http://www.democraticunderground.com/1202541Oh my.
You know, some days ago franksolich offered to "mentor" this primitive, an older woman up over in Michigan who's a little bit touched in the head, but not as addled as the pie-and-jam grasswire primitive, but got no response to my kind and generous gesture.
Denninmi (2,868 posts)
Would someone critique three excerpts for me, please?
I am trying to get into writing fiction for recreational purposes. I used to do this quite a bit, actually, but that was 20 years ago or more. The bug has bitten again. My long term goal would be to post on amateur writing sites and hopefully get some readers.
I sat down in the wee hours of Friday morning and wrote a short story in the first person, turned out about 15 pages as is.
I am going to post just three paragraphs, one each from the setup, the body, and the climax of the story.
I would ask that you read them, and then respond to the following. Please be brutally honest, I want to know if people think I have any talent at all, or I should trashcan this whole idea because I really, really suck.
To preface, this is a sort of coming of age story about a friendship that ends badly due to the narrator's inability to put his feelings aside, and he treats the friend badly. It's written from a present-day perspective with the narrator looking back in hindsight, and I have broken the "fourth wall" and directly addressed the reader at a few points, I don't know if that is ok, a stupid gimmick, or just plain verboten. I never took any type of creative writing class, my high school and college English writing courses were geared towards formal and technical writing, term papers, scientific writing, and then later legal writing.
In a nutshell, the story is this, two teenage boys, loners, are put together in school, bond, became the best of friends, and the narrator more or less destroys the friendship through jealousy and disagreement. The friendship ends slowly, with them drifting apart after high school. The story ends with the narrator finding out suddenly that the friend had just died, a few years after they lost touch, of cancer.
Here is the first paragraph, from the setup of the story:
But slow, steady progress was made. By Halloween, we could actually talk to each other in class, enough to ask, “what’s the answer to number 6?†or “Is a palm a monocot or a dicot?â€, and on a semi-regular basis at that. Damn life was getting good, not only could I find my classes and not be late, I actually had someone I could talk to. Not bad for a loner. Not that there weren’t other people I wanted to talk to, Mary Beth for example, a girl I had the biggest crush on for a couple of years, and who actually took the time to notice me as a friend. Nothing more, mind you, just as a friend.
I guess the teen years are never easy for anyone, the certainly weren’t for me. But my relationship with Alec progressed, by Thanksgiving we were sitting together in the cafeteria on a daily basis for lunch and talking in class, not just about school, but about other things. Amazing things. Things that seemed like they were so awesome it dazzled the mind. The amazing computing power of 64K – the Commodore 64. Hot stuff for a 15 year old in 1983. It had SIXTEEN colors. Sixteen. Not eight. Not zero. SIXTEEN! That’s what we really bonded over, not the acrid smell of formaldehyde, but that technological mass-market marvel of the Reagan era, and you could play chess on it! I had one. Alec had one, a gift from his grandparents, something he had wanted so badly, and it could be justified as educational.
This paragraph is from the body of the story:
Spring came, and Alec and I knew we needed an encore. We were stoked by our success. Once again, good old Mr. Clark came to our rescue. He knew something else that would be perfect for the Science Kings of Westover High School -- science and math camp, basically. Well, not actual camp, but a summer science and math program at a local technical university for gifted high school students in the summer before their senior year. The price of admission, a small application fee, great grades, a few glowing teacher recommendations and a three page, typed single space, essay about “What Science Means to Meâ€. Lucky for us, they could accept two students per school into the program, and we swore to God we would both get in.
We wrote those essays in April, sent them out with the application submissions, and damned again, we were In Like Flynn by the middle of May. There was just the one sticky wicket, how in the Hell were we going to get there? This program was two months long, and the campus was halfway across the Detroit Metro, about an hour’s drive each way. My parents sure weren’t going to drive me, and they damned sure weren’t going to buy me a car and pay the insurance. Nope, driving was not to be for me for a couple more years, until it was no longer an option. As luck would have it, or maybe it was a fringe benefit of being an only child, for once, damn, Alec’s parents came through, despite everything, the unemployment, the mortgage, the bills, they came through.
