Hatrack River Writers Workshop: 12 Grains

This is topic 12 Grains - Science Fiction in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by mdybyu (Member # 7909) on :

8...9...10...11...12.
The grains of rice dropped from their dispenser, collecting like a pile of tiny pearls in the center of the dish. Minnie took a deep breath and brought the hollow wooden chopsticks onto the dish, and counted each grain again. She counted them a third time to be absolutely sure. There were exactly twelve. It had only been a month ago that she had gotten careless and allowed another grain to sneak into the pile stuck to another. It had not done any permanent damage, but it had been excruciatingly painful, and had thrown her metabolism out of whack. Her body had just started to settle down again, and she would not take any chances. Minnie stood just under five feet tall, and weighed barely enough to keep gravity working on her.

Posted by KayTi (Member # 5137) on :

Nitpicks and personal opinions only, take what works, leave the rest.

I've never heard of/seen hollow wooden chopsticks - that took me outside of the story (I've lived in Asia...so I'm not just speaking from a few Chinese takeout experiences.) I've seen plastic, wooden, lacquer, cloisonne, ivory, bone, etc. chopsticks, but all of them are solid (there's some heft/weight to them, even the cheapy split-apart takeout restaurant ones. It's part of how you use chopsticks.) I apologize if this is some cultural thing that I've completely missed, just wanted to mention it.

The sentence with sneak into the pile stuck together...it's probably just me, but the words sneak and stuck close together like that were a challenge - my brain kept wanting to ignore one or the other, or munge them together. I think this is a really important point of your story, so you might want to consider rewording for extreme clarity.

The last sentence is really evocative.

However, that raises my last point, which at this stage in the story I've concluded the story is about a subject that I find distasteful/upsetting, and I personally would not care to read more.

If your story is about more than anorexia (which I have to believe since your headline mentions it's a sci-fi story) you might want to figure out a way to make sure that sci-fi element comes in very quickly on the heels of this. You also already probably know this about some readers (that we're put off by the concept) but I wanted to share it with you in case you did not.

Otherwise, I thought the story opening was solid - a good mixture of sentence lengths, concepts, good wording choices, etc.

Good luck with this piece!

Posted by tchernabyelo (Member # 2651) on :

Broadly, I'm intrigued, and I'd certainly read on. My main niggle is that the only way you can practically eat rice with chopsticks is if it's glutinous rice (and even then, the standard approach is take bowl - place bowl near mouth - shovel). Glutinous rice won't come out in individual grains. So why the chopsticks? Unless each grain is the size of a tater tot or something

Posted by alliedfive (Member # 7811) on :

I would probably read on, with reservations. I agree that adding some sort of minor speculative element would help with the anorexia turn-off.

Also agree with that brain-twisting sentence. I think the problem is here:

"allowed another grain to sneak into the pile stuck to another"

The repeated "another" and the alliteration at the beginning both serve to muddle. I think you could get away with just: "A month ago she had gotten careless, allowing one extra grain to sneak into the bowl."

[This message has been edited by alliedfive (edited October 21, 2009).]

Posted by Wolfe_boy (Member # 5456) on :

1. I don't think this story is explicitly (or implicitly, I suppose) about anorexia, or at least I don't read it that way. It's good to note though that someone is reading it that way.

2. There's a minor break in POV at the end when you state Minnie's height. At least, I think there is a break in POV. I'm a little murky on the specifics of this stuff, but it stood out to me.

3. I find myself irritated more than intrigued by what's going on here. How can a person eat only twelve grains of rice? How would a single extra grain throw off her metabolism? Minnie is human, I assume, since she's using human eating tools, eating human foods, and is measured in a human scale. The implausibility of all of this makes me more cranky than inquisitive for some reason.

4. Gravity affects all matter equally, regardless of mass.

Prolly not a lot of help to you, sorry about that. This is just my immediate response.

Posted by genevive42 (Member # 8714) on :

I didn't see this as anorexia but as some strange thing that we are about to discover why an extra grain of rice would cause her so much difficulty. Is she part machine or genetically engineered?

It does sound like she's eating twelve grains of rice per month. Is that what you intended? It's that extreme concept that leads me to believe that the twelve grains are part of the speculative element.

And tchernabyelo, sorry, but I don't see any problem eating a single grain of non-glutinous rice with chopsticks.

This opening does make me curious. I would expect it to go somewhere quite interesting and unexpected.

Posted by Teraen (Member # 8612) on :

I didn't think anorexia, I thought some ritual/religious fasting diet where she is only allowed certain amounts of food. But that doesn't explain how it would mess up her metabolism. Either
1) extra grain really does mess it up, in which case this is part of the scifi aspect and could be increased to avoid anyone misreading...

2) she THINKS it messed her up, so it is a psychological thing and this IS anorexia, which appears not to interest everybody.

Posted by 3442 (Member # 8876) on :

Good beginning. It caught my attention and got me wondering immediately why she could only eat that exact amount of rice. One issue though was the last sentence. It didn't seem to belong there. But if I had the entire story before me I would definitely read on.