1st Thirteen

They called my daughter many things. Freak, mutant, monster. Then, later; blessed, anointed, powerful, merciful. Important men in robes and tall hats called her a saint. When she was little, I called her Dee.

We named her Deidra after my wife’s great grandmother, who was important to my wife’s family in a way I never really understood. So we honored great grandma with the name, but I honored my daughter with the nickname. When Jen divorced me and began snorting her alimony away one line at a time, I asked Dee if she wanted to change her name. She said, “He wanted me to have this name. I’ll keep it.” I always assumed she meant God.

By the time Dee was sixteen, her fame had burned down to ashes scattered in the archives of the Internet. Sometimes the flame was fanned anew when some nut remembered her and did something

end

1st revision

They called my daughter many things. Freak, mutant, monster. Then, later; blessed, anointed, merciful. Important men in robes and tall hats called her a saint. When she was little, I called her Dee.

We named her Deidra after my wife’s great grandmother. When Jen divorced me and began snorting her alimony off a mirror, I asked Dee if she wanted to change her name. She said, “He wanted me to have this name. I’ll keep it.” I always assumed she meant God.

By the time Dee was sixteen, her fame had burned down to ashes scattered in the archives of the Internet. Sometimes the flame was fanned anew when some nut remembered her and did something sociopathic, hoping to draw attention to himself in Dee’s name.

[This message has been edited by alliedfive (edited November 24, 2009).]

It's clear and direct. You're not trying to marvel us with too much authorial hand-waving and derring-do.You're getting to the point pretty quickly. I'm getting the feel for your MC pretty clearly too - nice normal guy, loves his kid, maybe slightly indulgent but in a good-natured way.

Things I would clean-up on:

1. You have three things they called your daughter, then four. