Critique #125 — Don Ostreicher #2
Kevin Andrew Murphy April 21st, 2007
They say you’re not really an adult until you face your own mortality.
By this definition, Bonnie’s age had doubled five times without her reaching maturity.
All this changed today.
Her F-150 coughed. She gently ran her phalanges around the large circumference of the steering wheel until they intersected. She paused there like a good student, hands folded in her lap, waiting for the teacher. Neurons fired, preparing to birth anxious thoughts, but like a naughty student, she interrupted, “I know you’re feeling old, but you need to make it through one more winter.â€
As if in response, the faded blue pickup – she named him Luke – he had ADHD – coughed again. She glanced at Luke’s odometer – 156,213 – just as Elizabeth woke up killing the thoughts of timing chains and piston rings incubating in her subconscious before they could hatch. Lizzy filled the present Zen moment. Thus centered, and in no rush to enter The Yoxborough Funeral Home, she carefully packed Lizzy into her stroller, sheltering her extremities with pink booties, little mittens, and a rainbow-striped ski cap tied under her chin. Lizzy sang the entire time, little clouds of stream escaping her puffy, rose lips. “Dada, Mama, Da, da, da, Ma, ma, ma,â€
Okay, so the first age-double was age 2, the second was age 4, the third was age 8, the fourth was age 16, and the fifth was age 32. Why not just tell us that she’s 32 years old so that the reader doesn’t have to stop and figure out what you meant?
Her aging changed today? That’s the last thing you said, so I assume that’s what you refer to with the “this.” I also think that “All that changed…” reads better, but you probably should change the “this” into what it specifically refers to, instead.
From this point forward, you completely lost me. I know she’s in a plane and there is trouble, but that’s it. I couldn’t make sense of all the imagery that you threw at me.
Did you mean that she ran her fingers over the steering wheel? How, if her hands are on her lap? And why not just say that instead of using the word “phalanges”? Is she a student or is she just acting like one (which seems to be the option you’re saying, but that seems like an idiotic thing to do in an emergency if she isn’t one.)
Why not say that she was getting worried instead of the neurons bit (assuming I decoded that correctly) and what does being anxious directly have to do with needing to live one more winter?
How can a pick-up (which I assume is a camera) cough or have ADHD or have an odometer?
Do you mean that something suddenly occurred to her? I have no idea what you said here.
Who is Lizzy? We’ve had a Bonny and a Luke, but who is Lizzy and what, exactly, is a Zen moment? Okay, Lizzy is a baby? What is a stroller doing on her plane? Why isn’t she trying to make the plane work instead of packing her baby stuff?
As in, I’m totally and completely confused. It would help me understand what’s going on if you just said things in the shortest, plainest words possible. Good luck on revisions.
So, her truck died and she was waiting for a teacher to rescue her–but she took her hands off the steering wheel while the truck was in motion?
Is she an alien with weird fingers that you use “phalanges” rather than “fingers”?
But all of a sudden she’s human and packing a baby into a stroller, still without apparently pulling the truck over, stopping it or getting out.
There is no genre to this, really, given that it’s a woman driving a highly anthropomorphized Ford pick up truck with a baby in (I assume) a car seat.
Seaboe
After posting, I realized that the F-150 probably wasn’t a plane…especially since it had a large steering wheel. Until Seaboe commented, I had no idea that it was a Ford truck. Not everyone is going to understand that phalanges are fingers or an F-150 is a truck and so forth. That’s why I suggested using plain language–so that people know what’s happening instead of having to decode what’s happening and perhaps failing.
I had trouble following what was going on.
Don,
Your story is lost in psuedo-literary blather.
This is what’s happening: Bonnie is 32 today and is going to a funeral home with her baby daughter. She’s having car trouble but is so unconcerned about the funeral that instead we’re treated to boring pet names she’s come up with for her pickup truck, and moreover, she’s actually paying attention to the words her baby is babbling, rather than thinking about the dead person, who should be what she’s thinking about.
Debbie is right–starting the story with a math problem sucks, and I just skipped down to the comments to let Debbie do the math for me because I’m tired and cranky and have no patience for games in the first sentence of a story.
