This was the third day in a row the man had been sitting on that bench, and she had yet to see him move. She thought that he must be awfully hot, dressed in that gray overcoat and his hat pulled down enough that the brim covered most of his face. Looking at him, one would have though it was the middle of April rather then the beginning on June.

***

I hope that's 13 lines. In MS word it was less, but I suppose font style and size matter and I don't know what the standard measurement here is...

Anyway, this is a short story I wrote, it's a little under 900 words total. Basically for this opening segment I'm curious about the following things:

1. Are you hooked?
2. Are there any points where the meaning of a sentence or phrase isn't clear and you need to read it a second time to understand what was intended.
3. Are there any mistakes that ditract you as you're reading and thus prevent you from "getting into" the story?

2) Why do I care that she is on the monkey bars? Or that she can skillfully dismount? Was she in the Olympics? Is she trying to train for them?

3) Why hasn't she told someone about the strange man?

quote:

---

1. Are you hooked?

---

No. But, I could be.

quote:

---

2. Are there any points where the meaning of a sentence or phrase isn't clear and you need to read it a second time to understand what was intended.

---

No. Each sentence is understandable, if some of them are long.

quote:

---

3. Are there any mistakes that distract you as you're reading and thus prevent you from "getting into" the story?

---

Intentionally withholding information is distracting.]

But I'm easy. And the mantra around here (for good reason) is "hook me, hook me, hook me." You could probably use something else to draw the reader in.

As far as the mystery of the girl's identity is concerned, I don't need to know just yet. I expect I will know soon, and I'm okay with that. So there are certain kinds of readers that you will not alienate (me) without identifying her, yet, and there are certain readers (like IB) that you will.

The why that she's on the monkey bars seems to be that she frequently plays on them, and that they give her a good vantage point to see the man, so I don't think I need further explanation of that. And a child might very well keep her observations to herself without any apparent reason, so I'm okay with that.

quote:

---

[Mary] had been on her perch atop the monkey bars for nearly ten minutes watching the strange man [sitting in the distance on the bench]. This was the third day in a row [that she had seen him there], and she had yet to see him move. He must be awfully hot. He was dressed in a gray overcoat and his hat was pulled down enough that the brim covered most of his face.

---

I’m intrigued by the mystery man sitting on that bench for three days. He could be dead, he could be an android, his bus might be late or he may be left waiting for the garbage truck.

The girl needs a name to personalize the character and draw in the reader. “Janey had been on her perch atop the monkey bars…………” “She wasn’t stuck there…………”

IB;

The girl is simply a POV. The man on the bench is dead. I needed a POV character who would be naive enough not to pick up that the man was dead.

The fact that she's on the monkey bars does not matter to you. What does matter to the story as a whole is that she's a young child. The description of her "dismounting" is to show that this child, like many, is in her own imaginative world.

That last fact answers your third question IB. Children often take interest in things which adults don't. They wonder about them to no end but never tell another soul.

mfreivald;

Thanks for your thoughts. You seem to understand the type of thing I'm writing here reasonably well and your comments are bang on.

To answer your question, it's social commentary.

DebbieKW;

The story is written without any of the characters having names. It's common in social commentary to create the "any man" to whom everyone can relate on one level.

Having said that, reading through my POV character again, she isn't one that I would expect the reader to relate to. In fact, I believe it would be counter-productive if the reader attempted to relate to the POV character.

So... I suppose ya'll are right. Introducing a name for her would almost certainly be a good idea.

I also really like the rewrite you made. It gets all the information necessary communicated very fluidly. Thank you for it.

Antinomy;

quote:

---

The story is written without any of the characters having names. It's common in social commentary to create the "any man" to whom everyone can relate on one level.

---

You are violating a fairly serious "rule". One that I am not sure you know you are violating or that you can pay that price. You lost whatever interest I had when NO character had a name.

quote:

---

The girl is simply a POV. The man on the bench is dead. I needed a POV character who would be naive enough not to pick up that the man was dead.

