Such lovely things, thinks her mother. They loved this place very much. So very sad.[C8]  ‘Ellie! Where are you?’

 [C1]Superfluous.
[C2]Common tautology
[C3]Unpunctuated compound sentence
[C4]Should be a semi-colon
[C5]The focus was already low down on the seaward side – what is this?
[C6]The rest of the lists in this par are separated by commas; why a semi-colon here?
[C7]Prints by definition are not originals.
[C8]Odd commentary



Father carefully moves a ceramic puffin and a carved wooden dragon aside and crouches in[C1]  a window sill, undoes the catch, leans out three floors up and looks down at the ground – lyme grass and shingle, timber and mud, a rotting boat and a rusting bicycle. The single-track road and the shacks further on; the gift shop and the beach cafe.[C2]  He calls ‘Ellie!’ And a gull comes and holds there on the buffeting wind not five yards out, disinterested. He looks up. The October sky all but blue - just a wisp of ice in it. He holds his palm to the white clapboard side. It’s warm to the touch already. Nobody about. ‘Sunday’ he thinks.

The pudgy blue elephant fits in her palm, made of some sort of soft putty rubber. Ellie holds it up to look as her mother comes down, arms open and gathers her up. ‘Be careful’[C3]  Ellie scolds. ‘You’ll hurt Sally.’ Sat across her mother’s lap, one sock on, held there tight, her Mother’s tears dot her brushed cotton PJs, and she holds the little round elephant up for her father to see and her sister goes back to her room, muttering.[C4] 
The girls’ play room. Of course. They hadn’t thought. Last night’s arrival, too late to explore, just a quick story and brush your teeth and then all week to play, but no, Ellie couldn’t wait.[C5] 

 [C1]'on', but more likely 'before' - have you ever tried to undo a window latch when crouching on the sill?
[C2]List
[C3]comma
[C4]Line return needed
[C5]Are these two pars meant to be the solution? The girl is now found? Because it reads more like a flashback memory and possible place to look – although how a room was missed on the room by room search is not explained.



Another window, her father sits on a cushion and looks out. The ground floor is just below the level of the road. The crumbling edge of the tarmac is at eye level. It’s still very quiet. He looks around the room. A heave of nostalgia – the muslin tent ceiling, the apricot glow. The fluffy bears and rabbits, books and crayons, posters and stencils. A tinkling mobile. Hardly room to move. Stuffed with well-loved toys.[C1]  Warm and alive. His favourite place. And now they’re gone.[C2] 
‘Let me have a look darling’[C3]  he says.[C4] 
The lapis blue elephant is hand-hot and sports a saddle and a skull cap in red and white beads, and tiny black beady eyes. ‘What did you say her name was?’ he asks. ‘Sally’[C5]  says Ellie and he looks at his wife.
‘It’s ok’, she says. ‘She must have heard us say the name.’

Out all day. Back at five.[C6] Tide marks on their feet and salt in their skin. A bucket of cockle shells, a feather and a piece of drift wood with a hole in it big enough to put your finger through. A burger at the café and a paperback from the post office. A sunglasses and fleeces sort of a day.[C7]  The girls are tired but it’s still light out. [C8] Father looks at a shelf of books. Walnut, he thinks, so beautifully put together. [C9] It had only been a few years ago and the place had been a wreck. His sister Jennie and her husband Mike had worked for months on it, non-stop. He had thought they were insane but at least it was better than that mouldy flat they’d had in the city. What had this place been before? Some sort of warehouse before the river silted up and the curlews moved in, or maybe one of those high wooden structures for drying nets? He’d meant to ask before, well, before the accident. Jennie and Mike and their two children, Sally and Millie, in a car accident. So pointless. So stupid. [C10] He picks out a book and flicks a page and Mike is there with him, alive, he could swear. He lived for his books[C11]  did Mike – trains, boats and planes. Jennie was the artist. She is everywhere. He looks about the walls and an orange light floods the room from the west and the shadows move in. ‘Jennie?’ he says, and puts the book away.

 [C1]Another list
[C2]Line return
[C3]comma
[C4]Line return
[C5]comma
[C6]Diary entry
[C7]Combined list and diary entry
[C8]Par break
[C9]Par break
[C10]Par break
[C11]comma


‘It’s like they’re still here’ says his wife, in bed. He settles down beside her and looks. The low angled ceiling up under the roof, the girls next door. ‘I can feel them’ she says, ‘everywhere.’[C1] 
‘They loved this place’ he says.[C2] 
‘I hope they don’t mind us being here.’[C3] 
‘Of course not. They’d understand.’

