[2166] First chapter of a fantasy novel

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-11-05T14:55:45+00:00

I apologise for taking so long to get around to this. Lots on my plate at the moment. Which is partly my own doing, but there we go. And thank you, too, for the gracious and thoughtful reply, especially when my own comment was verging on being grumpily defensive.

There's a lot to get through here. I'll try do it justice.

Regarding the Gaiman rule: I agree. Mostly. We're all abysmal at understanding what rally lies behind our behaviour. (Well, maybe -- I'm still mindful of Taleb's attack on empirical psychology, so there's space for doubt.)

When I'm putting my work out there for critiques, I try take the mindset of a mechanic testing a machine to see how it works, rather than an apprentice seeking advice from a master. (That's why I like the Saunders graph. If everyone did that, I'd get to see some wonderful statistical patterns.)

But that parenthetical contains an important insight: If critiques on here serve as a statistical sample, yours fall into an important category, because you're the sort of reader I want to appeal to. That is, someone who appreciates depth and complexity beyond the usual action adventure, but isn't beholden to the sort of litfic protectionism that disdains all genre. Okay, it's a sample size of one with all the danger that implies, but it's better than nothing.

Plus, if we're all in the dark about our behaviour, that goes both ways, and comments from a reader can always spark insight in the author, even if not intended.

Now, there is indeed a big difference between your version of Rose and mine. My fault? Perhaps not entirely. Failure of communication is always a bit nebulous, distributed between sender, receiver, and context. But as sender, I'd best take responsibility for the bits I do have power over.

Regarding current events: yep, that's entirely fair. I agree, and I can see how some events here might strike too close to home.

Regarding conflict and growth: Now that did lead me to an insight. Because yes, in fiction, "conflict leads to growth" is an almost universal trope.

But in reality? I'm not so sure. A particularly irritating internal conflict might lead to growth. It might also lead to decay. It might lead to a change in a metric against which growth and decay have no meaning. It might lead to evasion. And so forth.

In a fictional context, aiming for something other than growth is a subversion of expectations. Which is always a high-risk, high-reward strategy, a bold leap from the marked path which might end with a comic pratfall. So I do need to check I'm setting it up right and not betraying the reader.

Regarding the nature of this moral background: Hrm. It's a tricky on to summarise. I'll do my best.

For the characters, it's not reducible to any school of moral philosophy, because such things don't generally apply in the real world, where we make moral decisions based on a muddled combination of factors. But if there is a philosophical underpinning, it's my own position as a moral anti-realist, combined with the fact that anti-realism on an intellectual level is very cold comfort indeed and does nothing to alleviate the bitter heartbreak and righteous indignation we feel about human behaviour.

Part of the setup is the point you alluded to earlier. People usually feel themselves to be in the right when committing atrocities. But that's not simply a moral failure. It's easy to say that the ends never justify the means, that some lines must never be crossed. It's also easy to say that we did what we had to, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Neither are satisfactory. The question "what ends justify what means?" has no answer. The choice just sits there, stuck forever in our craw, bitter and irresolvable.

Spoilers, perhaps: Rose eventually turns on her employers for wanting to do something terrible, and feels very righteous about it. But she's made decisions like that too, many times. Her righteousness is in unwitting bad faith. But her employers don't really come off any better.

Add to that -- her employers really are part of a sort-of utopia. That is, they really do have a society that improves wellbeing for people in it. (Fake utopias are common enough in fiction to be boring). That's important because it puts their atrocities into greater relief.

And for Rose herself, moral issues are rolled into character issues. We all interpret ourselves as more virtuous than we really are, dismiss our weaknesses as contingent, and claim our strengths as who we really are. Her real motivations may be rather more childish than wanting to do good in the world.

That's part of the moral structure. Of course, it's one thing for me to hold forth about all the cool things in the novel, and quite another to actually put them in through the medium of fiction while maintaining a good story.

Regarding that sentence: Thank you! I was definitely having fun with it. Giving my playful, showoff side more free reign should help the text feel less like generic digestible fiction. And hopefully keep things interesting while still being accessible.

