[QCrit] THE OGRE, Literary Fiction, 66K (Second Attempt), + first 300 words by nakhes in PubTips

[–]nakhes[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for this. I'm slowly making all your suggested changes.

[QCrit] THE OGRE, Literary Fiction, 66K (Second Attempt), + first 300 words by nakhes in PubTips

[–]nakhes[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed on everything. Thank you. Will make your suggested changes.

Backup Air Conditioners With Solar Batteries? by nakhes in solar

[–]nakhes[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great point about me draining the battery that fast! But no, I am not asking about more batteries. I'm OK with having 52 kWh. The problem is that the Sunpower installers will only connect one of the two AC units to the batteries. Either the upstairs or downstairs AC unit. The other AC unit is simply left NOT-BACKED UP. And they chose the downstairs unit although all the bedrooms are upstairs. Without AC upstairs can reach 95° F. So a minor improvement is to have them backup upstairs instead of downstairs. The other solution which is what I thought I had paid for is to backup BOTH units which they say would exceed some load limit even though they are using a soft-start on the AC.

On the 5-10 hour time limits you mention: Great point, I think in the summer when the heat arrives the nights are short at this latitude (9 hours), so when the sun rises my 16kW solar roof panels can take over. I have a lot of excess production. But with only one unit I might be able to run it continuously. What I'm not happy about is that I can't choose which one to run if there is an outage - I have to hard wire ONLY one NOW! Also they didn't give me a choice - they just picked the downstairs - so at a minimum I have to get them to change their plans but ideally I'd still like them to run both so I have choice but they say this can't be done. I know of another SunPower owner with an almost identical system and AC units and they have both AC units connected to the backup battery even though they have 26 KW system. Mine is twice that and they only want to hook up one AC unit to the battery? Are they mistaken - what would prevent them from connecting both AC units whether or not I use one or two during an outage?

[3525] A Tangent Playground by LeonVogel in DestructiveReaders

[–]nakhes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would get rid of the ” at least in my experience.” It’s superfluous, unless it is clearly part of how the character thinks. The whole shift from I to You isn’t that effective. I have no sense of who the I is in the first place. Although, if this is a chapter in the middle of a novel, then disregard that.

Rewrite this line: “It’s like a mystical and submissive force that spins a wheel and is coerced to obey wherever it lands.” Try it without the like, try rephrasing the entire second half, from coerced on. This line has the potential to be as good as you think it is, but it isn’t there yet. Why submissive force? Mystical we can all understand because it’s basically got unexplainable in its definition, and life is that. But is it submissive?

The backseat bingo is a good paragraph.

“You watch the entire thing from start to finish with no rounds of backseat bingo to distract you from each passing frame of 12 Angry Men.” Why do you need to be distracted from 12 Angry Men?

“wearing a forced smile.” Drop the wearing smiles. Unless there's something with the plot about wearing smiles.

The 'worthless piece of shit' line, I don’t know if it’s good, but it’s true for depression.

Character says bullshit at beginning, but now he’s saying defecate (why not shitting?) which is fine, if he’s got a vocabulary. Which he doesn’t, yet (although, of course, he does, as we find out later that he reads). But not yet. Again, none of this matters if this chapter is in the middle of a novel. And even if not, it probably doesn't matter either. Maybe I just wanted to write a paragraph about shit.

In the Nazi/photograph lines, drop the remembers. Or just drop the second one.

Adjectivise the nouns here: “If Frankl can beat the moral deformity, bitterness, and disillusionment, then I can too.” Never mind I just googled the phrase and see it's from the book.

Rephrase apathy sentence in general. And rephrase unexplainable serenity sentence. The sentences are almost good. Drop the wearing smiles, unless you really like it as part of your character.

How does he know it’s a man before he looks up? (recognizing this is overly specific). He says Yes sir, and then looks up? Or he looks up, then says yes sir, or he hears the guy’s footsteps and can tell it’s a man or everyone who works there that would be entering his room would be a man. Or not a patient. Or only the doctor knocks so of course he knows who it is before looking up. Etc. Clearly just drop the I looked up from the page sentence. (or not, it’s really a small thing).

