Critique #131 — Lance Levens
Kevin Andrew Murphy June 3rd, 2007
Felton picked up the frog—still kicking—and retied him by his leg onto the dogwood limb where he hung in a row of four victims, all riddled with pellet shot.
“Tough little punker, ain’t he?†He turned the frog over, examining the wounds. “Look here, Pheus, got him twice in the butt.†He looked up and me and grinned. His teeth consisted of rotted stumps from years of Skoal.
I smiled, painfully. I had on my Fred’s Frozen Igloo red cap and I was watching another grown man examine a frog he had just riddled with pellets
He returned to where I was standing about twenty feet away, cocked his rifle and fired again. The frog spun around .
“You try it,†he said, handing the rifle to me.
I glanced across the yard at a big rig from International Paper in Savannah that had just then pulled in at Pump 12.
On the plus side, your writing is pretty good. I did wonder about your grammar choices in several spots. For example, I don’t think you need the comma after “smiled” in “I smiled, painfully.” I assume you mean the “pained expression” sort of “painfully” rather than that it was physically painful to smile. My other nit is that this paragraph doesn’t seem very connected in thought flow. I figured that he was smiling painfully in response to being handed the rifle, so the next sentence (”I had on my Fred’s Frozen Igloo red cap[,] and I was watching another grown man examine a frog he had just riddled with pellets”) almost sounds like you’re doing a “setting the scene” infodump–and one that isn’t necessary. On the other hand, if the sentence is related to why he was smiling painfully, why is wearing his red cap ‘painful’? He didn’t have to wear it. As this paragraph is worded now, it just seems a bit out of place in the overall flow.
My last comment is more about my personal reaction. I feel like you’re trying to set up a stereotypical redneck country cousin here. I live in rifle-tot’n redneck country and have yet to see anyone with completely rotten teeth or anyone who would practice rifle shooting on live or dead animals. If the fellow didn’t seem so stereotypical, I might forgive it, but instead I find myself losing interest because I’m not expecting anything original from the story.
Lance, I took me a bit to figure out what was actually bothering me about your 13 lines. I decided that the main problem is that you set a scene so subtly off from what matches my experience that I don’t believe in the world that you’re setting up. For example, from “His teeth consisted of rotted stumps from years of Skoal”, I’m assuming that this fellow is at least thirty, but my experience places “rotted stumps of teeth” more in the range of sixty years old on up.
Next, you say, “…all riddled with pellet shot.” I assumed you meant that he was using an air rifle since they use pellet shot rather than bullets and the like. Yet most air rifles are used (under supervision) by teenagers to learn how to properly use a rifle before they get a firearm. So now I’m wondering how old these two characters are. Furthermore, you later say, “…cocked his rifle and fired again.” Air rifles are not, technically, cocked. Now I’m not certain about what sort of rifle he’s using.
Also, even with an air rifle at target range, a frog would have to be pretty big to be used for target practice and also very tough take two pellet shots in the butt and still have an intact butt. I’d expect a mangled butt on that frog, but that’s not indicated. Also, I’m wondering where he found four huge frogs.
Finally, from the Pump 12 reference, I was picturing this as happening within city limits. It’s illegal to shoot a firearm or air gun within city limits–at least, I know it is in two states.
Perhaps you could clear up some of these expectation problems since it would only take one or two small word changes to do it.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Debbie. Let’s examine your critique:
1. “painfully”: an adverb modifying the verb “smiled.” The narrator found it painful
to smile. His smile was forced.
2. The smile doesn’t come in response to being handed the gun. The painful smile
is in response to the situation in toto.
3. The stereotype issue. If you’ve never seen a man with rotten teeth shooting
frogs, we’re not talking about a stereotype, are we? If there aren’t
any examples in your experience to refer to, how can you assert that the image
I’m depicting conforms to what you consider a stereotype? Isn’t it incumbent on
you to a least be able to make the claim that this image is too much like
the hundreds of other rural men performing similar acts?
4. To play the Devil’s Advocate: In thirteen lines almost any character sketched therein will appear
stereotypical. The rest of the story will tell the tale.
Debbie, you’re too fast from me! We crossed. I’ll plunge ahead and respond to
your second post.
We have a he said she said situation here. I’m from South Georgia. I KNOW men in
their thirties with rotted teeth from tobacco and/or Skoal or Copenhagen.
