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hope75
05-30-2013, 02:31 PM
With a relentless assault, the rain poured as it had done for most of that day. The crowd huddled uncomfortably in the tiny dry space of the bus shelter as the passing traffic heaved by. Those unlucky enough to be at the front soaked from the spray of the numerous puddles, now shimmering black in the late evening darkness.

Nestled at the back, as he was at the same time most evenings, Dennis tried in vain to read the trashy fiction he had grown to love on these dreary commutes home. He glanced at his watch and noted that the bus was now over twenty minutes late and the hustle of the irascible crowd against him began to wear his patience.

The growl of an engine followed by the screech of brakes caused Dennis to look up from his book. Turning the corner he spotted the 145 that would finally get him home and back to Amy.

He boarded the bus, flashing his travel card quickly at the uninterested driver before taking the nearest available seat. Resting his briefcase on his lap he returned to his trashy tale of the pauper who fights for the love of the fair maiden, hoping this would block out the chatter of those seated around him.

It was after ten when he stepped off the bus into the cold, biting, damp air. The smell of the nearby slaughterhouse invading his nostrils as he made his way across the by now deserted small road that led to his home.

Drenched and tired, he unlocked the door of his shabby bungalow and stepped inside, relieved to be finally out of the rain. Making his way down the hallway, he stopped at their bedroom and quietly opened the door. Amy lay with her back to him, her raven coloured curls resting on the porcelain of her exposed shoulders. He pulled the fallen bedclothes back over her shoulders and went out to the kitchen to fix his supper.

He ate in silence, flicking through the files he had brought from the office. The McMahon report had to be finished within the next few days he thought to himself before returning it to his briefcase and washing the utensils he had just used.

Dennis then did all his safety checks – making sure the front door was bolted and the back door was locked. Happy that all was in order, he dried his thinning auburn hair in the bathroom and returned to the bedroom.

Amy felt cold on his skin as he spooned next to her naked body. He could smell the faintest hint of coconut still lingering in her hair that now filled his face. He ran his hand over her right breast, causing him to stiffen against her buttocks. Pulling her curls back he began to softly kiss her neck and upper back. Moving himself into position he guided himself into her. Her sex felt dry and tight around his, penetrating her deeper. Gyrating harder and faster began the catalyst that would eventually lead him to orgasm, which inevitably occurred moments later. Satisfied, Dennis lay onto his back and was soon enveloped by sleep and dream.

The shrill, electronic shriek from the ringtone of his phone on the locker beside the bed abruptly stirred him from this state the following morning. Focusing his tired eyes, the number of the office flashed as incoming on the device.

“Hello”, he answered.

“Good morning Dennis, Mr Boyce would like you to come in early today, there is an urgent meeting and he would like you to attend”, the tinny voice of his boss’s secretary replied.

“Oh, yes that is fine. What time does he need me there at”, Dennis asked still thrown by the earliness of the call.

“If you could get here in the next hour, that would be great”, was the quite demanding response.

“Yes, yes. I have a few things to sort out at home but will try to make it in as soon as I can”, he conceded before Mr Boyce’s secretary rudely hung up.

Dennis got up slowly and went to the bathroom. He turned on the shower which he hoped would help wash the sleep from his being.
Standing under the pressurised hotness of the water, he slowly started to freshen up. Drying in front of the mirror he observed his sagging middle aged body before turning away, almost in disgust.

In the kitchen, he once again ate in silence, organising the McMahon files for his upcoming meeting as the toast crunched in his mouth. It was then he noticed the familiar odour that began to creep through the air of the small bungalow.

He dashed down the hall to the bedroom where the pungent stench was now more prevalent. Getting down on his knees, he lifted the bed covers and pulled out a white air freshener from beneath the bed. Dennis put the box to his nose. The lime breeze perfume that should have greeted him was now non- existent. He pulled out another, followed by another and found they were all beginning to lose the freshness that their adverts would have people believe.

Leaning in closer to Amy he realised then what was happening. Dennis would have to get rid of his latest ‘girlfriend’. It was a shame he thought, he had loved Amy more than any of the previous ones. Danielle, Pauline, Sarah, he remembered the names he liked to give them.

