?

lagdonk,

Fantastic. Thank you so much. Incredibly helpful advice throughout. Everything you said makes sense and will help me to improve the piece.

New to lounge and writing.

I was wondering if there is a spot to post a short piece I had to write for a class? It is 'very first draft' rough, but given that my class is full of twits that just want to blubber about how special the birth of their child, how traumatic the death of their grandparent, or how deep the consequences of drinking and driving, are...I'm really having trouble getting feedback to improve it.

Thanks! Sorry for the tangent post.
Flash fiction<1000 words, does not meet #5 criteria

I'd say definitely yes. It's not like this thread is clogged with submissions and a dozen or so people are waiting on feedback (which does happen sometimes!) Also, I don't think it really matters if the piece doesn't follow Exercise 5's prompts, which to my mind are meant as helpful spurs rather than arbitrary constraints. The deeper goal of the exercise is getting us to write a very short (I wouldn't sweat word count as long as it's less than 1000) and (in some sense) complete story.

(P.S. There will likely be some delay before feedback is posted given the circumstances ITT (number of participants, irregular work rates, people focused on finishing their pieces, etc.))

I suggest using the regular workshop thread. Or perhaps it's time to start ***Writer's Workshop*** The Part IV? I think it's more useful for those threads to act as catchalls for something not contained within a specific prompt.

meh? there are three suggested exercises in this thread, one of them has like six prompts, people have submitted one, at most two exercise replies so far, low participation, etc.

feels like a good spot not to nitpick new blood and material, maybe build a little participatory momentum! in these circumstances, flash fiction at less than 1000 fits close enough (given this ain't remotely some official affair)

Ok, I'm totally intimidated by posting here--this is the first piece of fiction I've tried to write. I considered editing heavily, but I'm just going to post the first draft problems and all. The task was flash fiction with dialogue and we are also studying POV.

*One specific question: Coming from a background of dry academic papers, I'm used to avoiding all pronoun use. Attempting to write in the first person..it appears that I've gone to the opposite extreme with the use of "I". Obviously I should cut some/rephrase, but could you give me some advice on how to tow the correct line? It all feels unnatural.

*Humble apologies for offending your delicate literary senses with my tripe. Thanks for helping me learn!

I like the voice a lot. I think perhaps you capture it too well. Perhaps you can cut one or two of the asides that define the voice without losing too much. ( Fine starting off with loads of asides to establish the voice but perhaps have less later on.) You bring in the hook about "getting hit" early which is great.


Talking vodka is great. This reminds me of the video logs in 127 hours which were done excellently, I thought. Building on the "getting hit" mystery.

You're gradually building up the picture with little hints which is works well. Maybe we could do with a little more content, something actually happening.

Here, I'd start looking to cut out a few of the asides for voice. There's two "whatever"s in the last paragraph for example. You have perhaps too many "like"s dotted about as well. It's realistic but starts to drag in prose.

I found this section to be a bit of a letdown. I was expecting something bigger from the introduction. I don't see what it is about it that he doesn't want in his video logs and is keeping him awake. (Unless it's what happens after that he doesn't explain, it does end abruptly.)

Also, he says he'd normally leave due to the moan but gets curious. I'm not sure that's explained enough. Why did he get curious this time. The town is abandoned, seems to suggest there may be a lot to be scared of. He's living a hermit lifestyle, avoiding people it seems, why does he change his habits now?


Overall, rather excellent. You established an interesting voice, an unusual setting and left the reader wanting more with little hooks. All this with a first person monologue.

Thanks for the feedback! (And yeah, I did cut things off kind of mid-scene (I was going to put a "[...]" at the end, but forgot) mostly because I was going along with the Exercise instructions ("write the first 600 words of a scene") and actually concluding the scene would have involved way more length, but anyway.)

It was so terrible I killed the thread!

Fwiw, I chose the topic because our only example piece was this really sexist story. A woman aspires to more, goes to a ball wearing a borrowed necklace, loses it, and ends up deeply in debt to replace it. She loses all her beauty working hard labour to repay the money. Being unrecognizable at the end to the friend is supposed to be some terrible, shocking, punishment.

Sort of my own secret fffuuuuuu to the instructor.

I nearly finished the crit and the whole thing deleted on me. Might make me brief on the re-write. Apologies if so.

