Anonymous Writing Group II: criticism thread

It came with the explanation that it's conceived as a spoken-word piece, which to my mind explains the short paras.

that's interesting, at any rate. performance cd obviously fill out some of the stuff i'm talking about, tho i still think it needs development.

that's excellent.

i'd maybe lose or tone down the few pieces between moving to the city and the schoolkid's question, just the bits where he seems to spiral into mental fisherman outfit cliche- i think it could have gone that way but tbh it returns to the outside normality (or close to it) that inhabits the rest of the piece.

but that's a small quibble in a really good piece of writing imo.

this one was me. i think nv sort of otm - it's actually the product of quite a lot of work, and as i said upthread i trimmed it a lot. there was originally a lot more fishing stuff. ideally i'll prob have a separate monologue for the wife which precedes this one, maybe two or three more each, alternating, that's my plan anyway, so this will be the end of the play.

i think performance should add a bit given i wrote this for my own strengths (and weaknesses turned into strengths, awkwardness, weird body, etc, lolz) but i do agree it could be fleshed out a bit more, again. as i said earlier, "what i'm realising now is that maybe after cutting things down they could then be grown again from the trimmed root" - seems like that kind of tallies with nv's views and that's probably a good thing.

thanks for feedback btw.

Obv it was you tbh, and long before any geographical mentions.

Rather you than i leading the charge for 'one item for everyone's scrutiny' new rollout tactic

oh that one's really good, my word

the only bit I'd drop would be the three words 'the internet says' - it's good to give your character a little bit of worldly knowledge he doesn't have to coyly explain

other than that it's a really concentrated piece of unwinding alienation, relationships breaking down without really knowing why. entropy.

don't think the wife needs fleshing out. to flesh her out is beyond the capabilities of the narrator - he's lost her - he cannot find her - he lets her slide off the face of his comprehension

Agreed on that, on first reading. There's a sparseness that fits the distance that i'd be wary of overworking.

it coheres more for me on a second. but i wdn't be shy of exploring those stumps that cd become branches, can't hurt.

It's essentially a very, very good "the interior life of..." ILX monologue played more for emotional bafflement & entropy rather than laughs (although there are a few funny lines). The Roy Orbison tape bit is plain stunning - sad & funny all at once. It's also devoted to this mysterious & vulnerable character, not caricature - messrs Keane, Scholes & Gallagher are all established self-parodies who require little embellishment save a new imaginative escapade.

I have to remind myself that these can be extracts or fragments, I analysed too much on that basis last time round. I keep wanting them to stand alone. I think this piece does, but it's useful to know it'll have bits before & after - a lot of colour will come from there.

I have a difficulty in general with pieces that launch right into 'she says', all pronouns, in lieu of a proper introduction; but your 'I' is strong enough and the first sentence has enough momentum to make that not a problem here. You really get inside his head, the monologue works so well I feel.

the only bit I'd drop would be the three words 'the internet says'

I wasn't sure about this whole sentence. The rest of his persona is so domestic, so oldmannish, that the Maori reference didn't sit right for me. The sentence after shows that's the point, but it broke the spell a bit, is that worth it for a gag?

I look at the photo of Father Damien, taken just before he died of leprosy

This is a fine black joke, but I could see it coming and was kind of hoping for an absurd death instead. But would that work out loud? Not sure it would.

wherever the carpark he illegally parked cars was

This struck me as clumsy. It stands out more because the rest is so tight.

I don't know what the ringing phone is; it might relate to the next part, or I might well be missing something.

I wasn't sure about this whole sentence. The rest of his persona is so domestic, so oldmannish, that the Maori reference didn't sit right for me. The sentence after shows that's the point, but it broke the spell a bit, is that worth it for a gag?

this wasn't really a gag at all, more a sign of his interest/obsession. there was more about this tho originally, a few more maori references.

This is a fine black joke, but I could see it coming and was kind of hoping for an absurd death instead. But would that work out loud? Not sure it would.

