Critique #52 — Sarah Tolcser
Kevin Andrew Murphy August 12th, 2006
Ari Kloss had dreams about space. They were not the naïve fantasies she had
imagined as a child growing up in New Lessak City’s lower levels, where
black exhaust dust from the skyway above filtered down through the muggy
air. Nor did they hold the giddy excitement of her teenage years: daydreams
of space gangsters hanging around cruddy shuttleports, assassins with flashy
good looks, hotshot pilots, fast ships. Space terrified her now. Her dreams
were accompanied by heart-racing hot panic flashes, shallow breaths in the
dark while her hand fumbled for the light switch, and underneath it all a
downward-spiraling sense of flat melancholy. But when the cool blue light,
supposedly designed to maximize calm, as if Ari knew anything about calm,
flooded the tiny room and its secondhand furniture and tossed-about
uniforms, there was no one there. No one there at all, except the faintly
taunting stars outside her window, and memories of blackness.
Ari wiped the fine layer of sweat from her hairline and leaned her forehead
against the cool window of the railshuttle. Above her and to the right,
private vehicles roared past on the city skyway, held on their individual
paths by bright tracings of blue lights on the right and yellow on the left.
The sky had the dim pinkish glow of very early morning. In the last two
years, she had found herself in the uncomfortably lonely position of being
neither up nor down. She could never go back to the lower levels, down out
of the light, where the grimy silver bases of the city’s light towers and
shuttle tracks stood fixed to the tiled ground like the roots of great metal
trees. But nor would she go… well, up, as she euphemized it to herself. Up
there.
Sarah,
Ari reads as a guy’s name to me, so it caused a blink to my mind’s eye when she was established as female two sentences later. Not a big deal, but if you have a character of one sex with a name usually used for another, try to establish that in the same sentence by means of a pronoun. It makes for happier and thus less distracted readers.
I don’t think it’s wise either to dis your readers by dismissing naive childhood fantasies or equally unrealistic teenage fantasies. That’s what a lot of people are wanting to read, and if yours is not that sort of fantasy, could just leave it as a descriptions of nightmares about space and leave it at that. Likely there are people in this universe who would find such fears childish as well.
Anyway, if she has a crappy apartment with second-hand furniture, why is it in the semi-fashionable middle reaches of the city? And why does she see stars when she looks out her windows, rather than the other buildings and trains? Naming the city New Whatever also gave it New York as a frame of reference, which can be bad or good, depending on what you want, but to this reader’s mind is a negative. Personal preference, but I’ve read so much narcissistic New York-based fiction that I’m rather turned off by anything that implies that New York is the model that all cities aspire to, especially when in the future, one might expect other cities to have taken the crown. After all, it’s the far future, not next Tuesday.
The main trouble here, however, is that this looks like a far future version of the “grubby apartment story,” at least from this prologue, and the only item of interest so far is Ari’s nightmares, which frankly don’t interest me enough to go on, mostly because you’ve only described them in terms of general phobias and anxieties, not anything that grabs me and makes me empathize with the main character.
Sarah, I liked this. I didn’t think of Ari as a male name, and in any case, I think having the pronoun “she” as the thirteenth word is early enough to avoid confusion. I think teenagers who are attracted to danger and thrills also recognize that the reality of these things are different. In fact, Ari’s saying this isn’t a game might make the danger more… dangerous. And thrilling. New Lessak City didn’t call New York to mind for me. And it was my understanding that living in a room by oneself could easily be a step up from the lower levels. However, if this is an improvement for her, maybe she would describe her tiny room and secondhand furniture with more warmth.
I might trim some of the description of the city in the last third, or create an incident to attach this description to, since I lost interest a little bit here. I might possibly consider cutting some of the adjectives, such as: “giddy” excitement, “heart-racing hot” panic flashes and “faintly taunting” stars. They don’t add much more information. Also, the repetition of “no one there at all” felt a little awkward.
Details aside, I would turn the page. You have my interest about what happened to her, and I want to see how she handles it when fate inevitably draws her “up.”
To clarify, my “New York” reaction came from seeing a “New _______ City” description, which NY,NY does to differentiate between the state and the city. If you dropped the “City” or the “New” from the construction, it would have less of this feel.
Hi Sarah!
You have some very nice imagery here.
A couple of nits.
The phrase “as if Ari knew anything about calm” read (to my mind’s ear) a bit intrusively in that sentence. Perhaps it could be offset with dashes (to indicate that it’s not a part of the flow) or eliminate it(because I think you convey her lack of calm quiet well without it).
I wasn’t sure what a “railshuttle” was. Because it evoked an image of train, I became confused. She was in a “tiny room,” then in a transportation vehicle.
Also, there are “taunting” stars and the “dim pinkish glow of early morning” — so I found that confusing as well.
“Faintly taunting” — do you mean the stars were faint (faint evokes here “not bright”)? Or that they taunted in some kind weak or vague way? Dimly twinkled?
Like Kevin, I thought “future NYC” when you named your city. Like anything familiar, with you use references like that you run the risk of bringing with it all the images it evokes for your many readers. In a way, you lose control of your image. For me, it was a short-hand for “big, grubby, impersonal, crime-ridden sprawl.” May be what you intended, may not be.
“Euphemized” didn’t work for me. First, because the word seemed out of place among all of the other simple words in the sentence. Second, because I think the word is just hard to say (stupid reason, I know). Third, because I didn’t see how “up” was really a euphemism. It seemed like “up” was a straightforward (from the solid way you’d already laid it out) destination.
