Featured WRITER
Featured by IndigoSkyes
I only just discovered sea-rchlight’s gallery, and I have no idea why I didn’t find her sooner. Her writing is completely and utterly gorgeous, and I simply can’t get enough.
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[insipid]
"somebody take my body/to the sea when this is over./somebody take me/home."
I could not even begin to describe how this makes me feel. The stanzas are relatively disconnected, but everything works together perfectly.
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[muse]
"somewhere in town, a woman is collecting /my words in a plastic bag./she rearranges them into a tired song/about yesterday and wails each time /i speak her name."
The imagery in this poem is simply exquisite.
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[something broken]
"beside me/you are saying something sad/about tomorrow and i/am so sorry /i have forgotten/your name."
This is what it feels like to grow apart from someone you used to love.
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[in no cence]
"the line has been cut. something here /is so terribly broken."
Growing up is hard for everyone involved sometimes.
We
sea-rchlightFeatured CRITIQUES
drakmordis
on Tradition's Finale by FightingIsolation
Vision: 5/5 You have a dichotomous conflict established, and it is well expressed.
Originality: 4/5 This topic is widespread and perhaps overdone, but you handled it well
Technique: 4/5 As free-verse, I hate giving a score on technique. So I'll say that your stanzae are about the same length, and you have short, effective line breaks.
Impact: 2/5 That monster thing wrenched me away from what the first stanza offered. But hey, this is one voice in the wilderness.
[Read more here]
on So This is Life? by DiabolaExMachina
Flow is something in poetry that is very important; it's one of the main differences between it and prose. The reason why I said initially that I thought this was a 'sketch' of a poem is because it doesn't seem like there is a lot of thought going into the meter, and so there is not a lot that can really distinguish this from regular writing.
[Read more here]
Featured RESOURCES
Dialogue can be pivotal in a story, so here’s how to make it awesome.
Writing Tips - Dialogue
If you’re writing fiction, the dialogue is arguably one of the most important parts. And it’s the bit that’s the easiest to mess up, if we’re strictly honest. And why not? There’s so much going on in that single sentence that any number of them can go wrong; voice, character, tone, point of view, punctuation. We’ll start with punctuation, because I’ve already written that bit.
Punctuating Dialogue
Go here. I was originally going to copy and paste that part of the lesson into this lesson, but then the thing wound up being ten pages long. So, read that, and then come back to this if you feel you might need help with the mechanical bits.
When to use Dialogue
Right. So, you’ve got a story all set up in your head (or on a piece of paper if you’re inclined to pre-write), and it’s great. Your hero is blasting through space with a whole heap of misfits, and you
For you poets out there going “but what is enjambment?!”
The Breaking Point: End-stopping and EnjambmentIntroduction
The most noticeable difference between poetry and prose is often the use of line breaks in poetry. When the line break comes at the end of a phrase, sentence, or clause, the line is end-stopped. End-stopped lines often end with punctuation like periods/full stops, commas, semi-colons, and colons. When the line break disrupts the phrase, sentence, or clause, the line is enjambed. The French word enjambement, from which 'enjambment' is derived, means 'straddling,' and appropriately, the phrases straddle two or more lines.
End-Stopping
The first four lines of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" are an example of end-stopped lines:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Walt Whitman also uses end-stopped lines in "Song of Myself (I)":
I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
F