This is the Father Damien: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Damien - you learn about him at school in Ireland, or you did in my time.

With the phone it doesn't really relate to anything, I just imagine it as an interruption. It could be his wife. It could be someone else.

Carpark line is a bit clumsy, I agree.

Heard this afternoon this wasn't accepted for one monologue comp I sent it to, so it's good to get feedback here.

feedback is the standard would want to be high in that comp imo

re: fragment length, sci-fi universe building,
I think the complaint was about the universe itself, one where improbably wacky situations and names dominate, rather than its depth. To stay true to the contours of that universe, it would just get progressively wackier.

It is meant to stand alone (I didn't pick the title "fragment" though it was originally part of a series of equally short and improbable vignettes), so feel free to critique it as such. I appreciate the politeness of "this isn't my cup of tea, so I can't judge" but I'd prefer the engagement of a dissatisfied customer so I can learn to trick others into drinking and enjoying this tea without realizing they actually hate it.

I am a little taken aback by the idea that there was a wave of Douglas Adams-styled SF that ruined people's appetites for it. The closest SF to Adams I could think of is Ballard.

Terry Pratchett was who I had in mind fwiw

re. Har-De-Har-Har, idk how serious it's meant to be but nobody gains anything from dismissing it so - I am assuming that this is not a complete piece, as it doesn't contain any real resolution; stuff just happens; however it could be a useful set-up of a situation. As an opening set-up it doesn't engage me much tbh, as both the content and the style are a little clunky. The sentence fragments are not always effective. The break between the first two paragraphs, followed by a fragment, was particularly jarring. It didn't feel like the author had spent enough time considering the salient details of the environment or the characters. I would rewrite this using full sentences, vivid description etc., and then pare it right back down to match the required tone.

re: Pratchett, he strikes me as being earnestly invested in the characters in his worlds where the wackiness is more like window dressing or a structure for them to inhabit, whereas with Adams/Ballard, it's the wackiness that uses characters as a substrate.

re: Kennesh, I like the idea of letting the reader/listener figure out Kennesh is actually Kenneth.

mods can we get a SPOILERS up in this pls

re. Turtles, I liked this a lot. I enjoyed the varied sentence lengths, especially the long and complicated one that makes up the first para. I would have liked more hints at the emotional weight behind the narrative. There's a darkness there that's intriguing and isn't explored. Idk. It's fine how it is, rather slight, entertaining, but I think it could carry more quite easily & wld be more rewarding.

Shame Garda outed himself so early, it's good to be able to read these without knowing the author, as soon as you know who it is you instantly start reading other things into it.

Still, I really liked this piece, although more so when I thought it was a short story - the terseness has the potential to drag in monologue form, not quite sure it fits the speech patterns of even very introverted or uncommunicative people. There's a lot of very well-chosen detail that gives it a lot of its emotional heft - that Roy Orbison tape, the mud from the fishing trip all over the carpet. And the phonecall at the end is a very nice touch.

Not so sure about Kenneth, and I don't think that "probably smelled like rubbish" is powerful enough for what's going through yr speaker's mind at that point, even as devastating understatement.

Also probably just because I knew this was LG but I couldn't read Real fishing men. Real. When will you be back. Fishing. Men. without thinking of the Interior Monologue of Paul Scholes. But overall I really like it.

re. Andrew; lovely concept. I'm not sure I have much to add, so ditto to folks above re. the run-on sentence, 'non-sarcastic' not really working, prose could generally do with a nip & tuck, but it is pretty good. Best of all, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen off the end of it, and I would like to know. Would read more.

what doesn't work about 'non-sarcastic'?

Panic is surely one of the most inherently sincere emotional reactions there is? You can *maybe* sarcastically effect panic if you're with someone, but on your own? I'm not sure I really get it.

Exactly. It seems like a contrived way to avoid saying 'genuine panic', which may seem banal but has the advantage of clarity. If it's pitching for something more nuanced, whatever it is idgi.

re. Fragment - much improved by the expansion, mildly amusing, lacks any element of surprise or sufficient pathos to take it to the next level (I have probably read too much quirky SF).