In the morning[C4]  the father goes down to the car and fetches some of the cardboard boxes,[C5]  a big bundle, flat pack, he can hardly handle them. His wife makes coffee. The girls play in the decomposing rowing boat at the back with toys from the play room. Ellie builds a house for the plastic farm animals from bits of wood to keep them safe while her sister sets up a spa for Millie’s Barbies. Her spa specialises mostly in mud baths. She thinks Millie would like a mud bath. She saw it in a programme once. The ladies came out all clean and relaxed.[C6] 
The father stands in the middle of the living-room-come-dining-room-come-kitchen and looks at all the things his sister and her husband collected in their life here. His wife hands him his coffee and looks too. Two hours later they are still looking. It’s not that nothing has happened. They have tried to take down the pictures, to wrap the china in tissue, to bag up the books and records - Uncle Mike’s jazz and Auntie Jennie’s classical. They just can’t seem to be able to do it. They have tried to prioritise. They have tried to think just one thing at a time, but as soon as they start the room looks so forlorn, so lost without them, as if it just doesn’t understand why its things are being taken away. So they go back where they were and the father and his wife stand, fresh coffees in hand, and can’t decide what to do. Even the kitchen utensils object.[C7] 

 [C1]line return
[C2]line return
[C3]line return
[C4]comma
[C5]semi-colon
[C6]line return
[C7]line return


‘If only we could take the whole house, just as it is’[C1]  he says.[C2] 
‘We’ve talked about this’ she says softly. ‘You know we can’t do that.’[C3] 
So the things go back where they belong.[C4] 
As it begins to get dark the girls come in and take the Barbies and the farm animals in the bath with them and wash them scrupulously and dry them and put them back where they belong. They’re never so careful with their own toys at home.

Tuesday is the same. The girls play in the mud and the adults try to make a start packing up. The autumn sun illuminates the beautiful objects all around the walls and Uncle Mike’s carefully worked and polished banisters and furniture, and Auntie Jennie’s intricate needle-work and neither of them can bear to take any of it away. It’s as if it doesn’t understand why anybody would want to come in and change things. It doesn’t seem to understand what’s happened.[C5] 

It was early on the Wednesday when the break-in happened. Nobody had ever heard Ellie scream so loud. She’d sneaked back into the play room in the small hours and was there when the men got in through the window.[C6]  Her father appeared in the doorway armed with a golf club and managed to crack one of the intruders hard across the back of the head as he fled. In the quiet aftermath Ellie was understandably shaken in her mother’s arms but more than anything she was worried for her cousins. [C7] The intruders had left a terrible mess. Ellie had hidden among the bedding when she first heard the breaking glass and she’d witnessed the kicking about and trampling that went on. She only screamed when they talked about heading up into the rest of the house and her mother told her she was a very brave girl indeed,[C8]  for raising the alarm[C9]  but it didn’t console her. Her cousins’ things were torn about and smashed – the dressing-up box, and Sally’s paintings. One of the men had stood laughing and weed on them.

 [C1]comma
[C2]line return
[C3]line return
[C4]line return
[C5]It is the same – repetition in a short story = waste
[C6]This is a different story.
[C7]Par break
[C8]No comma
[C9]Comma


The father phoned the police and in the morning the window was boarded up. Ellie, her parents and her sister sat in the lounge with their breakfast drinks. The room in the dim morning light seemed to cower down around them. Ellie said something about Sally being hurt and wanting to go down to help her. Her father said that where Sally was she couldn’t be hurt any more but they all knew it wasn’t true. [C1] Jennie was down there in the playroom holding her crying children as Mike stormed about the place; his normally placid face wrung with anger and disbelief, and the entire house and everything in it groaned in pain and humiliation with them; every blanket, every spoon, every paperback book.[C2]  In every speck and button they lived, and now it had been defiled, their refuge, their nest, their lives’ work, and there was nothing they could do about it. [C3] 
And they knew it would continue to be defiled. They knew, even if not by criminals[C4]  there would be estate agents and developers, letting agents and art dealers, house clearers and refuse collectors,[C5]  come to break it up, break it down, over the coming months, gradually tearing it apart, this thing they had made, that had become them, with their love and optimism, and turning it into just a pile of random stuff to be bought and sold or thrown away.[C6]  It was impossible.