The heavy rain of the last few days had made the soil in his secluded back garden soft and easy to dig. Dennis carefully laid the body now draped in the sheet into the newly dug hole beside his other ‘girlfriends’ whom also ended up in the seclusion of the pretty back garden of his shabby little bungalow with pretty flowers now growing where they lay. What flowers would he grow on top of Amy? Yes lilies, he thought.

cafolini
05-30-2013, 03:45 PM
I'm waiting for Hillwalker. LOL

hillwalker
05-30-2013, 04:07 PM
On a cursory reading I would have to say you are guilty of over-writing. You're making every scene dramatic - so that there's no room left in the story for any drama when the plot kicks in.

How do I know this? It's relatively easy to condense 90% of the plot into less than 100 words.

With a relentless assault, the rain poured as it had done for most of that day.
It rained.

The crowd huddled uncomfortably in the tiny dry space of the bus shelter as the passing traffic heaved by.
'heaved'? Strange word selection.
Traffic passed the bus shelter.

Those unlucky enough to be at the front soaked from the spray of the numerous puddles, now shimmering black in the late evening darkness.
Some people got wet - it was night.

So far no story in sight.

Nestled at the back, as he was at the same time most evenings, Dennis tried in vain to read the trashy fiction he had grown to love on these dreary commutes home. He glanced at his watch and noted that the bus was now over twenty minutes late and the hustle of the irascible crowd against him began to wear his patience.
Dennis is waiting for a bus which is late.

The growl of an engine followed by the screech of brakes caused Dennis to look up from his book. Turning the corner he spotted the 145 that would finally get him home and back to Amy.
The bus arrives.

He boarded the bus, flashing his travel card quickly at the uninterested driver before taking the nearest available seat. Resting his briefcase on his lap he returned to his trashy tale of the pauper who fights for the love of the fair maiden, hoping this would block out the chatter of those seated around him.

It was after ten when he stepped off the bus into the cold, biting, damp air. The smell of the nearby slaughterhouse invading his nostrils as he made his way across the by now deserted small road that led to his home.
He gets on the bus - and travels home. He lives close to an abattoir.

Phew - this is such hard work trying to find the story. But I'll continue reading.

Drenched and tired, he unlocked the door of his shabby bungalow and stepped inside, relieved to be finally out of the rain. Making his way down the hallway, he stopped at their bedroom and quietly opened the door. Amy lay with her back to him, her raven coloured curls resting on the porcelain of her exposed shoulders. He pulled the fallen bedclothes back over her shoulders and went out to the kitchen to fix his supper.
He gets home - wet - and Amy's already in bed.

He ate in silence, flicking through the files he had brought from the office. The McMahon report had to be finished within the next few days he thought to himself before returning it to his briefcase and washing the utensils he had just used.
He eats supper and thinks about the McMahon report.

Dennis then did all his safety checks – making sure the front door was bolted and the back door was locked. Happy that all was in order, he dried his thinning auburn hair in the bathroom and returned to the bedroom.
Then he goes to bed.

Amy felt cold on his skin as he spooned next to her naked body. He could smell the faintest hint of coconut still lingering in her hair that now filled his face. He ran his hand over her right breast, causing him to stiffen against her buttocks. Pulling her curls back he began to softly kiss her neck and upper back. Moving himself into position he guided himself into her. Her sex felt dry and tight around his, penetrating her deeper. Gyrating harder and faster began the catalyst that would eventually lead him to orgasm, which inevitably occurred moments later. Satisfied, Dennis lay onto his back and was soon enveloped by sleep and dream.
And shags Amy then falls asleep
- but there's still no story within a million miles of this.

The shrill, electronic shriek from the ringtone of his phone on the locker beside the bed abruptly stirred him from this state the following morning. Focusing his tired eyes, the number of the office flashed as incoming on the device.
A phone call wakes him.

“Hello”, he answered.
“Good morning Dennis, Mr Boyce would like you to come in early today, there is an urgent meeting and he would like you to attend”, the tinny voice of his boss’s secretary replied.
“Oh, yes that is fine. What time does he need me there at”, Dennis asked still thrown by the earliness of the call.
“If you could get here in the next hour, that would be great”, was the quite demanding response.
“Yes, yes. I have a few things to sort out at home but will try to make it in as soon as I can”, he conceded before Mr Boyce’s secretary rudely hung up.
Dennis needs to go to work early.

