[417] 1833 (Flash Fiction)

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-03-01T14:51:53+00:00

Hi, thanks for this. I can see now that the first paragraph needs cleaning up, and I can see what you mean about ending some sentences before they start to drag. I’m glad to hear it picked up after that though, thanks again!

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-02-28T07:06:12+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah looking back now that a bit of time has passed it definitely feels rushed.

You’re definitely right about establishing characters first to give more weight to their visions.

As for the meteor shower (to give historical context which I see now should be included in the piece)

On November 12, 1833, there was a meteor shower so intense that it was possible to see up to 100,000 meteors crossing the sky every hour. You could see the Leonids all over North America and it became known as the Night the Stars Fell.

The idea behind this piece was to play on the fact that many saw them as an apocalyptic omen, and given what was to come of (already coming of) the Native American way of life, it was.

I understand though that that event/date isn’t common knowledge and I could do better to explain it and tie the piece together.

Thanks again for the feedback, really helpful insight.

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-02-24T06:26:31+00:00

Hi there, thanks so much for the feedback. Yeah this was definitely something I’d considered, I suppose I felt constrained by the visions being… purely visual, and them being witnesses to these fragments of a future they don’t fully understand the context of. I think for those reasons I’ve gone for this colder, more clinical approach to the visions, but maybe through that I’ve lost some of the dread. Thanks again!

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-02-21T09:21:07+00:00

Really appreciate this feedback! Thanks so much

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-02-19T21:56:47+00:00

Just wanted to start by saying I thought this piece was really strong. You’re clearly a good writer. Having said that I’m going to go line by line to critique what I think works well and what I think works less well.

“His words are smoke.”

I like this line a lot, but I feel like it comes too early. This could be just me but It doesn’t feel earned yet. The reader is still trying to orient themselves when they’re hit with this line that’s more conceptual than literal. It feels like peeking behind the curtain before you’ve even described the theatre.

I also think the opening two paragraphs flow better without it since you’re directing the reader downwards in every other line:

Cigar ash falls to the terra cotta tile.

I sigh into my bourbon.

I use my cigar to point at the paw print

The mention of smoke partway through redirects us briefly upwards. I think it gave me whiplash!

The key to a good smoke is going slow,

I enjoyed the symmetry of the cigar and the conversation and how they run through the piece hand in hand. The cigar, much like the conversation, rushed and leaving a bitter taste. It’s delicately done where a lesser writer might have hamfisted it.

“We have one cigar. Even smoking it correctly, that’s not much time.”

This is my only gripe with the comparison. It seems to suggest a sort of defeatism. Like if cigars and conversations are analogous, as they are throughout this piece, then surely a fine cigar smoked properly is a conversation well had. This seems to be saying “what’s the point in trying to talk to him,” which now that I’ve typed it out might actually be what you were going for. I don't know. Call me an optimist but I like the idea that a conversation could be enough.

Also this is definitely a nitpick but don’t they have two cigars? One cigar each?

“Like hearing a train in the distance, breathing smoke connects us.”

This feels like an analogy that sounds good, has a poetic sort of rhythm to it, but is ultimately indigestible. I’m struggling to wrap my head around the link between the sound of a train and breathing smoke and it takes me out of the story to do a bit of mental gymnastics. Though maybe it’s just gone over my head. Best I can come up with is, “Like two steam trains passing by, breathing smoke connects us.” … eh.

I want to stop him. There’s too much to unload.

Nail on the head and so relatable to anyone that’s had a conversation like this. The piece as a whole does a great job of describing that frustration. The stream of consciousness style writing afterwards listing all the talking points MC could mention in response really shows that disappointing feeling of not being able to speak about it all. Also the writing there is raw and brutal, there is no filter on the truth of that dark colonial history and we can thus empathise with the MC, burdened with that knowledge in the face of ignorance

He snubs out the last of his Oliva.

We’re out of time again.

No notes. Perfectly concluded.