Just before dawn of the following day Ellie, her sister and her mother were standing a safe distance along the road beside their car as their father walked briskly toward them from the house. He was putting something in his pocket. Already black smoke was beginning to waft from the garage door and pretty soon an orange flame emerged too. They stood and watched as, for a while nothing more happened, and then there was a rush of fire from a first floor window and after that the fire spread rapidly up into the rest of the building. [C7] By the time the fire engine arrived there was nothing to see but a tower of flames a hundred and fifty feet high[C8] . They all stood and watched together. The girls cried a little but there was no need to explain that this was the only thing to do. They understood completely. The police tried to move them along but the father insisted on staying a little longer just to see that his sister and her family got away safely.
 [C1]Par break
[C2]Compound sentence ending with another list
[C3]A messy compound sentence of fragments. Line return
[C4]comma
[C5]semi-colon
[C6]the messiest compound-list sentence yet
[C7]Par break
[C8]From a four-story house? Highly unlikely; with flames at a hundred and fifty feet (the height of a fourteen storey building), the entire block would be forcibly evacuated as the first priority.


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## Jo Tampoco (Nov 8, 2012)

Ok - well I suppose I asked for this. Patience - yes. Not my strong point.

First up - "Basically, it is two stories cobbled together. " No it's not. I've shown this to a few people and I don't think anyone else has read it that way. There are no flash-backs. 
"...the main story, which is about arson as the solution to winding up a family estate."
This is just a sneer - which makes me wonder if you should be critiquing this sort of thing at all. 

Second - almost every thing you've 'corrected' I did on purpose. You may not like it but I like short sections and line returns and semi-lists (and I don't much like semi-colons. Take them out - I don't care!) For me it's like the difference between a photo-realist landscape and something more impressionist or water-colour. The former is very clever and no doubt more technically correct but the latter have more life and energy. You find it messy. I guess it's a matter of taste. 
A small example "‘Let me have a look darling’[C3] he says.[C4] "
You want a comma after "darling", but to me that says "‘Let me have a look darling’ [pause] he says", which is not how it is said in life. I think punctuation should serve the writer, not vice-versa.
'Only just', likewise may technically be a tautology but people around here say it. (Actually I'm not sure it is a tautology. I'm not sure what the difference is between saying "she just did it" and "she only just did it" but there is a difference. The latter perhaps implies an even more recent occurrence.) 

Thirdly, to be honest, yes, I'm not sure how high flames from a building like this would climb. Maybe I should have done some research but I'm not sure it really matters. It is a tall timber building though ("maybe one of those high wooden structures for drying nets") and our Nov 5th bonfires here in the UK go to 70 feet or so I think. And where did you get the idea that it is part of a block? The para about the Father in the window (it's a wide sill btw - that's how he sits in it) I thought made it pretty clear that the house stands pretty much alone on the road through the marsh (apart from a few shacks further down, post office and cafe.) Maybe i need to make that clearer, or maybe you need to read a bit more carefully - not just looking for punctuation errors. 
In any case, even if you're right about the height of the flames, the fact that this one 'fact' seems to be so important to you makes me think I'm talking to the wrong person about my writing. You do come over as terribly scathing and dismissive, and I'm not sure you're a person I'd want to work with.


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## Cran (Nov 8, 2012)

Well, that's editors for you - you won't like what most have to say. Right now I have the task of editing your piece for possible publication in Motley Press - your attitude has some bearing on this. 

Punctuation is punctuation. The line returns was saying you need to put an extra one in, not remove the one that's there. 

A sill is the flat ledge that the window sits on - that's why you cannot sit or crouch in a sill, only on a sill. 

The flames - a suspension of disbelief can only go so far - knock a hundred feet off the flames, and you'd have a four story house fire. Bonfires are designed to burn high - houses are not.


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## Jo Tampoco (Nov 9, 2012)

Ok - the thing is I'm not at all averse to constructive criticism. If it had been more of a conversation - more 'what were you trying to achieve here?' or 'what did you mean by this?' I could have dealt with it, but it wasn't. 
I've looked back at your crit, and sensitive soul that I know I am, I still can't really see it as anything other than a hatchet job. Look - 
"Apart from poor formatting, random punctuation, an over-developed tendency to list, and poorly constructed compound sentences alternating with sentence fragments, the story has a continuity or clarity issue. Basically, it is two stories cobbled together. In the first, a little girl goes missing and there is no clear mention of her being found or why she disappeared."
That's pretty harsh don't you think?