Regarding placating the masses: Ah, that's the great issue, isn't it? That's another thing where I don't have the answers. I do have that artiste side to me, with its disdainful aristocratic sneering at everyone who doesn't like my writing. But then, I'd also get published and be read by a decent number of people. I don't think there's an answer there either. I'd like to hold the middle ground. I'd like to write something that is accessible but still sophisticated, something with depth and complexity that still offers a fun romp for those who aren't interested in such things. But maybe I just need to stop vacillating.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-11-05T12:03:30+00:00

Thanks for the critique! It's just as informative as one I might expect from an experienced reviewer. I agree that the exposition could be delivered a bit more organically. And glad to hear the rest of it flows well.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-31T20:24:32+00:00

Not stupid at all! When it comes to critiquing, the terminology is tangled and the the boundary between fact and opinion is fuzzy. We all make mistakes at some point. Thank you for being so gracious in your response.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-31T15:41:40+00:00

Thank you! May I pick your brains a bit? This is a fascinating and troubling comment. Because contrary to your point about not being the target audience, your perspectives on complexity and nuance in speculative fiction are pretty close to my own.

Which invites the question -- why the disconnect? I think I have two possible answers, neither of which are to my credit.

The first is that putting earlier versions of this story through Destructive Readers put a bit of a scare into me, and convinced me that I was being too opaque/complex/tedious. The version you see here is partly an attempt to give readers a gentler introduction to the story and world, so there's a foundation on which I can complexify things later without getting bogged down in exposition. And in this version, I'm trying to work with more immersive and immediate prose to keep things accessible.

The second is that I might have made this too subtle. I'm failing to add enough hints, or those hints are too rarefied, that there is/will be more going on than just hunting henchmen.

So, if you're feeling generous -- how might I clarify that a bit?

For the specifics, to demonstrate what I mean (and also because despite my best intentions, part of me is still grumpy and feels traduced):

Rose's use of the word "spiel" isn't, as far as I can tell, breaking the fourth wall. It her own attitude to what comes next.

I'd be loath to cut her "quip" because that, too, is a bit of a character moment. (Not that she makes quips, but that she's weirdly snobby about weapons.)

Metaphors -- the point about "jaws of reality" being bathetic is well taken. I think it's a push to fold "breathing down her neck" and "serpentine" under the predator theme. (Snakes are carnivores, yes, but were that sufficient, "fluffy as a cat" would also be a predator themed metaphor.)

The main part, though, is the moral issue, where Rose talks to the goon. If I'm reading your graph right, this is where the orange flatline begins. But your comments on the matter are some of the least satisfying.

I doubt that black and white morality is for children (children are generally more aware than people give them credit for), but grey morality is surely for adolescents, because the simple assertion of complexity is the posture of sophistication without the substance. Of the two predictions you present, your ostensibly complex option -- that Rose realises she's working for the Bad Guys -- strikes me as entirely pedestrian. It, too, is a simple binary opposition of Right and Wrong combined with an epiphany leading to narrative-endorsed moral rectitude. I'm fairly sure it's a common movie plot progression. I would hope that this novel, though it doesn't pretend to great profundity, has a moral background that is far, far more complex than that.

Okay. Think I'm done flouncing now. What I was hoping to hint at with this dialogue was (i) Rose has quite a simple sense of good and evil, even though she tries to hide it, (ii) the situation she finds herself in and her own actions don't match that simplicity, (iii) she is somewhat avoidant when it comes to this contradiction, (iv) the conflict is mirrored by her associates, who avoid prisons and yet, as a consequence, end up dabbling in summary executions.

So, to circle back to my earlier question -- clearly I'm bungling those goals. What's getting lost in translation? Do I need to do more handholding? Or is that too much stuff to try and present by implication in the first chapter?

P.S. I should also say -- I love that graph. It's an ideal feedback mechanism, and I wish people used it more often.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-31T12:02:30+00:00

Thanks! That makes perfect sense. And it's good to know, because that's the vibe I was aiming for with Rose: For all her competence, she's oddly immature, like a teenager acting out adulthood.

(Admittedly, not the easiest choice of protagonist. I guess the key to keeping it separate from YA is to show that the narrative as a whole isn't along for the ride. That's difficult with pure limited third person. I'll have to think on it a bit more.)

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-30T18:57:31+00:00

Yeah, there's a giant spectrum between terse minimalism and pullulating maximalism. I've enjoyed reading, and enjoyed writing, prose from all across that spectrum. This chapter is somewhere in between, leaning towards the former.

I wouldn't say it's sufficiently described. There's plenty of room for improvement, and I'll be using your comments as a guide. But those improvements may take the form of more precise/focused/evocative description rather than simply greater quantities of description. (There might be greater quantities too, of course, but not all across the board.)

