Critique #22 Rhiannon R.S.
Katharine Kerr July 5th, 2006
Chartji flipped the revolver over; it was old and heavy in her clawed hands. Much heavier than her old pistol. She opened the chamber and loaded it carefully, one bullet at a time, until six lead bullets lay inside. Hands shaking slightly, she snapped the chamber closed and swept the rest of the bullets into a leather pouch with one hand.
    Chartji put the revolver down on the mahogany desk and stood up. It was getting dark; there was just enough light left that, though the room was devoid of colour, she did not have to fumble to light herself a candle. The glimmering of the candle was the only light in the room; it was faint, but it was enough for Chartji to see by.  Holding the candle well away from the table, Chartji went to boil a bucket of water.
    She returned to the room shortly with a wet rag—there was no telling what it had been as cloth—and wiped down the table to catch the spilled gun powder. Satisfied with the cleanliness of the table, Chartji tossed the rag into a metal bucket by her desk and slammed a lid down on it.
    She picked up the pistol, retrieved the candle, and made her way cautiously down the creaking stairs of her old house, the pistol ready in one hand and the candle in the other. She stepped off of the last step, walked silently into the kitchen, and placed the pistol and the candle on a shelf above the sink. Then she fetched the bucket of warm water and dropped it into the sink. The wood thudded against the metal sink.
Rhiannon, overall, on the macro level as it were, this is a good strong opening. I’d turn the page to see what happened next, for sure. I like the way you show us that your character’s not human, at least not in any ordinary sense, right in the first sentence. The last few lines have a nice ambiguity. What does the water bucket have to do with that pistol? Will she need clean-up after disposing of someone/something? It keeps this reader reading.
On the micro level of punctuation, I think you need to invest in a good reference book, either the Strunk and White I’m always talking about, or THE TRANSITIVE VAMPIRE, or EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES. You use too many semi-colons to join what really could be separate sentences, for example. The sentence fragment in the first paragraph doesn’t work for me, either.
However, these are the little things that can be easily corrected. The big things — the character, structure of the opening, and the character’s situation — are all well done.
Kit
Interesting start — I’d definitely turn the page.
In general, the prose is a bit clunky, feeling very linear and sequential. “I did this. Then I did that. Then I did this other thing.” Similar to Kit’s suggestion about grammar in general, I’d focus on the rhythm of the prose. For ex,
Could be rewritten to be much smoother and tighter. YMMV, of course as there are times where jerky prose is exactly what’s needed. But I don’t think that’s the case, here.
This was awkward for me. If there was just enough light so that she didn’t need a candle, then why was one lit?
I’m with Kit and Dani. I am intrigued by the opening, especially by the fact that this woman has clawed hands, yet has to do all these difficult tasks. (As one whose hands hurt a lot, I could feel for every effort she made.)
But the prose really needs to be streamlined, or I don’t think I’d be able to stay with it.
Let’s take a look at a couple of grafs:
Now, the first two sentences appear on first reading to contradict. What I thought was going on was, it was light enough so she didn’t have to light a candle. But she lights one anyway (?)–and now the candle is light enough to see by? Which sentence is true?
Then we have two impossible actions at once: to put the subordinate clause behind the main clause, how can she go to boil a bucket of water while holding the candle away from the table? Or is the table super long, extending all the way to where she goes to boil her water?
Here’s where I really start bogging down and wanting to skim. Why do I need to know she stepped off the last step? (The echo of step twice in the same sentence is particularly leaden.) if she leaped off the sixth step, then there might be some interest, but doesn’t everybody step off the last step? and since there is no report of other people, do we need ’silently’ loaded on? Finally, the three repetitions of ‘the sink’ made me long for a red pencil.
Here are your own words, with what I think are the unneeded words trimmed. What do you think?
Do we nreally need to know what these items are made of wood and metal, and how they sound? So far we haven’t a hint of what she’s thinking–except those shaking hands. The rest is plodding . . . if she’s being deliberate and painstaking, do give us a clue of it, and why. This is the beginning of a story, and we need more clues to the character’s inner life. If this segment took place later when we knew her and knew what was driving her, the plodding place might accelerate the tension, but since we don’t know the stakes, we’re getting a lot of stuff about buckets and sinks and stairs and candles, before we have a clue why she loaded a pistol.
Oh, that’s so much better. Thank you! I can’t really say how much I appreciate this advice. :g: I struggle with pacing, plodding narrative, and semicolons quite a lot, and this advice is muchly appreciated. Am I allowed to submit rewrites?
Rhiannon, as I understand it we are allowed to post re-writes as comments on our pages. When I asked about this, Katharine Kerr wrote:
I take this as an enthusiatic yes.
Rhi — absolutely post your re-write. I’d love to see where you take this story.
Rhiannon: definitely repost. I think everyone here was intrigued by this opening, and would like to see it again. There’s very tantalizing story material here.