Yesterday night, I went to sleep completely chuffed. I found out that one of my long-forgotten stories on writing.com had received some feedback. Not one, but two readers had left remarks.


The Chord of 88 Notes
The unfortunate outcome of racing 2 grand pianos.

Your title and description are most intriguing.

Your intro really sets the scene. It's almost as if the reader is watching the events unfold and listening in, perhaps sitting in the dark auditorium.

'ponderous engines of music.' What a wonderful description, ties in well with the line from the first paragraph: 'the sort of black one would find on a well polished black BMW 745iL'. I like this kind of subtle touch in a story. Lovely craftsmanship.

Your pacing is spot on, the pianos are not moving that fast so you have time to ease up the tension as their inevitable collision approaches. You even fit in a quick physics lesson!

You obviously know a thing or two about pianos, you incorporate facts in your descriptions very well.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

I enjoyed reading this a lot. I thought the tone of comedy was great throughout, as was the pace of the narrative. The piece read smoothly and I particularly enjoyed your turn of phrase. This is a pretty crafty piece of writing.

The bits about the BMWs were great, I liked the comedy element in that. A lot of the imagery was superb and original too, this made the piece all the more enjoyable.

Comments/Suggestions

'Dimly lit by stray rays intended for the centre stage, the pianos gleamed softly, its edges glinting where they caught the light.' - This is a great sentence. The description put a vivid image in my head of the whole scenario, and the poetic effect of 'stray rays' is great. Good word choice.

'Owing to the inviolability of the natural laws of the universe commonly ascribed to the second holder of the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University, the pianos accelerated at a slow rate due to their sheer inertial mass.' - Again, the descriptions are quality here. You bring the situation to life and I like the manner in which you referred to Newton.

'What was in their eyes a scene of two racing pianofortes was now a scene of the impending collision of two steam locomotives out of control, or two raging bulls arguing over fertilizing rights to a particularly fetching cow, or two colliding stars just doing what colliding star systems usually do.' - This example demonstrates how you cleverly fuse the comic with some pretty good imagery. This works well and stood out to me as one of the best parts of the story. Good job.

I couldn't see any errors in the piece.

Thanks for the good read.
Keep up the superb writing.
KevG

After all these head-puffing comments, the natural question to ask myself was, why have I not produced anything even remotely half-decent over the past months?

Reality bites, hard. With serrated teeth.


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