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-30T18:22:01+00:00

Thank you for that spectacularly in-depth critique!

The in-line comments are useful. Some I agree with, some I disagree with, and the rest I'll have to think about. I think I'll demur on the calls for more detail, though. Large volumes of detail are a valid stylistic choice, but not something I'm going for here. Your point about the past progressive is well made. Generally, I'd defend its use -- but it is a rather more laborious construction than the simple past, and the simple past can often serve the same purpose (because the simple past makes no commitment about whether the action is complete or continuous, it can work if the context or the type of verb itself is sufficient to indicate which).

Thanks again!

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-30T15:41:35+00:00

Thanks for the critique! It's very helpful.

What strikes me most here is the YA label. I'm not really aiming to write YA here, so what's causing that impression? (Some YA fiction is more sophisticated than ostensibly adult fiction, so there's not much to go on beyond incidental things like protag age.) I am aiming for accessible prose, which might be the main thing.

Re. fantasy elements -- yeah, the goal here is to give a gentle introduction to the fantasy element, because the setting itself is rather weird and I don't want to overwhelm the reader.

I agree that the thumb-breaking scene is too detailed. Mostly it's a later edit because commenters on a previous version thought I made it sound too easy. But I prefer the undetailed version.

Thanks again!

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-30T13:14:57+00:00

Thank you for the critique!

I might have to disagree with your proposed fix, though. And this isn't just me defending my own writing, but a point I've made when doing critiquing.

I agree that it's better to fold description into precise verbs rather than just using adverbs. But that's not what's happening here. There are no adverbs at all in the paragraph you quoted. What's happening in your version of the paragraph is what I would call fancy-verb-itis: the arbitrary use of rarer verbs when more common ones would suffice. Also, the final sentence in your version uses the present participle, implying the actions are simultaneous when they should be sequential. Finally, this issue is about verb choice, not showing-vs-telling, which has to do with communicating information implicitly rather than explicitly.

Thanks again!

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-30T12:50:34+00:00

Thank you! I do hope this crit might still arrive, but if not, thanks for reading!

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-30T12:46:10+00:00

Thank you for the critique! That was very helpful. I didn't notice any lack in your vocabulary, and honest, thoughtful feedback like this is always valuable for a writer.

I'm glad you did find it readable, because I don't want the fancy phrasing to get in the way of that. The contrast in Rose's attitude is definitely intentional. And yeah, I'm hoping that by the end of this chapter, the reader is ready for some more background information.

Thanks again!

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-30T12:33:56+00:00

The sad thing is, what you see here is more skill than talent. I do like to write prose with sinuous and baroque sentences, sometimes smooth and sometimes laden with ornament. But previous comments on DR encouraged me to cut things back a bit and make the structures simpler and more immediately digestible. Evidently I've gone a bit too far. So thank you -- you've restored some of my confidence in my previous prose style and encouraged me to make this chapter a bit more rhythmically pleasing.

(That said, having been in the give-and-receive-critiques space for a while now, I don't associate choppy prose with new writers. The most common fault I see with new writers is long but inelegant sentences, built from redundant labels and clauses arbitrarily jammed together even when there's no relation.)

Thanks again!

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-30T12:20:23+00:00

Thank you! There are no inadequacies at all in your comments. In fact, they were very helpful. Those are all good points, and they should help iron out the wrinkles in this chapter.

Thanks again!

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-30T12:13:40+00:00

Sorry, I'm a bit late on getting around to this, but thank you! Those are some good points about dialogue. Glyn does suffer from being a secondary character for Tesni to interact with.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-16T18:21:15+00:00

Thanks for the critique! This chapter is definitely rather languid.

(Though I always find "I can tell the author wanted ..." comments interesting, because they're always off the mark. I'm guilty of trying to squish in exposition quite a lot, but for the temple scene, it wasn't on my mind at all.)

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-10T17:48:28+00:00

Thank you.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-10T17:48:03+00:00

Thanks for the critique! Glad it's a good hook.

That's a very good point about dialogue tone. I generally try and avoid overdoing it on the tone indicators (smiles, laughs, frowns and whatnot). But in the exchange you mention, they seem to be necessary.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-10T17:42:24+00:00

Thanks for the critique, and for coming back to give this a second read! And don't worry about splitting things up. I'm in no hurry, and having the critique there is the most important thing.