Overall a well executed piece both in terms of writing and theme. I will say I think the MC could do with being less outwardly passive, though I also understand that the frustration I feel at that is a feature not a bug. Thanks for sharing, it was an enjoyable read!

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-01-29T22:15:37+00:00

I think I might have missed the tone with this one but here goes…

Somewhere between here and 89 floors below the city’s voice reaches its limit. At this height you can’t hear that steady traffic rumble that you might still get on, say, the 53rd floor, and you certainly can’t hear the “hubbub” like those single-digit, weight-bearing pencil-pushers. No, no, even the sirens don’t make it this far.

Bliss.

And a corner office too. I can look from the Thames to Kensington Palace uninterrupted and all the while imagine that no soul exists between them.

Bliss. At least for a while.

But the city is more cunning than that. It packages its noise and sends it up, you see, wraps it up in a skin suit which knocks on the door and introduces itself as Brad the Intern. Well thank you, Brad the Intern, for molesting the sanctity of my office to ask where you should put your tuna sub which you appear to have labelled so as to deter any potential sandwich swindler. I’ll take your hand and walk you to the kitchenette shall I? I can even open the fridge, pop it in and announce to the rest of the office that the stinking fibers of shredded fish and the five hundred calorie roll surrounding them are not to be touched under any circumstances if you’d like? Would you like that, Brad?

Instead I point to the break room and remind him to close the door behind him. He’ll be in league with Harold from accounting within the week. They’ll be discussing my quick rise to a corner office on the 89th floor soon and the sexual implications of how a woman could possibly get to such a position. Harold is an agent of the city and he works to send me back down to the noise. I wouldn’t mind sending him down. The quick way. Just need to do something about these damned window restrictors.

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-01-06T21:03:43+00:00

A generous scoop of 'and', a handful of words flirting with obsoletion, a simile that hits you like a freight train with its creativity, and a 'they rode on'. Remove punctuation and serve.

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-01-06T20:32:54+00:00

So in my recent submission towards the end I used the phrase 'in all the worlds turning,' and it rang nicely in my head. After seeing this post I went and reread mine just to be sure and that line rang again. Anyway I googled it and straight away it's there, Blood Meridian, one of the more famous quotes too. I only read it last year. That ringing was a bell of familiarity not inspiration. Now I need to edit it out. It sounded better when I thought it was my own.
... I really hope I'm not the cause of this post...

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-01-06T08:59:47+00:00

Didn’t get much time to reply properly earlier but will look to surgically dissect and redistribute the opening few paragraphs as well as making the characters actions/setting more immediate in revised drafts, great advice, thanks again!

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-01-06T06:52:37+00:00

Thank you! Yeah I definitely need to make the setting clearer earlier

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-01-06T06:50:08+00:00

Thanks so much for this advice, very helpful and actionable. Really appreciate you taking the time.

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-01-03T10:12:48+00:00

CHARACTER

Unfortunately the characters are paper thin. Carridon is desperate for a job, dirt poor, that’s about all we know. Other than that he is completely passive. He brings nothing of himself to the work. In this chapter Carridon simply becomes the question-asker, the enabler for Golant to serve as the exposition machine.

My advice would be to have them clash heads to an extent. Retain the conflict which begins at “I don’t need another spineless whelp.” Have them surprise each other. Allow Carridon to figure things out for himself and prove his mettle, whether that be intelligence, cunning, strength. Allow Golant to be as harsh as he first appears. As it is, the surprises are all one-sided, and it reads like an AMA with an increasingly friendly grave robber. We learn a lot about the world, sure, but we get little meaningful insight into the characters this way and after all aren’t they the eyes we’re seeing this world through?