Dennis got up slowly Why? and went to the bathroom. He turned on the shower which he hoped would help wash the sleep from his being.
Standing under the pressurised hotness of the water, he slowly started to freshen up. Drying in front of the mirror he observed his sagging middle aged body before turning away, almost in disgust.
He has a shower.
- still no story, but I'm still looking.

In the kitchen, he once again ate in silence, organising the McMahon files for his upcoming meeting as the toast crunched in his mouth. It was then he noticed the familiar odour that began to creep through the air of the small bungalow.
He has breakfast and notices a smell.
. . . surely not the scent of a plot?

He dashed down the hall to the bedroom where the pungent stench was now more prevalent. Getting down on his knees, he lifted the bed covers and pulled out a white air freshener from beneath the bed. Dennis put the box to his nose. The lime breeze perfume that should have greeted him was now non- existent. He pulled out another, followed by another and found they were all beginning to lose the freshness that their adverts would have people believe.
An advertisement for air fresheners. . ?
. . . or is Dennis is necrophiliac?

And that's your plot in a nut shell. A one-line idea stretched out beyond salvation. The bus journey - the abattoir - the McMahon report have nothing to do with the 'plot'.

Feeble, and hardly worth the effort it took you to type it out. My advice - read some short stories first then try again.


H3K

AuntShecky
05-30-2013, 05:01 PM
. . . or is Dennis is necrophiliac?

Could be. Maybe this is an X-rated version of "A Rose for Emily." In this one there is the ineffectual air fresheners (whiffs of the movie Seven). Not only that the narrator describes various parts of the wife's anatomy as "cold," "dry," and "tight." Also, you'll notice that the wife never says a word. (Dead women tell no tales.)

Speaking of telling tales, this one doesn't really work. It's subtle enough, but the majority of
the description is superfluous material that has little bearing on the gist of the story.

Don't get me wrong. It is better to show than to tell. (Martin Amis once said that he'd rather die than write a sentence like "He walked into the room.") Still, the things the story "shows" should indicate something more important than mere typing.

hope75
05-30-2013, 05:35 PM
Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate you taking the time to do that. It looks like I have a lot to learn.

NickBrown
06-01-2013, 09:41 AM
I'm going to have to disagree with Hillwalker. I feel like you're trying to give him a style, rather than tips. I don't feel that the abundance of details reduces the value of the story; rather, it is the details hope75 has chosen that does. I agree that the first line is totally cliche sounding, but the story does pick up later on. I guess I'm just saying that not everyone is Ernest Hemingway.

hillwalker
06-01-2013, 12:04 PM
The problem is that there are so many details that they smother the story - by the time we get to the punch-line we've long given up caring.

Relevant details can flesh out a character and add depth to a story. A series of banal diary entries recording a character's mundane, tedious daily life is going to attract few if any readers.

And the abattoir and McMahon report. . . do they foreshadow something I've missed or are they irrelevant? If the latter, they have no part in the story.

H

jayat
06-01-2013, 04:17 PM
On a cursory reading I would have to say you are guilty of over-writing. You're making every scene dramatic - so that there's no room left in the story for any drama when the plot kicks in.

How do I know this? It's relatively easy to condense 90% of the plot into less than 100 words.


H3K

Okey, I can see the great exercise of condensation you made, H, but is there some room for any poetical view upon the things he either narrates or describes?
It looks as though you built a list of actions "it happens this in here" "there that thing" come on, what's next, folks? "oh, this thing". I don't say I don't agree with you. I appreciate some sort of "straight forward sense" when narrating but some kind of poetical, literarian "sauce" (without killing our attention) must be necessary not to turn a fictional story into a piece of news...
Just a comment.

hillwalker
06-01-2013, 04:31 PM
I'm not saying this is how it should have been written - a list of events condensed into less than 100 words. Far from it.
But there's nothing lyrical or poetical in the style the OP has chosen to write the story - and nothing enthralling in the way it is structured. It reads like a series of diary entries spiced up with ridiculously over-dramatic descriptions.

Ask yourself, who in their right mind wants to read a story that spends most of its time recording a man's bus journey home, his night-time routine, being woken by a telephone call and then his morning ablutions?

H

jayat
06-02-2013, 08:24 AM
Certainly...Are you suggesting nowadays pieces of work such as "Dubliners" which told us tales which no much interesting peripety doesn't work? Well, yes, I would agree. I must confess I read this Joyce's writing work to acquire more vocabulary as well as more narrative threading skills. What's more, the stories in that book were rather "boring"...(I hope Joyce's spirit doesn't wake up from his graveyard and come to kick off my lack of criteria or either my taste).

