Anonymous Writing Group II: criticism thread

We sowed the seed here: Anonymous Writing Group II: submissions thread, deadline 31 October Now reap the harvest. It's not clear yet how many submissions I have - I think eleven, it may yet be one or two more. I'm going to put them up in three lots - five today, the rest next week.

This thread is for the criticism. imo that's the really important part of the exercise - every piece is already at least pretty good, the idea is to make it better. I'd encourage everyone to get stuck in, whether you've written a piece or not. No need to be nice, just make it constructive. And nothing personal obviously, even if it is anonymous.

These are some of the things I'll be looking for, but obviously ymmv:
• Word Choice - did every word have an impact? If it takes two words to describe something, could you have done it in one?
• Mood - how long does it take to come through, is it maintained?
• Believability - would this character really act that way?
• Pace - did you have me hooked from start to finish?

Har-De-Har-Har

by Phil Johnson

Charlie and Eddie sat in the out of service hotel room. The sounds of the party in full swing could be heard through the floor. They provided a stark contrast to the drab surroundings, because this particular room was being redecorated. A decorator's ladder was propped against one wall. Dust sheets were draped over the various bits of furniture to protect them from paint splashes.

All except two chairs, on which the two men sat. Charlie was a small time cocaine dealer, and Eddie was his cohort. Between the two of them, they made a reasonable but dishonest living selling cocaine to City business types. But in the current economic climate, people weren't buying as much powder. Competition uptown had become fiercer, resulting in an increase of violence between dealers.

Charlie considered the last run in that he and Eddie had been involved with. A larger rival dealer had sent round some heavies to warn them off what the rival considered to be his turf. Nothing physical had happened, but it had been plainly stated that if Charlie and Eddie didn't stop dealing in that area of the city, then things would get nasty.

Eddie had wanted to quit the business immediately and get out of the city. But Charlie had kept a cooler head and convinced his less experienced partner to stay. Though they needed to get another patch in which to deal. Hence the reasons the two men were now sitting in this hotel room. Charlie's cousin was the foreman with a firm of interior renovators. Their contracts included the Pressburger Hotel. Pulling in a favour, Charlie had got a copy of the key to the room. It was the perfect place to hide out while the heat died down. No-one would consider looking for them in such an expensive high class location, much less in a room that wasn't even available to the public.

The other reason for hiding out in the hotel was because Charlie had come up with an alternative “patch”. The hotel was always fully booked. Mainly business people, but also some celebrities. Whoever the guests were, they were always high rollers with money to spend. Charlie knew that people like that more often than not enjoyed a bit of coke. Of course these people were invariably from out of town, so they had the dangerous prospect of trying to score in an unfamiliar city.

It's like selling insulin to a diabetic, he thought to himself. This was the answer to their problems. These people were rich, and wanted cocaine. Money was no object to them. By offering a very discreet service, he could make a lot of money. And the risk of unpleasantness was low, these people didn't want bad publicity or trouble with the police, so everyone tended to keep their mouth shut. And right now he and Eddie were able to work right out of the hotel, although neither their clients nor the hotel staff knew that.

The only downside, as far as Charlie could see, was that these clients were used to the top quality gear. Charlie wouldn't be able to cut the merchandise as much as he had done. Which meant that he had to pay more in relation to how much money he made. That had rankled with him a bit, but after a bit of reflection, he realised that the advantages of this new situation heavily outweighed the minor disadvantages.

Eddie sat opposite Charlie, playing patience with a deck of cards. They weren't able to put the light on in the room, as it was supposed to appear empty. But the light from a small battery powered lantern provided just enough illumination for him to see the cards.

He thought to himself about what they were both about to do. Downstairs was a party for an internationally famous celebrity. There were people down there who wanted top quality cocaine, and didn't want to have to go to some dodgy back alley or deserted car park to get it. Charlie and himself would slip into the party. They would wear suits and clip on radio earpieces, and try and pass themselves off as perhaps minders of one of the guests. This way they could walk around the party without actually having to talk to anyone, thereby reducing the possibility that someone would realise that they didn't belong there.

Then they would locate people who looked as though they were looking for cocaine. These people were usually quite easy to spot, Eddie thought to himself. Then either he or Charlie would make the deal, and arrange to meet the client somewhere out of site to make the exchange of money for drugs. Earlier in the day, Charlie, while dressed in decorator's overalls, had located an ideal place – a corridor just beyond the kitchen adjacent to the main reception room. It was perfect, the corridor lead to a fire exit, so they could even make a quick getaway if something went wrong.

.

Detective Inspector Norman sat back of the van and lit another cigarette. Technically this was illegal, as the van was police property and therefore this was a working environment. But Norman didn't care, he needed a smoke. Besides, the windows were tinted so no-one would have been able to see in anyway. In addition, he wasn't going to get out of the van and risk missing the moment when the plain clothes officer stationed in the hotel signalled that the criminals had been located.

Sitting next to Norman in the driving seat of the van was a uniformed police sergeant. He hadn't worked with this particular man on an operation before, which made the DI a little nervous. However, he had worked with several of the other officers involved. The uniformed officers were sitting in the back of the van, while the plain clothes officers were already in the hotel, stationed around the building.

All this effort just to bring in a couple of small fry dealers, he thought to himself. But he knew that this was just the start of a bigger catch. These two would give him information that would lead to the arrest of one of the big dealers, and also hopefully more information on the network of suppliers that brought drugs into the city.

Just then, the radio on the dashboard of the van chirped into life.

“DI Norman, are you there? Over.”

.

Charlie and Eddie's first foray into the party had been successful. Now many of the great and the good of the music industry were stuffing white powder up their nose. So much so, that Charlie had returned to their commandeered room to fetch some more from the stash.

But as he was leaving to return downstairs, he noticed a quick movement out of the corner of his eye, some way down the corridor. The person was now hiding in the shadows, hoping that they had not been seen. But Charlie recognised the face, even from that brief glimpse. He didn't know the detective constable's name, but he knew that the evening had now taken a decided turn for the worse.

Calmly but rapidly, he returned downstairs to alert Eddie.