I think 'non-sarcastic' used to contrast with the sarcastic panic referenced earlier, which I argue is a genuine thing that happens, often when you've got a deadline.

1 day before paper is due-
half-sarcastic panic: "ohh shit, my paper. get it together, self"

10 minutes before paper is due-
non-sarcastic panic: "OH SHIT, MY PAPER. GET IT TOIFDFMKSLF"

I feel like a horrible person now - I think I'm doing these too fast and I need to slow down and think about them harder, give more positive comments and not just pounce on the most obvious flaws. I'm throwing out the kind of notes I make for myself when I'm reading slush, and that's not fair.

What I like about anonymous reviews is a greater tendency towards honesty, and frankly negative stuff seems more helpful, even if to resolve whether "sarcastic panic" is a real phenomenon.

Sarcasm - to say the opposite of what you mean in order to convey contempt, y/n?

Because that is my understanding, and therefore an emotion can't be sarcastic - it can be feigned, enjoyable, self-mocking maybe, but not so much with the sarcastic. The use of half-sarcastic just about slipped through for me, but non-sarcastic drew more attention to it and jolted me out of the story.

I think the stumbling block is a philosophical difference of opinion whether emotions can be allowed their own character and volition, arriving to their host wearing many hats, among them the backwards-baseball cap of sarcasm.

Maybe a way to avoid this is to show the sarcasm via an exaggerated shake or an eyeroll, while also mentioning a chill, though this tends to emphasize sarcasm as a separate coping mechanism rather than being an integrated full-hatted sensation visited upon the narrator.

Grendel - I really liked this. I didn't think I was going to because it seemed at first like it was going to be just too nasty, but it turned silly and mocking instead. I liked him being schooled by his quarry in an inexplicable and humiliating way; we've all been there. Reminded me lots of the pub scenes in London Fields by Martin Amis; idk whether that's a direct inspiration for this?

It did make me swoon at Amis' prose though, how much work it must take. This is on not-dissimilar territory tbf, but it'd need a lot of honing to get it as sleazy and faux-spontaneous as he does. It starts off too literary is the thing - 'ways unprecedented', 'unrendered' or 'coated with ... indolence' don't suit this unpleasant fellow. Keep it for the Jodie Wishert extract imo, and let Grendel stew in his anglosaxon.

I liked Grendel too. I loved the use of the quotation, didn't think it was too long at all. I kind of agree about it being too literary, but perhaps not as strongly as Ismael Klata puts it - I think having some literary phrases can highlight the unpleasantness, but I'd use them most when the narration is at its furthest distance from Grendel's POV, to imply a sense of contempt for his... monstrosity.

Also probably just because I knew this was LG but I couldn't read Real fishing men. Real. When will you be back. Fishing. Men. without thinking of the Interior Monologue of Paul Scholes. But overall I really like it.

louis obv sort of said similar - i think it's prob the case that that style is something i'd developed ages ago (mainly from silly things online, like youtube comments) but have started honing a bit more lately.

i have been reading a lot of carver and i really like the idea of the "punchline" that need not be funny. just the idea of rhythmic set-ups i guess.

oh it's a literary style when done well, don't worry about that

v impressed. unfunny punchline - little cumulative payoffs - crucial to the momentum of the thing. would like to see more.

that were right good, that were, imago thought

thanks lj. i am working on that as a whole play, i'm sure there'll be another chance to share more here. really appreciate all the feedback, this is the first two months ever where i have been finishing creative writing rather than bouncing the one idea around inside my head and never starting it (10 years or so of this) so it helps to just have encouragement. all that matters is to keep doing it and not lose the momentum.

xpost but what would bonehead think?

keep doing it

i wanted to say- it's very clear, imo, that it's a piece that has been worked on- and in a good way, not because the joins are showing. it has precision and structure in a way that doesn't compromise the rhythm or voice of the entire, and is definitely well worth working more on.

xp what would rock fly? what would tree walk? what would water run uphill?

what would bonehead think, indeed.

