Yes. THAT is bad. Well done. It's easy to pick fault with stories that were written in another era for an audience that admired long, convoluted sentences and enjoyed reading them and/or hearing them read out loud. (Dickens was an extremely popular author, and A Tale of Two Cities was a popular story.) If you can get over the use of semicolons, slow down and actually READ the sentences, and pay attention to what they're saying you'll likely find them both informative and absorbing. I don't consider either the 'dark and stormy night' excerpt OR the 'best of times worst of time' openings to be bad at all. They are just out of fashion, but I would certainly want to carry on reading. In fact, I have read A Tale of Two Cities several times, and not as a school assignment, either. But this more contemporary offering of yours carries an aura of a writer who is trying hard to cover all the bases, without actually giving us anything to either imagine or think about, doesn't it? It's just banal and wishy-washy.
Depends on the next sentence, doesn't it? That actually might be a great opener ...although muredered might be arrested by the spell checker at some point.
This one starts out fine, then dribbles down the chin: A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world. —Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
I've read it ten times now, and I cannot make head nor tail of it. What in the hell is he saying? Is it that a character in the story has come from Epsom to a Dutch enclave in Pennsylvania? (Epsom is the sort of village you tramp through on the way to somewhere you'd actually like to visit, and furthermore, it would only be known to perhaps one in a thousand readers!) And what in the heck is a coral cry?.. or for that matter, a soft stone smile?! I love juxtaposing allusions... but soft stone is a bit crude! The last stretch of words are beautifully done; but you look back over your shoulder at the rambling sentence before it, and wonder how it came to such a nice end.
I'm still scratching my head over the middle bit. Having said that, Look Homeward, Angel is a bestseller classic, so he must have done something right. Maybe it all snaps into focus in Sentence Two?
The character being introduced (in a clumsy way; this was Wolfe's first book and as such is very self-indulgent; give him a chance and the style settles down) is a stonecutter. He carves headstones for graves. The soft stone smile is the smile on the face of the angel he carves. Now re-examine coral cry, while picturing a carved rooster...
Godzilla sat down on the Golden bridge to contemplate why he was so mad all the time. Call me Moby Dick on account of I bite off some fellers leg, worst meal ever, and he's been following me ever since.
In all my years of planning, watching movies and T.V. shows to see how everyone else 'got it wrong' somehow the smell of a dead body had totally slipped my mind as I tried to wheel old Mrs. Jenkins out of the hotel.
Oh I understood the angel to be a statue of some kind, though I wasn't thinking grave stones. And I still don't get coral cry, nor Altamont either, especially how the word is being used. It's a place, I assume.
That should have been a prize-winner. I don't know if I'm more impressed by the reference to sheets as pieces of cloth, which they are not aboard a sailing vessel, or the gentle description of her lightly scented wind. I believe it is the wind, actually, as much as I love sailing. The sense of smell is awakened, and what reader would not imagine the music, as well?
The light might have shone, if not for the want, the need... of the world, and thus the story ended before it began, with 500 pages of white ended, choked hope following the end... of the wooooorld... so read on... if you want to feel that need... *rattling noises* HAhaha, what a joke. I can't believe people buy this shit. Book 3 and 10 million in the bag is as easy as hitting 'record' on a phone- HEY SHARRON, WHERE'S MY CAR KEYS!?!?!
This is what makes her feel so curious to continue to read the letters. Her cognitive skills are warped... Why? She _can not forever not Even know_ Now, _and why am I so myself traitors?_ -... so, now, this is a temporary world, this is a short time. Isk got late already.. she is just "ever so puzzled"_ and evEr so confUsing_ Her mental talking is interrupted by adrenaline - the teddy said: "Level One_ Let's have Some fUN !" _You said this for the last time, right ?_ - "u get u back right here young suN-" ... I wish I could speaks likes that, says isks, sadly. The teddy bear's red little heart glows in the darkness of twilight and it just smiles so wide and badly. Her inner voice said her to run from scary creepy happy_ever so ever so fast_ ... and she was out to step down to the night garden in the long black grass... in some time... even if she did miss that last time... excited, blooding her lip, so madly and so truly pleased to have some red adrenaline sip. All she wants to see is empty, so empty, space, so empty every where Sky to hands she looks to see the flashy language of the teddy bear : - I awaIt - U - no poor - ex - xcuses this time I - can't cAre IN fAct I jUst take U - not EV/vV/n if -thIS, , , has 2 mea//a/n - U are ALoNe - true U rANDOMSTICKI//cognt/v - Gift jusT RAMble on + on - to make no personal sense client/i/s/k///98701228gf//PErSonaL LOG_COMMENCE
I sat spellbound as the freshly-applied paint on the wall before me began, slowly, gradually, horribly, to dry.