Story has been removed because I no longer wish to pursue this because it is a work that does not fit my mission as a writer.
Story has been removed because I no longer wish to pursue this because it is a work that does not fit my mission as a writer.
Last edited by kangels4ever; 08-25-2011 at 06:23 PM. Reason: Abandoning project
This was creepy - I'm not sure whether it's meant to be, but the narrator behaving like some deranged stalker was quite an original idea to come up with...Originally Posted by kangels4ever
...except it's not very well written. As a work of fiction there's hardly any 'showing' as you call it. I could only find one example -
“Hi,” she replied, a shy smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
The rest of the story is 100% 'telling' - you tell us this happened, then that happened, he said something then someone else said something, etc. etc.
Also, the opening exchange of dialogue is presumably there to inform the reader of the background. That's never a good idea - having two people tell each other something they already know purely for the benefit of the reader who can eavesdrop and find out what the story is supposed to be about.
It's very much a dialogue-driven story - much of the extraneous detail is irrelevant and adds nothing to the plot development -
e.g. the bus behind the black Chevrolet, glancing at the leaves under your feet, the old man with the white moustache
We don't get the merest hint of what motivates the narrator to hunt Melissa down after two years... which is why the entire story feels unreal. It reads like a contrived set-up allowing the narrator the opportunity to tell the girl who dumped him he no longer wants to be her friend - wow. Hardly gripping stuff.
The story might indeed begin well, but once he arrives at the sports field it self-destructs
- the rather strange conversation where he asks someone where the race is taking place (were there no signs? spectators? etc.) and the closing piece of internalised dialogue about whether or not he should hug Melissa... truly bizarre.
It gets even worse by the time we reach the 3rd block of prose - the heart of the story - where the race ends and somehow everyone the narrator speaks to knows that Melissa has no wish to see him - laughable; particularly that interchange of dialogue with 'Chad Jameson'. My jaw actually fell open as I read it.
If the story is meant to be about a stalker you really need to inject some tension and drama into the piece.
If, on the other hand, it's just about some young kid with a crush on a girl who has rejected his advances... well, this is really a case of trying to create a melodrama out of very little, and failing. Why would anyone want to read about his problems?
H
PS - the story might indeed be authentic as far as the bus routes are concerned - but your portrayal of human behaviour lacks an element of truth.
I agree with Hillwalker that the story seems unrealistic - people don't generally say something like "You’ve hurt my feelings irretrievably". 'Irretrievably' is just too literary word. To polish it up I would focus on making the behavior and speech of the characters more realistic/believable and add more dramatic and emotional interest. Your main character also seems to be a villain and I found myself sympathizing more with the girl.
With all due respect, I can't believe my narrator is being labeled a stalker. He's meant to be a young, naive man who blindly pursues this girl despite her tepid response, and he's shocked when she shows him her true colors at this race; i.e a knack for playing petty emotional games like not telling him personally she doesn't want to see him but trying to get others to do her job for her.
If she told Richard right off the bat when he first meets her she doesn't want to see him but he keeps at it afterward, then he would be a villan. But she doesn't. She agrees to meet him after the race, and then ... pow!
But Richard has steel beneath his innocent surface and stands up first to the grown-up jerk who comes against him and then Melissa, where he finally gives up on her.
That is the story I'm trying to tell.
Apparently my narrator would be more sympathetic a character:
-If he arrives totally unaware of his crush having a boyfriend present until she tells him.
-If he calls her on not telling him right away about her not wanting to see him.
-And if there's an opening phone chat between him and Melissa before the chat between him and his buddy, with all boyfriend refences removed from the latter to avoid setting Richard up to be a stalker as opposed to a clueless suitor, which is my goal for him.
It's the two year gap since seeing her that makes no sense - coupled with the fact that she has told him over the phone that she has a boyfriend why is he expecting to be greeted with open arms?
And the points about the dialogue still apply - unrealistic I'm afraid. It doesn't make sense that every person he approaches in search of the girl at the end of the race somehow knows Melissa doesn't want to see him.
h
One other idea I have for Janes behavior is that Mr. Jameson is the father of her boyfriend, whom she's so serious about she's already considering him her father-in-law. Plausible? Corny?
BTW: I re-named her Jane in honor of the second wife of my most favorite fictional hero of all, Bernard Cornwell's Napoleonic war hero Richard Sharpe of His Majesty's 95th Rifles. Jane, alas, stabs Sharpe in the back by going off with an English lord named John Rosendale in "Sharpe's Revenge". Unfortunately for her, Lord John is badly hurt at Waterloo and later killed by -ironcially enough- a female looter.
