-My comments @@
As always, its only MY
opinion. If I say something
that makes sense to you, great.
Otherwise, hit delete and move
on.
[side note:: I make these disclaimers
because some people have gotten upset
with my C&C. I really can't blame them.
I've told them their baby is not only ugly,
it's dead. ^_^ BUT . . .that's just MY
opinion. I don't like Stephen King or
Heavy Metal, other people do. Not
right or wrong, just different taste]
-- Mad Hamlet <mad-hamlet@usa.net> wrote:
Greetings,
Damn, damn, damn.
I HATE it when I do that. I posted the WRONG
version. A rough draft not a
proofread one. Sorry about that. I think I got most
of the blatent mistakes
but if anything really bad jumps out at ya and
bites, just blame me. C and C
is always welcome, if somewhat painful.
I remain, as always
Mad-Hamlet
@@Bad, Bad Hamlet.
Disclaimer: I disavow, deny, disclaim, disbelieve
and dismiss any and all
things pertaining to that ugly phenomenon known as
'reality'.
@@C'mon now. Give credit where credit is due.
THEN get creative. ^_*
Drain Bramaged Inc. Proudly Presents,
A Mad-Hamlet Production...
Brutal Truth
She sat sitting across from me at our regular
table. The bar was your
standard one, dark, cozy, and a murmur of collected
conversations gathering
into the background to create an ever-present buzz.
It wasn't bad enough to
attract the wrong crowd, nor was it good enough to
overcharge for watered down
drinks. Add that to the fact it was within walking
distance of where we both
lived and it quickly became our little home away
from home.
@@Not bad, in a 1930's Hard-Boiled-Detective
sort of way. (I am now anticipating a fat man looking
for the "stuff dreams are made of."
Right now though, I wanted nothing more than to get
her away from our hang
out and back to her actual home. She always got like
this around this time of
year. Every spring, just when the grey skies of
March gave way to April, she'd
go all to pieces.
Her hair hung listlessly, unwashed, unkempt. The
black gleam had been covered
by grime, grease and dust. Misplaced locks hung in
front of her eyes but they
were so clouded over with the effects of alcohol I
doubt she'd have noticed
the second coming, much less stray hair. She huddled
over her drink, almost
protectively then with a lurch held it out at arms
length and with a loud
exclamation of "Too duty!" downed it.
Just like the five before it, and the ten the night
before, and the seven the
night before that. Just like she had, these same
three days as long as I had
known her.
And she never, not once, had ever said anything
about it.
@@Yep, definitely Marlow time. (Or should
I be looking for Callhan behind the bar?
I met her six years ago when she arrived in San
Francisco from Japan. I
myself had just finished my schooling and was
teaching English as a second
language. While her English was passable there was a
lot of rough edges to be
refined. I picked up pretty quick that she was
different from the majority of
my students. While most did study and concentrate on
whatever task I had for
them, she seemed to cling to every lesson with
desperation. After a few weeks
of regular lessons, twice a week, she came to me to
inquire about the
possibility of private tutoring. Normally my
reaction was to politely decline
as I had more then enough on my table already but
she seemed quite earnest
and, she was an excellent student. If you ask any
teacher worth their salt
they'll tell you what they love most is an eager
student. I was no exception
so I agreed.
@@OK, a problem with first person narrative like
this . . .it's static. You started off fine, but it's
starting
to drag, just a tad. Either cut it down to speed it
up, OR
jazz it up a little. I don't do first person, but I'll
make a
couple of suggestions. JUST as examples of what I'm
talking about.
EXAMPLE (for purposes of illustration ONLY)
I met her six years ago, fresh off the plane from
Japan. I'd just finished my schooling and was
teaching
English as a second language to a half dozen
illegals,
three chemists from Kuzbeckistan and a former
President of an emerging African nation who'd left
office one bullet ahead of a firing squad.
