The Space

[RTL]

Test.

[Delta40]

well I think you made space so tangible as to make me want to hold it. Its an odd piece and not too long. your beginning was well structured.

[hillwalker]

An interesting piece - with an annoyingly self-conscious style that creates a claustrophobia all of its own. You have the ability to create unease without actually identifying what might be causing it.

You asked for criticism regarding the writing itself rather than the story-line.....

1) repetition - it's fine to keep repeating the phrase 'the space' (up to a point - although you do tend to overdo it here) because you are obviously using the repetition to generate tension - but phrases like 'much else' (appearing twice in sentence 2 and 4) need tidying up.

2) A pet hate of mine : 'A staircase that lead to another door' - 'lead' should be spelt 'led'

3) 'The door opened! A man rushed through the door! The man, immediately looking confused, looked into the space.' doesn't quite work for me; 'the door'/'the man'/'the door'/'the man' is trying too hard to inject a bit of action perhaps, or uncertainty into the writing, and it fails (also 'looking confused, looked into...' is pretty grim use of repetition isn't it?
And can you actually rush through a door? or do you mean doorway?

4) another couple of strange images -
'he ran towards the stairs and climbed upon them' - How?
and
'Reaching the last step, he placed his hand on the doorknob..'
- which doorknob? if it's the one on the door he opened originally he must have exceptionally long arms.

In terms of grammatical furnishings like semi-colons - if you were to write the first two sentences as one complete sentence, you could use a semi-colon thus:
'It was a space; not much else.'
but it's nothing to get excited about.

My main criticism is that it is difficult to focus on any single objec or idea in this piece for too long because the writing does tend to flit from here to there and back. And in doing so the tension is lost almost as soon as it is created.

Having said that, with a little fine tuning it has potential.

H

[RTL]

Thanks for the top notch criticism! I'll definitely take these points and rework the piece.

RTL