Critique #141 — Kelly Anderson
Kevin Andrew Murphy June 27th, 2007
A tall, pocked-faced man in hat and coat stood at the door. Clutching his damp coat at the shoulders, he attempted to shield himself from the drizzling rain. When Damien saw him, he quickly turned and disappeared into his study. The man waited outside the door. When he saw me, he looked me up and down. A teasing smile spread across his face. He made me nervous. To my relief, Damien emerging from the study and the man hastily drew his stare from me. As Damien walked towards the entrance, I noticed a familiar glass medicine bottle that he held tightly in his hand. “Here you are,” he said, handing the man the bottle. “That will be five stuivers.”
The man dung into his pocket and pulled out five coins, counting aloud as he dropped each one into Damien’s palm. One, two, three, four. He held up the last stuiver in the air for Damien to see. “And this one is for after my introduction,” he stated.
Damien looked over his shoulder and into my eyes. I knew then, that the man was referring to me. The two men exchanged looks. I could sense the tension between them. Damien extended his arm across the frame of the door, blocking the man’s view of me. “I think you better leave,” he said firmly.
I’m waffling on this one. It certainly has tension. It doesn’t seem to have a lot of characterization. We have a bad guy playing the role of bad guy and not being much else. I want to hear the PoV character’s voice some more. I want her thoughts. When Damien looks at her, I want a quick response based on what she knows about him.
Damien looked over his shoulder and into my eyes. I rolled my eyes and he flashed me a small smile. I almost felt sorry for the dripping fool.
or
Damien looked over his shoulder and into my eyes. I tried to plead silently. Not again. He’d promised.
See? I want more of a sense of character here.
I think it has potential. No promise, but I think I’d read on.
The situation shown here would be a good enough hook to get me interested if the execution of it were more polished.
One of my hot buttons about openings is when the writer doesn’t establish a clear POV as soon as possible. This is particularly crucial when you’re using first-person. In your first sentence, the POV appears to be omniscient. The third sentence leads me to believe it will be Damien’s POV. It isn’t until the fifth sentence that POV is clarified as first person. By that time, I’ve been jarred out of the story twice. That’s two times too many, especially in the first paragraph.
The prose is choppy, almost staccato in places, with one short declarative sentence after another. Weak verbs are chosen over stronger ones. For instance, “turned quickly” could become “whirled.” There are also misplaced commas, typos (dung unstead of dug), wrong words (drew instead of withdrew), and redundancies (you tell us three times that the man has five coins). Taken altogether, I would not be turning the page on this one.
But take heart–as I said, the situation is potentially interesting. Just get the POV clear in the first sentence, and let it unroll from there. And take a good, close look at your sentence length and variety. In fact, read it out loud. Then rewrite with an ear toward euphony.
Oh, and put us inside your POV character’s head. “He made me nervous” is telling, not showing, and it’s the only clue to her thoughts we have.
I think Beth S. pretty much hit the nail on the head, there. Ditto everything she and Ivy said, particularly things about POV..
…I’m at a loss - they’ve covered everything I was thinking. Would I read on? Yes, but things would have to improve pretty soon.
Oh, one thing I forgot: I got the impression that five stuivers is, if not a huge amount of money, a reasonable sum. Since we’re not told that Damien has any guards on standby or a weapon to hand, it seems odd that he would just hand over the medicine bottle - what’s to stop the man legging it? ‘The man’ implies that it’s a stranger - if so, Damien wouldn’t have any way of getting backto the man, should he escape.
Hi
I have to say, I wouldn’t have read on.
I found it difficult to follow the prose. Initially, it is unclear if we are watching the guy from inside or outside the house. Have I, the narrator, opened the door and he is in front of me, or am I viewing the man through a window?
As the narrator you haven’t even specified what sex I am yet. I presume I am female, but it isn’t explicit. He may wish for the introduction for any number of reasons, not merely the implied sexual ones; even that falls short of informing me of my sex. If I am female you could indicate this by making a reference to a skirt etc.
Then:
When Damien saw him, he quickly turned and disappeared into his study.
You a ‘him’ followed by a ‘he’ and you are referring to two different people. It’s confusing.
You lost me quite early, I am afraid. Although you do develop some tension I don’t think it’s enough to overcome the flaws as described above.
Adam
Kelly,
You’ve gotten a lot of good critiques so far, but honestly, the “dung” instead of “dug” is going into my permanent book of unfortunate spellchecker-proof typos. Why on earth don’t people proofread? It’s really beyond me. And as an editor I’d find it the height of arrogant unprofessionalism and toss it for that alone unless there were something absolutely amazing on the page.
What there is, however, is as mentioned, POV disagreements, clunky prose and sentence structure, and a lurking villain who can apparently afford five stuivers, whatever those are, but not an umbrella or even the common sense to try to shelter with the doorframe, rather than an upturned collar.