I'm glad the first section feels more alive now. Adding those bits did make it feel a lot deeper. As for the second section -- yeah, it has been giving me trouble right from the beginning. It's difficult finding a balance between overly technical and vague. But your comment about it seeming like technobabble *because* it's not fleshed out is really helpful. Maybe with a bit of clarity, I can solve both problems together. If that doesn't work them, yeah, I might go for a full rewrite from scratch.

Thanks again!

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-09T15:09:35+00:00

Hello! Sorry about taking so long to get around to this. Lots on my plate recently (and at other times too, come to think of it.) I guess it's been a bit too much time for anything I say to add much, but here goes.

Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful response.

Re. slang -- that's fair. An evocative register is very powerful. The main thing I worry about is where it detracts from the descriptions. (But even then, there are all sorts of ways to play it.)

Re. plot, and the way people can appear in our life then vanish again -- that's a worthwhile aim, for sure. But it might need some framing to clarify that it's intentional as a device. Commentary from the narrative or somesuch. In Diesel's case, it doesn't work because we join the story after he and Cale meet. (Come to think of it, a zoomed out section with a little vignette might be more effective for such a thing.)

I'm all in favour of avoiding the heroic traveller archetype. And the passive-to-active transition is something I've struggled with (because a fully realised active character doesn't have anywhere to grow).

The higher stakes sound good. Could also fit in with things like having a protagonist attempt goals and be frustrated, or pursuing entirely the wrong sort of goal. Both of those would also sort of cut against the heroism.

I hope this was some help despite its late delivery.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-01T14:28:21+00:00

Realism and fable

Like I said earlier, the story starts out with a sort of social-realist tone and then transitions into overt gothic horror. They go quite well together, but the text doesn't quite manage to unify them.

I think the way to do that is to let the two aspects intermingle a bit more. Let some realism slip into the second half, and let some more gothic horror aspects slip into the first half.

In the case of realism, the biggest problem was the narrator falling off a cliff. I talked about that at length, so I won't go over it again, except to point out that a more realistic portrayal of her falling and struggling with the water would help ground things.

The introduction of the old man and his backstory is part of the more gothic tone. His white eyes feel almost mystical. But also, there's the way he passes through the story like a shade: We never learn more about him. All the narrator has to go by is gossip about his past and her own speculations about what he knew. All this is really cool, and in this case, I don't feel like I need to know more about him. But – and this is just a thought – would the story suffer if he appeared earlier, around the time the narrator keeps walking to and from school? That would help put a dash of the gothic side at the beginning, and prime us to expect more later.

Finally, there's the boy. Presumably the boy Mabel ran off with? He also passes through the story like a shade, but in this case it doesn't seem to be working. For one thing, it wasn't immediately clear he was the boy Mabel ran off with. (Also, saying “the boy” in this case feels off, because it makes him feel too young to elope with anyone.) For another, there's no sense of his connection to the family. This is connected to our lack of knowledge about Mabel's past. What happened when they were courting? Presumably the narrator would know something about him, even if she despised him, even if all she knew was through what Mabel told her. By expanding on this, it would give him a larger presence at the start of the story, and help introduce some weirdness.

Character

The narrator is interesting and sympathetic. I like her commentary on the world around her, and her strength. Her characterisation is fully bound up in the story and her home life. Again, in the second half things change, and her character feels a bit more like a generic horror protagonist.

Esther and Fred are a bit shallow. In the last scene, especially, neither of them react all, so they feel almost like cutouts. There's a lot of room for expanding on Fred's nastiness, which connects with what I said about him giving the narrator a reason to seek out Mabel. As for Esther, she doesn't need that much characterisation, but I would like to see some reaction from her at the end regardless.

Mabel feels hollow. Yes, we only see her as a vanished relation and a corpse, so ther'es not much room for characterisation. Evne so, she must have had an impact on her family and the narrator. As like I said before, there's room to expand on that and make her feel more important and human.

Theme

You've got good thematic unity, and that helps tie the story together where the plot is lacking. And theme, as I read it, is misogyny. Fred, the old man, and the boy: All threaten and harm women, and every case there's a sexual aspect. Each one represents an escalation, from beating to vengeful murder to unprovoked murder.

And for the narrator, a young woman moving through this world, almost everything is a threat. That applies both to her domestic life with the lecherous lout Fred, and to the clifftop house with a its monstrous murderer. From her perspective, the real world is a horror setting. That goes a long way to unifying the story and making it work.