Perhaps: “But nor would she go… well, up. Up there.” I think the ellipse and “well” already tell me that she’s euphemized the “up.” The repetition evokes (for me) a sense of foreboding.
“They were not the naïve fantasies she had imagined as a child growing up in New Lessak City’s lower levels, where black exhaust dust from the skyway above filtered down through the muggy air.” I like the description of NLC but I’m not sure about putting that description in this particular sentence. The subject of the sentence is “naive fantasies” and I expected the rest of the sentence to be about that. It’s an excellent description and I’d definitely include it — but later when you’re talking about NLC’s lower levels. Here, in the beginning, I think you want to focus on the dreams and what they were or weren’t.
“there was no one there. No one there at all” What confused me about this repetition is 1) because you repeated it, I thought it was a Big Clue, but 2) there was no mention of others at all. My mind can infer from this: 1) that her dreams involved beings and the repetition is there is a kind of “Ari reassuring herself that she’s alone,” or 2) she’s a lonely person and her condition (being in between) deprives her of companionship. If it’s #1, then I think it’s too far a leap for most to readers to make from her dreams to the absence of others. If it’s #2, I’m not sure we need the empty room detail emphasized at this point. She seems lonely (alone) enough with out it — and you state that pointedly later.
Finally, and I really hate to mention it because I do think it’s a nicely written opening, but opening a story or a novel with a wake-up call from a nightmare is an often-used opening device. It seems a shame, with your obvious talent for imagining, to use a device that others have used many times before.
I think you’ve set the stage for a compelling story. I want to know what scares her about space. I want to know why she’s stuck in between.
Is this to be a novel or a short story?
Sarah,
In addition to Kevin’s and Kit’s comments about Ari’s dreams, I found the opening a little ambiguous. Did Ari just wake up? Is she afraid to sleep? Does she have insomnia? I think a little explanation here would go a long way and it would allow you to heighten the tension while condensing some of the unnecessary descriptive text.
The section starting with the calming blue light begins to confuse me. Here’s a quick list of the few little nits I found:
-The expository phrase “as if Ari knew anything about calm†could be deleted since you’ve already established that she’s anything but calm.
-She leans her forehead against the cool window of the railshuttle, but in the previous sentence you are describing her apartment. Is she in the railshuttle or the apartment?
-The mention that no one else is there made me wonder if someone should have been there. If so, who and where was he/she?
-By the time you mention she could never go back, I want to know why. I would turn the page here if you give me some kind of clue about why she is having all of these problems.
Kevin, Ari is a M/F name. In the female form it’s short for Arianna, which isn’t common. I agree that the gender should be mentioned along with her name since it’s ambiguous.
Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts!
Strange that I picked the name of the city ages ago thinking, “Large city, similar to New York,” and that seems to be a problem for people. Actually, now that I really think about it, it’s one of those things where “the tale grew in the telling,” and the city is no longer like New York at all… I am not married to the name and will probably change it so it doesn’t impart shades of meaning for readers. I guess I hadn’t considered the preconceptions a New ___ City combination would cause readers to bring to the table, but it is a very good point.
I thought this might be wordy for a first page, especially since the rest of the story is not as descriptive and more focused on dialogue. The story’s under consideration at a magazine at the moment, but when it gets back (or well, hopefully not– hopefully they buy it, but it’s good to plan for everything!) I will take a look at my first page and see if I can tighten things up.
Re: the dream… I wish my email hadn’t messed up the formatting. There is a paragraph break between the dream and being in the railshuttle (I envision railshuttles as a really fast monorail). I hadn’t meant to describe one dream in particular, just Ari in the train on her way to work, reflecting on her current state of mind. This is what other readers are good for– things that seem perfectly clear in the writer’s mind are often a leap for others. But I guess it isn’t a wise idea to have a place/time ambiguity in the first two paragraphs.
What is really going on is that about a page and a half further on, she will run into someone from her past who will give us more insight into what she’s afraid of. What I want is to give two impressions: 1) she is afraid of space, and 2) she is paranoid, maybe about being followed, but I want to leave it ambiguous at this point. I now see I need to do this with more clarity (ha– be ambiguous with more clarity!), maybe throw out the apartment altogether in the first paragraph, because we see it later anyway.
I liked the first 13 lines (there were more than 13 there, I only read 13). It captured my attention with her being afraid of space. Look at the passive verbs “was” and “were’ and see if these can’t be swapped for something more active, direct, and/or descriptive. Good work
Could I ask a very naive question?
Why do some of the transmitted works appear sooooo askew? - no paragraphs, or (sometimes) paragraphs for each sentence- mine behaved the same way.
Sarah’s is hard to read because of this.
Beyond that–
I agree with putting in a small scene that would bring out Ari’s (gender?) and also her anxiety, during her ride home? It would emblazen her world in the readers’ mind. I’m thinking ‘Blade Runner’ the movie. The book is a different matter altogether.
Maybe, see a logo on the jumpsuit?
Maybe, link the fact of ‘no one there’ in the room with a memory?
Don’t drag out the scenes or memory, one two words added into what you’ve already got would do nicely.
Would go along way to settling complaints of ’some’ who are not bonding to your character yet.
The tension is there, but the your ‘built’ world is still too vague and might be contributing to the vagueness of your character.
Grace