.

The unmarked police van was now parked in the hotel's underground car park. DI Norman got out, and turned to the sergeant.

“Wait here with the boys until I signal you by radio.”

“Right you are, sir.”

Norman looked around the car park. There were a lot of expensive cars parked there. Quickly he located the lift, and briskly walked towards it. As he got there, he noticed that Detective Constable Hackett was already waiting for him.

“Follow me, Hackett, these uniformed officers will watch the car park now.”

Norman and Hackett both got into the lift and ascended upwards.

.

Charlie opened the door to the room, after some effort. The lock appeared to have got jammed somehow. Eddie was behind him. They both walked into the room and shut the door.

Eddie spoke first. “I don't understand, if the place is crawling with the old bill, why are we risking coming back here. Why didn't we just leave?”

“Because I'm not leaving several grands worth of gear for the coppers to have a party with down at the station. And also, genius, you left your playing cards up here with your fingerprints all over them! Anyway, get your bits and pieces, and I'll get the stash. And don't forget the money.”

The two men went around the room gathering up their incriminating items.

“Right, that everything?”, said Charlie, indicating the small bag of assorted items that Eddie was holding.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Now let's get out of here.”

Just then, there was the sound of several pairs of footsteps outside the door.

“Eddie, hold this”, whispered Charlie, as he passed the other man the bag containing the cocaine and half of the money.

Charlie crept forward, and put his eye to the keyhole. He couldn't see anything.

Suddenly, the door exploded with a crash, knocking Charlie sideways as the doorknob hit him squarely in the eye. He sat back on the floor and cupped his rapidly swelling face. “Ow!”, he cried.

DC Hackett charged through the open door, followed by several other plain clothes officers.

“Right, no-one move! You're all nicked!”

Behind him, DI Norman shook his head in disbelief.

Kid's seen too many episodes of The Sweeney, he sighed.

On the Difficulties of Confessional Art and Turtles

by Johan Evans

I wrote a song in 1995 that dealt with the thoughts and emotions I was processing at that time about the diminishing presence of the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in the evening television schedules- a subject that had been the cause of several deep and very personal disagreements in my household and among my wider peer group (I had already been suspended for writing pro-Splinter slogans on school whiteboards in permanent marker some weeks before, much to the chagrin of the chairman of the school board- whom I had long suspected to be a Power Rangers sympathiser using his influence to ill effect in that regard).

The song was a poor thing, but pithy in its more lurid scatological qualities, and it proved popular enough that one or other of my drinking companions of that period thought it worth recording (in somewhat amateurish fashion though I say it myself) on a Sony double deck one night. One thing leading to another, it gained significant traction on the underground copied-cassette market that served as the neural pathways of the countercultural hivemind in rural Ireland back in those days. Within three months I had appeared on local radio. Within six months I had gone national. By the time I ought to have been sitting my Intermediate exams in June 96 I was Assistant Head of Political and Current Affairs at RTÉ (although there was obviously loud clamour to situate me in light entertainment that I might address the long-running Turtle issue, which I regret to note runs to this day as an acknowledged farce).

But I digress.

To focus on the immediate and specific, the song itself made lyrical reference to one parent, two brothers and several notable parishioners as ‘mindless philistines’ (among other things I prefer not to recall in full detail) and, rather unfortunately, early local exposure led to its being the subject of a running three-part sermon delivered around the parishes by Fr. O’Brien- the themes being, jointly, the rashness and insolence of youth and the lamentable decline of faith-based programming in the plum 6-9pm weekday slot.

Never dreaming of the successes to come, Father (my personal one, not the good O’Brien) leathered the shite out of me three Sundays from four in October, forced me to recant publicly in seven separate public houses on the island (which I did by ironically penning my fulsome regret in the style of An File Rafteiri to the air of ‘Mo Ghuile Mear’, performing the composition sean-nós to what Hot Press was later to describe as ‘stunning effect’) and banned all Turtle paraphernalia from the house.

I carried on or about my person for some several years two miniature plastic sai, the only items I managed to withhold during the monthly searches for contraband that he carried out from that time until I finally moved out. Our relationship never fully recovered, and when he passed a few years back I threw them in with his coffin- in token of I don’t know what. Rebellion. Regret. Disillusionment with the direction that the franchise had taken.

Perhaps all three.

Richard Ashcroft later used the Turtle song as the basis for the orchestral backing to ‘Lucky Man’. After the troubles he subsequently encountered with the sampling in ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ his people made contact with me, plainly anxious to sort something out about the rights. I signed what they sent me, refused all incomes. Left them to it.

Some things are best left buried.

Andrew

by Hector de Costa Dias

After his third suicide attempt, Andrew returned from the hospital a more relentless optimist than ever. This was quite the feat for a person who, since high school, was accustomed to hearing – usually as part of purportedly well-meaning “advice” – that his aggressively positive life outlook had been described as “insufferable,” “repellant,” or some similar thing by a third party, who would remain anonymous, but who the speaker was inclined to agree with, although they were careful to point out that they wouldn't have phrased it in quite the same way. “Dial it back,” – I am paraphrasing here but these conversations all followed the same general pattern – “you know I wouldn't want you to change, but you have to know your audience and have more.... awareness, buddy. Awareness,” they would repeat. To this, Andrew would usually reply with a noncomprehending shrug or nod, unless he was speaking to his mother, in which case he would say “I thought I wasn't supposed to care what people thought,” to which Andrew's mother would reply with a noncomprehending shrug or nod.

In point of fact, Andrew cared a great deal about what people thought. Not what they thought about him, necessarily – his ego was roughly scaled to his degree of social self-awareness – but what they thought in general. Andrew conceived his role in most conversations as primarily evangelical. He usually seized on something you said early in the conversation and from this deduced your entire belief system. He would then explain how this belief system was hurting the general cause of human happiness and encourage you to replace it with a system more in keeping with nature, the harmony of the cosmos, or whatever facile God term he happened to favor at the moment. He was here to help, always to help; to free you from the scourge of what he referred to vaguely but with conviction as your “negativity”. Maybe it's hard to understand if you haven't met him. My point is that talking to Andrew was the most exhausting thing in the world and this was the reason that, God forgive me, I did not visit him in the hospital.

