His twenty-fourth floor window caught the lights of Guomao and twisted them, and it came to him that these were the stars under which he voyaged, his destiny spelled out in a constellation of blurred neon. From where he sat, he could almost make out the lustrous white Yintai building through the smog of a Beijing summer. Atop one of those glowing rectangles, he knew, sat Death.
Keith could almost see it now, the soft rustle of expensive black cloth slightly shifting, but still shifting more than the lips attached to the mask-like face of the girl, the girl who wanted to kill him. It had to have been in an expensive expat bar, one of those things that you find scattered across the slowly brightening cities of the developing world, beaming out their rays of money and gaudy chic into a polluted expanse of poverty and economic development each night.
He could almost hear the words now, each a monosyllabic representation of an ideogram condemning his soul to die. They were formed into phrases; between each phrase would be a languid slurp of champagne, the free champagne that the club gave away with an entry ticket. The mask had filled the table limit with orders for her friends, for her tools, by which the deed would be done; she drank none of the expensive liquers for herself; she would fire none of the bullets herself.
Just as her face was impassive, the fingers of Death were long, but did not touch him directly, merely sending icy chills down his spine, caressing his hair as he slept, flitting past his eyes in patterns he saw as clearly as the ones in the market.
He was normally a dour man, with a preposition to sell short. She did the same, with human lives instead of equities. And now--now, she was going to show him the meaning of unlimited downside potential.
 
|
not sure what to make of this, i feel like the sentences are too abstract for me to understand properly. when i used to write, i used to write in a very abstract way that felt right, and understandable, to ME....but....
then i read a book that used quite short and simple sentences. i found it conveyed the scenes and messages very crisply because it allowed me to interperet it so easily.
to me, the first paragraph might better have "night" or "darkness" in it, or remove the "summer". it didnt convey nighttime to me at first.
the next bit i got stuck at was "the slowly brightening cities of the developing world, beaming out their rays of money and gaudy chic into a polluted expanse of poverty and economic development each night. " the phrase "economic development" retracts from the message here IMO (you're trying to say the expensive bar contrasts with the surrounding poverty, but "economic development" doesnt convey poverty to me and makes the line a bit confusing.
"monosyllabic representation of an ideogram". here's what i meant earlier when i hinted that what you're conveying might be easily understood by YOU, but your reader might be grasping trying to interpret it. a lot of people would have to google to realise just what you meant here, and that doesnt make good reading.
"flitting past his eyes in patterns he saw as clearly as the ones in the market." Again, what patterns? YOU might have the scene visualised in your mind, but your readers might have to stop and figure out what sort of things you're trying to convey. you want shit to flow into your readers mind, not for them to have to ponderously interpret it by themselves based on what they think you're trying to say.
"unlimited downside potential". k well i guess this is a reference to economics? >_<
keep writing, people read shit even if they dont write comments. sometimes i even save things people write , without ever commenting on it myself
|
EPT