---

After 3 days in nice weather, he'd have fallen over and be, well, fragrant. There would be flies and other scavangers at work. Also, police officers do check on the guys sitting on park benches at night to: (1) clear the dangerous ones from the park; (2) discourage the perverts, drug dealers and bums; and (3) make sure they aren't dead. You are going to have a plausibility problem with him being there 3 days.

quote:

---

The fact that she's on the monkey bars does not matter to you. What does matter to the story as a whole is that she's a young child. The description of her "dismounting" is to show that this child, like many, is in her own imaginative world.

---

Then I shouldn't know any more about it tham she climbed up to see him. Isn't she just going to go over and poke him?

Okay to the 13.

You have a "shifting" POV.

The "girl" thinks of things she wouldn't and her voice is far too old. If she's a POV, get into the way she'd think. At 900 words, you have a lot of room to explore this from the proper POV which may not be the girl. It might be an adult who sees her poke the corpse, and it fall over. Think about who should tell your story and why.

Ex.

Mary sat on the top of the monkey bars so she could see the stranger in the trench coat. He didn't move once in the ten minutes she'd been watching him. She glanced at her mom but she wasn't paying attention. Even though Mom said never to talk to strangers, Mary was going to ask him why he'd been sitting on that bench for three days. Pretenting she was an Olympic gymnast, she swung down from the bar and stuck her landing.

She looked back. The grown ups were busy talking. Mom had her eyes closed as she sat in the sun. There was no one to stop her. Mary was going to poke that stranger and see if he moved.

While not perfect now I'm seeing the world as Mary does. I know there's something up with the dude and Mary's mom's not paying attention.

Edited for typos - I type too fast. Sigh!

quote:

---

You are violating a fairly serious "rule". One that I am not sure you know you are violating or that you can pay that price. You lost whatever interest I had when NO character had a name.

---

I know that it causes some to have difficulty, but there are any number of great writers who do this. It's not a rule I think we can impose on our friend J Cassels.

That isn't to say that it cannot be improved. That isn't to say that the story wouldn't be better by giving them names. But it isn't a rule, and it isn't serious. It's a matter of preference. And the approach can be effective.

quote:

---

You have a "shifting" POV.

The "girl" thinks of things she wouldn't and her voice is far too old. If she's a POV, get into the way she'd think. At 900 words, you have a lot of room to explore this from the proper POV which may not be the girl. It might be an adult who sees her poke the corpse, and it fall over. Think about who should tell your story and why.

---

I think you are confusing the narrator with the POV character. The narrator and the POV character are not necessarily the same entities. The narrator might be the girl at a different age relating the past. But the narrator could be a different entity all together. The narrator can have varying degrees of omniscience. The narrator can even have varying degrees of reliability.

As far as I can tell, there are no POV violations in the first 13. In every sentence there is an unknown third person narrator telling things from the girl's POV.

The kind of piece J Cassels is writing will put some people off. (Just like Faulkner or Updike put a *lot* of people off.) So, J Cassels, it is worth considering the problems that everyone has expressed to you. Take them seriously, then decide where you want to make your trade-offs.

As far as an editor goes... if I honestly thought I was ready for an editor I'd submit the story to one not post here. Thus it makes little sense to lecture me about how an editor will view my writing or the opportunities I will have with one.

Now, the reason I answered questions asked of me was because, without being able to post the entire story here, I wanted to give some insight into the rest of my story in the hopes of stimulating additional helpful responses.

I'll admit that not all my post would be useful for such a task. With that in mind I hope you'll take whatever you don't believe is helpful as notes to myself and accept the explanation that I develop ideas best when directing them as comments to other people.

But here I am justifying what you encourage me to justify not at all. Alas, such are my failings.

mfreivald;

If you want to get away from that plausibility point - suggest you use the girl's innate curiosity about why a stranger wouldn't be moving at all (all the other people on the benches fidget, shuffle, turn the pages of their books, etc.) and why he's dressed so heavily.

