Critique #101 — John Chu
Kevin Andrew Murphy January 14th, 2007
Jacob made it onto the Amtrak Regional just before it pulled out of
South Station. If this had been any other Friday night, he’d be in a
seat by now, waiting for the conductor to take his ticket, then going
to sleep. However, he and rest of his design team were pushing to save
their jobs by taping out Sentry tonight. In the rush to prepare
Sentry’s design files for the fab, he had been caught in the fray of
last minute bug fixes. He left work only after yelling at a workmate,
Kent, who had told him to get his priorities straight or else he’d
pick him up and carry him to the station himself. He left, in part,
because Kent could do it.
The train car floor rumbled beneath him as he pulled his carry-on case
from car to car looking for a seat. Too many people thought sleeping
in Boston and waking up in DC was a good idea. He migrated through
several cars before he found an empty seat, or rather a seat with a
bag on it. It was an aisle seat next to a waif-like woman who sat
stiffly on her side determined to face the window.
I’m intrigued overall, but why not begin with the guys fixing the bug and stick with linear time? Your verb is not precise enough (were pushing when you probably mean had been pushing?) for starting with the station, jumping back to his usual habits, then jumping again to what he’d been doing instead. I was so confused I had to go back and reread the first graf three times–and it’s not all that interesting.
Once you get him moving, I begin to pick up some interest, but really, why not begin when he drops into the seat beside the woman, because isn’t this where the story starts? If we need to know about his late bug fix, can’t he establish that in conversation, rather than the narrator having to dump expo on us at the very start?
What Sherwood said. The intro does let us know he’s working with a fabricator and so on, but I had to reread it to see what was going on in the muddle, and really, it was less interesting that Office Space or Dilbert, so why bother?
The story begins with the semi-territorial waifish woman, which is enough of a dose of reality to give us a taste of it, and we can quickly find out any crucial backstory while your main character vents to this stranger.
Anyway, I am intrigued enough to turn the page, but I still want these first lines cleaned up.
What Sherwood said. I like the first line, though - it’s clear and it establishes setting and situation. I’m not sure why you can’t jump from there to the second paragraph, and then, as Sherwood suggests, establish the bug fix in conversation or some other narrative mechanism?