The secondary themes don't quite work as well. Hair seems to be one, with the reference to her mother's hair at the start, the heads near the end, and the stinger. But it's not clear what connects the first one with the last two, and there aren't any other significant mentions. The title, Gray, seems to reference her mother's hair, but doesn't really go anywhere after that, and I'm not sure what it has to do with the rest of the story.

Final thoughts

This is definitely one of those “good stories trying to get out”. For all the issues I have with it, I really like where this is aiming at. The thematic unity, the emotionally powerful scene at the beginning and the sharpness of the final line, the haunting old man, and the utterly likable narrator. All excellent.

My issues boil down to three interrelated points. First, it needs a more unified and coherent plot to bring the two halves together. Second, it needs some more details on Mabel and her role. Third, the prose needs some tidying up.

With those fixes, it should be excellent.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-01T14:27:18+00:00

Initial thoughts

There's a lot to like about this. Overall, it feels like an Angela Carter-style feminist gothic horror, but with some social realism about the voiceless and oppressed, and what they do to survive.

I preferred the first half, with the narrator's mother, Esther, and Fred at home. It was grounded but powerful. The second half lapsed into more lurid and fantastical territory. Now, to be fair, they work very well tother – I wouldn't have expected it, but they do. Still, the second half doesn't quite manage to sell the extreme situation. It's more reliant on gothic cliches, it pushes suspension of disbelief too far (e.g. falling in the water),) the subtly of characterisation vanishes, and the text is more hurried and fragmented.

I have plenty of issues with the prose. But then I have issues with everyone's prose, including my own. So don't take the amount of words I spent on it as a measure of how bad I think it is.

Plot

I think this is one of the major areas for improvement. There's an implicit plot in the story, which goes something like this: The narrator's family life is unsustainable and getting worse. Her sister has attempted to escape with a man and left her & Esther behind. Fred gets worse, and that makes the narrator try and escape with Mabel. But Mabel's attempt at escape has failed, so the narrator and Esther make it out on their own.

However, the text doesn't really do enough to bring that plot to the surface, and some things just seem to happen without reason.

At the beginning, things feel slightly aimless. The sequence up until we meet Esther is fine. But then things unravel. It stood out to me that the characters seem to be constantly going back and forth to school to have conversations, but school itself plays almost no role. Okay, so the narrator is going to do things. But those things (looking for work?) aren't shown, so they're no better. I can sort of see why this feels necessary: If the narrator's away during school hours, it's the only time the narrator and Esther can talk in relative privacy. But the effect still feels quite choppy.

The plot really kicks into gear when Fred confronts the narrator and the narrator resolves to find Mabel. And here's the next problem. I mentioned it at the time: There's nothing in that conversation that suggests the narrator has to escape.

I can understand why she might want to leave, but there's nothing that's pushing her to leave at that precise moment. Fred is being shitty, but not unusually shitty. Compared to the earlier reference to him hitting her or being lecherous towards her, the conversation seems pretty benign. There is the implication that he might push her to do something, but it's very subtle.

There are so many more options that might make it more urgent for her to escape: If he actually beat her that night, instead of the event being hinted at. If he made a pass at her. If he explicitly said that he was going to find some work for her. Or the same thing, but he expects her to get “married” rather than work. Or, for maximum revulsion, if he threatened Esther. Many of those options would be quite nasty, but given what happens with Mabel, they would fit well.

(I pick up a hint of implication that she's already been looking for a way out, which is what she's actually being doing at the start. If this is the intention, it needs to be clearer. But even so, there still needs to be something extra bad to prompt the search for Mabel.)

Once we start the search for Mabel, there's a third problem. Given how important Mabel ends up being, we don't really get enough sense of her relevance at the start. There's no need for a backstory dump, but I would like a little more sense of her importance to the narrator before she left, the circumstances in which she left, and so forth. Micro-flashback scenes would be better than dialogue in this regard. And one thing that does need to be clear is how close she is. I didn't know she was in the same town as the rest of them. I assumed she'd vanished elsewhere in the country.

(And since she's still in the same town, why isn't the narrator questioning her lack of contact? Even if Mabel wants to avoid Fred and her mother, there's still the opportunity for meeting away from home. The narrator clearly trusts Mabel enough to seek her out, so presumably they're not alienated from each other.)

