Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Stealing Time

This is topic Stealing Time - short story needs critique in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Jefficus (Member # 272) on :

I've got a short story, called 'Stealing Time', that is currently making the rounds, collecting rejection slips. That doesn't bother me, I expect them. But what does bother me is the complete lack of feedback some editors provide. (I understand why, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. :-) Since the editors won't tell me what they don't like, I thought I'd turn to the bull pen and see if anybody wants to take a whack at providing alternate viewpoints for me.

It's a time-travel yarn that runs just under 7K words. I'm including the opening paragraphs here to give you a flavor. (Think film-noir petty criminal working a time scam.)

Any takers?

---Stealing Time-------

"Looks like it's the end of the line for you tonight, boyo." The flatfoot grabbed me by my starchy white. Damn. He had a point, too. Somehow the Dimsel brothers had screwed their end but good. Take-Five Thompson wasn't due to make his round for another three minutes twenty. But here he was, and since I hadn't reached the cream yet, I didn't have the customary fin to spring me. Not that it mattered. With the kind of heat I'd been drawing to him today, I don't think the usual rates would be in effect. He squeezed his pickle house pug right up close where I could see all the new glad he was wearing. Nope. Five wasn't even going to come close. Time to zip this line.

"Okay Danny. I'll flop. No hassles." He looked at me all smart-eyed, like he could actually back it up with some gray.

---end of excerpt-----------------

<<edited to conform to 13-line rule --2nd assistant

[This message has been edited by Second Assistant (edited June 19, 2006).]

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

Well, I'll be brutally honest. This makes my head spin. I suppose there's crime involved, but what that crime is, what a fin is, what the Dimsel brothers were supposed to do -- I can't tell. And, after all, if I can't understand the story, it won't matter to me how cool it is.

(I only base this on paragraph 1, which I think is about your first 13 lines in MS Word, 12pt Courier, 1" margins, that is, standard.)

[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited June 19, 2006).]

Posted by Mig (Member # 3318) on :

I think you've violated the 13 lines rule.

That said, I agree with wbriggs, I found it hard to follow. I understand the sound you're going for (a hardboiled film noir detective patois) but you're laying it on too thick. Read some of the classic Raymond Chandler stories and you'll see that a little "noir" can go along way.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

The intense period slang sounds hokey, and intensely implausible for a time traveler. Also, the first person doesn't help, and you don't have any apparent justification for using it anyway.

Posted by kings_falcon (Member # 3261) on :

I think you are trying to hard to sound like Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer. While using new terms certainly establishes a very definate setting, I was struggling to figure out what most of them were.

I had no sense that this was a Sci-Fi peice other than from what you said in your intro. While the hook is there at the bottom of the fifth paragraph, it comes too late because I had to struggle with the language.

You might consider starting with that last paragraph and giving me the local color a bit more slowly.

Edit - That is if you clean up the slang so I can understand more than the last two sentances.

[This message has been edited by kings_falcon (edited June 19, 2006).]

Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

Too much jargonish slang, too fast. Not enough establishing of setting/millieu, not enough character development so I care. It all read as "blah blah gangster-talk blah blah" to me.

I suggest using the slang like cayenne pepper... just enough to give your prose a kick, but not so much that it overwhelms the dish you are trying to serve us.

Posted by LibbieMistretta (Member # 3496) on :

Agreeing with Elan here - your use of slang needs just a little bit of tempering - or that's my impression, anyway. I'm assuming you've read A Clockwork Orange, right? I think jargon was used really well in that story (novel? Novella? Whatever.) in that it was clearly different from what we're used to seeing, but it was stuck in only where we'd be sure to learn it via context very quickly, so it would feel more natural.

In reading your 13 lines, I get that "fin" is money or some kind of exchange, and "glad" is "bling." "Gray" might be "smarts." Everything else is totally beyond me. Maybe if you only use a small handfull of jargon words in the opening scene, and bring in the rest later, if you feel they're necessary....