I'd advise editing before submitting to a crit. No point in getting a critter to tell you something you knew already and was about to change in the re-write.

Don't worry about it too much as "I" is a pretty invisible word but try to mix up your prose. Don't have a sequence of the narrator doing stuff. Mix in descriptions and thoughts. Avoid filtering things with stuff like "I watched" "I heard" "I thought" "I felt" etc.

An odd adjectives and adverbs that aren't doing much work. e.g. delicate, impatiently, empathically.
Too much description that doesn't seem to add to the story. Every sentence should advance the plot, show setting or reveal character, preferably two of those things at once. Particularly in a short story, every word is precious. It's easy to set the scene as a housewife in a suburban house, you don't have to overdo it.
The whole scene with Jan seems superflous.
We are getting no sense of the narrators thoughts or feelings or character.
There are no hooks for the reader, no conflict, no sense of story.

This is possibly where your story could start. I like the flow and rhythm.

Story takes an abupt left turn. You need to hint at where the story is going. We still get no sense of the narrators feeling about these creatures who have attacked after 20 years. We don't know how she knows from just the sound that they've arrived. She is suddenly a terminator. I don't know why she breaks off the knitting needle rather than using the whole thing. We don't know what the monster looks like. The thing dies rather easily, not making it seem very dangerous.

There's no sense of urgency in the writing despite mentioning time once or twice. We are still distant from the narrators thoughts and feelings. Descriptions are essentially what a character notices at that moment in time. Would the mother take time to note her daughter's nightgown and how she looked like a doll when time is a matter of life and death?

"headlight-guided car" is bad
All the checks read like a shopping list, again no urgency
Not ringing her husband to warn him makes no sense (as described.)
Waiting until the night to pray for her husband seems bizarre.


Hope I was helpful and not too harsh.

Overall, I think you need to figure out your story better. If you could contrast the domestic details with the zombie fighting details, it might work better. (She dusts her axe along with the china. She texts her husband "Bring home applesauce. Pork tonight! Headlights off close to the house, undead about.") if you want to go for a humourous tone. Or have her trying to fight off zombies while organising a baking drive with Jan while not letting Jan see the zombies about.

If you want to be more serious: Show the domestic setting in less details but with hints of what was to come. What extra homework would she give her kids knowing what was coming? Would she check the handgun as often as the china? And then when the attack comes, you need to add more urgency and danger.

Not too harsh at all! This is exactly what I was hoping for.
I'm so tired of hearing, "It's good!" from peer editors, and my instructor is happy that I'm attempting anything out of the ordinary so he generally gives me ~100% and less than two sentences of suggestions.

Thanks so much!! I'm going to read your post a couple times and think about it...and then probably ask more questions. Thanks again!

ps. You're right about the Jan thing. That is me punishing my captive instructor-audience for the sexist, overly descriptive, short story he made us read/respond to/model from. In an outside-class version, which is what comes next, I'm definitely going to heed your advice. Not sure yet how to do it in a way that is interesting to non-captive readers but still creates discord between complacent housewife and competent woman.

Kristy,

Do you recall the name / author of the story he made you read?

The Necklace, Guy de Maupassant

It isn't the story that I object to. It was written long enough ago that sexism is expected, but I hate that our instructor used it instead of finding something more contemporary.

Preface: This is my Exercise 5 output. It exceeds 600 words by a bit. I don't care. It doesn't obey any of the prompts. I don't care. Well, I feel a twinge of guilt, but it's irrational. Irrational, I tell you. What I do care about is that Exercise 5 and the social nature of threads like this drove me to flesh out (a rather skinny version of) a key scene in my current work-in-very-slow-progress and make huge strides discovering some kind of credible voice for my narrator, who hitherto had sounded precisely like a stilted, unfunny Niles Crane. Maybe he still does! Let me know! And to address my guilt, no, I don't think prompts should be disrespected or wantonly flouted, and won't make it a regular habit, or endorse others who do, it's just this thread and occasion felt open enough and more about the spirit of working key muscles (pitching, practicing first person, crafting a whole micro-story) than strictly honoring random NPR prompts.