As such, I don’t like any of your characters or anything I’ve seen of your world and wouldn’t be continuing.
Thank you for the replies, good and bad. I deeply apologies for the misspelling. I read the sentences five times over so that I didn’t have this problem, but as you can tell I didn’t catch them all.
To be honest, this isn’t the first 13 lines from my story, it’s several paragraphs after. I really wanted feedback on this paragraph, but couldn’t find another spot on this site for “general” critiques.
With that in mind, I should explain the scene…
Damien is a doctor/medicine man, which the narrator (who is a female) knows nothing about. This scene is important for it subtly reveals Damien’s occupation. The unknown man is a customer coming to purchase medicine at Damien’s house. Damien is the one who answers the door.
I was having trouble trying to capture the emotion and intensity of the situation between the characters. Also, I did notice the confusion of where each character was placed, I just didn’t know how to fix it. For instance:
“The man waited outside the door.”
I already mentioned earlier that the man was standing at the door, so I can see why this sentence may seem odd. Perhaps I should change it to, “The man stood patiently.” or “The man waited patiently.” Yes? The only problem with these examples is that I want the reader to understand that once Damien had moved from the door, the stranger almost immediately noticed the narrator sitting at the table.
“When he saw me, he looked me up and down. A teasing smile spread across his face. He made me nervous.”
These sentences are not to my liking. I am trying to describe that this man is eying the narrator like a sexual object, a piece of meat if you will. The narrator feels uncomfortable, nervous and unsafe by his stare. That’s why she is relieved when Damien comes with the medicine; saving her from being alone with his creepy man.
“The man dung (okay DUG!) into his pocket and pulled out five coins, counting aloud as he dropped each one into Damien’s palm. One, two, three, four. He held up the last stuiver in the air for Damien to see. ‘And this one is for after my introduction,’ he stated.”
Originally, I didn’t have the “One, two, three, four.” sentence in the paragraph. I only placed it there for I thought that the words, “as he dropped each one into Damien’s palm.” would be read as the man dropping all five of the coins. Should I take the “One, two, three, four.” out completely then?
“Damien looked over his shoulder and into my eyes. I knew then, that the man was referring to me. The two men exchanged looks. I could sense the tension between them. Damien extended his arm across the frame of the door, blocking the man’s view of me. ‘I think you better leave,’ he said firmly.”
I wanted to describe that Damien was at first confused by the strangers statement and then it suddenly occurred to him what was meant. Damien was looking back at the narrator in fear; he knew the sexual intentions of the man.
So… with all that said, I would very much appreciate your help on this. I know the problem areas, but am at a lose for what to do. I would like specific advise please (if you can manage it), like the examples Ivy proposed. Also, please indicate where to change the punctuations and he/him’s. Writing comes hard for me, so I am grateful for your understanding and patience. Thank you.
We all know how easy it is to miss typos and such even after we’ve read something ten times! One way to catch silly mistakes is to read it out loud, slowly, making sure to focus on each word. My big issue is dropped words. I think I’ve typed them, and my brain assumes they’re there, but when I read something again later, I discover holes where words should go.
Still, you do need to work on your basic writing skills and I say that will all possible kindness. In the above post you misused three words: apologies instead of apologize, lose instead of loss, and advise instead of advice. I’d suggest studying a basic grammar/usage/punctuation book to help you sort out some of these issues.
Beyond that, I don’t have time right at this moment to go through the entire piece again, but I will give you some advice on this part:
The reason you’re not happy with this is because you know, on an instinctive level, that you’re not communicating your POV character’s experience. And the reason for that is because you’re simply informing the reader of her reaction instead of climbing inside her skull, perching yourself behind her eyes, and living through the scene with her.
I hesitate to rewrite someone else’s prose, but I can pull some examples from my own writing where three different characters are made to feel nervous:
He glanced at her in that unnervingly direct way he had, leaving her defenses in flinders.
#
(This is a child’s POV) Whenever he was near, she always made herself as small and invisible as possible so he wouldn’t be tempted to notice her, because when he did, his eyes made her feel like her skin was missing and she was nothing but naked bones.
#
Once, there had been a man—one of the Tsuroi, the fair and mysterious tribesmen who occasionally ventured into the Lur to trade—who had looked at her with something other than surprise and vague distaste, a man who had watched her with a hunger in his pale eyes that was very much akin to the look a hound got when on the trail of fresh meat. As if he wished to devour her, not just her flesh in the way of men with women, but the inside of her, too.
***
Ask yourself–what does your character experience inside when this man looks at her? Pretend you’re her. How would it make you feel to be looked at in that fashion? What does it remind you of? What physical sensations does it give you? Choose active verbs, vivid nouns. Include two or three of the five senses, if appropriate. Use metaphors or similes.