Re the target practice: Felton is using an air rifle, we call them down here. He’s at
a service station/watering hole for 18 wheelers on an interstate here in
South Georgia. His shooting at frogs speaks volumes about his character, level of maturity, etc. The frogs are big, but Felton (the shooter) has a worm farm on a river nearby; he can
nab some big ones. Later we discover that Felton supplies the narrator, Pheus,
with all his fishing bait; consequently, Pheus is somewhat forgiving of the man’s
sadistic hobbies.
If the air rifle shooting within the city limits shocks you, in a few narrative moments a woman will fire a .30-.30 at the same frog! I hope I don’t sound glib or dismissive. Thanks for
taking the time to set forth your objections. Even though I disagree, you’re
probably raising questions others might raise.
Lance,
What happens later in the story is immaterial to the question at hand: What impression does the reader take from the first thirteen lines, especially a reader who’s the editor sorting through slush?
I remember getting a dismissive note from an editor at the beginning of my career which made it clear that she hadn’t read any more of the story than the first page–a story that I later sold, I should mention–but in 20/20 hindsight, I have to say that this was a good and illustrative lesson. Editors are just looking for a reason to toss a story away, since they’re overworked as it is, and if your opening isn’t up to the caliber of your later story, this is a problem.
So, on to the problems in your first thirteen lines.
First one is brand name fever. I’ll cite from the wisdom of the Turkey City Lexicon:
In your first thirteen lines we have Skoal, Fred’s Frozen Igloo and International Paper in Savannah and I’m pretty damn certain that in the next line, you’re going to tell us the name of the gas station and the big rig’s trucking company.
Worse, the “Fred’s Frozen Igloo red cap” is a viewpoint shift. Your narrator, first person though he may be, is probably not thinking either about the color of the hat on top of his head, the logo on the front of it, or for that matter that he’s wearing it. You are probably wearing underwear while you read this, but have you thought about them since you put them on this morning? Have you ever forgotten your sunglasses atop your head?
As for Felton’s stereotypicality, stereotypes are unfortunately based on truth, but if you don’t have anything to differentiate the individual from the stereotype, they read as caricature.
The easiest way to do this is to play against type. For example, in the show Supernatural, one of the recurring characters is Bobby, who’s an old moustached guy in a trucker cap who lives in a rundown house with a hound dog on the porch and speaks with a Southern accent while holding a can of cheap beer and this all reads as a stereotype until we step into his living room and suddenly see such an occult library of demonology texts as to make Giles from Buffy weep while simultaneously going into a geekfest.
Right now? Felton is looking like an extra from Deliverance and I have no sympathy or interest in either him and his frog-tormenting ways or the narrator who’s completely accepting of them.
More than that, there have been no stakes introduced. We’ve got two good-ol’-boys shooting frogs for their amusement with no hint of external threat or internal angst or anything to make this more interesting than eavesdropping on a couple kids eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Maybe it’s slice of life, but the tension meter is currently at 0, the character sympathy meter is negative, and even the amusement and novelty factor is flatlined. It doesn’t matter if I’ve never heard specifically of good-ol’-boys shooting frogs for their amusement–what matters is that I’m neither surprised nor interested by it.
For all the reasons above, I’m not turning the page.
Lance,
A description can both be stereotypical and something that doesn’t match my experience. Felton seems stereotypical. However, the area around here (where I live in Arkansas) doesn’t conform to this stereotype. My point (which was later expanded on) was that [i]I[/i], personally, kept getting jerked out of the story when the little details didn’t line up to what I expected. At least a few other readers will have this same problem. Frankly, I don’t care where the big frogs came from–though it’s a good thing that you know. I only mentioned them because they played a role in the description that confused me on the points of the two men’s age, what type of rifle was being used, and my mental picture of the target frogs. As I said, you could clear these problems up by just changing or adding a word or two without actually changing your story a bit. Or you can leave things as they are. Just don’t expect me (and readers like me) to read on.
Thanks, Debbie and Kevin:
I checked out the Turkey City Lexicon. Interesting, valuable stuff; but for literary fiction writers the no brand name rule has to be modified: if we complied with it thoroughly, we’d have to eliminate Joyce, JK O’Toole (Confederacy of Dunces,)Walker Percy and any writer inextricably associated with a known place such as Dublin or New Orleans. Known places involve the writer in those aspects of that place that are known–which are often name brands. True, the writer also risks, thereby, binding him self to things which pass away. Who will know squat about any brand name in a thousand years? But, if the brand name is tied to something that functions within the story–the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg in Gatsby, Guiness uberall in Joyce, it has a function beyond it’s brand identification. It rises to another level.