First came this blur of fratty guys called Chad or Toby who said "what up" while glancing over my left shoulder at whatever. Then a few wafer-bland girls. Then some Asian kid with a Charlie Brown head and a stupid nickname, possibly "Mike Mike." And finally, like a sudden closeup taken at midnight and lit by torches, Claire.

This was at a lakeside house party Jed took me to one night.

From what I could tell, Claire's skin had this indefinable terra-cotta duskiness, Hispanic or southern Italian or, the way my thoughts were skipping, ancient Egyptian.

She was heading inside and us out to the deck overlooking the water when Jed stopped her near the glass doors and introduced me. He left me alone with her.

Above me somewhere, a small bulb was pointing downwards. We stood together in its narrow cone of influence, everything else a dark haze. Somewhere below, the lake lapped at the reeds.

This by itself was enough for now, and complete in a way. But time advances and people need to talk and also Jed was in my head saying, make something happen already, God you're a f**k-up.

"It's really great out here," I said.

"Yeah," said Claire. And I heard a blankness in her voice. And her eyes started going away.

There was this limp pause, just music leaking faintly from the house and wind crossing the black water.

In my head, Jed was telling me to make it happen, make it happen before Andrew or Chad or Dustin or Brett came out here, all shoulders and bulk, crowing some eighty-proof bullsh*t.

Then Claire said, "So you've been here how long, like a month?" And suddenly the full warmth of her attention was on me again.

"Actually, I got here in June, so—"

"Where were you before?"

"Manhattan. At NYU."

"That sounds cool." Her shoulders, her neck, her hair made a soft, swaying movement.

"Yeah. Very cool. Lots of action, people, you know." My hands were waving around trying to mime action and people. I put them in my pockets.

"And now you're here." She said this with a slight touch of drama, her lips half smiling.

"Yeah, I know, it's like, this culture shock."

Her head dipped a little. "You don't like it here?"

"It's okay, it's just a lot smaller than I'm used to," I said, "and weirdly isolated, like stuck in the seventies"—she was giving me this funny look—"but actually that's healthy, I need that right now, it's way less stressful, and I can really focus on things and be in the moment and that's good."

"I hate it here," said Claire.

Then a short silence.

"Oh, okay," I said.

"It's the same thing all the time, the same people, the same parties, the same losers getting wasted and"—she briefly closed her eyes—"whatever, you don't need to hear this."

"No, I think I do. For my own safety."

This got her to smile a little. Her cheeks dimpled. And for a moment, she really looked at me. It was kind of staggering. Her irises were tiny wells of autumn light.

"So how about tomorrow?" I said. "We'll sit down somewhere. You can make me a list. Biggest losers, where they hang out, never go there, that kind of thing. I'd be very grateful, buy you coffee, lunch—"

The glass door slid open, a swell of noise with it. Some girl walked out, grabbed Claire by the wrist, yelled something about karaoke and tequila. Claire—her focus, her tone, everything—switched instantly to the girl's wavelength, and they vanished inside.

Later, when Jed came out and found me still there, he pressed this hard little pellet into my hand, saying, "Here. Just, here. Take it. Just take it."

And I did feel better after that—the party and all of us were under the lake, and the chaos was sweet, and Claire's eyes, though we didn't talk again, I saw tiny shapes there: around each pupil, a ghostly fringe of petals, and something else—until I felt much worse.

First: Bad lagdonk for not following the prompt.
Second: Spectacular piece. Absolutely brilliant.

"She was heading inside and us out": The more I read this phrase, the more I like it, but it left me confused at first and I had to read it a few times.
You time jump back a forth a bit in the opening which makes it a small bit hard to follow.
I like the voice established at the start.
I'm not so sure about 'Jed's talking in his head' part of the voice. Maybe it's slightly overdone.

Not too sure about "cone of influence."
Loved "Somewhere below, the lake lapped at the reeds." and "music leaking faintly from the house and wind crossing the black water."

Ok, I found a big contrast between the epic setup (ancient Egyptian, lit by torches) and the actual dialogue which is kind of bland. This might be what you are going for and it is realistic of actual smalltalk but it felt a little bit of a letdown to me.

Dialogue gets more interesting now. I liked the awkward silence moment.

The little interactions between them are really well done.
"girl's wavelength": something about that seemed off to me.
Liked the ended.


Overall: I just came up with a few nits for something to say. It was fantastic writing.