Fragment: given this is intended as an improbable vignette, I think the basic idea could be made more complex. When Borges or Barthelme does something like the conceit is like a little puzzle you have to unpick. In those cases the short form complements and seems natural for the content, because the idea becomes too contradictory to be drawn out in depth.

For e.g. the idea of an alien taking a human name despite being part of a non-individualistic telepathic community is comic and meaty in itself... why not develop that. How does an interconnected extra-terrestrial society react when a part of itself is suddenly called Mrs McCloskey? What difficulties does it represent for the customer when they go to partake in a simple transaction, (buying a car) and are faced with an unlimited repository of cold, inhuman, malevolent logic from across the void of space... The situation is inherently comic and odd, but would be especially so if it were taken really seriously.

On the monologue: I like the Maori and Father Damien details. Could have done with more of this IMO, we'd get more a sense of the character if the viewpoint was narrower, more focused on his obsessions. It's the details, the unexpected things, that make him unique, not the existential dread, the sense of being outside himself, the feeling he's not really living. Those are all fairly familiar post-modern sentiments that are certainly powerful, but would be more so if anchored in the unusual and specific.

Sea Nettle
by Elizabeth Cranfield

That was the year
We couldn't remember anything
But only felt nostalgia.

Everything shimmered and was out of focus,
All odors carried an erotic charge.
Life ran its course, coursing elsewhere
But we were inside it.

That was the year
We didn't care about anything,
And felt alternately liberated and imprisoned
According to what music was playing.

We laughed at how familiar this all was,
And understood familiarity as a feeling
But not a concept,
And we worked hard at our forgetting.

Blackfriars
by Elizabeth Cranfield

When your brother had
The words “empathy” and “patience”
Tattooed across his eyeballs,
I lost the will to live.

Later, in response to a McGriddle sandwich,
It returned, spurring a series of reflections about
Blood sugar, and our enslavement thereto,
Which became a treatise.

Alone and afraid, at the podium
Naked, I address the audience.
Look me in the eyes to see my eyes.
My doctors read my will to live.

Black
by Kate Hamill

Mr. Black, currently clutching a coffee, nervously adjusting his tie, pulling at his collar, is very fond of numbers. After all, they have been kind to him: from an early age he has used them to count his blessings, and other people’s shortcomings. Now, as he settles into his desk, he is luxuriating in them, almost unconsciously totting up the details of his surroundings. His new terminal, which arrived, shining, at his enclosure last week, normally takes between eight and ten seconds to start up. Today it takes six, which is very good. He has 27 new emails to read, which is normal for Mondays, on average, but rather high for a day in June. The company has ordered him a box of 50 new biros, which he predicts will last for 45 days, given his previous difficulties in keeping hold of them. He found a grey hair on his chest this morning, which makes three altogether. On the whole he still feels he looks three to five years younger than his actual age.

Mr. Black performs these quiet calculations in the manner of an athlete stretching – practiced, languid, a little bit drowsy. His glasses are so perfectly balanced on his face that they look like they’ve been drawn on, in thick, permanent marker. His suit fits his slim body impeccably. (It’s semi-bespoke, and Mr. Black asked the tailor for an extra half-inch of ease below the armpit, so that when he reaches for the calendar on the far wall of his enclosure, the seam is just a couple of millimetres away from touching the trimmed hair he has there). Soon, when he has finished adjusting his chair (an alien-looking, back-supporting designer number, which must have cost the company something in the region of 900 pounds), he will take a running leap at the figures buzzing away on the screen.

Mr. Black has a good job. He spent years working late nights, bringing the right people coffee, attending the right pubs and acquiring the right accent and wardrobe to get it. It’s a position that was incredibly difficult to attain, but is incredibly easy to do. When people ask him what his job is – that is, the people on the other side of the 700 glass windows that make up the office building’s façade – he tends to say something like “Oh, I won’t bore you by explaining – I’m a numbers man.” Then he chuckles. “Two and two is four, that kind of thing, ha.” People rarely question him further. Most mornings his main duties appear to be drinking coffee and clicking happily through a spreadsheet, watching the figures breed, the money rolling in.

