Critique #136 — Jason VanBlarcum
Kevin Andrew Murphy June 18th, 2007
He ran across the street and tripping in the flooded wheel ruts of the Long March, he fell to his knees. Hands covered in mud and stinging from a cut from some hidden stone in the muck, Khoen scrambled in the dung and mire back to his feet, praying to the high gods that the great rolls of fat on the butcher’s son would impede the boy’s pursuit.
“Move it, stray,” an impatient coachman yelled down at Khoen.
He took a second, rising more slowly than he could have, to shoot the portly man a glare. Move it, he says as though Khoen had causally decided to settle back in the filth and enjoy the pouring tempest on such a dreary and frozen autumn afternoon. The man, seeing the impertinence in Khoen’s eyes, swung his lash at Khoen and moved on.
He was on the opposite side of the thoroughfare, peeking from behind a stack of crates in an alley near the Averian Plaza when Lobb’s swinging mass stepped into the street, looking up and down the Long March like a large, hungry mole. Khoen snickered to himself at the thought of Lobb as a bronze-skinned and overweight garden rat, too tubby to escape down his hole as some farmer’s wife strikes him in his protruding ass with a hoe. “It was as though the gods knew he was going to be a fat bastard, putting that name in his father’s head.” Shaking his head and smiling, “who calls their son, ‘Lobb,’” Khoen mused to no one in particular.
Hey Jason, here’s what I thought (apologies for the length). Overall, this kept my interest, but it’s biggest problem is some dodgy sentence structure. For example:
Though your first line is good for catching the reader’s interest, some iffy punctuation makes it flow oddly. Since you’ve got a mix of tenses (it basically says ‘he ran [...] and tripping’, rather than ‘he ran and tripped’), you need a comma after ’street’ to make a subordinate clause. You could also switch it round a bit to have ‘he ran across the street and tripped in the flooded wheel ruts…, falling to his knees’ if you wanted.
Your second sentence is huge, and needs cutting up with some full stops, imo. You’ve also got ‘from a cut from’, which reads badly - avoid word repetition if possible. ‘… scrambled in the dung and mire’ sounds odd, specifically the use of ‘mire’. A mire is a place more than a thing - you’re trying to say ’scrambled in this and that’, but you’ve got ‘in this and this place’. It’s the difference between saying ’scrambled in the muck and slime’ and ’scrambled in the silt and river’, the second one being iffy - do you see what I mean?
Second paragraph (not counting “move it, stray”): can you shoot someone a glare? Personal preference on this one, but it just sounds odd. Yes you can shoot someone a look ['of pure contempt' or whatever], but ’shoot a glare’ just sounded odd to me. Also, you’re missing commas again in places. ‘Move it, he says’ needs a comma after the ’says’. It gets a bit long after ‘and enjoy the pouring tempest’ (which reminds me - a tempest is a storm specifically. Though you often get rain in a tempest, it’s not always the case [there can be snow or hail instead]. You can have ‘pouring rain’, but you can’t really have ‘pouring storm’. And even if you could, the verb ‘pouring’ is a bit too gentle for something as violent as a storm). But yes, it starts to waffle a bit after ‘pouring tempest’. Another personal preference - I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ‘The man, seeing…’, but I’d be more comfortable reading ‘Seeing the impertinence… the man swung’.
Last paragraph: again, the first sentence is very long, and could easily be spilt into two. Secondly, ‘Lobb’s swinging mass’ creates an odd picture for me. To be blunt, I used to be rather large [ok, fat], and rolls of fat don’t generally ’swing’, even when running. They ripple and bounce - ’swing’ doesn’t seem to work, somehow (though that’s arguably just a personal pref). ‘bronze-skinned garden rat’? What kind of weird hairless rats do you have? Aside from that, Khoen was running in fear (presumably for his life) a moment ago - now he has time to chuckle snidely to himself and start daydreaming about rats? Come to think of it, the whole bit with the impatient coach driver doesn’t work for the same reason. Yes you can still have Khoen glaring at the coachman as a bit of characterisation, but he’s meant to be running for his life - he doesn’t have time to sit and muse about pouring tempests and the thoughts of some random coach driver. Indeed, he also doesn’t seem like the type of person who would continue to sit in the muck while doing so. But alas, I digress. If you want to keep the rat daydream, lose the ‘in his’ from ‘in his protruding ass’ - it’s unnecessary - and change it to ’strikes his…’. Also, the bit about the Gods confused me - since when does the name ‘Lobb’ imply ‘fat bastard’? Maybe I’m just being dense, but I don’t see the connection. More importantly, it makes me stop reading to try and figure it out, which is the last thing any writer wants (i.e. for their readers to stop reading).
