Critique #128 — Taryn Krueger
Kevin Andrew Murphy May 11th, 2007
A telephone rang, the note was pure and clear; an ordinary sound. The sound reverberated off the walls of the suburban home and out into the street from a partially open window. The silence afterwards was sweet, but only momentary as unconsciously everything stopped, awaiting the return of the sound. A single wet tear ran down a pale cheek of a solitary figure as the sound returned. The figure knew what the speaker would say the simply stared out of the partially opened window. The day had dawned many hours before and the sky was now bright with the deceiving sunlight of winter.
The telephone spoke again and the tears begun to flow more freely. The telephone spoke right into the figure’s mind Pick me up - you need to know the truth!
Taryn,
Proofread instead of relying on your thrice-bedamned spellchecker!
In the first paragraph, you have “the simply stared out of the partially opened window” instead of “then simply stared out of the partially opened window.” Then in the second paragraph, it should be “began” instead of “begun”. An error of tense like that, even if a typo, is inauspicious for the start of a story.
Seeing two typos in the first thirteen lines, and both the sort of things that pass easily through spellcheckers but would be caught instantly by the eye or simple reading aloud, says Lazy author–can’t even be bothered to reread his own work. If you can’t be bothered, why should an editor?
You also use a semicolon in place of a comma in the first sentence, but that’s just a grammar error.
Of course, if there were scintillating prose or the story had sucked me in, I’d pardon it. But even aside from the typos and spellchecker laziness, the voice of the omniscient narrator is diffuse and occasionally bizarre, with stuff like “deceiving sunlight.” Which all adds up to me not being interested enough to turn the page.
Which is too bad, because the crying person in the room with the telephone ringing and not wanting to pick it up is a classic setup — in fact a bit of a stock setup — but one that generally hooks the reader with the double mystery of why the person is crying and who the hell is on the phone. Unfortunately, while wondrous prose is always wondrous, you need to at base have at least workmanlike prose to get people interested in the stock scenario.
My suggestion is to work on the narrative voice, describing those elements that contribute to the story and ignoring the rest. And don’t be so deliberately mysterious and coy about who the figure is, even to the point of us not being told the sex. If we know the specifics of it being a suburban house, then we should likewise be told it’s an elderly man or a teenage girl. Unless you want to have everything be archtypical, in which case you have to strip out all the adjectives and everything else that refines the image–but that can really get boring after a while.
In any case, for many reasons, not turning the page.
I found the reference to the “solitary figure” (who is never given gender or name) to be distancing. I don’t care about the character because you’ve given me nothing to hang caring on–even the fact that it is crying means nothing to me.
Seaboe
Thanks anyway guys - It was worth a try for a first attempt. I shall take you suggestions in Kevin. Thanks