The first line is awkward, and I think there should be a semicolon after “The bridge was too high.”

I get a “Lost Boys” vibe from this. Reminds me of the scene when they jump over the bridge and hang onto the rail as the train runs by. Definitely not a bad thing.

Did you ever hear what Kurt Vonnegut said about semicolons?

I’m with John here. The commas make it look like “black and cold was too” is a separate clause.

Love the story, though.

How about

The bridge was too high; the water, black and cold, was too far below.

You lose the emphasis of the “too, too”, though. How about “far, far below”?

Your story, of course… ;)

Far, far might be better.

The problem I have with semi-colons is that they are a hard stop not a breath pause.

I use commas too much, a lot like I use white space. Not to make a piece grammatically correct, rather to make it visually appealing with a certain flow. Commas are used as cadence rather than a rule.

Sounds very pompous I know. Semi-colons are connectors that seemed forced to me. Not a natural slight pause in a thought.

I agree with ethel about word choice. But I just can’t bring myself to use a semi-colon. I’m stubborn.

Plus I don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about the grammatic functionality of a challenge piece I wrote in 30 seconds.

As for Kurt Vonnegut’s rule for semi-colons I mentioned above:

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/39857.html

I think “far, far” would be better. And there is a Lost Boys vibe! although I don’t know if I would have thought that if it hadn’t already been mentioned

As for the semicolon issue, I think the best writers make punctuation their own, just as they make words their own. I’m a fan of semicolons but like BA Boucher I don’t necessarily think about rules as much as aesthetics when writing. And in the realm of aesthetics everything becomes subjective.

There’s a great piece in (I think) Watt by Beckett where the narrator exclaims “How hideous is the semicolon” and then churns a few out to organise his disintegrating thoughts on the matter.

It’s been a long time since I read it but the gist is as such.

Changed to far, far.

Ethel’s superior edits and confirmation from Spider and my own brain made it so.

Thank you

Thanks for that Vonnegut quote about semicolons BA. Very funny. Man I love that guy in a completely homoerotic way.

However, I don’t think his thoughts necessarily apply to this piece. That first line is two complete sentences, and needs to be separated by either a period or semicolon. Vonnegut’s quote seems to suggest using a period in this instance.

As a dude who uses sentence fragments like each one entitles him to a free happy ending at the Asian Massage Parlor, it’s a bit hypocritical of me to get on anyone about improper sentence structure.

Another option is to modify the sentence to something like this:
“The water, black and cold, laid in an uneasy calm far, far below the too high bridge.”

Made a slight edit to compromise the semi’s vs the Anti Semi Colonists

Still a run on sentence, still grammatically questionable, but perhaps a little more balanced?

I don’t know that I’ve ever correctly used a semicolon; for that reason my writing is always kind of lackluster. I use them; anyway though;

This is going to sound weird and completely random but I don’t like it when people refer to their ficly as a “piece”
like, piece would be a word to describe music or fine fine art. And I’m not saying that Ficly isn’t a place to make art, but… I don’t know, it bugs me.
I like the story alot though

I think I refer to them as pieces all the time and had never even noticed. Now I am left pondering in what other ways I come across as a pretentious cad and have not noticed.

Fie.