Good luck on the social commentary aspect. That's not my thing. FWIW, I think a title without the leading article might be a bit more interesting: Man on a Bench, kind of like a title of a famous piece of art.

Oh, one final thought - if you are new to Hatrack and haven't yet read the threads related to giving and receiving feedback, I suggest you do. IB wasn't mentioning anything new - the questions raised by critiquers in Fragments and Feedback don't generally require replies. Instead, they're offered to the writer, so the writer can understand that at least one reader had these questions. It's up to the writer to figure out what to do with all the feedback they receive, since sometimes there are opposite views or suggestions that contradict one another in the comments from F&F.

You’ve already seen my comments, but there is one other thing I want to say. What interested me about your first 13 was how you set the scene. Regardless of the nits you’ve picked up, the scene setting was visual. This is obviously one of your strong-points.

IB wrote:

quote:

---

1) Who is the girl? I'm not interested in following a protagonist that doesn't have a name.

---

DebbieKW and Antinomy had similar things to say. (More had difficulties than not.)

You later wrote:

quote:

---

Having said that, reading through my POV character again, she isn't one that I would expect the reader to relate to.

---

First, I'll reiterate that I see no POV problems here. The narration is not in first person singular, so "the girl" is an adequate way to refer to her for the moment.

However, you have a few readers here who are thrown off a little by the style of the first 13. So, if it were my work, I would probably ask myself: What can I do to alleviate this, and still retain the anonymity of the girl? I might include or highlight some kind of personalized and semi-unique attribute about the girl. (You might have her talk to her doll, and say the name of the doll.) A name gives the impression of a unique person – but it is not the only way to give the impression of a unique person.

You say that the reader "relating" to her would be counter productive, but I think there are several levels that you can "relate" to a character. So you might identify just how it is you don't want them to relate to her, and avoid that.

For example, if by "relate" you mean you don't want them to sympathize with her, you don't have to give us anything that evokes sympathy. However, I think you have to "relate" to a character at some level to have any interest at all in the POV. If we do not relate at the very least that this young little being is engaging the mystery of the man – then we have no reason to relate to the mystery of the man.

IB wrote:

quote:

---

2) Why do I care that she is on the monkey bars? Or that she can skillfully dismount? Was she in the Olympics? Is she trying to train for them?

---

I understand your explanation for the Olympics dismount, and I don't need to be told why she was thinking it. However, if this were my work under scrutiny, I would ask the questions: Does the Olympics reference accomplish what I want it to? And: Is it worth the distraction it gives to readers like IB?

I can relate to IB's questions here to some degree. I didn't mention it before, but it was, in fact, distracting to me. I don't mind that it isn't explained to me – but it is distracting. Maybe it just needs a smoother presentation. (The "her young mind told her" came too late, I think):

quote:

---

The girl wasn't stuck there. A hundred time before she had dismounted and bowed to the imaginary applause of the Olympic Games.

---

The above can still be improved, but I placed it in your first 13, and it read a lot better.

What do you want to accomplish with this characterization? There was a little disruption in the way her Olympic ideas made me think of the girl. My first impression was that she was about five. The thought of the Olympics stretched me in two disparate directions. Was she five with some rather precocious interests for a five-year-old, or was she actually older? The former also made me think she might be from a wealthy, over-achiever family that pushes her into these ideas at a young age, but I wasn't sure. You might prevent this slight confusion by stating her age or giving some subtle indication of her age and/or station in life.

One last thing to consider is – does it enhance the story? Does this imaginative characterization enhance for us the way she perceives what is important to the story? Does it slow the story down, and prevent you from getting to the point? I don't think there is a pat answer for any of these – they are all trade-offs that you will have to consider. Does it enhance the way she perceives what is important? Probably – but what is the trade-off? Does it slow down the story? Yes – but do I get sufficient compensation in the trade?

