Critique # 65 Kit Marr
Katharine Kerr August 29th, 2006
Mystery can be found in the most unexpected places, and the service station on the Ullington road was no exception. At the back of the silent café two figures sat - one with her small bare feet up on the table, the other scarfing down abandoned cold chips with ashy ketchup - watching the man who made his way around the floor with mop and bucket, completely oblivious to the two.
The red-haired girl wrinkled her nose in distaste. “How can you eat that stuff?” she said; and then, without waiting for an answer, “I suppose you’re used to people’s leavings.” The bones dangling from her tattered red skirt clattered together as she shifted her feet from the table. Her fingernails, when she leaned forward to poke at her companion’s meal, were thick and ridged like an old woman’s, curving forwards into claws.
“Keep your fingers out of my food,” he said, dispassionately, moving his plate out of her reach. “I don’t like to think where they’ve been.”Â
Wonderful stuff. Crisp prose, vivid details for both the characters and the setting, and a setup that intrigues me. I would definitely keep reading.
This is, overall, very nice. There are places where you need to clean up. The first sentence drives me nuts–perhaps someone else can explain why it bothers me, beyond a certain clichéd flavor. I’m not sure what it adds to the fragment (other than to locate the scene, which could be done otherwise). Mystery suggests a bunch of things, but you don’t make clear how you mean it.
This is small: “ashy ketchup” didn’t suggest to me ketchup in which someone had stubbed out a cigarette–I stopped to consider what the ketchup was made of, or why it had turned gray. Probably more thinking than you want your reader to do about that.
Did you mean the gender of the woman’s companion to be a surprise? That’s valid, except that the way you’ve set this up, I thought at first that the “He” in the last graf was the man with the mop and bucket.
It’s intriguing; I would definitely read more, but I’d like it even better without that first sentence.
Thanks, Beth.
And Madeleine, this is great feedback. Looking at it, what drives *me* nuts about that first sentence is that it’s in this weird, rather coy narrative voice, which doesn’t appear anywhere else in the rest of the story. It’s unnecessary, and it’s going. (I find first sentences possibly the most evil and difficult bit of the whole process….) Will look at the other points and try and find a way to tweak them. Thanks!
Kit, you’ve already seen what I was going to say about that first sentence. The rest of it works pretty well.
Kit (Marr): exactly. Thanks.
The first sentence sounds like a writing prompt to me.
Seems like you could lose it and just start with the next one. (But you already got to that conclusion, I see.)