On a more sober note, I'm also doing my best to re-equip this tale with realistic dialogue as per hillwaker's suggestion, considering his demonstrated skill and knowledge of it in his own writings here. :-)
The redraft is an improvement but there are still some niggles to overcome :
“Why you lucky boy!” I chortled, “You always did have a way with women. I’ve had a crush on her since we first met a couple years ago when we worked at Cub.”
The underlined sentence is for the reader's benefit presumably, since Muhammad will surely already know the history between the two main characters. It's bad practice in telling a story to insert background this way by creating artificial dialogue.
“Gosh, and I thought the State Fair could be crowded,” I joked to an older man with a white mustache.
Presumably this older man never appears again in the story - so telling us he had a white mustache is unnecessary. You're forcing the reader to focus on trivial matters when we should be sticking to Richard's heels.
...and this sequence of dialogue is still in need of some major trimming :
My heart froze.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Who are you?" I replied.
The man crossed his arms. "That's what I asked, not you."
"My name is Richard Spiers. And you are ...?"
"Chad Jameson."
A hot stab pierced my chest, thought That does it.
"Well Mr. Jameson, are you affiliated with Gustavus Adolphus?"
"Well, I'm a buddy of the women's cross country coach, and when Jane whined about you barging in on her I decided to see what I could do.
“’Barging in?’ She told me on the phone last Sunday she saw no reason I couldn’t drop by today. Please leave me alone, Mr. Jameson.”
"Yes honey, do that," his wife said, picture of patience. “It’s nice of you to do this, but let them sort it out.”
“All right, all right,” he agreed. “I must warn you, Richard, I doubt you’ll resolve anything.” He added with a sullen gaze as they left.
“That’s ‘Mr. Speirs to you, man.” I called to his retreating back, “And the only way anybody can stop me today is throw me under the wheels of the nearest train passing Bandana Square, if I didn’t do the same to them first.”
Hey, get a grip! I thought. You’re here to meet Jane, not act like a macho man.
It's like being invited to a party then finding the hosts in the middle of a blazing row as soon as you arrive. You wish you were somewhere else. The entire scene is completely artificial - a tiresome argument between two cartoon characters.
I can't understand why you felt the need to record the entire conversation word for word - it doesn't add very much to the plot except make Richard appear rather self-important.
and finally, more dialogue that seemes to have been included to feed information to the reader rather than develop any rapport between the two speakers:
Geez, I can't believe you are the same girl who teased me with 'Don't fall asleep, Richard!' when I passed by you up at the registers one day at Cub Vicksburg Lane.”“
"You looked so beautiful to me the day I met you by the time clock as you came off break, money in hand, to pay me back for those drops,” I continued.
Would Richard actually mention all these trivial details if he's struggling to figure out why Jane's treating him this way?? I doubt it.
They both know where they met - and where they were when she paid him back for the sweets - so for whose benefit are you including all these historical facts? And are they relevant anyway? Absolutely not...
I'm still being hyper-critical but I can see you have made a genuine effort to streamline this. A little more polishing and pruning and you'll have something to be proud of.
Good luck
H
Thanks, as always, for your input, hill. Your input isn't "hyper-critical" in my opinion but rather that akin to a seasoned drill sargent putting a rookie private through his paces. A good writer knows how to make a story or poem ebb and flow well. Otherwise a pile of rejection slips is in their future.
I admit to being stubborn on keeping the Richard-Chad exchange because it's inspired by a time a grown-up barged in on me in similar circumstances and, instead of standing up to him, I ran like a Yankee at First Bull Run. When coming up with this story I thought to myself Why not put your character in that same circumstance and stand up for himself? Unfortunately it seems to be a boat anchor instead, at least in its present form.
I conceed the point regarding the windy "artifical dialogue" sentences.
Thanks again.
By all means stick to your guns - one often has to stand up for one's writing so it's good exercise to be challenged and respond positively yet in a dignified manner as you have here. I take my hat off to you.
Sometimes one creates a story that has a great deal of personal relevance - which is why it's painful to remove some part you believe is actually pivotal to why you wrote it in the first place.
But for future reference it's as important to know what to leave out, regardless of how important you felt it was on first writing. You should write for the reader as much as for yourself. An important part of the craft of editing is knowing what to keep hold of and what to let go.
H
This story of mine remains scrapped.
"This was creepy - I'm not sure whether it's meant to be, but the narrator behaving like some deranged stalker was quite an original idea to come up with..."
Hillwalker, that one note tune you kept playing got quite irritating for me. It was one of the reasons I decided to scrap my story.
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