I hadn't talked to Andrew for nearly four weeks when I received a message from him on Facebook chat around 2am one night in early March.

“Yo.” said Andrew.

I hesitated a bit before replying “Hey.” When he didn't respond after thirty seconds I followed this up with “Are you home right now?”, “Sorry I didn't visit you in the hospital” and, worst of all, “I've just been so busy.”

Andrew wasn't one to take offense. After around ten minutes he said “Sorry, I was afk. Boathouse?”

“It's really cold. Come to my house. I still have two bottles of 90 minute IPA in the fridge in the basement.” I considered following this up with a grinning emoticon, possibly with sunglasses, but didn't.

“I have things I need to tell you. About the band and other things. Your house wouldn't be the right setting. I couldn't speak honestly at your house.” Andrew followed these cryptic messages with “Boathouse” and then signed off of Facebook.

Having no other option, I left for the boathouse, which was an abandoned, barnlike structure on the bank of the Delaware River that contained only one boat, an old three person canoe made out of what I'd always imagined was aluminum. Andrew and I started frequenting the boathouse in high school because it was a convenient, discrete place to use drugs. It was located maybe a mile from my parent's house but I decided to drive there. It was something like twenty degrees outside and windy so I dressed in layers.

I parked my car in the gravel clearing right off the wooded, twisting road and thought, for the first time maybe, that the existence of this clearing was weird. I wondered what the purpose of it was and almost immediately realized that it was at least originally intended for police cars, a speed trap. The fact that I had been parking my car here while I trespassed on private property, sometimes to use illicit substances, semi-regularly for the past seven years filled me with a half-sarcastic sense of panic. Maybe this was a long game. Maybe they had been keeping tabs and would hit me with hundreds of counts of trespassing at once and put me away for good. This didn't seem impossible to me at that time, but it also didn't seem very frightening. “It's too late to worry about these things,” I thought, but then wondered in what sense, precisely, I meant “too late” and this filled me with a non-sarcastic sense of panic.

“Hey.”

I screamed.

Fragment

by Mrs McCloskey

Aliens don’t have names, generally, because they are all psychically linked to one another, so what would be the point? However, this particular alien was called Mrs. McCloskey and was proprietor of McCloskey’s Used Car Emporium. The fact that she drooled profusely and often spoke of devouring all of humanity did not raise any suspicion among her employees that their boss was an extraterrestrial; they thought it was some new sales motivational tactic, and it wouldn’t have been a bad guess since those behaviors were exactly the same as those espoused in the recent bestseller, “How to Increase Your Sales by Drooling Profusely and Threatening to Devour Humanity” by Beatrice D’xzgrx-Andromeda-Strain McCloskey.

Grendel

by Leonard Marcks

Out on the streets of Horshead, Alan Grendel is struggling with the heat. It finds him in ways unprecedented - the newspaper he scatters across his windscreen itself seems to be emitting malevolent rays - and it menaces his air of homicidal calm, which grows haggard and squawkish, quite unrendering any instinct for observation. He decides to go for a beer and a screw. Rolling out of his van, which is parked in its favourite habitat - the mouth of a side-street - he lollops into The Steam Wheel, an establishment coated with dusty flyers and late-afternoon indolence. It also happens to be the pub that birthed England, and it is only by mischance (ascribable to the insidious effects of sunstroke) that Alan does not happen to walk in while Vanessa and her girls are present. Other than that, he is on track, as he strides to the bar and asks the barmaid for a pint of Old Brew and leans onto a high-chair, brutal jokeplay at the edge of his lips.

“Alright love,” he settles upon, “bloody scorcher innit”. She looks up.

“Yeah tell me” she says.

“And as for the weather…” Ahh, she’s smiling at least. G’wan, laugh. He laughs himself a little to get the momentum going. She isn’t his target, of course, just the pre-match kickabout.

“That’ll be three sixty, please.” He gives her a look and reaches deep into his pocket.

“Got change for a twenty?”

“Oh there’s always one. I’ll have a look…” She flips out the till. He stares down her cleavage and makes the faintest of gurgling sounds - faint enough that she can’t hear, but can, possibly, detect the guttural waves pawing her skin - she palms out his change and scurries away without looking even slightly in his direction. Lovely bum.

“Mm-hmm” muses Alan, adjusting his seat. Now look, there’s a lonely old bird, probably hasn’t had any in weeks. He knocks back around two-thirds of his pint and physically shuffles his chair a foot closer to her. She’s sitting in a corner, reading a book - no, it’s an e-book - same bloody thing really. Alan isn’t overly concerned with the literary world, but now’s as fine a time as any. “Alright love, whatcha reading?” He looms above her, the space behind him rapidly filled.

“Oh! Er, Jodie Whishert, just a short-story collection. You know her?” She peeks up. Good. Interested. Spread ‘em you tart. He licks the insides of his cheeks, liquid peeling off and sloshing beneath his tongue. Gimme your fucking muff-box.

“No I haven’t. You should read me some.”

“What, now?” Seems a bit flighty. Gonna have to nail her down.

“Not now! In the fucken pub for everyone to hear? Might start a bloody riot.” He smiles knowingly and hushes to a clotted whisper. “Nah, I’m talking about a private reading. I’m only passing through town - if there’s a book by Jodie whatsherface being read out, I don’t want it ruined by” and he looks back over his shoulder “all of them lot”.

The woman chuckles. Got her. “Jodie Whishert! Well, if you really want to find out about her I could write down…”

“No, love. I want to hear it from you.” A single, slow nod. She will nod too. They will wander out to his van. It will be established whether her husband’s at work. If so, bingo. If not, he’ll drive her to the woods and they’ll fuck in his van for a bit. Then he’ll drive her back and drop her at the shops.

