Door Knocker gargoyle

Evil Face Door Knocker on Old Door in Tuscany Italy Canvas Print / Canvas Art - Artist Gordon Wood
This is a beautiful stretched-canvas print wrapped on 1.5" thick stretcher bars. The print is professionally printed, assembled, and shipped within 2 - 3 business days from our production facility in North Carolina and arrives ready-to-hang on your wall. Fine Art America is home to more than 75,000 artists from all over the world who entrust us to fulfill their print orders online. We offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on every print that we sell and look forward to helping you select your next piece. Keywords: Doorknocker Canvas Print, Door Knocker Canvas Print, Gargoyle Canvas Print, Evil Face Canvas Print, Oak Door Canvas Print

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What do you think of the story so far?
This is for an english project; bear in mind I'm in Year 9 (I'm 13) and I just started. Anyways. We are currently studying incongruity in gothic-ish stories, so please bear that in mind too. I thought of this bit, but I don't know what else to write..? It's supposed to be at least a A4 Word size font 12 page. Can you please list some ideas and tell me whether or not my story is any good? Thanks! It was a rather chilly sort of night, but the cold temperature was not what was causing my hands to shake a little as I reached out to touch the finely polished door knocker. For what seemed like the hundredth time, I stepped back, looking onwards at the extravagant mansion with more than a little apprehension. It was, without a doubt, a very intimidating place. Two monstrous gargoyles scowled fiercely at me from their hiding place amongst the shadows, their cold granite eyes shooting accusations that spoke of things that usually only disturbed mortals in the realm of nightmares. Frightening images clouded my brain in a dense fog, and I had to fight the urge to look away. A sudden glint in the corner of my eye attracted my attention, but by the time I had turned my head in that direction, the sudden spark of light had disappeared, and I was left staring at the pair of cherubs that were perching there. They were looking away, oblivious of my presence, one curled around the other as if to share some intimate secret. Their finely sculpted faces were no doubt once beautiful, but were now rough and weathered, haughty features contrasting with their supposedly angelic deposition. An audible shiver emanated suddenly behind me, causing my head to turn instinctively, followed quickly by the rest of my body. (//) The trees were dancing before me, their branches waving like oddly proportioned limbs, edging closer then shying away in a mesmerizing waltz. Their blank faces were leering at me in a fashion not too different from the way drunken old men leered at pretty young girls. Just to clarify: at the //, I don't know whether or not to break into a new paragraph..? Anyways, thanks!

I like it. There's a little too much description though, and it gets boring after a while. You have good metaphors and similes in this piece of writing, and I think you should just pare it down a little. Too many adjectives and adverbs can cloud the writing and make it harder to see what it's about. About the (//), don't separate. It sounds better without the separation.
Liza(:  |  Read more

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Looking for Criticism for the opening two pages of my novel?
I'm working on a novel now, and I plan to make it my pet project. I have high hopes for it, since I hope to be a writer full time. I'm at the point where I'm building my writing skill, and would like criticism from veteran writers who know what they're talking about. Anyway, here's the opening two pages: For Ariel and Jeremy Day, nothing was more important than money. The couple came from two of the most prominent families in the United States. This fact was no coincidence, because Jeremy Day and Ariel Bronze had not married for love. The two had been conceived and wedded to continue a chain of arranged marriages that had taken place for generations among America's most elite families. Of course, Ariel Bronze and Jeremy Day had no trouble accepting their roles in the four-hundred-year-old line of arranged marriages, because they had been brought up to worship the American dollar. It was a widely held notion that Mr. Day sold had sold his soul for a quarter-billion dollars (since he didn't think it was going anywhere anyway.) Children in the neighborhood of Mockingbird (changing title because of Munsters- side note) Lane, where the Days had taken up residence, were told to stay well away. It was widely believed that Mr. and Mrs. Day enjoyed nothing more than locking up and torturing stray children. Ariel and Jeremy Day gave no notice to these rumors. They didn't care for their vagrant neighbors or their good-for-nothing children, and liked nothing more than to be feared in their community. One harsh November morning, Ariel discovered much to her dismay that she had become pregnant. She hadn't planned it. In fact, nobody hated children more than the Days. However, upstanding conservative that she was, she wouldn't care consider an abortion, and no child of hers would go to an inferior family. (Abortion too controversial?) And so, Ariel and Jeremy Day paid a visit to their doctor, Allen Crosby, where they found out the gender of their child-to-be. As luck would have it, the Gree family was expecting a son. Perhaps the birth of their daughter Agatha (Ariel had already decided to name it after her great grandmother) would be a blessing in disguise. It was a snowy January morning when Ariel decided to visit the Grees at their home, and as she approached the manor, she couldn't help but scoff. The manor was made almost entirely of stone and looked like a castle from a cheesy 30's horror movie, but perhaps most amusing was the gigantic wooden door that the Grees had set up in place of a normal door. (I'll work on editing that bit.) Rather than using a doorknob like everybody else in the 21st Century, the Gree family had installed a large metal knocker with a gargoyle positioned just above the handle. The man who greeted Ariel was a bit too chubby to be Mr. Gree, and Ariel could say with confidence that she had never seen an uglier man. His nose folded up, giving it the appearance of a pig's snout, and nearly every inch of the man's face seemed to be covered in boils. "Ah, you must be Mrs. Day," the pig-man said. "Mr. Gree is waiting for you in his chamber, if you'll just follow me... We must get you out of this dreadful cold." The man led the way up a flight of winding stairs into a red-carpet hallway lit entirely by candles, and finally to a steel door that appeared to have been taken from a bank vault. He banged on the door as hard as his tiny hands would allow, and a tall man in a crimson bathrobe (replied? responded? appeared in the doorway?). The man who answered the door was not much more attractive than the servant. His face was gaunt and his arms were bony, giving him the uncanny look of a skeleton. Ariel imagined that despite his characteristic, the man would have been somewhat attractive, however. "Please, please... come in, Mrs. Day," Mr. Gree said. "Oscar, go to the kitchen and fetch us something to eat." The servant cast Mr. Gree a frightened look and stumbled away down the spiral staircase. @Nick- Don't worry- you haven't offended me. The gossip style of writing isn't something that will remain consistent throughout the course of the novel (unless of course you're talking about how I describe the family). I had no plans on introducing actual dialogue early in the story, because the opening chapter is only a backdrop in which I introduce two supporting characters that are only paramount in the opening chapter, but which fade in later chapters, until they're nothing more than ghosts. I will say that the characters I'm writing about do influence how I write about them somewhat stylistically.

Okay...I think you've got a good idea, it just needs to be..fuller? I think would be the best word. The bit about being raised to worship the American Dollar, good. I like it, I like that you're not saying it's a good thing. Mentioning abortion, also good, 'cause unless you're trying to publish teenie-bopping trendybooks, I say push the controversy. Peoples' minds are stagnant, and as a writer it's your job to smack them out of that complacency. My only real problem with it is that your language gets kind of weird, it almost reads like a gossipy story at points (mostly in the first few paragraphs). Hope that helped and didn't hurt to much, I'm not trying to be a dick, just trying to be honest.
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