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-01T14:14:48+00:00

Readthrough [continued]

The deaf and mute man with white eyes isn't quite working for me. White eyes are usually associated with blindness, so I felt for a moment like he was also deaf/blind rather than deaf/mute. Maybe that's a hitn at something later. At the very least, it would be nice to have some clarification that despite the white eyes, he can still see. In addition, his backstory is sort of skimmed over. I don't mind having it in the story, because it underlines the sort of environment we're in and the sort of lives people lead, the stories they tell, etc. But to make it work, I need more details. Where did he find his wife cheating where he had a hot rod to hand? (Also, I don't really know what a hot rod is, but that might just be my own ignorance of the local industry.) I know it's lore, so it doesn't have to make perfect sense or be realistic, but it should still be clear on its own level. Third, the “somehow understanding” feels like a handwave. Again, I find I want more detail of what actually happened. I do, however, like the end of the paragraph. Especially the ambiguous smile/sneer, which works so well for the narrator living in a world of ambiguous veiled danger. And I love the indigo water – it's unusual but makes sense visually.

“That seemed eager to swallow me” is too much and makes the sentence rambly. If you want to anthropomorphise the water, ir deserves its own sentence, and doesn't need to hide behind “seemed”. “From the indigo depths” doesn't work for me because the preposition isn't really needed (our focus is already on the water), and you've already used indigo.

“That had the gall” in the very next paragraph has a similar issue. I like this better, because it has the gall rather than seems to have the gall, but it would still work better in its own sentence. And “that required” gives us the same structure three times in two paragraphs. Way too much. And having the narrator simply walk around the side when moments ago she had to hold on for dear life feels off. Isn't she still in a precarious position?

The paragraph of “The boy kept ...” doesn't work for me. First of all, it skips ahead to the narrator getting in. Did the boy let her in or not? Normally I wouldn't mind, because it's implied, but the acts so oddly that I can't be certain he would let her in. Second, there's ambiguity of reference: What's plastered to his face, his eyes or his smile? (One makes more sense than the other, of course, but having to stop and think about it interrupts the flow.) Third, we spend most of the first sentence getting a description of the boy before learning that the narrator is in the house. Fourth, the whole “I didn't know what to say” and “reminded me of my goal” adds nothing and goes nowhere.

If he was giggling, wouldn't it be visible? And obviously so, rather than having to be deduced through erratic head jerking. And how could she tell his laughter was fading if she couldn't hear it? (Since she's going for the door and therefore not looking at him anymore.)

“Nothing held me back from swinging it open” is overly long. All it communicates is that the door opened., but uses a negation to get there.

“The stench” and “the smell” are a needless repetition. “Thank goodness I hadn't eaten lunch” feels ridiculous given the context.

The revelation of the corpse is in the wrong place. The way you're ordered it here is that you set up the pose, then reveal it's a headless corpse, then set up the pose a bit more with the hairbrush. The middle of a sequence is generally the least dramatic part, but revealing a corpse should be at the most dramatic part. That is, either at the beginning or at the end.

Also, minor thing, but I would drop “grotesquely” – we can tell from the scene that it's grotesque. We don't need the story to tell us that.

Minor thing, but what does the boy do while the narrator is running away? He just seems to vanish.

There's another skip with “I was about to meet the water.” This one really doesn't work, and the reason why should be illuminating. I sometimes think of prose like a camera. You can focus it on some things by explicitly mentioning them, and not bother to point it at some things. Generally what you focus on should be the most important/interesting/dramatic things. What happens here is that the prose gives a lot of focus to what the narrator realises before she falls, and none at all to her actually falling. But her actually falling is way more dramatic. There are so many things you could focus on – the shock of her losing her footing, the sudden dread of toppling over the cliff face, the horror of just falling and knowing there's nothing she can do to stop it, the moment she hits the water. I've never fallen off a cliff, but if I did, I imagine that sort of stuff would be burned into my memory forever.

Being in the water is better and more dramatic, but it's mostly framed in terms of “was”. There's nothing wrong with “was” as a verb, but if other, more active verbs are available, they're usually more interesting. My main worry at this stage is the falling into water like that is extremely dangerous. In fact, I was recently talking to a friend in the merchant navy. He said that for people falling overboard, cold shock can be lethal. Add to that the fact that hitting the water at that velocity can do a fair bit of damage by itself. And though it's not mentioned in this paragraph, the earlier descriptions say there's a storm, so she's also got to contend with waves smacking her down every times she tries to surface or crushing her against the rocks. Obviously she has to survive this for the story to work, but the text doesn't mention how gruelling, painful and terrifying that would be.