“I’m sorry, but I actually have to go,” she says, shrugging on her coat and practically jogging away, glass of white wine barely touched. Alan doesn’t follow her - waste of fucking time. He swivels back to the bar and makes wordlessly suggestive dialogue with the barmaid’s tits. They don’t say much but fuck he’d like to stick his balls between them as she sucks him off. What else have we got. Some young tarts over there. Show ‘em a thing. Don’t know what a real fucking is. He rolls his arse a bit. Aching. Fuck it’s hot. Things I do for the fucken MOD, right? Get ‘em their cunt. Need a screw first. Fuck. Long day.

Alan is interrupted by the book woman re-entering the pub and steaming right over to him. A bright ecstasy bursts onto his face. “You fucken want it, right?” he mutters to himself. She walks up and flips open her e-book. It’s on Page 75 of Jodie Whishert’s novel Borderline Panjandrum. An extract of two paragraphs has been highlighted.

“Read this,” she says with a certain fury.

Alan likes them frisky. “Whoa! Easy, girl. Maybe tell me how you” drops his voice “want my cock first.”

“Just read it. Then I’ll tell you.”

Fucken hard work, love. “Ok...The boat was five feet long and three wide, barely enough for Ivy let alone her bags. But that was ok. She stowed the heaviest snug in the bow, other two at the stern, and after a sighing glance back at the cottage, pushed off with an oar and began to row. She hated herself more than anything else, more than the memory she could at least pummel with each row-stroke, its face the water she streamed down. But after a few minutes, even the oars, heavy in her arms, were…what is this bollocks, woman?...were hateful, invasive prongs by which the river was breached and corrupted. She cried aloud and in a great shudder threw both overboard, where they floated peaceably in the current, gradually drifting away from her boat’s sides. One beached amongst flotsam on the next bend, but the other followed her for nearly an hour as she wound down towards Hackmouth, sobs gradually decreasing as she surrendered to the movements of Wind and Wave, into whose protection she felt entrusted. That remaining oar was a problem, however, and it was only with the summative powers of her courage that she stood up amidships and began to recite her curse. I, River, swallow you up and spit you to oblivion. I, River, bend your grain and warp your craft. You are unmade in a spirit alien to your making - torn slowly by my silent power, rotted out of view in an unseen corner of my borderlands. I, River, see to it that you are unpurposed and left to perish uselessly and without mourners. I, River, am the reality of your fate, and you the fiction your fate has abandoned. And so, before her eyes, the oar drifts from view into the estuarine salt-flats, where it will waste unremarked by wading-birds and their watchers, slowly to disintegrate over centuries, down into the silt, as she, Ivy, passes from River to Sea and its greater promises of spirit unconquerable.” Alan looks up over the e-reader, but he has unaccountably lost his vigour. In any case, the woman’s eyes are absent as she withdraws her device, folds it, and walks slowly out of the pub. Alan orders another beer, and later another, but the shag has sycamore-drifted from his mind’s loin, and after a desultory pass at a 15 year-old on a fake ID (spot ‘em a mile away the horny little cunts) he lumbers to his van, debating whether to paper the windows again and have another wank. It turns out that he papers the windows but doesn’t wank, instead sitting there with his cock out, staring at it with obvious frustration, as if a dog that won’t heel. “Fucken mate” he mutters. It’s no good. Unwilling to witness his own welling tears, he punches himself to sleep like what they do, honest guv, in the SAS.

Believability is irrelevant in most fictional pieces, word choice is a purely personal preference which v often feeds into or takes from mood, all three (and many other things more important besides imo) will give and grab as individual components to contribute to a finished piece that either works for an individual reader or does not but in either case shall not be judged in any reasonable way by dint of a breakdown into these components.

iow klata out

ioow, if the spellings and grammar are correct, continue straight to yr arbitrary opinions of the work

if not, ask yrself if any errors might be intentional and consider why, then continue straight to your arbitrary etc etc

otm

Is the first one meant to be taken seriously? I mean, given the title? I feel like it's toying with our politeness, if that's not rude to say.

Is it not better to do these thread-by-thread rather than all at once?

I'm happy to delete everything but the first one if you think it would be easier, strikes me we'll have everyone talking over one another as it stands. (Even more than usual, I mean).

I'd be more than happy with putting one up daily if that'd make it easier. I reckoned we could cope with a feast, but tbh I hadn't given it much thought beyond eleven being too much.

On the Difficulties of Confessional Art and Turtles

this made me laugh, enjoyed it. felt the ashcroft reference was too much of a leap but other than that it was good spoofery.

'Andrew' i liked. Nice flow, good riffs, tight.

Fragment- ok. decent teenage satire kinda vibe, small piece obv hard to say much more about it but stylewise consistent with similar stuff ive read and certainly no worse than much of that.

Grendel, im afraid i didnt like at all. Tripping over phrasings from the start, characters imo not much more than ciphers for an overarching Point, some of the language was nice and it kept a nice consistent level of seedy tone from entering pub til the re-entry of our heroine but not my cup of tea, sorry anonymous writer xxx

First one- its boiled-down but without, imo obv, obv, the snappiness or style that makes for good boiled-down...it's a bit 'these things happened' fin.....

xps idk i think its fine to have it all in the one thread tbh...

Yeah, the first one was too on the nose for me, like it didn't have any points of view, there were parts where it could have expanded and said something more.

The fact it's called Har De Har Har makes me think someone is taking the piss though.

The genie's out the bottle now anyway xp. Depending how this plays out, I'll maybe revert to daily postings from now on (and depending on length of piece).

'On the Difficulties of Confessional Art and Turtles' - has a genuine sense of being in a realistic setting, despite the slightly fantastical events.

'Andrew' - in the first half it's difficult to work out if the reader is supposed to sympathise with the title character or think of him as a bit of a dick. The second half is better and actually made me want to read more.

'Grendel' has a good seedy pub atmosphere, twist at the end was intriguing.

btw any authors can out themselves and explain/respond on-thread - anonymity isn't a hard-and-fast rule.

Alternatively if you want to remain anonymous, drop me an email and I'll post your response for you.

