Comments on: LEFTOVERS • by Lia Molly Deromedi

By: bc

bc — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:33:44 +0000

The long sentences don’t bother me because they are melodic. I find the rhythm int eh story and the senses evoke the music–the underlying melody in writing.

It has become all very trendy to knock longer sentences, and often such comments stem from strong editorial-sharpened experience.
And yet, there are sentence structures that force the reader to let go of their clippity-cloppity gaits and get caught up in the rapids of the music. And that is sheer magic.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:10:49 +0000

Since this is an overly familiar subject to me, I was hoping for a point or twist, but found none. It reads more like a setup for a screenplay. The Isis angle seemed forced. People in such hopeless straits aren’t going to be thinking about family planning, especially with those other seven equally desperate characters around to fight for the last morsels. And The Last Dog on Earth? It would’ve been BBQ days before things got to this point, even if the nameless MC objected.

The random commas and strung on sentences also got to me. Needs a good editor.

By: Joyce

Joyce — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:09:59 +0000

Not really a story, and grammatically, it is a nightmare. Too many commas and semi-colons. There should be actual sentences. This really distracts from the writing, but again, there really is no story here. Just yet another view of the potentially desolate post-final-war future. Nothing new or clever here.

By: bc

bc — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:08:58 +0000

I gave this story five stars.
It is poignant and complete as a flash fiction story.
Even with the dark setting, there is hope, there is a reason to put one foot in front of the other, so I do not mind the journey.

(Stephen King in The Stand made us go miles AND MILES and made us even feel sick along with the characters before he gave us any hope -although, LOL,
I am doubtful that he would be an ace at flash fiction. And, here, again, I could be wrong on that.)

The characters were developed.I start to feel them as entities beyond what you have written so that what you did write are like doors to them for me, the reader, to imagine them further.

For such a “seemingly” somber piece, I feel the power of love and mythology and archetypal continuity pulling this story and its characters towards a peace and a world worth struggling to get to (even though it is mostly beyond the horizon at the end, it is in their hands, still tracing an eyebrow for beauty, etc.).

Very compassionate and compelling writing.