A very short story 04/10/11

[Clay MacDonnell]

This is just a fragment of my daily writing exercises, putting them up online helps me find the motivation to write. Any critiques would be welcome!
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I never cared for history. It always seemed an inconsolable concept to me. History is what happens to great men, to every Caesar or Napoleon. History never happens to the little man. So we stay out of each others way, it keeps it's distance and I keep mine.

A tenuous peace.

You can imagine the offence then, I'm sure, of bombing raids interrupting my morning tea. Aunt Bethany turned chaotic as usual leaping up from her lounge chair and thumping peg legged into the kitchen only to retrieve a large saucepan for her mortal defence. I heaved a grand sigh and licked and turned the page of my philosophy booklet. What else could I do? Bethany just stared, pupils dilating in horror at my disinterest.

'Are you mad!?' she screamed.

Ah! Chapter two, paradoxes. I ought to enlighten her on the paradox of asking a man if he is mad whilst wearing a saucepan on her head. To be honest the raids didn't bother me anymore, they had become something of a regular occurrence, a momentary excitement in what would other wise be another dreary day in the life of a prep school teacher.

[hillwalker]

It's rather a jump from philosophising about history to an air-raid (and the bizarre behaviour of some relative) and to the concluding sentence that reveals the narrator is a teacher. I couldn't quite make the connection - a little too disjointed to mean anything much to anyone other than the writer.

H

[Trever J Bennett]

Felt good except it felt like you're telling me too much. Like, oh he's a school teacher? Why's the narrator telling me this? Does he wake up every morning and think, "This sure is another day in the life of a prep school teacher, pip pip." No, you don't talk that way, it sounds weird because of all the exposition.

Reveal it in context.

If he can be a believable character, which he can be, you've got to make me think this actually happened. "a day in the life" takes me right out of the story. Makes me think that the author is imagining all of this.

Good stories should make you think that the author knows what he's talking about.

[Clay MacDonnell]

Thank you both. Looks like iv'e got some more practice to do.

[AuntShecky]

This piece has a few aspects in its favor, some more than others.

In general, it's better to "show" and suggest rather than to "tell;" don't do all the reader's work for her. Your first paragraph, followed by the fragment sentence which forms the second paragraph, both "tell" too much. The observation that history never happens to the little man might be the theme of the story, but perhaps shouldn't be spelled out so explicitly. {On the surface this observation seems "true" -- as an example of Stephen Colbert's "truthiness"--but in real history it overwhelmingly isn't. Examples abound throughout the span of human civilization; certainly the Second War War and the Depression leading up to it affected the "little guy" and millions of oppressed people much more than those historical events affected the Rich and Powerful. Perhaps the narrator's statement was meant to be ironic? }

On the other hand, there is one instance in which this story "shows" rather than tells and that is the notion of the narrator's reading a book on philosophy, which illustrates the pot-wearing aunt's reaction to the narrator's seemingly lack of interest> "Ah, Chapter Two."

Also, watch out for punctuation errors:



So we stay out of each others way, it keeps it's distance and I keep mine.



each other's way [or] one another's way

its distance [no appostrophe for possessive pronouns]



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