Naomi

[DavidO]

Hello, I am a novice writer, just getting started, and I am working on a story. I was wondering if any of you guys would be able to take a look at this sample of it and provide some critique or feedback? Anything would be helpful. I'm totally in the dark about my writing and the ignorance is killing me.

This is going to probably be a genre piece, possibly fantasy.

Thanks!

(Also, let me know if there are formatting issues making it difficult to read and I will adjust as necessary.)



Naomi

It was noon. The lunch rush began and a sizable group of students spilled into the cafe, seeking the taste of midday sustenance. Jason was already inside. He'd been there for a few hours sitting alone at a corner table, absorbed by his laptop computer. More students gathered and Jason absently hunched over as if to shield himself from the swell.

He didn't notice when the pretty young black girl entered. She was wearing a short vest jacket on top of a purple hooded sweater. Her slim jeans covered all but the base of her boots. The girl sidestepped the line of students standing in front of the cash register and she walked directly into the open seating area. She took a brief look around before spotting Jason in the corner. Smiling to herself, she went to meet him.

Jason didn't notice her until she'd reached the table and plopped down right in front of him. He looked up from his computer. Her presence was a surprise to him but his face didn't show it.

"Naomi," he said. "What are you doing here?"

She was still grinning. "It's 12:00 pm, Jason. Middle of the day. It's bright and sunny outside, and you haven't slept yet have you?"

"Excellent assessment. But what exactly are you doing here?"
"Living," she said. "Breathing, loving. How long have you been awake?"
"I don't know. Since yesterday?"
"Well you look terrible, obviously."
“Thanks,” said Jason. He refocused on his laptop. “How did you know I was here?" he said, without looking at her.

Naomi leaned back on her chair and folded her arms. "In any given restaurant, room, store, bathroom, you're always going to be hiding in the back corner, like an oversized collection of dust or something. Always hunched over and wearing that shaggy coat. And definitely burrowed in a corner. I've seen you panic in hallways."

"Nice," said Jason. "And you knew that I was in this particular restaurant because…?"

"Because you weren't in the library, you weren't in your apartment, you weren't in the computer lab, you have no classes on your schedule for today, and you weren't at the Chipotle on the north side of campus. So I figured you'd be in here, at a little corner table, on your laptop."

"Wow."

Naomi surveyed the restaurant. The students were filling in around the open tables. They let their backpacks rest on the floor beside them and they sat down to dismantle their trays loaded with food. An appetizing aroma permeated the air.

"What do they even serve here?" Naomi said. "Just bread or something?"
Jason looked back up at her. "You've never been to Panera?"
"I can get bread at a grocery store."
"Well they have soup and sandwiches and stuff. Salads and smoothies."
"White people food."
"Sure."
"That's why you come here."
"I come here for the Wi-Fi," Jason said. "I never order anything besides a smoothie. Everything else is overpriced. And I sit in the corner so I don't take up any of the large tables that are meant for large groups, if you haven't noticed."

Naomi instantly pointed at an empty table towards the center of the restaurant.
"I see a small table for two," she said. "Right in the middle over there."
"That was just moved there, separated from the group sitting next to it."
"Sure it was, Jay. Whatever helps you sleep at night."
"I don't sleep at night."
"As we've established."
Jason sighed. "Yes, we have," he said. "But we still haven't established why you're here. And I can't help but consider that to be the more important matter."

Naomi sat silently for a moment before leaning forward and putting her right elbow on the table. She pulled back the sleeve of her sweater and exposed her bare arm. Jason could see her blood veins emerging through the skin surface. They were deep black, as if she’d traced them with ink. The prominent veins formed a rough textured web across her forearm, while the smaller veins sprouted in spindly lines that made it look like her arm was riddled with cracks.

"Christ, Naomi," Jason said.

She pulled the sleeve of her sweater back down over her arm. The restaurant seemed to have reached full capacity and Jason became more aware of all the other clusters of students sitting near them. They were chattering loudly to one another and devouring their meals, jovial under the warm energy of friendship and nourishment. None of them caught a glimpse of the wicked road map that had spread across Naomi’s forearm.

Jason looked back at Naomi and she appeared to be studying him. “Relax,” she said. “It doesn’t feel as awful as it looks.”
“I don’t even know what it is,” he said. “Do you?”
“Not exactly.”
“And you haven’t gone to the hospital.”
“Nope.”
“And you won’t.”
“Nope.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Naomi shrugged. “Not sure yet,” she said. "But I was hoping you could help me figure that out."

[hillwalker]

1) The formatting’s ok.

2) This is pretty fine writing.

On the surface you’re describing a casual meeting between two students and have captured the conversational tone perfectly. You obviously have a good ear for dialogue.
It’s a relaxed, fairly innocuous setting yet there’s also an undercurrent of something more sinister at work that you manage to underplay to perfection – Jason doesn’t sleep at night, avoids open spaces and rarely eats – Naomi has some physical condition that she’s reluctant to seek medical advice for.
On the basis of these few paragraphs I definitely want to know more.

3) The only flaw I can find is in paragraphs 2 and 3.

First of all you tell us at the beginning of both that Jason didn’t notice her – so there’s some clumsy repetition.

But the other more subtle issue I had with the second paragraph was the way we are given such a detailed description of the girl’s appearance.
The story focuses on two characters – Naomi and Jason. So the point of view or perspective will be centred on this pair. No one else in the coffeehouse is relevant.
In which case, if Jason doesn’t notice her when she comes in then who is absorbing all this information of what she is wearing etc.?
It’s a trivial issue but I was suddenly aware that the omniscient all-seeing author had stepped into the story - if that makes sense. Because of that, the entire paragraph seemed unnatural and rather intrusive.

