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Substantive critique of that travesty of an attempt at writing: Tom Send a noteboard - 14/04/2011 06:00:16 AM
He had no regard for her anticipation, had never troubled with such niceties, and now, his lust almost murderous, he had no margin or wish to learn.

This is clearly a run-on sentence. And what the Hell does Lee mean by "margin" here? It's an awkward word that doesn't make sense in the context.

But she, who had been raped and used and left to freeze for so many years, had found in these courtships of words and blows the stimulus no rough and no cunning caress could provide.

Run-on sentence. "No rough" is hanging out there as though it were a noun but "rough" isn't a noun.

At the first surge of his body into hers, her own body surged and came to quickness.

I'll admit, it's a stylistic comment, but "quickness"? Please. Using it to mean "life" is very cliché.

Touching him, clasping him, feeling the quivering tension that ran through and through and through him, her own flesh was educated, copying his.

Did it really run through him? Because I didn't get it based on the number of times that word was repeated. Poor sentence structure to go from a string of gerunds to a verb and then back to a gerund.

And so for the first time in his selfish impoverished existence, beheld the essential duality of eroticism under him, twisting and straining and striving as he himself twisted and strained and strove.

There should be a comma between "selfish" and "impoverished", and there is NO SUBJECT to the word "beheld". That makes this perhaps the worst sentence in the whole extract. "Duality" is an abstract concept that cannot be "beheld", furthermore, and "eroticism" is as well. He could realize the duality of eroticism as he beheld her under him, but he couldn't behold the duality of eroticism under him. Also, the fact that the object of the preposition and the missing but implied subject are the same, it's really stylistically better to use "underneath" rather than simply "under". There's also no complement for "strive", which isn't really proper.

And seeing this, his eyes blackened and his heart engulfed him and he fell down on her into the great explosion of ecstasy, vaguely astonished to hear his voice cry out just as hers did.


"Vaguely astonished" is a phrase like "slightly devastated". The verb already has a level of intensity to it that makes the adverb out of place. Someone hearing their "voice cry out" is poorly worded. It should be either "his own voice" or "himself" because the reflexive cue is needed grammatically.

Ultimately, Tanith Lee just doesn't have a good grasp of the meanings of words and the proper use of the English language. She also uses "and" far, far too often. It reads like a first-grade child's book report: "And then they went to the store and they saw something and they liked it and so they bought it and then they went home."
Political correctness is the pettiest form of casuistry.

ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius

Ummaka qinnassa nīk!

*MySmiley*
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Your favorite sex scene (post here) - 10/04/2011 08:04:15 AM 1833 Views
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Sandman: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman. - 10/04/2011 07:02:28 PM 1044 Views
That is good. *NM* - 11/04/2011 01:52:31 AM 367 Views
Gaiman's American Gods. - 11/04/2011 09:17:14 AM 920 Views
This request is causing me a great deal of distress. - 11/04/2011 04:12:19 PM 1072 Views
*nods* - 11/04/2011 07:43:48 PM 953 Views
You have to type up some samples for me, b/c so far I think your crazy. I love that paragraph. *NM* - 11/04/2011 11:42:26 PM 289 Views
"you're", not "your". And the paragraph was awful. - 12/04/2011 12:28:02 AM 752 Views
Yes, and punctuation marks go inside the quodation marks, "like so." - 12/04/2011 05:16:55 PM 907 Views
Wait... they do? - 14/04/2011 03:26:10 AM 724 Views
No they don't, at least not in my reply. - 14/04/2011 05:44:50 AM 779 Views
Re: No they don't, at least not in my reply. - 14/04/2011 04:38:37 PM 710 Views
That would be wrong and ugly. - 14/04/2011 04:51:05 PM 725 Views
... *NM* - 14/04/2011 04:52:20 PM 320 Views
Substantive critique of that travesty of an attempt at writing: - 14/04/2011 06:00:16 AM 809 Views
Re: Substantive critique of that travesty of an attempt at writing: - 14/04/2011 04:30:58 PM 790 Views
Once more into the breach - 14/04/2011 05:27:37 PM 917 Views
I agree with you on some points, disagree on others. - 14/04/2011 06:57:07 PM 977 Views
Only in America - 14/04/2011 04:36:38 PM 895 Views
I understand why you like this. - 12/04/2011 02:35:37 AM 762 Views
Would one I wrote myself count? - 14/04/2011 12:23:43 PM 761 Views
No. *NM* - 21/04/2011 04:35:47 AM 319 Views
I read a good one last night... by Tanith Lee! - 16/04/2011 08:38:52 PM 677 Views
Re: Your favorite sex scene (post here) - 17/04/2011 11:24:28 PM 944 Views
Oh that Roman erotica - 22/04/2011 10:14:21 PM 729 Views
I really enjoyed that. - 23/04/2011 06:20:57 AM 711 Views

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