Then the matter is founding something interesting, something grasping, some catchy things that can knot the facts one try to narrate...but...the terrific but...Where do you get them? Once we've got created a character and throw her/him/it (it may be a dog...) to her, his or its world, which we also create for all of them, are we sure the peripety is good or it will be more likely another amount of rubbish?
All that liturgy to tell you I've got built a character living in his world and I do not know what to do with him. I came to a point where I got bored of him, indeed...I suppose your advise will be keep on trying (Reading as well as writing) and when you know enough english translate it to this language for us to improve you, okey...

hillwalker
06-02-2013, 08:52 AM
Comparing Joyce's meticulous detail and mastery of language in the likes of 'Ulysses' or 'Dublinners' with this banal story is rather disrespectful. If something is well written then you escape into the story and the characters come to life. But in this post neither happens.

H

NickBrown
06-02-2013, 12:47 PM
But sometimes banality actually serves a big purpose. Take for instance the McMahon report. When I hear that, I immediately think 'important person'. Possibly a businessman, but judging by his living conditions and mode of transportation, I would probably lean more towards police officer/detective. Now, a necrophiliac is much more disturbing than some joe-shmo living on the edge of society. I mean, it's almost like how Hemingway's Nick "liked to open cans." Now, this is obviously no Hemingway, but he does the same thing, just not as effectively.

jayat
06-02-2013, 04:26 PM
Comparing Joyce's meticulous detail and mastery of language in the likes of 'Ulysses' or 'Dublinners' with this banal story is rather disrespectful. If something is well written then you escape into the story and the characters come to life. But in this post neither happens.

H

Wait a minute and sorry in advanced for being disrespectful. I try it never be any of my intentions.

Having said that, some considerations:
Joyce's wrote like angles could do if they were affected by human feelings and had got innards but the joyces' plots, at least in Dublinners (I missed an "n" in my former message) are rather boring. I remember one in which a drunker falls faint, stairs down. People in that Irish bar get impressed by the stunning falling. He is a big, fat, hefty man and looks rather clumsy and a bit stupid. He, in the falling, beats his tongue and then speaks showing a stupidity even bigger than what he looks like.

Otherwise, all of them, indeed people from out in the street, help him to come around. The barman gives him a Sherry and calls someone to pick him up to home. They also help him to get into a car and one of the congregates in there led him at his main house's doorway (the doorway of his house ?), pays the taxi driver and comes back next. Then I do not remember if he meets all the friends from his gang at his home or they come in a rush to visit him, something I'm afraid I can't recall at the moment. But all they, all those friends together surround the clumsy drunker with a beaten tongue, who talks as if he was retarded and keeps followg a conversation about banal, trivial things, as banal and trivial as all I've been writing so far. The woman appears in the middle of the friends's gang reprimanding his husband as he was a child when he opens his mouth to call her for more booze.

Well, good story if you don’t mind about peripety or eventful resorts. I do not consider all that sequences of...banal maybe?...events to much exciting, compelling-to-read-till-the-eyes-burn peripeties. I only can say Joyce is good even translated to Catalan and a good literary teacher to me, definitely…But, for God’s sake, I do not see more plot than “a drunker, who harms himself in a bar, is brought to home and there keeps drinking with his fellows”.

All in all, the story grasp but, due to the plot or due to resorts which are artistic or literary? We can see all the symbologies we want to, there must be tenths of messages underneath from all the schools of thought and so on but…A part from the way of writing the story (I take my hat off, how lucky you are, you Anglo-Saxons, to have writers of that caliber) the main story is as light as a grain of pollen in a windy day.

Happy to be among you

hillwalker
06-03-2013, 05:49 AM
My mistake - a stray 'n' somehow found its way into 'Dubliners'.

Joyce wrote this collection of short stories as a series of vignettes where each character experiences self-understanding. The fact that he focuses on the banality of their existance was his deliberate attempt to explore the Irish working-class way of life at the time of writing - its parochialism and its rather sad lack of direction given that the country was going through such upheaval politically.

H

jayat
06-03-2013, 07:09 AM
Good to know it, I got no idea about the data surrounding this Joyce's set of scenes. Well, thanks H.