Besides the fact that you just didn't understand the story (and got your facts wrong - of course there are original prints - silk screen? Lithograph? Wood cuts?), this crit really is just completely damning. There is nothing positive whatsoever here. And this given that in the posting about posting it says "before you post something put yourself in the author's position. How would you construe your reply if someone else posted it on your work? Consider this before you post, and temper your words if necessary."
If instead you'd asked what I meant by 'in the sill' I'd have explained about how I visualised it being a very deep-set window and we could have talked about how I could have explained that better. As for the flames' size - I really don't think it matters that much but we could have talked about making it more plausible or convincing. One way or another it's an old timber building and it's going to be one heck of a conflagration.
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And I don't agree that 'punctuation is punctuation'. Like vocabulary, I believe punctuation is a creative tool. This is creative writing remember - not  a scientific journal. I know the difference. My training is in biology and I know how to use punctuation. I chose to do something different here because it seemed right for the job. (There is a danger I often feel in insisting on too correct punctuation in everybody sounding the same - like Oxbridge grads.) Obviously you can't just punctuate any old how or the work would be incomprehensible but you can bend the rules, or even sometimes break them if it seems to serve the work better.

Anyway. The take home message is that perhaps you need to think about how you come across. This all feels very high-handed to me, and if that means we can't work together, or even that I can't do anything much on this forum, well, so be it. [/FONT][FONT=Tahoma, Calibri, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif]
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## Cran (Nov 9, 2012)

Jo Tampoco said:


> Ok - the thing is I'm not at all averse to constructive criticism. If it had been more of a conversation - more 'what were you trying to achieve here?' or 'what did you mean by this?' I could have dealt with it, but it wasn't.
> I've looked back at your crit, and sensitive soul that I know I am, I still can't really see it as anything other than a hatchet job. Look -
> "Apart from poor formatting, random punctuation, an over-developed tendency to list, and poorly constructed compound sentences alternating with sentence fragments, the story has a continuity or clarity issue. Basically, it is two stories cobbled together. In the first, a little girl goes missing and there is no clear mention of her being found or why she disappeared."
> That's pretty harsh don't you think?


Harsh, yes. If you can take it, you have a future - if not, better to get out now. Harsh, yes, because it's worth it. This isn't kindergarten; you don't get gold stars and smileys just for turning up - if you want that, go to Facebook. I'm not here to make friends; I don't waste time on lost causes. You don't need to be told what's right with your story, or your writing; you already know that. You wanted to know what could be improved, where to pay attention on the next one, and the thousand after that. There are plenty who will tell you what you want to hear; few who will tell you what you should hear - which would you rather?  



> Besides the fact that you just didn't understand the story (and got your facts wrong - of course there are original prints - silk screen? Lithograph? Wood cuts?), this crit really is just completely damning. There is nothing positive whatsoever here. And this given that in the posting about posting it says "before you post something put yourself in the author's position. How would you construe your reply if someone else posted it on your work? Consider this before you post, and temper your words if necessary."


Been in both positions many times over more than 30 years, and learned that sharp cuts heal fastest. Yes, I could have coated my reply and comments, but you were impatient for something more than generic praise, and I had less time to donate to your piece than I would have preferred. 




> If instead you'd asked what I meant by 'in the sill' I'd have explained about how I visualised it being a very deep-set window and we could have talked about how I could have explained that better. As for the flames' size - I really don't think it matters that much but we could have talked about making it more plausible or convincing. One way or another it's an old timber building and it's going to be one heck of a conflagration.


Don't get stuck on the two simplest errors that would take less than ten seconds to fix. Yes, we could have had a long back and forth which would have ended up with either _on the sill_ (the simplest), or _in the window niche_ (or some other word which means the same thing). Similarly, we could have introduced references and research into the nature and physics of building fires, which still would have ended up with roughly fifty foot flames. 