Alec’s grandparents really saved the day, though, it was their old car, a mid-70’s Ford sedan, ugly but functional, sold on the quick and cheap, on the installment plan, on the “if it doesn’t get paid back so what?†plan, to Alec’s parents. A car, insurance, and I paid half the gas money, or really, a lot more than half, I knew what a hardship this was for Alec’s family. But what it also was was Sweet Deal! Sixteen going on seventeen, Detroit freeways, a car, gas, a little pocket money, the summer heat, and more of that freedom that we loved than either of us had ever had.
I can honestly say that was the best summer of my life. I did things I never had done before. Worked on advanced computers, well, advanced for 1985, probably had a tenth of the power of a low-end desktop today. Studied chemistry, learned more about astronomy than I ever knew, studied calculus and physics, did lab experiments, Hell, we even played softball a couple of afternoons each week. And I liked it. No, I loved it. Softball. Me, the non-athlete, the geek, the nerd.
Who knew? Never before, and honestly, never again, but for that summer, for those brief eight weeks, I was a young Roy Hobbs in my own mind. So was Alec. Hell, we even flirted a bit with some of the girls in the program. Just a little bit, you can only push some things so far. We weren’t exactly your normal average teenagers; after all, we were the Science Kings. All of that stuff could come later; we had important things to do. Or we were just too shy, too nervous, too unsure, and the thought of really interacting with girls would probably make either of us run to the men’s room and throw up. Take your pick.
This is the final excerpt, from the setup to the conclusion.
And, with that, my perfect 4.0 gpa was reduced to a pathetic 3.9887 or something along those lines. Me, Valedictorian, not to be. I took a lot of grief over it at home, mind you. But school was worse for some reason, far worse, like the shame I brought on myself was visible, was palpable. It haunted me, this little thing, this act of not being perfect. This was the 3rd of 4 marking periods, early April, with the very last quarter of the last year to go, and it was now down to a two way race between our hero Alec and bitter rival Tori, she being the Queen of the Royal Realm of the Land of Conceit.
Tori looked down on Alec and never missed an opportunity to let him know it. Why? Because her family had money, and his didn’t? Because she thought she was smarter than he was? Because she could? Who in the Hell knows, I don’t? But she did. And did I ever stick up for Alec in her Royal Presence? No. Was I crushed, defeated, humiliated by my own personal failure? Yes. Could I be the bigger man and support Alec the way I should have in the face of this challenge? No, apparently not. Actually, not at all. I said things, in an offhand way, loaded with nuance and passive-aggressive bite, that let him know that I was damned unhappy it wasn’t going to be me, and if it wasn’t going to be me, it damned well better not be him, either.
And I said things about the Navy, about R.O.T.C., about going to the University of Michigan, about politics and the military industrial conspiracy and draft cards and patriotism and Ronald Reagan and atoms and nuclear war. I said more than enough to piss Alec off, to royally piss him off, and he was pissed, oh, I knew he was damn pissed, and I knew it, and he knew that I knew it, And he never said one damned thing back to me. The guy, by rights, should have punched me square in my damned obnoxious mouth.
But that wasn’t Alec’s way. He was the bigger man. He was a bigger man than I have ever been.
THANK YOU for reading this!
Now, my questions:
1) Do you feel that I have a "voice", that I have anything worthwhile to say about life and the human condition?
2) Is the style good, bad, terrible. Is it readable, or is it dreck? Too complex, too verbose, too long?
3) Do the excerpts make you think the story is interesting? Is the topic something worth thinking about? Would you want to read more?
Any other thoughts or comments?
Upon review and edit, I realize there are technical problems with these paragraphs, first and foremost two of them need to be split into two separate paragraphs each. But I'm not that worried about technical aspects at this time as I am about my main question, which I guess is "can I write, am I any good at all?"
Well, the first thing is, the primitive has got to learn paragraphs are her friends. franksolich had to paragraphize her excerpts. Paragraphs are a good thing to have.
I also suggest the primitive get with Big Dog for writing tips and evaluation.