Thanks again, VM

The issues you raised were helpful (for example, I too was uncertain about "cone of influence" and how it comes across, and you've pointed me to potential fuzziness at the beginning (possibly fixable by reducing pronoun use, switching things around for clarity, etc.) that I'd overlooked when revising because I was unconsciously filling in subtle ambiguities using authorial knowledge of "what's supposed to be happening" that a reader wouldn't have.)

(Also, your flattering review is enormously gratifying; dangerously so! says my rational self. But that guy matters less than he thinks.)

No offense, but calling that one spectacular, brilliant, and fantastic seems like a result of confirmation bias. Because his other recent and semi-recent pieces were by most measures way, way better.

SPLAIN



(but seriously, if / when you have time + energy, your feedback (in whatever form) to help me see how you're evaluating this piece (in itself, relative to others) would be great, in part cause I feel way fonder of it craft-wise than the others (possibly for misguided reasons?))

Most of lagdonk's pieces that I've read have been excellent. For me, this was his best. I'm not just going to praise something because he posted it. If I didn't like it, I'd point out what I didn't like.

Crits are always going to be subjective. Just because I like it a lot doesn't mean it's good and vice versa. If you feel this piece was weak, I'm sure he'll appreciate you pointing out why.

Later. It could be just a first-impression thing, because some voices/styles can seem meh at first but get better as one gets used to them.

I wasn't implying that--that sort of bias is a subconscious thing.

This will be short, because I think that of the three general things one can touch upon in a critique—1) What’s wrong. 2) Why. 3) How to fix it.—#1 is most useful, a pithy amount of #2 is best, and #3 can be worthless at this stage.

“Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” — Neil Gaiman.

---

“like a sudden closeup taken at midnight and lit by torches”

Confusing.

“From what I could tell, Claire's skin had this indefinable terra-cotta duskiness, Hispanic or southern Italian or, the way my thoughts were skipping, ancient Egyptian.”

Very awesome.

“She was heading inside and us out ...”

A bit awkward.

“Above me somewhere, a small bulb was pointing downwards. We stood together in its narrow cone of influence, everything else a dark haze. Somewhere below, the lake lapped at the reeds.”

Reminds me of something Jonathan Safran Foer would write. I don’t mean it’s bad—it’s just that the imagery and language strikes me as very (distractingly) maudlin. The last line especially reads like a ham-fisted attempt to set the mood.

“And I heard a blankness in her voice. And her eyes started going away.”

Loved this—especially the way both sentences begin with And.

“crowing some eighty-proof bullsh*t.”

Seemed a bit off.

“And suddenly the full warmth of her attention was on me again.”

Refer to the previous comment on the maudlin bit.

“Her shoulders, her neck, her hair made a soft, swaying movement.”

I can feel what you’re going for, but this sentence is not-quite-there. Possible culprit: the asyndetic anaphora “Her shoulders, her neck, her hair.”

“her lips half smiling.”

My initial reaction was “Eh.” The Casual Reader in me would let this slide, though.

[Dialogue as a whole.]

The subject matter of the conversation feels generic and dull. I felt this way early on, but the line, "It's the same thing all the time, the same people, the same parties, the same losers getting wasted ..." solidified that impression.

“switched instantly to the girl's wavelength”

Awkward.

“I saw tiny shapes there: around each pupil, a ghostly fringe of petals, and something else—until I felt much worse.”

Very nice.

The pace was nice and measured—its length felt right.

Overall, though, I found the lyricism of the prose and imagery—except for some of the sentimental parts, which left me feeling the piece was trying a bit too hard—carried it. The interaction felt flat. One possible culprit: As the interaction approaches its climax, the narrator loses the sort of idiosyncratic, emotion- and mood-tinged language that fills the story’s first dozen or so paragraphs and last five, at which point he turns into a camera. His attention to her gestures feels right, but his narration of them doesn’t convey his emotional state. While reading I felt as if he might as well have floated out to some faraway point. It’s as if after the line ending with “... crowing some eighty-proof bullsh*t” he completely stopped fearing failure. Consequently, the events themselves left me feeling nothing. (This final paragraph sort of contradicts my first paragraph, lol.)

Thank you so much, TTI. A lot of bracing substance there for me to mull over. Good God, dude.

Update: 19/20 on mine.