> And I don't agree that 'punctuation is punctuation'. Like vocabulary, I believe punctuation is a creative tool. This is creative writing remember - not  a scientific journal. I know the difference. My training is in biology and I know how to use punctuation. I chose to do something different here because it seemed right for the job. (There is a danger I often feel in insisting on too correct punctuation in everybody sounding the same - like Oxbridge grads.) Obviously you can't just punctuate any old how or the work would be incomprehensible but you can bend the rules, or even sometimes break them if it seems to serve the work better.


I'm a firm advocate and believer in _Rule 2_, but I don't accept it as a justification for lazy work.




> Anyway. The take home message is that perhaps you need to think about how you come across. This all feels very high-handed to me, and if that means we can't work together, or even that I can't do anything much on this forum, well, so be it.


Perhaps, but coming across is a case by case thing - you get what you give.


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## Jo Tampoco (Nov 17, 2012)

Well, first up, I'm glad we're still having a conversation.

You say "You don't need to be told what's right with your story, or your writing; you already know that."
I don't think you can assume this. I like what I've written, sure, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to anyone else. I don't want gold stars and crap, obviously (you really can be very patronising) but I do need to know what comes over well as well as badly. Otherwise it seems like I might be trying to polish a turd. 
I expected some changes. I don't care too much about where the commas go, and semi-colons? I like dashes usually but I experiment with semi-colons sometimes. (Where are these rules BTW - rule 2 for example?) I'm less flexible about line returns. I tend to use them very deliberately, but we can talk about that if you did want this for the newsletter (probably not now I guess.) The height of the flames and the architectural details i can refine. 
I'm more concerned about how you so completely misunderstood the story (the 'two stories cobbled together' hypothesis) and wonder how many others didn't get it (though perhaps enjoyed it). That, it seems to me, needs attending to.


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## Heid (Nov 18, 2012)

I quite enjoyed the piece. It had a certain melancholic realism to it and the setting made the piece feel quaint and delightful but interspersed with a touch of sadness and forlorn. Personally I liked the list style descriptions. They were punchy and rhythmic and it filled in the gaps in the scenery without delving into too much superfluous detail.

However, I do agree with Cran about some of the finer points of the story. The syntax does need tweaking to make the story visually easier to read. I was also a little disheartened by Ellie being found so easily and so soon in the piece. It felt a little too anticlimatic for me. There are some abiguities that made me go back and read some sentences twice ("Is this a flashback or have they found Ellie then?") and I also noticed that you changed from present-tense to past-tense halfway through the story leaving me to wonder which bits were happening and when.

As a side: please try to understand that if you are posting a piece of writing on a public forum that houses professional writers, editors and critiques there will be times when you may not like what's being said about the work you poured your heart and soul into. I imagine just about everyone on this forum has been in the same situation. It's best to detach yourself from your work when being critiqued and know that it's not a personal commentary. Speaking as someone who has been writing for nearly a decade (but has yet to break into it professionally) believe me when I say that you _want_ this kind of feedback.

And Cran, you are clearly a thorough editor/critic and I would love for you to look at some of my work. But that's for another post


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## Jo Tampoco (Nov 20, 2012)

Thanks Heid
It's had a pretty mixed response hasn't it. 
It actually started out as a kind of prose poem - hence the rhythmic lists. It was a way of working my way into the piece in a spontaneous way, which I intended to make into proper sentences later. Then when I looked back at it I liked the effect and kept it. I think it's fresh and light but I know not everyone will agree.

This thing with Ellie being lost and found. I've had a look at it and I can see why there's some confusion. I intended it as just a lively way into the story but it's a bit of a red herring. It allows me to introduce the family and describe the house and its location in a brisk sort of way. The styles of the first few paras are intended to reflect the mother's panic, the father's detachment and the sister's exasperation.  I  deliberately set up the anti-climax to lull the reader into a false sense of cosy family life (with it's tiny dramas) so that the real story has more impact. 
Anyway I've done some re-writing to try and make it a little more obvious (although I don't want to have to spell it out.) I can post the revisions some time if anyone's interested.
Tenses - I do some paras in the present tense to get at people's immediate emotional responses where the past tense seems to be too distanced. All I can say is it feels right to me.

As for your last point. I don't want to go on about it any more. Suffice it to say I probably respond better to a more open, egalitarian style - not so much the _*Word From On High. 
*_I've been writing for some time too btw. The other stuff is novels though (in a more conventional prose style) so not really suitable here. I might post some bits. I don't know.


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