I'm not really sure what the first piece is supposed to be either. If it's meant to be an excerpt from a crime story then it's very forced and I wouldn't want to read much further - the slang feels dated and sub-Eastenders and there's a lot of tell-don't-show going on. It reads almost exactly like a cops-and-robbers subplot from John Lanchester's Capital, which isn't really a recommendation.

But then the last sentence undercuts that, so maybe it's a parody, but in that case I'm not sure the intention is that clear. If it is a parody, it could perhaps be sharper.

Well turtles was an ilx post so no pretence here tbh

on phone atm so sorry if thoughts on other pieces are too brusque btw, will prob have more to say on grendel when i get a chance without it being a headline 'rave or pan' restriction

re: word choice

i remember delillo once saying something to the effect that he spent a long time on the SHAPE of his sentences, they way they actually sat on the page, and that consideration of this very often conditioned the word choices he made - like picking a less obvious word for the sake of symmetry or typographical neatness.

think some of the writers above might profit from this approach - give it a go!

I liked the Turtles piece, nice George Saunders-esque quality to it, I hope it's an introduction rather than the entirety of the piece, as I would like to see something more happen to the character. There's definitely the kernel of a really enjoyable story there.

xp to ward, yeah my first post hammering against ik's dictatorial opener touches on that i think, that the 'right word' impacts descriptive, mood, consistency, rhythm/cadence, i dunno a dozen things, its a very blunt instrument to use 'word choice' in a set of analytical tools. A 400 word piece is 400 word choices, no more than that, if one were so inclined to critique.

first piece is baffling

'andrew' is effective fare. i haven't read 'the catcher in the rye' but this is kinda how i imagine it to be (except with more computers)

feel that too many have been posted at once but idk we can handle it

Re: Andrew - cracking first line, to the extent that I was actually a bit disappointed when it turned out to be a first-person narrative. Presumably the writer is making a point about their narrator's character by starting off like that, if not, you need to reconsider the word 'relentless', but I hope not, because that's a great start.

i remember delillo once saying something to the effect that he spent a long time on the SHAPE of his sentences, they way they actually sat on the page, and that consideration of this very often conditioned the word choices he made

Not just the shape on the page, but the rhythm of the sentences themselves - most great writers are great at prose rhythm and it's a difficult thing to get right. The second sentence in Andrew is very long and unwieldy, all those subclauses, it could be broken up a bit. No reason why you can't write long sentences, of course, but you have to be absolutely on top of the rhythm and flow of them and I'm not sure this is.

I hadn't talked to Andrew for nearly four weeks when I received a message from him on Facebook chat around 2am one night in early March.

Likewise this would benefit from being reshaped and reworked, you can convey the same information with almost exactly the same words, but give the sentence a lot more shape and momentum, just by reordering it a bit. As it is it's a bit flat.

Still, I'm intrigued as to where this is going and would like to continue reading. Taking a character to an abandoned boathouse in the middle of the night in the pouring rain is full of potential - if something terrible is about to happen, you can probably take more time and have more in the way of description and atmosphere to build the tension. You might not need to, depending on what's going to happen next.

That said, I don't know what a sarcastic sense of panic would be, or even a half-sarcastic sense of panic.

Good post, that. Had a nice punchy feel, the words did the heavy informational lifting while still keeping a good clipped stacatto tone, 7/10 would def like to see it as part of a fuller analysis

I think the Andrew piece could afford to leave more things unsaid - it chews through analyses (usually psychological) of the titular character where it can perhaps show rather than tell. It's quite stodgy in its rhythm (as Matt says), even if the ideas are well-considered and the characterisation sensitive

Fragment - really like the first line once again, but it veers a bit quickly into self-conscious wackiness. The humour misses the mark, there's enough comic potential in the premise that the writer shouldn't have to resort to wacky names.

Also, why is the alien running a used car business? And if so, why are they drooling and talking about world domination, rather than trying to be a bit less conspicuous? I know you've written this:

The fact that she drooled profusely and often spoke of devouring all of humanity did not raise any suspicion among her employees that their boss was an extraterrestrial; they thought it was some new sales motivational tactic, and it wouldn’t have been a bad guess since those behaviors were exactly the same as those espoused in the recent bestseller, “How to Increase Your Sales by Drooling Profusely and Threatening to Devour Humanity” by Beatrice D’xzgrx-Andromeda-Strain McCloskey

... but that reads a bit like a jokey way of getting yourself out of the logical problem you've already created for yourself.

Sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, but there isn't really much to go on here. What is here is quite Douglas Adams, and I don't really like Douglas Adams, even less so fiction that is going for the same thing.

For me the first one would be massively improved by developing different plot seeds that are already there.

The detective/bust scenario is a generic story that we've seen a thousand times, and so is naturally going to generate cliches. On the other hand, two small-time crooks crashing a music industry party to try and sell sub-par cocaine to drunk celebrities.... better. Potential for lots of mayhem, conflict + characters.

I like "Andrew" – you want to know more about the character and the situation pretty quickly. And the basic premise of a guy who can't live with himself because he's too positive... great.

Grendel - reading this you get the sense that the writer isn't very comfortable with the basic skeeziness of the character they've created, and it shows in the bluntness of the interior monologue here.

The sight of a creepy bloke chatting up a girl in the pub is universally recognisable enough for you not to worry about including lines like "he decides to go for a beer and a screw" or "gimme your fucking muff-box". It works best if you read it in a cartoonish Viz kinda way, and great if that's what you're going for, but there needs to be more pay-off at the end. Otherwise I'd be tempted to kill the interior monologue stuff altogether and convey the creepiness and misogyny in other ways.

I'm not quite sure what the intention of the piece is either, if it's to be taken as a whole (the mention of a Vanessa suggests not). Without knowing more about the girl in the pub, it's hard to know what to make of her - that she hangs around after "tell me how you want my cock first" stretches credibility a bit, even if she's deliberately fucking with him (which would be my guess).

Got more time now as I'm working from home an I've done all my work.

So Har-De-Har-Har for me has a few probs, it seems at the start like it's set in America then switches to Britain, only definitively by choice of dialogue at the end. I also think you need to know who the celebrity is, or they need to be made up. I still think it's a joke though.