If it still causes reactions from many of your readers, I would consider a different way of characterizing her. And, btw, <friendly tweak alert> this characterization is, in fact, a way to get the reader to relate to your character.

One thing I said earlier that I would like to take back is that there is no hook. The mystery of the man is the hook. So playing to that is probably your best bet. Still, there were a few commentors who did not feel hooked by it, and I would take that seriously – especially since you specifically asked for that input. I would look for ways to enhance that hook if you wanted to expand the appeal. (As I said, I was already drawn in a bit by it. And, I think looking for ways to enhance your hook is always a good thing.)

Regarding the stench, the other commentors make some good points, but I think you can work around it. For example, the man may have had an intense stink before he died, and the mix of the decomposition only added to it. Perhaps the wind is strong, and he is down wind from the others during most of the story, then when you want to jolt a character or two into awareness, you can shift the wind.

Plus, you can probably get away with stretching reality a bit on that one. Not too much – but maybe some.

kings_falcon wrote:

quote:

---

You are violating a fairly serious "rule". One that I am not sure you know you are violating or that you can pay that price. You lost whatever interest I had when NO character had a name.

---

I was mostly commenting regarding the first 13 when I said earlier that I don't have to have the names. However, from what you wrote, it sounded like you might not have the reader relate much to any character. I'm not going to impose a hard rule on you, but it will be difficult to keep me interested if there is no character to relate to for the duration of the story. If you do that, I would spend a lot of time considering how to make the story compelling enough and the writing compelling enough to keep the reader engaged. It would probably take much longer than usual to write a piece like that. (At least for me.) How you engage the reader would depend a lot on how the story played.

kings_falcon:

quote:

---

After 3 days in nice weather… There would be flies and other scavangers at work.

---

This is more challenging than the stench, but you could probably find a way to get away with it. For example, he might have a dog who keeps them away.

kings_falcon:

quote:

---

Also, police officers do check on the guys sitting on park benches at night to: (1) clear the dangerous ones from the park; (2) discourage the perverts, drug dealers and bums; and (3) make sure they aren't dead.

---

This is probably true in most places, but not necessarily all places. (Or all times.) It might require some explanation to help most readers consider its plausibility.

Almost every comment I have made above, by the way, is the result of taking the other commentors seriously. They have made very valuable observations, and my thoughts would not be this well developed without them. (Just wanted to give credit where credit was due.)

ciao,
Mark

[This message has been edited by mfreivald (edited June 14, 2007).]

I need no defense. If someone doesn't want my help, ignore it.

Second:

1) I don't need better description of the girl's relationship to a romantic dream of becoming an Olympic Champion -- unless that's the direction the story is headed. However, with the Title being A Man on a Bench, I wouldn't suspect that it is.

2) I do need to relate to your protagonist. If she's not your PoV narrarator, then I need to know who is and why he/she's telling the story. (See Watson in the Sherlock Holmes novels. He keeps a record because Holmes never would.)

3) The entire first paragraph distracts us from getting into the conflict of the story.

I submit a less-cluttered illustration of my point:

This was the third day Mary saw the man on the bench. She had climbed the monkey bars to see over the tall hedges. He was in the same exact place. The man's hat was covering his face and he wore a coat much too hot for summer. She wondered if he was dead. Why didn't anybody look and see? She decided that she was going over to find out.

Mary started climbing down...

I don't expect that you do need defending, and it wasn't my intent if it came off that way.

J Cassels seemed to be struggling with how to translate the reactions of the commentors into valuable adjustments to the story. I was trying to assist J Cassels, not anyone else.

Sometimes people take constructive criticism as personal jabs. That's not really my concern. They are going to read things the way they want to, anyway. <shrug>

With my last post, I was attempting to illustrate what was being misinterpreted. Maybe I succeeded; maybe I failed. Atleast, I tried.