Her understanding wasn't bad, but her spoken
English was rougher than the engine of my
^�64 Dodge Dart.
@@NOT the only way to do this, but I'm adding
a few "additions" that liven up the
narrative and "flesh out" the world you're
describing. (BTW, MY wife teaches ESL, I'm
just using some of her classes in this story) Draw
on real life (yours, a friend, something you've read
about) as much as possible. Don't re-invent the wheel.
I also like to use comparison.
Not::
"she seemed to cling to every lesson with
desperation"
[she seemed to] is too passive, too far removed
in time. You want IMMEDIATE.
She _clung_ to
She clutched at
She grabbed
She snatched
She grabbed at my lessons like they were the last
lifeboat
off the Titanic.
She snatched my lessons like they were the last square
meal before Donner Pass.
Make it immediate.
SHOW the desperation. Don't just tell me
she's desperate. I want to see the flop sweat.
Show me the wide eyes, the trembling hands,
the knot in her stomach that makes her throw
up every morning and every night until
there's nothing left to come up but old blood
the colour of coffee grounds.
MAKE me feel her desperation to the point
I want to scream, to release the tension.
For the first few weeks our meetings were quite
what you would expect between
a student and a teacher; but as the time passed our
lessons began to edge away
from just simple instruction and repetition
involving vocabulary and grammar.
We began to have real conversations, talking about
ourselves, where we were in
our lives and where we were going. I learned that
she was majoring in acting
and hoped to go onto theatre. I told her of my own
plans to hopefully open my
own language school one day. We discussed ethics,
the latest news and, more
than once, our conversations continued well past the
scheduled lesson-time.
She never talked about her past much, except to say
that she had family back
in Japan that she didn't talk too very often save
her middle sister who she
chatted with over the phone from time to time. I
didn't pry much either seeing
no real point.
@@Too polite and bland.
Tease me a little. Give me some banter.
If HER life is a secret, then give me something
about him. And give us a little innuendo, a little
sexual
by-play.
Example::
After the first week I found myself telling
her about more than English. I told her about my
father's
death, my sisters suicide, my dream of opening my own
school someday. Things I'd never told anyone before.
And she listened, watching me with those deep
velvet eyes, but never telling me anything . . .Oh,
she'd
talk about school, about a movie she'd seen, a book
she'd read.
But nothing personal. Nothing--real.
@@You're giving me the facts, I want
the atmosphere.
Sit back, close your eyes and picture them.
is the room dark, light? Are they sitting in
chairs--across from each
other, next to each other? Does she bend over, to
point to a passage she
can't translate? Does her hair brush his arm? Does she
smell
of ivory soap and baby powder? What is she feeling?
Even if you don't want
to tell us WHAT or WHY, give us a better picture of
what's going on.
Have him notice she'd mended a tear in her coat, that
her shoes are scuffed.
Better if he notices something that the reader will
discover is significant later
in the story if possible.
I know it may sound silly, but when you're doing a
first person
like this, especially when you can't blow something
up. ^_^
you've REALLY got to dig deep into the characters
emotions,
what they feel, HOW they feel, little details. smells,
sounds, memories.
That's why I blow things up. It's easier.
I do a lot of this stuff as well, but I break it up
with action because it
is VERY hard. to sustain it through an entire story. A
FIRST person story,
And a SHORT story . . .that's about the hardest kind
to write there is.
Things changed one night after we had had a
vigorous discussion regarding the
ethics of group religion versus singular worship.
She was gathering her things
to leave and I really didn't want the evening to
end. It had been a long time
since I had had a regular social life and I suddenly
had the urge to go out
and have a beer. Something I had not done since
leaving the university. I
casually asked her if she wanted to 'go and have a
drink.'
@@Better. But make it more personal, more real.