I felt like Grandel was a bit stereotypically grim - it'd be nice to have more neutral insight into somebody like that and their mind - rather than an internal monologue that becomes a bit predictable.

I liked the plot device with the novel but it did feel a bit like a joke - a shorter paragraph would have been better.

Some of the language was a bit unnecessarily flowery for my liking.

I like Andrew, it feels like something that could be expanded upon. I didn't like the opening line though, contrary to others. Maybe personal preference but it feels like too much early exposition, I'd have saved the suicide bomb or wrapped it up into the positivity stuff, even later in the same paragraph, cos the two things make a nice contrast.

You could finish the opening paragraph after expanding on some of the positivity stuff with something like "it was even stronger after his third suicide attempt". Like a sort of grim punchline.

Or just ignore me if that's not helpful!

btw the turtles one - is that darragh?

It's the perspective on the Grendel story that's confusing... You feel like the narrative voice should be a little bit more of an observer after the first para which is nicely drawn.

Stephen King (love him or hate him) does these kind of detached-omniscient bad guy descriptions really grippingly. Needful things is probs a good example.

(sorry if that's lowering the tone)

Kings a good writer of exactly that imo

Ya im turtles.

add me to the idgi chorus re charlie and eddie; I'm a pretty uncritical reader, I like pretty much everything (this should be borne in mind when reading my "critiques" of the other ones, also I'm not v bright) but this story just isn't justfying itself to me at all, like why does it need to be told? If I have to read banal clichés like "in full swing" "in stark contrast" "while the heat died down" &c one after another after another, I want it to be in the service of a more interesting story than "there is a drug bust", or failing that, more interesting characters. Would suggest reading more (better) crime fiction, seeing what the best authors manage to do with economy, memorable characters &c. Soz if that sounds harsh.

Andrew reminds me of treezy talking about tao lin kinda? Not that I've read tao lin but something about the way certain emotional states are described very painstakingly evokes hazy memories of that thread. I like it.

Deems is having fun and so am I.

Fragment is a joke, and if it isn't funny it isn't anything, and I personally don't find it funny.

Grendel is probably the closest to my own literary preferences - I love this sort of overripe, vivid prose when done well and on a sentence level this had the most bits I went back and re-savoured. Things like adding a redundant "physically" to "physically shuffles his chair a foot closer to her" will stretch some patiences but it worked for me. I do agree though that the author goes a bit too far into grotesquerie with Alan's character (at least until I read Matt's Viz comment and began to like it twice as much, esp wrt the guy sitting looking at his todger going "fucken mate")

*by redundant I meant to write "redundant" as it's obv been inserted deliberately to convey extra um physicality

not sure if it's tacky to be the first to out myself, but i want to thank everyone for their supportive comments and constructive feedback for "andrew". i think i might actually try to finish that novel now, maybe. i have a very clear sense of everything i want to happen in the book (it's like, a condensation of a bunch of autobiographical stuff really, with fictional stuff added in) but i am afraid of putting too much time into it if there are no publication prospects.

i have ideas for comments for the other ones that i will post later when i feel more capable of concentrating, and giving them the attention they deserve.

also xp snoball, you're right that the main character is a dick, but only because his best friend whom he loves is unraveling before his eyes and he has no idea how to deal with it.

also, nb. wtf was i talking about the novel isn't autobiographical, really. just the locations and some scenes are... the characters aren't based on anyone specific. i think everyone who said i need more work on the rhythms of my sentences are otm... i have something very specific in mind in terms of the tone i want to convey but i think it only intermittently comes across, and it can sometimes get clunky. ok i'm done now.

ok, i really only have comments on two of the pieces. deems' piece is incredible and i agree with whoever said that there is a strong sense of place (ireland) even though it is a saundersian whimsical piece. it seemed at one level a good natured satire of ireland's sense of itself as being behind-the-times, or provincial culturally (with the way this silly turtles song led the narrator to national fame and later a government post) and i was reminded of an interview with kevin shields where he said that when he moved to ireland from queens, ny he felt for a while that he had left the real world and was hiding out in some alternate, purgatorial type space where nothing every really happened, due to the fact that pop culture and television at that time were so america-centric. in general, it was delightful and i want to read more. in terms of tone, pacing, etc. it was A+

"grendel" i also liked as an exercise in tone. i also liked how the title reinforces your sense of the main character as a grotesque figure who occupies seedy environs. it reminded me of william s. burroughs.

aha, called it!

Har-De-Har-Har - I don't fully get the disdain for this one. A bust is a brilliant subject to write about. Yes it's been done to death, but there's so much potential conflict that it will always make for good fiction. I don't read enough crime for it to be anything other than promising ground.

The trouble imo is that this piece doesn't stretch the conflict out enough. There are maybe four separate relationships that you could have a bit of fun with - between Charlie and Eddie; between them and the big-time dealer; between them and the guests; and between the two cops - but they're all too sketchy. Have them really hate each other, see how the bust develops differently.

its boiled-down but without, imo obv, obv, the snappiness or style that makes for good boiled-down

This is otm. An obvious improvement would be by paring it down to the minimum - The two men sat among the dustsheets. A party in full swing boomed up from the lobby. It contrasted sharply with the ladders and crusted paint. Charlie was a small time dealer, Eddie his cohort. They picked a living selling cocaine to City types. But now powder wasn't selling. Competition uptown had become fiercer; so had the violence. - still not great, but much punchier.

The trouble is pulp is itself a cliche, so it's got to be done right. You can't really have 'City' and 'uptown' in the same intro (not that I could think of anything better); you don't have the time to explain what dust sheets do. You have to reflect how people talk, but without cliches - it's really hard to pull off.

Would suggest reading more (better) crime fiction, seeing what the best authors manage to do with economy, memorable characters &c.

By complete chance, immediately before turning to yours I read the prologue to Robert Crais' L.A. Requiem, which is also a hotel bust with tension between old and young cops. I'd take a look at that - it's only eight pages, but it's extraordinary how much tension and backstory can be wrung out of economy, slow revelation, and switching points-of-view (the latter being a big strength of your piece btw).