One last thing I’ll say is that I don’t particularly empathize with your main character. He seems like an uppity, self-important sod who for all we know may deserve everything that’s coming to him. I’d still turn the page, but I’m not exactly enthralled.
Hope this helped :).
Daniel Woods.
I was a little confused. First it sounds like he’s running from a bully, praying for time to escape, then he’s taking extra long getting up to glare at the driver, then the bully is utterly forgotten as he’s laughing at some fat guy. Is Lobb the butcher’s son? That would make more sense. I don’t know what to make of Khoen yet (although the name makes me think of the Jewish high priests, the descendants of Aaron) but I’m curious, I want to know more, and I’ll read on to learn more.
I agree about the sentence structure. Sentence length and structure are tools. Use them. If a character is pontificating, let the sentences run long and thoughtful. If he’s scared, make them fast. Short sentences zip past. They give the reader a sense of speed and hurry. When a group of long sentences are followed by one short one, that short one carries more punch.
Also, I wouldn’t call the coachman “impatient”. We know he’s impatient based on his words and actions.
I must admit, it took me a while to decide that Lobb was the butcher’s son as well.
Jason,
You’ve already got good critiques from Daniel and Ivy and I agree with everything they’ve said thus far.
Beyond that and to underscore some points, one big trouble here is imprecise diction, both on the large and small scale. For example, you’ve got the “Long March” and sort of talk about it as a roadway or thoroughfare. However, what a “march” referred to in oldendays was the borderlands, the unincorparated lands between two kingdoms, and obviously “the Long March” is the one with the greatest distance up and down it.
As Daniel pointed out, a mire is a place: a morass, a bog, a swamp. In the middle of a roadway, either you could say “muck and mire” or you’d have to talk about something “getting mired.” Don’t confuse idiom with cliche in an attempt to avoid the second.
Beyond that, you’re going to turn a lot of readers off with the “fatty is evil” vibe, in between the fat bully and the “portly” coachman. And honestly, the coachman threatening to whip children in the street is a stock villain, but becomes particularly inane in a rainstorm where he’s getting even wetter just sitting there being gratuitously evil. And even the readers you don’t turn off with “fatty is evil” are going to be wondering why there are so many fat folk in the first thirteen lines and why it’s significant.
I also question why he scrapes his hand on a single rock, and if you’re going to give him tetanus after he cuts his hands in a mixture of muddy water and dung. If not, why bother?
I’d say, just let your protagonist run away across the rainy muddy street, let him stumble, let the coachman yell something he doesn’t pay attention to, and then get on with the chase and the confrontation with Lobb.
Also, check your sentence structure. Stuff like this: “Hands covered in mud and stinging from a cut from some hidden stone in the muck, Khoen scrambled in the dung and mire back to his feet, praying to the high gods that the great rolls of fat on the butcher’s son would impede the boy’s pursuit. ”
First I thought “Stinging what? Insects?” since it was phrased awkwardly, and the end of sentence, with the strangely starched “impede the boy’s pursuit” had me going “What? He’s so fat he trips over the rolls of it?” To impede, something has to be an impediment, literally following the root “ped” it would be something that gets in the way of the feet and thus would trip Lobb. What you mean is “hamper.” But even that’s too starched.
With what stands, I wouldn’t be turning the page, half from awkward diction, half from unsympathetic characterization.
Also, I believe moles are gray or black, not bronzed. And they have short velvety fur. They’re not hairless.