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Review #4736695
Viewing a review of:
 The Guiding Light Open in new Window. [E]
Their meeting was as unexpected as it was transformative.
by zola Author Icon
Review of The Guiding Light  Open in new Window.
In affiliation with The WDC Angel Army  Open in new Window.
Rated: E | (4.5)
Access:  Public | Hide Review (?)
Greetings and welcome to writing.com!

An intriguing item, written with warmth and almost no dialogue. I enjoyed your careful use of words to paint pictures of Alex’s distress and the guidance he found in Mark. It feels a bit repetitive perhaps, as the same elements get used over many paragraphs, such as the streetlights and the emphasis on how significant the relationship became. But it is quite poetic, and there is no mistaking the theme by the time we reach the end of it. Although, I did wonder, when Mark finally spoke, if it was an exaggerated buildup to a joke about how stressful college math can be!

The “no dialogue” style can feel a bit monotonous, as we wait to see if there will be some action or drama to keep things exciting. It is very much a brief, lofty and removed story, elegantly described but all “tell” and no “show.” We are not told anything about Alex, his story or the specific struggles he and Mark faced together. The lack of conversation misses out on what some consider to be an important method of character development, bringing us down into the little minute ways people interact with and treat each other and allowing more room for specific details as to what is going on.

(I hesitate to say that it sounds almost AI generated, but in my personal experiments with such, I have noticed the AI avoids using dialogue and play-by-play showing techniques.)

But creative writing is a broad field, and there is room for contemplative studies such as this. If you wanted you could use this as a summary springboard to create a novel or a story story, building up Alex and Mark’s world and giving us a more exciting view of the situation. Or it can stand alone as a vignette of sorts, describing the impact of a fateful chance encounter in the dark of a city street.

Now for formatting. I always recommend using size 4 Verdana font to ensure readability across devices. The font and size and other tools can be found in the line of little boxes above the text box. It’s also a good idea to set off speech in quotation marks in a separate paragraph. Other than that it’s well written and easy to read.

Take care, thanks for sharing and keep writing *Smile* *HeartT*


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