posted
Story not finished, just looking for comments on this opening. Thank you. (I give up, this was 13 lines on my computer)
From the porch of his country home former SS officer Dietrich Muller watched snowflakes fall from clouds that loomed overhead in the dark. He reminisced over the time he spent at a death camp years ago where it "snowed" constantly. Ash spewed from chimneys then drifted to earth with the patter of a spring rain. Embers swirled in the night like fireflies. The dying muttered prayerful pleas for death, the air bore the assault of agonized screams and random cracks of gunfire.
He looked at the rusted, weed infested railroad tracks not far from his home. The tracks ended, he knew, at an abandoned slaughterhouse a few miles away.
He smiled at the wail of an approaching train.
[This message has been edited by nitewriter (edited March 08, 2006).]
[This message has been edited by nitewriter (edited March 08, 2006).]
[This message has been edited by nitewriter (edited March 08, 2006).]
posted
Interesting. I'm mildly hooked. I don't feel like I absolutely have to keep reading or the world will end, but I do think I would be inclined to turn the page.
First sentence here is a bit of a run-on. Clouds generally do loom overhead, so you could probably take that bit out. If you want to keep it just try to find some way to reword it. Also, the words "snowflakes fall from" has too many "f" and "l/r" sounds in it. You might want to change that. Alliteration is generally frowned upon.
Out of curiosity, does "reminisce" usually have a wistful, nostalgic connotation or is it just that I've normally seen it used that way?
Either way, "reminisce" seems like an odd word to use here, but if that's the word that sounds best to you, keep it.
Put a comma after "chimneys."
Change the comma in the last sentence of that first paragraph to a semicolon.
The cadence of the last three sentences in this first paragraph gets a bit monotonous. "Ash did this. Embers did that. The dying did this. The air did that." Each phrase sounds about the same length. Vary them a bit.
I think all the information after this first paragraph is what makes me interested. I kinda shrug at the mention of the death camp and the ash falling like snow. It's the description of the tracks and the fact that he's smiling at the sound of a train that pique my curiosity.
posted
We're not in MC's POV, really, because we don't know the significance of these memories. That is, we don't know if he's longing for the good ol' days of mass death, or saddened, or horrified, or something else. Tell us, and I think I'll be hooked.
Pretty good writing, IMJ.
Nit:
The dying muttered prayerful pleas for death, the air bore the assault of agonized screams and random cracks of gunfire.
It's so easy to die in a death camp that I don't think people would be praying for it (the ones still alive are the ones determined to survive). Random cracks of gunfire: I don't *think* they often used guns at death camps. And if they did, it wouldn't be random.
Another nit: Did ash spew from the chimneys? That's pretty unusual. It's a fire hazard.
I will want some explanation of how a former SS officer got to keep his country home, but I'd be willing to take it on faith for now.
posted
"Out of curiosity, does "reminisce" usually have a wistful, nostalgic connotation or is it just that I've mormally seen it used that way?
You're right! I'm glad you noticed because it was intentional. My reasoning was that Muller is a psychopath, so in order to convey that, I want him to "reminisce" about something that would be a nightmare for most of us.
Yes, first sentence is a run on - yes, was not sure how to change it without making it sound awkward. In short you have for the most part hit on the key problems here (cadence, alliteration,etc.)
"I don't "think" they often used guns at a death camp."
Good point, they rarely did. What I meant to convey was that one method of suicide was to try to escape, when a pistol shot would dispatch the person. Sometimes people were shot just for the hell of it.
"Did ash spew from the chimneys?"
As a matter of fact it did, some of these camps were really covered in ash.
As to how he got to keep his country home - well this is years after the war, I imagined that he acquired it after the war rather than kept it.
Anyway hats off to you both, frankly I'm impressed and a little stunned at the the thought and great points you brought up and can see I now have some work to do on this. THANK YOU!!
posted
One other thing I noticed which was not already mentioned:
"Ash spewed from chimneys then drifted to earth with the patter of a spring rain."
You might want to rework this sentence -- ash might float down but the patter of rain implies it made a sound when landing. If it's ash it would be soundless. Unless you mean it is also raining at the time, in which case it is ambiguous.
I thought about that when writing it. The fact is you CAN hear ash fall, BUT only if it is a cumulative noise made by the falling of a large amount of ash. Ever been in a quiet location while it was snowing and you could actually hear the snow falling? I have, lots of times. I imagined thats how falling ash would sound, though I think my description is not very good, as the sound would be soft indeed, softer than rain for sure! Thank you for pointing this out, I appreciate it!
posted
nitewriter, if I may . . . we had an earlier discussion about how best to respond to critiques ( http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/001622.html ). The consensus: "Thank you" or "Could you please clarify such-and-such?" Your answers aren't a problem for me, but I just wanted to point out: explanations in posts don't help as much as explanations in the story. I now know that ash spewed out of death-camp chimneys; but if I were reading your story in a magazine, I wouldn't have you to tell me -- so even though I was wrong, it *is* an authentic reader reaction you might need to take into account. (Or not. Ashfall wouldn't have made me stop reading.)
And it's maddening sometimes. I got critiques on something that had a sheep herd in it, one from a farm girl, one from a city man who'd encountered sheep as a jogger, saying, I don't think sheep behave that way. I used to tend sheep. But I *still* took what they said into account -- I may make the POV character wonder, "Do sheep really behave like this?" So that readers who don't believe me will get that I'm not pulling one over on them.
posted
The plausibility points are important. Particularly the ash. Not to get gruesome, but most of a human body is composed of water, fat, or protein. All of that was vaporized (if imperfectly at times), only a small amount of ashes remain.
The guards did have firearms, and dealt with runners, but this was kept to a miniumum, and trains only came in every so often. Praying was not allowed (since theoretically it was just a shower, right?) till the prisoners were huddled in the initial gas chamber. No need to pray for death, at least.
Some subjects place the writer under a special responsibility to get it right. SS run death camps are one of those subjects. There are many resources, and a lot of variety to the way the nazis carried out their "final solution", and you're getting a lot of mileage out of making a nazi the initial viewpoint character, so don't skimp.
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