Today is different. Hazily, over the rim of Mr. Black’s styrofoam cup, a plump, fertile-looking numeral 8 (the resemblance of which to the symbol for infinity Mr. Black has always particularly appreciated) appears to melt into a hawklike 7, then sighs and sags into the dumpy, bottom-heavy curves of a 6. Mr. Black blinks. He has issues, associated with a childhood loss, which he seldom goes into, that are typified by a paranoia about entropy. In isolation, then, this ugly numeric progression is enough to upset him. But it is also happening elsewhere. Mr. Black’s perspective deepens, Hitchcock-style, as he lowers the cup to the table. As his eyes are fixed on the screen – suddenly, vertiginously, trembling with falling numbers – the ridged bottom collides clumsily with the wood surface, and four drops of coffee spatter onto the table. This has never happened to Mr. Black before.

The phone rings. It has an idiosyncratic tone – three short bleeps and then a longer, growling blast. Mr. Black waits two and a half seconds before picking it up, noting the call’s origin before doing so. It is his friend and colleague, who is also called Mr. Black. “Are the figures looking right to you, Black?” says the caller (whose one failing, if Mr. Black is being particularly critical, is his rather pompous, brusque manner of addressing his co-workers). “No, not at all. Not at all, Mr. Black” replies Mr. Black. “Must be a mistake, Black,” barks the caller. “No?” Mr. Black pauses to look over the spreadsheet once more. “Well, if it isn’t then we’re in trouble, Mr. Black,” he says.

One of the first things Mr. Black remembers counting are his teeth, which he has had since birth. “It’s a boy, and boy, what a smile!” reads the energetic caption beneath the first baby photos, collected in a 72-page album his mother put together for him when she was expecting his younger brother, who is also called Mr. Black. On the upper jaw, one of the incisors is roughly one and a fifth times as long as the other one, something that’s barely noticeable to the naked eye but that gives Mr. Black’s face a slight cast of wonky jocularity, contrasting somewhat adorably with his overall neatness and earnestness.

As he hangs up the phone, that smile is frozen in place, but now it seems a little sickly, a little clenched. Above it, Mr. Black’s neat nose is pushing air around slightly faster than usual. His eyes, glued to the monitor, say most of all: two deepening black holes; a small galaxy of panic.

Now THAT is Douglas Adams pastiche

Nah, better than that, but perhaps a little kookier than it needs to be. The numbers thing is overdone. I get the feeling that the writer is quite eager to impress. Stuff like Hitchcock-style is plain clumsy

Cranfield poetry the sort of earnest self-important wonder I can never love, sorry

i just wanted to say gtf i like both those poems and especially the first. i don't have much in the way of practical critique to add at the mo, tho.

First one not so bad but still comes off like blogosphere confessional post-art handwring hipsterrunoff reaching. The obnoxious 'we'.

i'm a fan of mr black. more than anything else here so far i wouldn't be surprised if that turned into a book that sold.

id be surprised if i weren't right about the author too.

the poetry beforehand, i'm not in poetry processing mood tbh, i haven't really any feedback. poetry is harder to help along, it exists more fully in the head of the writer than a longer written piece like a story, that must usually stand on something concrete.

The "we" isn't obnoxious if it's addressing a specific person.

How are the numbers thing overdone if it is about a dude with a mania for numbers?
I agree there's something off about Hitchcock style in that I don't remember Hitchcock doing the fixed object size, perspective zoom trick a lot, but as with sarcastic panic, you would lose something (maybe something crucial) with a less offensive word choice.

I like "Hitchcock-style" , I am imagining a very specific scene in rear window that may be a false memory. In general, I think the best, most concrete images in writing often come across as "awkward" because they are distant from cliches, which sound as natural as ordinary words.