Sorry, I’ve done three as I would welcome feedback. I seemed to struggle a bit with tense and viewpoint.
Somerton was too small to technically be called a village, and certainly not big enough to support a pub, school or post office, although it did have a regular bus service which ran every Tuesday. The narrow, winding roads had evolved from footpaths worn by agricultural labourers between the cottages and farms, in the style of a dot-to-dot puzzle. The centre, if it could be said to have such a thing, consisted of half a dozen houses clustered around the medieval church. To the casual visitor, the churchyard contained the usual collection of memorials, but to the few who knew, the most important headstone was hidden under a tangle of ivy in the eastern corner. It commemorated the life and death of John Godwin, who had lived in the village during the late eighteenth century. His claim to fame was that he was the grandfather of Mary, who had married the poet Shelley and had written Frankenstein during a drunken night in. It was rather tenuous, as claims to fame go, but was the best that Somerton had to offer.
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The Caribbean island of Anegada British Virgin Islands . Once the course is set, nothing can be seen for a while in front except the sea. Then, indistinctly at first, peeping over the horizon, a smudge appears. A sailor, new to the area, may well make a fruitless attempt to clean the mark from his binoculars. Once he sails a little closer, he will realise his mistake, as the smudge becomes identifiable as a lone palm tree. As he gets closer still, the smudge will spread out, either side at the base of the palm tree, to denote the extent of the few miles of southern shoreline.
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The town of Fircombe
I really liked the first one Julie and also the 3rd one in which the town is compared to a teenage boy. Very clever!
ReplyDeleteFirst one:
ReplyDelete‘The narrow, winding roads had evolved from footpaths worn by agricultural labourers between the cottages and farms, in the style of a dot-to-dot puzzle.’ – I would cut this out, since that’s how roads are usually formed, and the metaphor of the dot-to-dot puzzle is a bit anachronistic – it’s modern, whereas the paths themselves are ancient.
The rest of it I liked, especially the grave of Godwin and the sense of arcane knowledge (‘the few who knew’). A ‘drunken night in’ is of course not strictly true, but if you are aiming for a humorous tone throughout this could work well.
Second:
‘rather than by sight as is possible, on a clear day, between the other British Virgin Islands’ needs a comma.
‘in front’ doesn’t sound like a nautical term! Some mention of bows perhaps?
Again this had a lot going for it, especially the very clever sense of discovering or uncovering as you approach. It would benefit from being tidied up a little in terms of sentence structure.
The viewpoint problem here is that you start out talking about a generalized observer, plotting his course by chart, and then move on to an inexperienced sailor. The question rather arises as to whether the sailor is attached to a boat with a crew, or whether he is alone, and if alone, is he not plotting his course to get to the island, or is he just drifting hopefully? Probably best to cut the surprised sailor out, and for clarity’s sake continue with the generalized observer.
Third:
‘Early on the appropriate day’ – much better to name the day. This is the sense of ‘naming’ that we discussed. ‘Appropriate day’ merely sounds coy. ‘The market place would bustle with activity: the unfurling of colourful canopies; the assembling of trestle tables and the unloading of many boxes.’ would be better with the semicolon replaced by a comma.
I also liked the simile – very good!
The thrid one, to me, seems very appropriate in a novel format. I too, loved the simile of the teenage boy.
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