Good comments imo so far.

When are we getting next batch?

Turtles - I'm not sure the rhythm of this piece fits. It seems to be a longwinded gasbag - that first sentence could be four separate sentences - but towards the end he gets quite snappy. Maybe he's getting tetchier by that point, but it didn't quite sit with me. Agree that the Richard Ashcroft thing, while lolsome, is an unnecessary whimsy.

Otherwise there's lots of threads packed in there; ripe for development should you so choose.

Sorry for not pitching in with my crits yet, I'm at a convention, will be home tomorrow night so hopefully catch up then.

Not sure I agree on the Turtles opening line, I think the writer is just in enough control of his material to pull it off, and if you're going to do the multiple sub-clause thing then crowbarring three separate scenes into your opening line is a good way of doing it. It could be tightened up rhythmically (those first 20 words especially) but I don't otherwise have a problem with its length.

Andrew - this is very good. I was going to offer the same comment on sentence structure, but in fact you (both) do it very well; and in Andrew's case the 'exhausting' makes very plain that it's deliberate.

You could trim out a few words here & there - 'of Facebook' and 'they would repeat' are unnecessary. You also use double-adjectives - 'abandoned, barnlike' and 'twisting, wooded'. Those break the spell for me, making me aware that this is a piece of writing rather than a monologue - choosing only the right one would let the story carry on.

Fragment - I agree that this reads like a piece of sub-Hitchhiker's whimsy. Now I loved Hitchhiker's when I read it; the trouble is it completely scratched that itch, so that every time I've encountered similar later, it's set my teeth on edge. So I don't know that I can be very constructive tbh. The piece seems fine (silly name apart) - and the opening line is a good one - it's the genre I can't hack.

I'm guessing this would be better if it were to develop in an unHitchhiker's way. The ultramundane setting could work I think - but it'd be a hard job to suspend reality enough to make an alien working there seem perfectly natural.

i think it depends what you are describing as well as the tone/concept for the piece, and what cinematic references and language you are using

Season Six is one of those things that I suspect is very clever and very good, and that I even get a certain enjoyment from; but ultimately it leaves me cold because I'm on the outside. I don't properly get it, in short. It's an american indie rock of a poem.

I feel like my criticism is probably useless here because it's doing all the meta things that I don't care for - I rarely read for playfulness with language, I don't despair at trite tv plotting, I can't deal with characters as ciphers. I can see there's all that and more going on, and I think it's done well, but it cannot reach me. Certainly don't change on my account, I'm unqualified to judge is what I suppose I'm saying. And for once that's not sugaring a pill, I honestly can't see how it could be better.

"I'm reminded of Dan Brown's description of Langdon as 'looking like Harrison Ford' in The Da Vinci Code (which had the added cringe of clearly pitching the movie at the same time)"

I must have skipped over this! I'm now picturing Dan Brown as a kid asking for a han solo action figure for xmas and his dopey parents get him forest gump instead.

haha idk if 'dan brown does it and it doesn't work there, ergo it's a bad thing to do' is a great argument!! 'dan brown does it, ergo it must be bad' is a little better but i don't know. but like, comparisons to (among others) clark gable and fay wray in gravity's rainbow work fine.

i think the first reason "hitchcock-style" doesn't work is because the human eye doesn't do depth of field like a camera lens does; it seems like it'd only be an acceptable description of something in the human visual field if the subject were undergoing migraine type hallucinations. in a story about someone who was having that happen, sure, but maybe more so if the character's a film buff, and there are probably better phrasings.

--

thanks to everyone with words on season six, sorry i've been to busy to engage with other people's work this week

I could've given other citations even less eminent than Dan Brown! I do remember cinematic descriptions coming up a number of times in my old writing group, including efforts by me, and it never worked, but we never bottomed out why.

now we dolly back, now we fade to black

I don't think it's true that they NEVER work. If the narrative voice is close to the character, and the character likes films, it should be ok.

I can even imagine it could be used as a device, if emphasised enough... a disconnected character who sees everything in terms of what he's seen on TV and in cinemas would probably be pretty fun to write.

In that case it would definitely work, but I see a lot of writing where it's obvious the author has a TV series or movie in their head and is trying to write that down, and that almost never works. Action scenes and physical comedy are really, really difficult to get down in prose, which is what makes the writers who CAN do that so good.

I find action scenes and physical comedy difficult to read as well fwiw, it's one of the reasons I don't like the Major Marvy sections of Gravity's Rainbow.

read a bad attempted demolition of pynchon once that used them sort of metonymically as a demonstration that p was Not Funny and A Bad Prose Stylist and like, hm, not sure about that

limerick spattered deathrace thru SS tunnels = beyond mfing classic. mistaken id castration = ditto. terrifying racist banter = terrifying

(for garda, mordy/zora close behind)

― imago, 11 November 2013 14:50 (Yesterday)

wait what was mordy's

also y u h8 rural cozy reminiscences u savage

Mordy's shd b obv given a close reading

eh didn't spot any of them particularly down on palestinians and/or minority rights tbh? maybe i missed some bible code shit tho, will re-check

thought i'd have a bite before now, tbh, disappointing.

" I see a lot of writing where it's obvious the author has a TV series or movie in their head and is trying to write that down, and that almost never works."
Even in the dan brown example it's actually kind of charming, though, and I think much more engaging than a writer who deploys it as a purposeless affect, or even one that puts a lid on such tendencies for fear of revealing crass and embarrassing ambitions at a franchise.

read this and was reminded of 'season six': http://theamericanreader.com/especially-heinous-272-views-of-law-order-svu/

still working through these, very slowly...

Harold Lovell is absolutely great. I actually think I agree with all of the criticisms of it, but only in retrospect - at no point was I thinking 'it needs to lose x' or 'how the author should've done it was y'.