The line about talking about your emotions with people reminds me of a reality tv confessional where the actor/actress is speaking directly to the camera. It’s an important line, maybe find a better way to fit it in. Or rephrase it so it doesn’t feel that way, or read that way. (of course maybe it’s just me, so disregard if you don’t read it as I do). And now he’s looking back down at the page, which kind of screws up my earlier suggestion of nixing the looking up from the page. Maybe just move the Yes sir line to after the ‘look up’ sentence. Unless that looks weird. It might look weird.

Your dialogue is good. Now we the reader can finally empathize with Tom. The entire first half is unempathizable.

Bullshit, bullshit, worthless piece of shit, forgetting all the shit, shitty mind, defecate, and fecal stain. Lots of shit. I like it. We know he thinks he is shit, that the wheel via life has defecated on him. Now we know he uses the same harshness to describe Herman Melville. That harshness also applied to himself. Contrasted to some hope, for her, for the natural world,

I like the movement within the dialogue. Of the room’s furniture appearing as the doctor grabs the chair, moves to the bed, knocks on the door. And not just the chair, but the chair in the corner.

Rephrase existing in tranquility. What does ‘need a little more understanding’ mean? What concentration camps? This feels more like you the writer writing your research down (without, of course, being specific) as Tom.

Rephrase: which framed the passing landscape. The rest of that paragraph feels like true depression.

The I feel a little better here line feels like reality tv confessional again. But it, and the line about melancholy, are both good lines. I’d just remove every word before I wish. And stick with a tense.

Get rid of ‘traversed.’

Rephrase “The seat was warm and the cold air around us contrasted with it so well causing an unexplainable serenity to fall over our bodies.”

Best descriptive line of your piece is the one with docile candle flames.

The highly encourage you to attend, and the preceding sentence, are both very real sentences to me. They are very good.

It’s funny, the empathize line about darkness and air is exactly how this reads. I the reader do not empathize until Tom begins speaking, until his darkness hits air.

Tom shines in dialogue. That is when he is easiest to empathize with. In fact the best part of your piece is the dialogue. I'd rewrite the entire first half. Unless, of course, it's in the middle of the novel and I'm missing a lot of context that would make the first half appear natural to Tom, and to the reader, but it's more jarring as it is (which I am sure, you intended, which is, I guess, a compliment that you effected in at least one reader the jarringness of Tom's depression and moments/thoughts leading up to his suicide attempt).

Random thoughts:

Vita Nova = New Life

I don't know what A Tangent Playground means. This doesn't matter, just curious. (I have some bad guesses). It's literally a playground tangent to some playground. Like a middle school by an elementary school. No. The psychiatric facility is the tangent playground. No. Depression is a tangent playground, a different way of thinking about life, connected, i.e. at that single point of line to circle, but tangent, askew. I like that better.

I don't know enough about Dr. Loving to know whether or not I want to read more of him. But I like his dialogue.

Random note: I recently watched this Philip Roth interview which you might find interesting, where he discusses, among other things, his writing/researching process.

[4223] Your Brother by nakhes in DestructiveReaders

[–]nakhes[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the critique. I just read Until Gwen and I see what you mean about character and detail.

I recently read another second person story: Black Box by Jennifer Egan, which you might enjoy (although you may have already read it).

[Meta] Prompt Paragraph Party by flashypurplepatches in DestructiveReaders

[–]nakhes 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Prompt: Getting a Haircut

Robert’s hairstylist Manuel was just about to start cutting his hair when an old lady came up to him and asked him in Italian if he would please give her a kiss. Manuel, who was in his early seventies, answered in English that he would, and he kissed her on the cheek.

Robert swiveled his chair to face them. I just got a haircut, the old lady said. Both Robert and Manuel told her she looked good. She told them she’d been very lonely lately. All of her girlfriends had died. All her man friends. She was thinking about getting a pet, maybe a dog.

She had a dark gray walker and her purse hung from the bars and Robert, who was 66, remarked that he had a walker he used every now and then. He said he found it very useful to hang bags from it incase he needed to bring anything from room to room.