The main problem here is that what you describe should be dependent on the mood you wish to convey, whether you’re going with third person limited omniscient or full omniscient. If you’re going with Bonnie as limited omniscient, having her describe any crap she wouldn’t be caring about at the moment–the pet names of her truck or the color of the baby’s hat–makes me want to slap her because it’s not only unsympathetic but unbelievable. You want to tell us the color of the baby’s rainbow-striped hat? Fine. Let us know about how Bonnie is stressing out because she’s going to a funeral with a baby and it’s not as if they make mourning clothes for kids anymore and/or she’s too poor to buy any, so the baby has the rainbow hat on and why is she stressing about something so stupid when -INSERT NAME- is dead, DEAD! and there’s no help for it! Or maybe she doesn’t like the person who kicked off and she’s just going there for family obligation but she’s still embarrassed that the kid’s wearing the rainbow-striped hat and is probably going to start screaming during the eulogy.
Even having an omniscient narrator is no excuse for this sort of description. Your narrator may be God himself and I’d still want to slap Him for waxing poetic about the unimportant bullshit when what we want to know is who died and what this person means/meant to Bonnie.
Until you clean this up, no one is going to turn the page.
Hello, Don, I think I might be able to see a glimmer of where you’re going with this, but Kevin is right, it’s lost in “literary blather†– most of which I would describe as too much abstraction and bad metaphor.
You write, “All this changed today.†Debbie’s post does a nice job of explaining what’s confusing about this. I’m assuming what changes today is that Bonnie faces her own mortality (I hope it’s through more than attending a funeral). But the opening line and the “this†of which the opening line is antecedent are too far apart and separated by a math problem, which distracts.
If it’s absolutely essential we know she’s 32, why not try something like:
>They say you’re not really an adult until you face your own mortality.
>By that definition, Bonnie at 32 still couldn’t consider herself an adult. But all that was about to change.
A much more efficient setting of the hook.
And about that math problem – I’m dyscalculic (math version of dyslexic), and you would’ve lost me right there. I don’t mind working hard to figure out a story, but the complication had better be really important with a big payoff in advancing the story. This isn’t and doesn’t.
Other responders have already pointed out how the use of anatomical terms distracts. I think you get yourself into some very overcomplicated sentences this way. For instance:
You write, “She gently ran her phalanges around the large circumference of the steering wheel until they intersected. She paused there like a good student, hands folded in her lap, waiting for the teacher.â€
A more direct way of saying this without losing a single important concept would be something like:
>She ran her hands gently around the outside of the steering wheel, then folded them in her lap like a student waiting in the principal’s office.
Actually, that whole student/teacher metaphor doesn’t work for me. It distracts and makes me wonder why it’s there, instead of letting me focus on the story. It’d be much more graceful and efficient to write something like:
>She ran her hands gently around the outside of the steering wheel, then folded them in her lap while she tried to figure out what to do about the truck.
In a way, I feel as though you’re talking down to me (and your other readers) and showing off, with the phalanges and neurons and such. Talking down and showing off are sure ways to alienate readers.
In paragraph 2, the truck is feeling old. In paragraph 3, it has ADHD. You can’t have it both ways. But really – even in metaphoric terms, it is absolutely impossible for a truck to be hyperactive and/or afflicted with attention deficit disorder. I don’t think you want us to laugh here, but that was my reaction.
You have another antecedent problem in paragraph 3. Look at this: “…just as Elizabeth woke up killing the thoughts of timing chains and piston rings incubating in her subconscious before they could hatch.†What is the antecedent of “her?†Yes, it’s Elizabeth, who is certainly not the one thinking about timing chains and piston rings. Again, this sentence is an overcomplication of what would be better expressed as a straightforward idea:
>She glanced at the truck’s odometer – well over 150,000 miles. Just then, Elizabeth woke up, distracting Bonnie from thoughts of timing chains and piston rings.
I think it’s important to remember that the writer’s job is to advance the story while providing enough characterization and description to anchor us in the fictional world, without giving us any excuses to throw the story down in frustration or boredom.
One last thing: if Bonnie is in a perfect Zen moment, that moment won’t be filled with thoughts of her baby. The Zen moment is one in which all distractions are released, all thoughts are pushed away, and one is centered and without self-preoccupation. That passage made me suspect you don’t know what you’re talking about, and that lack of trust is one sure way to lose your readers.
I hope you’re not feeling beat up too badly by this. It’s not my intention to be mean or slag you off. I think this story could go places if it weren’t so self-indulgent.