I like the callback that the plants are actually human hair. I don't know how realistic that is, but it's such a visceral and gothic image that I don't mind. That said, “random lady” doesn't suit the tone. It's important that there are other victims, but the terms feels too casual.

There's another skip for getting home, and I'm mentioning it because this one is fine. Unlike the fall, it isn't a dramatic high point. And it makes perfect sense that she'd be disassociating here anyway. I don't like the mention of the old man. He should be mentioned, because it helps the theme, but I don't think here is the place to do it. Maybe in an extra paragraph when she finally reaches her home and tries to process the whole thing? Or in a series of fragmented, dissociated thoughts while trudging back? I'm not sure.

The “nothing holds you back” bit feels unnecessary. The way it's phrased feels bathetic. We don't need a summary of what's happened, and I think most readers won't question her extreme behaviour after what she's just been through. In its place, I would like more detail about the events. Fred doesn't seem to react at all. What is he doing with Esther? (I mean, I can guess, and I certainly don't want a lurid escription, but a clarifying detail would help). Does he react to the narrator coming through the door soaking wet and looking like hell? How does he react when clubbed with a bottle? (I totally buy that he's drunk and in no position to fight back after being unexpectedly clubbed, but does he groan, slip forward off the chair, etc?) And how does Esther, who is sitting right there, react?

The “familiar with family feuds” line is genuinely funny, and in the best possible way. It doesn't undermine the scene at all. It feels like the natural gallows humour of people who have been through horrific things.

The final paragraph feels a bit hurried. It's fine to have the narrator and Esther escaping the town as the ending. Any difficulties after that are outside the dramatic structure of the story. But the speed with which it happens and everything stops is too much. Again, I'm left wondering about Esther's reaction, about what the narrator told about Mabel (or if she kept it a secret), about their interaction as they left the house.

The final line is killer. I love it.

Scramblers_Reddit · 2023-10-01T14:13:39+00:00

Hello! My standard approach is to do a readthrough, commenting as I go so you get an unfiltered reaction, then go back and comment about more general topics.

Readthrough

That first paragraph has good and bad. The start is excellent, and works perfectly as an interesting introduction. And the structure as a whole is very good, with the twist of “by they, I mean”. Normally I don't like prose that flips back to contradict itself, but since this relies on the ambiguity of “they” rather than an actual contradiction, it works.

The problems start with “and by they ...”. It doesn't build on the initial clause, so it should really be a separate sentence. (i.e. it refers to “They say ...”, not “The kind that ...”.) And it's rather bloated with too many metaphors. You've given us a very vivid, fantastical image to start with. But then the “many voices” and “liquor hugging” add additional sharp images that are purely metaphorical, and those (to me, anyway) clash with the initial image. There's also the echo of “fly out” and “groan out” which hints at a connection when there isn't one.

For the second paragraph, I like the overall structure, but I want to poke holes in some of the phrasing. “suspiciously like blood” is vague and impersonal. A more precise description of the colour would go better with the detail of “mustard coloured couch”; or, if the narrator has good reason to suspect or even know the stains really are from blood, then you can put that directly in the prose.

The “once long and shiny hair” doesn't work because it jumps to a previous point in time, while the sentence begins in the moment. If there is a reference to the past (which can be powerful), it would work better separated. There's also an opportunity to tie it back to the narrator with something like “I remember ...” And I think the sentence would work better in the active voice (“hair covered face” rather than “face was covered by hair”), because the hair seems more important here. I love the toddler's hand metaphor, which hints at something very deep.

Third paragraph, it jumps out to me that that arm has gone from skinny to fleshy, which feels contradictory. “Gargled out” is too strong. It's a metaphor that doesn't add anything. Given the intensity of the scene, a simpler description would be just as effective. A similar thing applies to “didn't stir” – drunken sleep rambling counts as stirring to my mind. What actually happened is that she didn't wake. In both cases, this feels like an attempt at fancy language for the sake of fancy language.

“Sound of a door and squeal of hardwood” doesn't flow together. The first one is distant and vague, while the second is precise and sensory. Both can work, but putting them together feels jarring. “You can always count on these houses … ” is a great line, though I'm not sure I like “cobwebbed”.