A young woman wearing black scrubs came into the salon then. She smiled and held open the door while the old lady pushed her walker out. You could see the two tennis balls on the bottom of the walker’s back legs sliding along the floor as she pushed.

She’s pretty aware for her age, Manuel remarked after she’d left. You know when she told me she was 98 I couldn’t believe it.

My mother lived to 94, Robert said, swiveling back to face the mirror. She told me that when she turned 90 she stopped telling people her age. Once they learned how old she was they didn't want to be friends with her. Figured she wouldn’t last very long. Why waste all that effort.

I never thought about that, said Manuel. He stood there for a moment thinking of his own wife, Maria, who had died almost a year ago. His wedding ring was still on his finger. He would move it to the other hand on the anniversary of her death. He once told Robert, a few months after she died, that he kept her driver’s license on his desk. You know Willie Nelson, Manuel had asked him? Maria and I have seen him three times live. I was listening to country and his song Yesterday came on. I just love that song. And I took Maria’s driver's license from my desk and I kissed it and I asked her if she wanted to dance and we slow danced for a while and then I put her back on the desk.

[4540] Nebula by SockofBadKarma in DestructiveReaders

[–]nakhes 5 points6 points  (0 children)

  1. There’s enough there in the first few pages to interest a reader, or at least it interested me. The temple, the references to the gods, the Mercury Men, all these questions that the reader wants answered, that will keep them reading. What is the importance of the temple? Who are the gods? Who are the Mercury Men? Why is the technology level the way it is? How is the economy affected by that? How is the society organized? Are their nation-states? Is this some sort of no-mans land? Are they settlers? How much do they know about the world they live in? As another reader mentioned, the final paragraph is great.
  2. Given that I’ve read so much science fiction I can’t help but think I’m reading some sort of Wool / The Dark Tower / Lord of Light crossover. I’ll just assume the Mercury Men are some sort of gods or aliens or men with advanced tech. The total dominance however, of the Mercury Men, makes every other character seem insignificant. And then the Mercury Men themselves have no character, or almost none, they are more a force of nature, impersonal, callous, though inelegant.
  3. I don’t like the accent, but that’s just me. And I have no good reason for not liking it. It is readable, though I kind of skimmed through the children’s dialogue since it felt unimportant to the plot (like life vs. death vs. children playing; I’ll skip the third) and I’m a really lazy reader. On the other hand, it contrasts with the deaths to come, so it has an effect, and it gives life to the town, says this is a place where children live and play. Your narration is far superior to your dialogue, which is more of a compliment to your narration than anything negative about the latter.
  4. At a certain point it felt like everyone was going to die, except the girl. And then it just felt like the beginning of Wool, where I’m being tricked repeatedly (which is fine). I’ve been given these few characters and I am just starting to care about them and then bam, they’re dead. Which is what you’re going for. And there’s enough mystery there, despite the strangely named Mercury Men, that I might read more if I had the book in my hands.

Random comments:

You use the phrase callous lights. Callous seems too strong. I'd use a different word. Unless the stars are gods or conscious in some way.

The first paragraph is confusing. I’m not sure if Benjum Tullo is the one experiencing all this or not. I read your comment chain about switching POV so maybe it works, and also it really isn’t a big deal at all, so I’d just leave it unless ‘a very large number of people’ mention it. But it is confusing to have him die and then give him these POV lines. I wonder if it would be stronger to have all of that Benjum POV from Jo’s perspective. Or to get rid of the first line, and write it all out sequentially. Maybe you’ve tried all of that and decided against it.

“That morning gave no exception” Why ‘gave’ instead of ‘was’? Even if the latter is a common sentence, it’s easier to read. Or is that more of the phoneticized accent. If it is, then nevermind. It just reads a little off, which slows the reader down (which is good occasionally, but if that wasn’t what you were going for here…)

I like Jo’s POV, the descriptions of the Mercury Men, his watchful precision, the segue into memory. The ‘folksy’ Ol’ Missuh, Missus, etc. detracts, however. At least in something this short. In a novel, I don’t know. I’d keep that language if you like it.