Play with the punctuation. ^_^
Example::
Things changed. We'd been having a vigerous
discussion about the ethical merits of polytheism
versus
monotheism . . .I called her an ignorant heathen, she
said
I was a Bigoted Baptist Bastard and clocked me on the
head
with an Annotated Whitkenstien (the 1921 original, not
the
crappy 1941 revised edition) and I suddenly didn't
want the
night to end. I didn't have a regular social life
(unless you count
pulling a hair out of your soup at Denny's "Social")
and I asked
her if she wanted to have some tea. She was Japanese,
after all.
After I picked myself up off the floor, and two of
her went away,
the third one of her, that stayed behind, explained
that "have some tea" was
a Japanese euphemism for "lets go have hot messy sex
you little slut"
As an ESL teacher, I'm always happy to increase my
knowledge. As a
man--I was in a lot of pain.
(Obviously this doesn't fit with what follows. That's
OK, I'm just
trying to show how you can add little details, or just
change the punctuation
or word order, to liven things up. Make them more
immediate.
Give some depth.
Don't be so polite and correct. ^_*
I had no idea what button I'd accidentally pushed
but it must have cut pretty
close to something nasty. For a minute she seemed
like she was going to bolt
out of my apartment, through the door if she had
too. Then her fear turned to
anger and I swear the temperature dropped several
degrees in the general area.
My mouth went on auto-pilot and blurted out,
"Platonic..platonic..platonic..only platonic."
@@Good. This is what I'm talking about.
Still a little stiff, but good.
I entertain no delusions about my physical fitness.
I have none. I don't
exercise, I eat what I like and smoke. Just by the
way she held herself I
could tell she could wipe the floor with me and I
did not want that at all.
Pain and I have never really been too close.
@@cute. good again.
One of the exercises I drum into all my students is
the practice of 'the
eternal homework'. I encourage them that, whenever
and wherever, they come
across a word they do not know that they immediately
look it up in a
dictionary, write down the definition in their
mother-tongue, then the English
definition and write three sentences using the new
word. Not many stick with
it very long but she was, as I said, different. The
second I said 'platonic'
she whipped out an English-Japanese dictionary
automatically and looked it up.
I saw her lips move as she read the Japanese
equivalent and the subsequent
English definition. I was quite nervous as I was
pretty sure I would either be
having a cold beer in good company soon, or a closed
casket service.
@@LOL. Needs a bit of tweaking, but
funny. (I'd make it a little shorter, to
increase the punch) But it was funny.
<SNIP>
Overall:B
@@I'm getting tendinitis in my right hand from typing
so
I'll have to cut this short.
You got much better as the story went on. Still a
little
too bland over-all. IMO, I'd cut it by 500-1,000 words
to tighten things up.
Make every word count in terms of
conveying emotion. You're giving
a lot of information but emotionally it's
bland.
There are quite a few spots where you seem to
loosen up and it's quite funny or WAFFY.
And, there's certainly noting wrong
with your plotting or story-telling.
I just want MORE! Make me feel what's going
on. Don't just TELL me about emotions,
anguish, sadness . . .make me FEEL these
emotions. You can do it because you DID do it,
just not consistently.
IMO, this read as a nice quite slice of life piece.
A pleasant read. It all depends on what you want
to do. IMO it can be punched up quite a bit, IF that's
what you want to do.
Remember, this is YOUR story. Write What you want to
read.
Write the story you want to write, the way you want to
write.
<SNIP>
This fic was a blast to write because, as
mentioned, it just sorta popped up
in my mind last night and practically wrote itself.
A wonderful, wonderful
experience.
@@The best way to write.
And a superb job for a once-through
writing.
If reading it was even somewhat similar
I'd love to hear about
it.
<SNIP>
@@Nice slice of life.
I rather figured it was you, but
as an SI, it was deftly done. There
are now THREE SI's that's I've read
and liked. (Most I delete within the
first paragraph)
=====
"When I get a little money, I buy books;
And, if any is left, I buy food and clothes."-Erasmus
"A man is a small thing, and the night is large
and full of wonders." -Lord Dunsany
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