You can easily fix this by delaying the description of what she was wearing until she sits at his table - something along the lines of:

Jason didn't notice the pretty young black girl as she sidestepped the line of students standing in front of the cash register and walked directly into the open seating area.

He only looked up from his computer when she plopped down right in front of him … then you can go on to describe her through his eyes as it were.

Other than that minor quibble this is a very promising piece of work. It shows a great deal of polish and maturity and I hope you’ll continue with what sounds like an intriguing story.

H

[DavidO]

Thank you very much!

That is some pretty perceptive feedback.

The clothing description was actually a last minute tack on because I thought I was lacking appearance descriptions. I also slightly sensed the pov issue, but didn't think to change it.

And the "he didn't notice" lines were remnants of a point where I was trying to be poetic with repetition in an earlier draft of the story. But that basically dissolved as I added/deleted a few more lines.

I'm guessing that I'm hiding behind writing dialog because I read so much Robert B Parker, who writes quite a bit of snappy dialog, and I am sort of automatically imitating his style in that department. But my fear is that as I write more of the narrative or exposition, that is when my novice will really start to show. I'll see how it goes.

But thanks again for this great critique.

[AuntShecky]

{For some reason, the computer I'm using is running as slowly as "Snail's Pace," the last horse I bet on. I'll try, nevertheless, to post a couple of critiques per your request.}

Re: Formatting. The posting looks fairly good on the screen or virtual "page.") Next time, though, please remember that in dialogue each change of speaker requires a new paragraph, so you should skip a space.

Few of us are able to sidestep another pitfall, and that's an inadvertent mistake in grammar and usage. It's extremely easy to trip up with a misplaced modifier:

He'd been there for a few hours sitting alone at a corner table, absorbed by his laptop computer.
Here the participial phrase is modifying "table." It should be closer to the noun or pronoun it's describing, either at the beginning of the sentence or after "alone."

As to the story itself: It's okay to open with setting, either with time or locale (or both), but generally it's better to hit the ground running with a more active scene. In this piece the time of day is relevant, though not crucial; still you only have to mention it once, not three times as in your opening
paragraph:


It was noon. The lunch rush began and a sizable group of students spilled into the cafe, seeking the taste of midday sustenance.

Actually, maybe you should skip that sentence entirely while retaining Naomi's line, as it establishes a point about Jason's character:

It's 12:00 pm, Jason. It's the middle of the day.
(You'll notice that even she mentions the time of day twice.)

Since the word "short" in short stories means that they are generally supposed to be brief, we really should attempt to "make every word count." Many of us, yours fooly especially, have to remind ourselves of that dictim which is more honored in the breach than in the observance. For this reason, the reader doesn't really need to know the details of Naomi's attire, as it's irrelevant to the story (except, later on, where rolling down her long sleeves is almost crucial.)

You are on the right track in your belief that dialogue is a good way to "show"
what's going on rather than to "tell" the story with lengthy narration. It's important, though, that the dialogue reveal aspects of each speaker's personality as well as reveal the "meat" of the story. Tone, word choice, even sentence structure can show us a lot about the character. That's why we should try to make each character's speech distinctive,without having all of the characters sound the same. That's difficult, I know, as it's hard enough for a writer to keep his own voice out of it.

It's also difficult, but not impossible, to make the dialogue authentic. You don't want your characters to sound like interchangeable sitcom characters or crank out undistilled emotions such as old timey soap operas. Some of your dialogue, I'm afraid, doesn't ring true. For instance, Naomi's rattling off a list of places where she didn't find Jason, as well as describing the location of a table which she has already pointed out. This is a flaw similiar to that of the dialogue in some movies-- having a character fill in plot points, just one step above the dreaded "voice over" narration.

I had the same impression over the bit of business about Panera. (A great place--maybe a certain member of the family will take me there for Mother's Day, hint, hint.) Naomi's line about "white people's food" was not really offensive but, again, doesn't push the story forward. You could retain the line if it's really necessary; if so, delete the part of her earlier description where we're told she is a black woman (though her race also seems irrelevant.) Other than that, the lines about the restaurant sort of screech the story to a halt. It's like a commercial for Panera's lower-priced competitor-- or the opposite of "product placement" in a movie.

The story is not about lunchtime or a certain restaurant or maybe even Naomi's knowledge--like a human Google--about Jason's whereabouts at any given moment. It's about the ghastly sight of the veins in her arms. Perhaps the space given up to unnecessary description and riffing on the restaurant could have been better used showing us a little more about how this strange phyiscal phenomenon came to be--subtly, of course, without spelling it out.

[DavidO]

Wow, thank you for this thorough feedback. Sorry, for responding so late, I just got around to checking the boards again. This particular story is one that I am currently working on possibly to create something longer, for fun of course, but I have some ideas for the characters and I'd like to try to write something fuller.

I will definitely be referencing your comments as I go. I picked up a little on the sitcom vibe and the issue with overly expository(?) dialog, but the other points I hadn't thought about. Will be thinking about them now. So thanks again.

[frontlip.eu]

I was hooked by the end of it, wanted to know what had happened to her arm and that's very important in this kind of genre fiction. The first two paragraphs ( and the later longer descriptive paragraphs) had a good natural style, but the dialogue was quite flat and didn't go any where. I think you should use less dialogue for the time being and describe a bit more.

Overall, I don't think you're that far off from being able to write a larger piece and let us readers know what's up with the girl's arm. Lot's of potential.

Jay