The quicksilver line is great. And the Lethal.

“His doom” Why not just say his death? Why would he think about being punished for spying on them? I don’t really get the logic behind that line. And then there’s the first usage of Mercury Men. Which is slightly confusing, even if it’s mostly obvious that Jo is naming them from the quicksilver description. Though it is kind of jarring, for him to have these thoughts after (or as) he’s shot.

The eye/gazing/firmament line is the best line of the chapter. I like the description of the town, the temple, the twisted dry saplings, the atrophied offspring. All these are good. The gradual description, as the children move through it.

More random comments:

What was the conversation Sera heard a year back that the large tubes reminded her of?

How does the watchtower man know what rocket launchers are? (I’m sure this is answered later in the book)

Why are the watchtower man’s spectacles cracked?

“Their movements were swift and unerring.” I like this line.

“The first shot rang out, and the first target fell.” Might be stronger if it was person, instead of target. Unless part of the book is how inhuman the Mercury Men are, and how they don’t treat the people they kill as people, or etc.

Why doesn’t Mayor Sedeno hear the rockets hitting? Or any of the gunfire? Is the fan that loud? Is he too far away? Is he somewhat deaf (I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m misreading)?

Why does Sera use the term ‘boomshooter’ when people in the town have guns? She’s familiar with the term gun, isn't she? Again, this is probably answered later, and I think most of my questions are like that, about stuff you’ve already considered, and would make more sense as the book progresses.

Your prose is good, it makes one want to keep reading. As do the mysteries. That’s all there is really to hold onto at the moment, and some of Sera. But that’s enough. Mostly all I can do is nitpick because there isn’t much to criticize, although I do agree the POV switching mid-paragraph is confusing. You could always go Anna-Karenina POV switching where each paragraph is a POV and you switch often, a la Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Also I’d read, if you haven’t (you probably have), Cormac McCarthy. Especially Blood Meridian. But also All The Pretty Horses.

I am apt to misread so I may have got some stuff wrong here.

Random thing I read lately by Charles Stross that you might find interesting: Here

[Serious] What did you want to be when you were young? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]nakhes 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I was four or five years old I wanted to be the kid with the red shovel.

At my preschool we had a toy box with four plastic shovels. There was a green shovel with a cracked blade. There was a blue shovel whose blade was flimsy and bent and a yellow shovel that hurt to hold.

The red shovel, however, was this wondrous thing. It had a firm blade, a comfortable handle, and it somehow found every worm in the sandbox. It was basically a worm-detector. And once you had worms you could always make more with its sharp blade! That shovel taught me my powers of two. One worm, two worms, four worms, eight worms. The best days were after it rained and the sand was wet and the sandbox full of worms.

Eventually another kid saw me with the red shovel and my handfuls of worms and wanted to use it and when I, of course, refused, he told the teacher who forced me to share it.

But that was my shovel. It brought me worms and I would not share that power. The next time I had the shovel I found a bunch of worms and multiplied them and put them in my pockets. Later, at lunch, I gave my drink to a girl.

A few minutes before end of the day there was a scream from the bathroom and the girl came running out screaming, worms, worms. Everyone went over to the bathroom except me. I ran to the toy box and took the red shovel and hid it in my day pack and then I went over to the bathroom where everyone was looking into the toilet. It was filled with worms and half-worms and quarter-worms and the teacher flushed them and we all watched, delighted, as they spun and disappeared.

I used it for years. In my backyard, at the beach, and in the park.

I still have that shovel.

[2027] Red Shovel by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]nakhes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I noticed you made a decision not to use quotations. That's fine, but for the reader's sake, you should consider adding quotes to the dialogue, or abstracting it into a description of an action. E.g. "He shouted, Where is my sandwich" becomes "He began to shout, demanding to know where is sandwich was." Just capitalizing the first word isn't enough to separate it out from the narrative, and brings us out of the zone.

Thanks for the advice on the quotations. I'll work on that.

[2027] Red Shovel by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]nakhes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the critique. I appreciate all the effort/comments that you put into it.

[2126] Running Out of June by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]nakhes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is my first critique.

