Critique #57: Alison Thompson
Kevin Andrew Murphy August 17th, 2006
Nero heard the familiar knocking of his friend. Thankfully, there had always been something distinct about the thud of Thorns knock so Nero did not need to rush to put a different game in the consol before he pushed the release button for his door. As the door slid open, Thorn slipped in, slapping the close button next to the door before it had opened all the way, preventing any other playmate or member of the Compendium staff from seeing what was going on inside the room.
“Are you playing it again?†Thorn wanted to know immediately as he settled to the floor next to Nero.
“I can’t seem to get away from it.†Nero replied, twitching his feet in nervous habit and not looking up from the screen. “I keep putting in one or another of our favorite games trying to distract myself. It doesn’t work. I have to keep coming back to this one.â€
“I have the same problem. I don’t even like the game. The graphics are poor, like they were created years ago and the object is too simple.â€
Alison–
First: punctuate. Thorns knock (which sounds rather like a small batch single malt Scotch, or the town in an 80’s soap opera) should be “Thorn’s knock.” For the sake of clarity there should also be a comma after “knock.” In the same way, your final sentence needs a comma after “ago” unless you mean to suggest that “the object is too simple” is a function of poor graphics.
Second: syntax matters. Your opening sentence says, “Nero heard the familiar knocking of his friend.” I read this at first as: “Nero heard people disparaging his friend, which was something he’d heard before.” I suspect what you wanted was “Nero heard his friend’s familiar knock.”
Third: reduce verbiage. If you have Nero pushing the release button on the door, in the next sentence you don’t need to tell us that the door opens in the next sentence. Start with “Thorn slipped in.” Also, in that one sentence as it stands, you’ve got “slid”, “slipped,” and “slapping”–needless alliteration. Again, this is a long sentence, and its easy to get lost in it. Simplify, if you can.
You’ve got two different time frames here: immediately and as he settled to the floor. Which is it? Is there a point to highlighting the urgency?
If I picked this up elsewhere I wouldn’t read further; part of that is the functional problems I’ve mentioned above. But as much of it is that there’s nothing here I can hang my hat on, no sense of characters I’m interested in, only a sketch of a problem (an addictive video game?). If the two speakers were more interesting I might be more intrigued by your premise.
I have the feeling that the story in your head is much more compelling. I’d like a chance to see that story.
Madeleine,
I appreciate the honest advice and will be packing my copy of Strunk and White around everywhere for a while.
I also appreciate it simply because I have a fear of failure that keeps me from ever sending anything I write anywhere just to let someone tell me it is not good enough. I had a fairly good idea that the commentary I received from this peice would not be of the happy, bubbly, ohmygoshthisisgreat, sort.
But now that I’ve heard it and it didn’t kill me I can continue to write and eventually, hopefully, come up with something that someone will want other people to read.
Thanks!
I, for one, want to know what the deal is with the archaic video game. Why does anyone care which game they are playing? And so on. In other words, the story had a hook for me.
You do, however, need to get a friend who’s really good with spelling and grammar to read your stuff so you can do minor fixes before posting. I would not have complained about the particular constructions that Madeleine mentioned, but I would drop a story quickly if there were two mis-spellings in the first paragraph. (”Thorn’s” and “console”)
Keep writing, keep putting it out there for others to review. The purpose is to learn the craft so well that eventually you just *know* it’s good enough. Nobody gets good overnight.