Re the particlar instances of brand names, Kevin, that you point out: the Skoal reference IS linked to a visual: Felton’s rotten teeth. International Paper is there to specify a type of trucking. Don’t you think the reader can fill in that they’re hauling timber? Finally, I don’t think your underwear comparison works re the narrator’s cap. The Fred’ Frozen Igloo hat identifies the narrator with his place of work. He’s proud of his work. What Felton(the shooter) is doing is: illegal, immoral and tasteless. That’s the reason the narrator’s thinking about his cap. He knows everyone can see it. Everyone can’t see my underwear–I hope. He’s embarrassed. Do I have to say it?
Excellent jousting! Keep up the good work!
Lance,
Reread the “Brand Name Fever” listing and note that it does not mean that such things are forbidden, simply that they can be overdone and are no substitute for good description. And if you can point out where Joyce uses three brand names in the first thirteen lines of any story, I’ll eat my unbranded hat.
First off, I thought the International Paper truck was hauling finished paper, not recently harvested logs. Why not just call it a lumber truck? You can spot that from fifty yards, even if you can’t read the name on the door. Describe what people notice first.
With the Skoal, did Felton never in his life touch Copenhagen? Maybe a cigarette too? Say “tobacco-stained” and have done with it. Not everyone will know Skoal, but everyone knows tobacco.
As for Fred’s Igloo hat, no, you don’t have to say that Fred’s embarrassed — and shouldn’t, as that’s another flaw — but you do have to intimate that in such a way that the reader will be able to pick it up.
One way to do that is to let the detail stand out. The Igloo cap is important is what you’re saying. The brand of tobacco and the owners of the lumber truck? Not so much.
As for the “jousting” business, you can talk defensively about your work all you like, and cast aspersions about people not understanding literary fiction, but at the end of all that jawing, it doesn’t change the fact that your characters as they stand dont’ engage me and all the things you’re trying to get across aren’t coming through because of simple flaws in the prose.
And even if the embarressment of the narrator were coming through, that’s not sufficient emotional stakes for me to be interested in his fate. So he’s hanging out with a grown man who shoots frogs for kicks. They’re both losers and I don’t care.
Make me care and you’ve got a story. Leave me cold and you’ve got a form rejection slip.
I liked it. I’m from New York, so the situation is comfortably alien and interesting. The people are familiar. I’ve met Felton’s kind. I knew a pair of guys (father and son) who would torture animals for fun, but didn’t have the room to go shooting frogs tied to a log. Both had air rifles. One shot his wife in the hand with it and the other shot out car windshields of drivers that had somehow “wronged” him, then parked too close to his window. I have no problem recognizing and hating Felton. If you want him to read as petty, sadistic, and deplorable, you hit it.
I think the language needs to be tightened. Once we have “Felton picked up the frog—still kicking—and retied him by his leg onto the dogwood limb where he hung in a row of four victims, all riddled with pellet shot.” we gain no further information from “I was watching another grown man examine a frog he had just riddled with pellets”. That last sentence needs a period, btw.
To nit pick “The frog spun around .” needs to lose the space before the period.
“I had on my Fred’s Frozen Igloo red cap and I was watching another grown man examine a frog he had just riddled with pellets” I wasn’t sure what relationship these facts have to one another, so I didn’t know why they were in the same sentence. I didn’t catch that he was proud of his job, or even that he worked for that company. I wear Shonen Jump hats, Microsoft hats, Anime Network hats, and New York Yankees hats. I don’t work for any of them and never have. Even if I had known he worked there, that wouldn’t have told me he was proud of his job. I’ve worked for some outfits that I can’t say I was proud of and did a stint programming children’s video games that I never put on my resume, the company has that bad of a reputation in the industry.
I didn’t get that they were hauling timber. I thought they were hauling reams of paper. Not knowing the paper company, they could easily have been hauling cotton if they were a high-end manufacturer like Cranes.
I get the feeling the narrator is in a bad place. On the one hand he clearly dislikes what Felton is doing and yet he’s still there. I want to know why and I would read a little further on to find out. You haven’t won me for the story, but you’ve won another few paragraphs to pull me in.
I’m with Kevin on the POV jump, otherwise I’m pretty much with Ivy. A few more graphs to make sure this isn’t a ‘Deliverance’ story (which is not my preferred reading)–I want something to happen but I’d turn the page.