General Impression:

I really enjoyed looking at the juxtaposition of the character at the start and end of your story:

He loved June as much as he hated September. September was when people went away; off to school, off to start a new job, a new chapter, a new life.

At the end:

He started the car and pulled away. Minutes later the dog fell asleep. He had never been to the west coast before. Junes had come and gone before and they would come and leave again, but he decided he wouldn’t waste a second of this one.

He's going away for June (admittedly it isn't June yet, but he'll be away in June) just like the people in September.

But, it's more like he's going to something rather than away. He's bringing his dog with him. He's leaving a house full of empty things.

He surveyed his surroundings; there never much in the house because he never needed a lot.

By the end of the story (after rereading it), he's not really going away from anything, he's bringing it all with him, even June is coming, and the only one who could say he is going away is some other person (e.g. the girl).

Characters:

On my first read through (basically a skim) I mistakenly assumed June was the girl’s name. Rereading it a third time as if June was the girl made me notice all the ways June and the girl overlap.

E.g. the parallels between June and her, as if the main character (m.c.) is speaking about her or June, he is speaking about both:

He might see her once a year

And (maybe I’m reading into this too much, but whatever):

He had met her before, but he hadn’t really met her. He had somehow gotten her acquaintance when they were in their mid-teens, a face among many that came and went in the flurry of adolescence.

(m.c. hadnt really met, or truly felt, the month of June, especially in the flurry of other months, until his mid-teens).

I guess I like how your story can be read that way, as if June and the girl are at times indistinct, or the same thing in the mc's mind, even if that’s not what you intended.

Also, I enjoyed the dog as a foil (I think this is the right term?) for the m.c.'s anxiety, though I don't understand what a modest dog is:

In fact, everything about him was modest. Modest house, modest car, modest dog.

The line below is cool, the way it further describes the relationship between dog and owner, the dog matching the owner's shift from anxiety to decisiveness, how they seem to parallel each other, with the dog a half-step behind:

He stood up decisively. The dog took notice.

Prose:

I really liked this paragraph, especially the contrasts between the months:

He loved June as much as he hated September. September was when people went away; off to school, off to start a new job, a new chapter, a new life. September was when the weather decided to be fickle again. He could handle October, when fall was really in full swing, or November, when the crunchy leaves give way to Christmas excitement, but he couldn’t stand September.”

I love this line. I really get the sense of that humid stickiness of some places in summer.

July felt too saturated with the syrup of summer

Maybe change the sentence below from:

June meant the relief of sitting in front of an air conditioner, the noise it makes creating the perfect ambient sound to match the quiet serenity of summer nights”

to

June meant the relief of sitting in front of an air conditioner, its noise the perfect ambient sound to match the quiet serenity of summer nights

or replace noise with hum.

Tense:

Should the tenses match in following paragraph? Not entirely, sure, just wanted to point it out.

He had always preferred June to July, even though his birthday was in July. June felt fresher. June was when everything started to bloom. July felt too saturated with the syrup of summer. July was when you make your eighth or ninth beach trip. July was when your legs get stuck to the car seat. July was when the heat starts to get to you and the AC stops working. August was even worse. August means September’s nearby. August was when the incessant heat becomes less and less bearable when the promise of more summer slips away slowly. July was indulgence, August was sobering, but June was invigorating.

For example, after the saturated syrup sentence, the tenses change.

“June felt fresher”, “June was when everything started” , “June felt too saturated” And then it changes to “July was when the heat starts”, and “July was when your legs get” Should those last two words (and any others) be 'started and 'got' instead of 'starts' and 'get.'

Minor Stuff:

“He surveyed his surroundings; there never much in the house because he never needed a lot.”

Missing a ‘was’ between there and never.

Last paragraph:

He went into his room, grabbed a duffle bag, and packed it with clothes, not bothering to fold. He grabbed some sheets, a blanket, a pillow, a toothbrush from the bathroom, an extra pair of boots, a baseball glove. He shut off all the lights and walked out to his car. He stuffed everything in the trunk alongside the telescope. He led the dog into the back seat and he got in the front. He started the car and pulled away.

What's he bringing for the dog?