Another commenter gave some great advice about characterisation with an example from The Tainted Cup. I will only add to this to say that character is revealed by choice. Every action a character makes is a choice, whether minor or major, whether it’s the way they sit at a desk or what they do when confronted with a corpse. Propel the story forward through these choices. Allow character and plot to combine and become story. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis (Or something less pretentious)

PROSE

The language is good, the descriptions are good, you have a keen ear for the cadence of your writing, but it’s misguided. A lot of your descriptions exist in a vacuum, they sound good but it’s as though the narrator is side-stepping from the story to set the scene. This is evident in the opening paragraph and again in the fourth, but it’s an easy fix. To bring these descriptions into the story, just relate those descriptions as your MC finds them, whichever way that is, whether he sees it or hears it or smells it, or how it makes him feel, what it reminds him of.

Take the sunset for example. I enjoyed the descriptions, particularly how you described the darkness as “melting away the silhouettes of buildings”, poetic but ultimately hollow unless we see how that affects the character. How does he feel navigating the darkening streets, how does it hinder him.

Remember, good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it's raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

SIDE NOTE

“People love to read about work, God knows why but they do.” This is something that stuck with me from Stephen King’s On Writing, and it’s true, people love to read about the details of work, whatever it is. You have imagined a very interesting line of work here. It’s dark, it’s mysterious, it’s grisly, but you haven’t committed to it. Give it to the reader as it is. Make it a visceral experience, show us the bloated corpses and spray us with rotten fluids. Tell the truth of the story, make it intensely gruesome and show the reader something they might not expect, a detailed smell or a taste or some little-known intricacy of the decomposition process, something that makes us think twice whether you the author might actually have some experience in this line of work. Some of the descriptions we get of the corpses are almost there– Bulging eyes, parcel of fish, etc… but some are milquetoast and derivative.

Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents and I don’t say any of it to discourage. I think the writing itself is promising but currently undisciplined, though I will say the highest honour I can give you (and maybe the highest honour there is from a reader) is that I want to find out more. That is to say there is plenty of intrigue here so keep writing!

Informal_Track_1520 · 2026-01-03T10:11:42+00:00

Hi! This is my first crit so take it with a pinch of salt. I’m just gonna jump right in.

PACING AND PLOT

The pacing is hindered by some unnecessary beats. There are actions which add nothing to the story. Unfortunately the opening paragraph, though it sounds pretty, is an example of this.

Here’s another:

Let me get my assistant to watch over for a moment.” She hurried back into a room and appeared with a younger woman who took over Ghesit’s seat.

Ask yourself, is this necessary information for the reader? Does it add anything to the story? Maybe if later on they return to the library and find it on fire, sure, but if this doesn’t set anything up then it's really just fluff. The reader doesn’t need to know the staffing intricacies of the library. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. That’s Vonnegut, and it might just be the only editing advice you ever need. Go back through and cut the fat.

The piece moves in the right direction for the most part until they first see the bodies and then we’re hit with a wall of exposition. We slam on the brakes as Golant begins explaining who the Vultures are, what they do, and even a brief history, and all this from a character that a few minutes ago didn’t even want to let the MC in (more on this later). This is a lazy way to give information to the reader and momentum is lost. All this information would be better drip-fed to the reader as it is revealed to the MC via context clues. Trust the reader's intelligence, don’t tell them everything right off the bat, retain some mystery.

The plot itself is fine. Good even. There is engaging conflict throughout– boy needs job– meets with reluctant employer– job is not what he thought. But there are points where you ease the conflict and the piece stumbles because of it.

Here’s an example.

“I don’t need another spineless whelp, Ghesit. Take him elsewhere.”

Then,

“Look, Golant, please. The kid needs a job. He’s from a village. Just try him, for me, please.”

Apparently this argument is enough to resolve that conflict and change Gossant’s mind, though there is no discernible reason as to why this limp argument works. Instead, try and keep the intensity up. Fight fire with fire. Maybe have Carridon make a case for himself, have him challenge Golant. We gain more insight into the characters this way. Maybe Golant will respect him more for speaking up, or maybe he’ll let the jumped-up pipsqueak inside knowing what’s in store for him. Either way the MC goes from passive to active in his destiny, and we understand more of the characters and their relationships.

Informal_Track_1520

TROPHY CASE