When you’re telling a story, you’re not just putting words on a page. You’ve got to live it yourself.
And lo! A typo! Or a substituted word, which my fingers like to do when I’m not looking. Sigh.
You said you wanted that to read more like sexual innuendo. Then give us more details.
When he saw me, he looked me up and down, not getting so far as my face, but stopping at my bosom. I half-turned and wrapped myself in a shawl, but his eyes trailed lower in response.
I like the counting, but I thought it was too much grandstanding for a man standing in a downpour.
Like Beth said, you need to get into your characters. Feel what they feel. He’s standing in the rain. He’s cold. He’s wet. His hair is dripping into his eyes and dribbling water down his shirt. He knows he looks like a just used mop at the moment.
We need her feelings, thoughts, and actions to understand her. A frightened character can be defiant, or cower, or pretend nothing is going on. She can hope the situation resolves itself or figure out how to resolve it.
I agree with Beth. You need to get the basics down. Unless it’s against the rules here, I would be delighted to look at the whole piece for you and offer what help I can. My e-mail address is Ivy@IvyReisner.com if you are interested.
Thank you again. I now have a better understanding of what you’re talking about. I’ll do my best to improve. However, I have a few more questions:
How do you know when character descriptions get out of hand? In other words, I don’t want my story filled with vivid descriptions of each of my characters and what they are thinking. Should it really matter when it comes to minor characters?
Also, what do you personally do when you have difficulty conveying your thoughts/emotions of a character on paper?
I look forward to your answers!
The amount of character description depends on the PoV character.
Let’s say your PoV is an insecure model, and she’s always comparing herself to everyone around her. We should hear about how this one is having a good hair day and that one found the perfect lip gloss and the other one has a zit on her nose. It should color the manuscript as it colors her perceptions.
If the character changes, deepens, and looks for something more than superficial beauty, then we should see those descriptions tapering off proportional to her loosing interest in them.
Also, what is described is dependent on who is describing.
From a perv’s PoV: “Marsha had a size D rack, maybe a little more, and she sure knew how to shake ‘em.”
From a priest’s PoV: “Marsha had kind, blue eyes and a welcoming smile.”
When I can’t convey a characters thoughts or emotions I explain them to someone, anyone. The cat is fine. That usually helps find the words. Sometimes it’s easier to speak than write.
First of all, as Ivy said, your point-of-view character will guide the descriptions. She has no way of knowing what the man is thinking, of course, so she must form impressions based on his appearance, speech, mannerisms, and body language. And since he’s a stranger she has no reason to be interested in, what you’ve included about him so far looked fine to me.
Beyond that, minor characters can be described in a minimalist way. Just note one or two details, and move on. Full descriptions are not necessary.
This will be different for everyone. But for me, it’s a matter of role-playing. Like an actor, I have to get inside the character’s skin, figuring out what they’re thinking and feeling. For the duration of the story, I have to become them, in a sense.
Beth S., I’m actually relieved to find out that someone else thinks that writer’s are actors–and we play the whole cast! That’s how I do it, too. I also agree with what Ivy said about descriptions. At the moment, I can’t think of anything else to add (darn headache).
I also use this method to an extent. When I am inspired to write a new section of my story, my ideas come to me in scenes (much like the scenes in a movie). In the 13-lines that I submitted, I already have an understand what my narrator is thinking, feeling, and what her facial expressions are visually; I simply have difficultly writing such a scene down. Many times I cannot think of the exactly word or string of words that I want. For example, I might have a mental image of the sun. When I attempt to describe it, the only words that may come to my mouth are “hot” and “bright”. However, the word I am searching for is “blazing”; a word that is much more precise and condensed. Does anyone face a similar problem? If so, how do you resolve it?
Similar to the problem above, is describing a setting/arrangement. I might be confident when describing, say, a chair itself, but when it comes to explaining where it’s positioned in a room (and in relation to other furniture), it becomes more difficult. Any suggestions?
Note:
Thanks for the replies!
I wish I could apply your example of talking to another person (or to a feline) Ivy, but many times when I am writing I am alone. Also for me, speaking (or should I say explanation) is more difficult then writing. Thank you for the suggestion though!
It’s interesting to know that writers think alike. I wonder then, if writing comes as a struggle for most people, as it does myself.
P.S. Sorry to hear about the headache Debbie White. Get better soon
Description takes practice, pure and simple. Some writers may be better at it than others, but any writer can improve. One thing that might help is to pay close attention to description in published books. Study the techniques. And spend time making up descriptions for things you see around you.
Kelly -
Put a face on a Soccer ball, and explain it to Wilson. It’s just as effective as a cat, and less likely to shed on your keyboard.