August 3, 2009
Packing the house for the move, and I came upon two boxes of old floppy disks. Rather than just toss them, I went through to see what was left on them. I found several old drafts of The Invasion and some Raya stuff—and some story critiques from a CRW class at UF (the files were last modified in Fall 1999). I was 22, and though apparently lacked tact, I can see the burgeoning of my aesthetic. Here are the critiques, with names removed. I hope these writers are still pursuing the craft in whatever way fulfills them.
1:
Although there are some well-rendered scenes, the end result leaves the reader nowhere. I suppose the “crisis” is the point when Jake and Jeff reach an understanding, share an emotional moment. The problem is that the reader (at least me upon my reading) does not feel any of the emotion of the final scene. The characters don’t feel real, aren’t people we come to know within the story, learn to care about. We don’t know what is motivating the characters to act the way they do. The author’s tracks are very visible. The subject matter is interesting, but it seems like in trying to write a story about someone coming to terms with a disease, you forgot about the person who is in fact doing this. The first thing to think about in a story is character. Character determines plot. The Character needs to be alive and breathing, and all his choices should be “duh! Of course.” It is how a character, a full, round character with a many-faceted personality sees the world that makes fiction interesting.
2:
Very precise descriptions of actions, but your sentences have little variation in structure. About seventy percent of them are “Egypt [or some other person] did this thing…” It becomes tiresome to read the same syntactic pattern again and again. Also, Egypt goes through some very severe shifts in mood, but we don’t know why. Certainly some exterior forces propel him this way, but his character is not well defined. At times he seems like Forrest Gump, unknowing that things are going on around him, and others he gets piping mad, quite in contrast to his previous state. At the end, I have no idea why he suddenly became docile again. His mother made a speech, then spoke with some other people, but we don’t even see Egypt again until his mother leads him, sullen, away. Show us how he is reacting to his mother’s confession. Let’s see him struggle with it and then the relief when he finally decides it is okay. This is the pivotal scene. We can’t point the camera at a wall while superman is battling the super-villain.
3:
A story told primarily in the subjunctive mood? Curious. Stories that hide something very important about the protagonist until the end are not good. For instance, in an example John Gardener uses, if we tell a story about a man who lives next door to a girl who finds him sexually attractive, but she doesn’t know that he is her father, and we tell it from the point of view of the father, we must know that he is her father. It is a cheat not to tell us this. It creates false suspense. The reader throws down the story in disgust. So if Kant Rogers works at a Kenny Rogers, tell us.
This story feels a lot like stories that are primarily flashback. It deals with an event that doesn’t happen in the “now” of the story. Since that is the case, maybe the POV should be changed… This story is a daydream, and although stories like that can be written, these daydreams must change the narrator in some way. Something must happen between the beginning and the end that wouldn’t have happened had not the narrator decided to act in some way. There must be consequences; even if we arrive at the same place anyway, a failure, the protagonist must affect things in some way.
4:
This is a very well written story. The scenes and dialogue and summary and description all flow together well. The character comes alive and we can feel for/against him. But nothing really happens. There is no crisis. Nowhere is Hunter forced to make a decision that may change him. At the end, he winds up…wet. It’s a victim story, and those don’t work. You wrote it very well, and all along it maintains interest, but the end is disappointing.
More on the move and some updates on Looming Thunderheads in the coming weeks—when I have a moment to breathe.
Filed under Writing.
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