I love how unsettling it remains. By which I mean it's making me pose the fundamental questions right up to the end. 'When did this stop being real?' 'What happened before?' 'Is he dead already?' I don't know the answers to these - if the piece were less skilfully poised either I wouldn't care, or my questions would be less riveting. This way it could be either a realist piece of science fiction or a straight-up piece of horror, and either way I'm gripped.

the SVU piece certainly commits to its thing in far more depth than i did

I actually think I agree with all of the criticisms of it, but only in retrospect - at no point was I thinking 'it needs to lose x' or 'how the author should've done it was y'.

imo this p much means that these criticisms are- well, not invalid, but not more than suggestions of difference than anything else. stands for most of the criticisms itt imo- fine thoughts and not bad angles from which to look again, but v eh tuomas-like in their 'i would have done it like this'iness ifgwim

I suppose that must be right. I was going to say that just because there's two valid choices, that doesn't necessarily mean they must be equally valid - but then we're into whether there's such a thing as *objectively* better. I'm inclined to say there is tbh, but whose objectivity counts? For this thread I suppose it's got to be the writer's.

The anonymous nature of it though makes feedback here much more useful as market research.
It's harder to tailor suggestions to help fortify what the author wanted to do if the author isn't necessarily there to confirm what it is.

The Zak Evans piece - only one substantive critique, which is that the lizards letter doesn't seem to be sufficiently remarkable to produce the unsettling effect described. I feel like you need either something really outrageous (the easy option) or else something that chimes horribly with the officer (hard to do) to take me with you along that development. The scenario is good though, a prison functionary creating unstable enemies has rich potential.

Other than that, I want to see capital letters at the start of sentences. You rely heavily on double adjectives at the start, and my eye needs help breaking the flow. I had to go back and read twice, which might be acceptable in a slower piece but I feel this one needs a wilder ride.

Dolly is kind of nasty I feel - not the intensity of any particular image so much as the sheer volume of them. I don't recognise the emotional state being described, and I don't believe I want to. I assume Dolly is the character experiencing it, but the horny schoolboy, who is he? Is a player, or a mere figment of her disturbed imagination? I hope the former, the latter is too vile.

I expect the aim is somewhere near The Naked Lunch, but it actually reminded me more of Nabokov's Ada, in that it retains a whimsy or olde worlde charm even through its horror.

And finally, Breathe is my own. I wasn't going to submit one, but as it happened I had aforesaid surgery that morning and dashed it off (via several drafts) to preserve the moment. Some interesting interplay between faith, confidence, vanity and the unseen that could maybe be developed further, though in pretty happy with what came out of it.

One lovely detail that I couldn't use - when it was over and they lifted the swabs from my eyes, the first thing I saw was the surgeon stretching back his latex gloves and pinging them across the theatre into a bin against the far wall. But that would've made it a different sort of story.

different but still good IMO. That's kind of a terrifying detail, definitely worth using I would have thought...

Any interest in a 'secret' I Love Writing board? Could be set up like 77, any ILXer can be let in but with anyone just trashing things for the sake of it would get access revoked.

Might do, might do

i thought the idea was mooted a little while ago but the mods weren't for it, was the decision

I very much like the sound of this.

would like this. i have been deep in expanding the piece that was here but i have a few other going concerns that i'd like to share. this thread was great reading too.

i would quite like this! i think if it were a secret board i might... actually post a thing.

do it!

It's difficult. The anonymity part of this was my way of giving a bit of privacy - which is good for getting the criticism started, but the disadvantage is that it's hard to get into a longer discussion about the piece (particularly why the author made the choices she did). A private board, so long as it got decent traffic, would be better for the latter - also providing it didn't inhibit honest criticism.

Another thing is whether the 'event' aspect of having a thread every six months would become just a couple of posters shouting into the ether. Not that I know whether this thread was an event, but it must've given some motivation I reckon - certainly I was delighted that people kept stepping up. If the board was just 'there', maybe that wouldn't happen?

would read an ilw board, but would miss these threads

Anonymity is pretty essential if anyone's going to get any useful feedback I think, though it is good to know who wrote what afterwards so there can be a conversation. TBH as it's fragments we're posting it's not such a problem having a public board, but a private one would be useful for longer/complete pieces.

Not that I have anywhere near enough stuff at the moment but, where ever it happened, I would do this monthly if everyone else could be bothered – would be a good incentive to write and improve! Six month gap kills momentum a little bit...

Unless the new board is a goer, I'm going to aim to get group III up in February. That way we can cash in on people's New Year resolutions.

Any ideas meantime for how to tweak the format? Having one piece per day seems like it might work better than posting them in batches.

I'm a bit busy right now but I'd hope that if the new board IS a goer, it'll be up before February. There's quite a bit more admin involved in private boards so Christmas is pretty much the worst time to do it, but early January should be okay?

If I set the submissions thread up in the new year, then it could also act as advance publicity/a register of interest for the new board. Then if it happens, we can kick it off with the criticism thread in February and let it fly from there?

Ya

I'd be really into the i love writing board. It could be a really great thing.

Me too.

I'd also be up for some kind of email-based thing where people send bits of writing around a group, although that might be a bit forward of me.

Anyone writing SF/F want to join a short story group? I'm part of a challenge group for 2014 where we commit to writing and submitting to market one short story every month. If you get enough stories in and you have one or more decent unsold short stories at the end of the year, they'll be considered for an anthology to be published in 2015.

There are 8 of us so far. Most people in the group are offering critiques as the stories come in, and help identifying suitable markets.

Ask for an invite to astoryamo✧✧✧@yahoogro✧✧✧.c✧.u✧ if you want to join in; say you're from ILX. I'm the list admin. You get a free pass for January, obviously.

it's auto-garbled that email address - the missing letters are nth ups o k

i was looking through my google drive and found a draft document titled "Anonymous II" that was apparently intended for this thread. i barely even remember writing it, but at least if there is an Anonymous III i'll have something to build off of

similarly i was looking through my googdrive and did not ever remember writing it ever but actually didn't hate it??? and would totally submit to this if it were to happen again if a certain amount of others would also submit

er *found something i wrote that i did not ever remember writing

who knows what happened there

karl malone alias, cunningly disguised with his real first name

NaNoWriMo is just around the corner, although interest in it seems to have fallen off the past couple of years here at ilx.