Part 1
My favourite extract was the one from One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. The reason I enjoyed and was engaged by this extract was because of the way Atkinson describes the character. She seems very empathetic with him and at same time delivers a subtle undertone of scrutiny. All in all, you get a pretty 3D view of Martin considering the minor size of the extract.
Part 2- The End of the Tunnel.
Jitters, quite small, quite abrupt, quite comical jitters. He smoked his toothpick like cigarette in one hand as his other hovered, filtering the steam from his peppermint tea. A mixture of quick and deep breaths misted the cold, brittle glass in front of him. He stubbed the remaining tobacco ponderingly into the gritty residue at the bottom of the mug below him. As each footstep resonated off the concrete, each gasp became more filled with excitement.
A silhouette blocked the light at the end of the subway. She didn’t worry. She pounded her streets comfortably, humming along with tinny sound coming from her jewel-like earphones. She saw the silhouette jerk, twice. She didn’t worry. A couple of gasps exceeded the volume of her music. She clutched her belt. As the silhouette came into focus, she saw its hands clench and unclench rapidly. She started to recognise the white contours of its coat and the shimmery plastic boots. She inhaled. Its expressionless face glanced at her as it passed. She exhaled. Hot breath misted her neck.
As he descended the steps for the last time, he smirked and grimaced consecutively. His jowls shook as his mood changed. Light from the party on the first floor gleamed off his head. He had nicked a couple of Iceland chicken satay skewers and a Stella from the party. It was his party anyway. His mind kept telling him that he needed one last time to prove himself. He hated himself for that. He thought that laying on cooked from frozen Chinese food and alcohol would help accompany a suitable send off. It wasn’t. A gasp echoed loudly towards him. His instincts took hold. He leapt into the arch at the front of the tunnel. It still buzzed. There was nothing there.
Nice sensory details in here! I feel like I can smell the peppermint tea, feel the cold brittle glass, and hear the footsteps on concrete. It puts us right in the story. I also like the jewel-like earphones. Well done. :)
ReplyDeleteMay I suggest a few punctuation changes... I'd punctuate the first sentence like this: "Jitters - quite small, quite abrupt, quite comical jitters." The hyphen allows for more of a pause before we take in the rest of the sentence. I would also use a hyphen in "toothpick-like cigarette."
I will admit to a little bit of confusion with this piece. Paragraph 1, I felt, was very clear until the last sentence. The beginning of the paragraph allowed me to imagine everything very well, but in the last sentence I wasn't sure where to place the footsteps in my visualization of the story. I thought they might be "his" footsteps, but then he is drinking peppermint tea - presumably at a table. So please edit for clarity of the footsteps - who is hearing them? Have they just begun? Are they distant? Near?
Also, in paragraph 3, we return to "he." Is this the same "he" of paragraph 1? If this "he" is different, then I'd recommend distinguishing them somehow. Referring to characters with just pronouns can't work if there is more than one of each.
Really nice work, just focus more on clarity. I can see that you're working toward only saying what needs to be said in a story (which is great!), but make sure you aren't depriving your readers of information either.
Keep it up!
Maria
Hello again Naboo, just like a broken record I have returned with more uselessly sychophantic praise;
ReplyDeleteI promise I try to scourge your work for something negative, but I find it nigh on impossible; again I feel this piece is extremely strong; it grips the reader, the characterisation is exemplary, your descriptive passages are exemplary, your sense of setting is exemplary as I can quite easily see your location in my mind, the tension is quite unbearably strong, and you write with a confidence and ease that I cannot imagine is often found in schools.
So anyway, now that that's over with, I feel that rather like Maria I am somewhat afflicted with finding it difficult to find criticisms, although, despite how strong your work is, there are definitely criticisms to be made, although of a very scant amount and Maria has pretty much already made them.
To an extent I do concur with Maria that there is a certain confusion that pervades this piece that could potentially rob it of its power, but the one thing I want to add to what Maria has already said is that, while I do agree that you could give a little more clarity to voice, I really really like the fact that you move from He to She to He respectively through the three paragraphs, and also a running theme I have found throughout your writing is that you very rarely give characters names but because of your formidable ability with characterisation, you easily pull off what could be a very disorientating technique, and I would also hate to see you stop doing this. Therefore, while I agree that you should revisit this piece to give it a little more clarity, I don't think you should tamper with it too much, as I feel you have a rare ability to handle ambiguity expertly and use it to give the reader a sense of palpable discomfort, but one that is extremely compelling.
Well done again,
Eoghan 'Broken Record' Lavery
There is some really wonderful descriptive writing here, Naboo – well done! “Show, don’t tell” has been my mantra since I started moderating on wordvoodoo, and you’ve applied it masterfully here. The precision of the first paragraph is fantastic; not only do the closely-observed details create a visceral, realistic version of the world, but the description mirrors and deepens the reader’s sense of the man’s neuroses. Wonderful! There are similarly lovely moments throughout the excerpt: the girl’s ‘jewel-like headphones’, the ‘Iceland chicken satay skewers’ the man ‘nicked’ from the party (it’s easy to overdo, but mentions of brand names can really increase the verisimilitude of your fictional world).
ReplyDeleteHowever, there are also some areas for improvement. Firstly, be careful not to overuse prepositions. For example, the first paragraph has ‘in front of him’ and ‘below him’. These different placements can create quite a confused spatial picture for the reader, so generally try to have as few prepositions as you can. In this case, you could drop ‘below him’, as the reader would always assume a mug would be below the drinker. Also, in this kind of realist fiction, don’t invent adverbs: adverbs can be inelegant at the best of times, so something like ‘ponderingly’ is a bit of a clunker.
My final suggestion is the most important in terms of this excerpt as a piece of crime fiction. In your submission, we move between three characters, none of whom are named, and I had no idea how these characters were related to each other. This was not only confusing, but led to a highly dislocated narrative; there was no sense of tension building across the piece. For this excerpt to work the relationship between the three characters needs to be clearer; there needs to be a thread connecting them, so we get a sense of a mystery building and of tension rising. As it was, any tension was undermined as by the move from one undefined character to another. So – fantastic characterisation, fantastic sense of place, and fantastic use of “show, don’t tell”. For the future, however, think more about plot (or, for a piece this short, atmosphere), and how to communicate it effectively to the reader.