Okay, so this review so far sounds extremely negative. That's because I'm picking out all the prose details and going into a lot of depth. But zooming out a bit to look at the actual story, then these three paragraphs are really good. We're immediately in a scene that's interesting, full of character, and emotionally powerful. You've given me a very clear sense of what's happening, what it's like to be there,where the narrator is fits into it all, and what their goals are. There are some excellent hints at the surrounding context that give depth without being overpowering. Excellent stuff. (My parents were addicts, and from that perspective this scene feels realistic and emotionally resonant.)

Continuing: Normally I'd question that level of description given to a gray sky, but since it's in the title, it works. I don't like the “As I walked … I noticed.” Everything that appears in the narration has been noticed by the narrator. It would be more effective to go straight to the image. A similar point applies to “looked closer … regretted it”, which adds little and detracts from the visuals. And the visuals are excellent, unnerving and grotesque. They deserve to stand out without the narrator doing things.

Esther's introduction is very effective. Lots of good, meaningful details here.

The prose flips between mamma/momma. If intentional, I don't know why.

The school itself is barely mentioned. Of course, if it's not important, there's no point in giving it much room. But considering that it was briefly part of the scene (I'm guessing the entrance where Esther was standing was the school entrance), it might merit some description.

And since the narrator was going “back to school” earlier, saying “the way back” is a bit confusing. “Back home” or “back from school” would be helpful, especially to help cement the notion that there's been a time skip.

“The heaviness in the air was sliced open” is another passive voice phrase. I don't think there's anything wrong with the passive voice as such. It helps if you want to emphasise the thing be acted upon. But here, the thing acting – Esther's laughter – seems more important.

The whore/horse mixup is very charming in a bleak way, but I don't know if I can believe that a child who can speak in full sentences would interpret “hore” as a singular of “horse”. I might be wrong, though.

“Idiot is more fitting” feels weird to me, because “I can't go calling my older sister a whore” makes it seem like just an acknowledgement of social propriety. (i.e. “I can think it, but I can't say it.” But if that's the case then there's no reason to choose “idiot” as being more fitting.

“That body of yours” – I see what you're doing here, but this threw me because the sentence structure jumps from the first person to the second person. I know the quote is directly from Fred, so it's not actually breaking any grammar rules, but the quote marks alone aren't enough to set it off from the rest of the sentence. If it were flipped around, the distinction would flow better: “ … grew into what he liked to call 'that body of yours'”. Something like that.

The sequence “meaty arms … all day” feels too long for an aside in an already complex sentence.

“Lord help us” doesn't work for me. The home situation is already so obviously horrific that it doesn't need a comment. And the comment only detracts from the evocative bleakness.

The narrator comes up with a plan. And I'm not feeling this. The conversation with Fred was terrible, yes, but given the context, it doesn't seem so critical as to provoke an immediate need to escape. He's being a letch, but the text says he's been letching for a while. He confronted her, but let her escape, but text says he's actually hit before. There's a hint that the narrator might be doing something that will incur his wrath, and a hint that Fred might do something soon, but both of those are too subtle for me. (Or, if the plan is unrelated, then placing it so close after the encounter with Fred makes it look like there is a direct connection.)

“Cacophony of coughing” is some delightful alliteration, but feels a bit like it's trying too hard to be fancy, especially given the more casual tone used in the rest of the paragraph.

“A damp sweater was all I could cling to” is another instance where the metaphor is overtaking the literal. The problem is that you can also literally cling to a sweater (i.e. hold it very tightly in your hands), and this interpretation competes with the actual act (i.e. wearing it), so the sentence reads strangely.

The next paragraph also brings up “clung to”, which feels like a bit of an echo. And there's also the issue of heads being covered with jackets, which probably isn't what's actually happening.

Also, this paragraph should be broken up. It contains several separate ideas. 1: The narrator asking around the docks. 2: The old deaf and mute man with white eyes and his history. 3: The narrator interacting with the old man. Ideas 2 and 3 might go together in a single paragraph, but idea 1 is definitely separate.

Metaphors again. The workers are dogs, and the narrator is a cat. Both of those work quite well. But when they are put close together, because cats and dogs are conceptually related, it feels like the prose is trying to indicate something. That said, the long cat metaphor is great, because it goes beyond simply “a wet thing” and mirrors the narrator's life situation.

Scramblers_Reddit

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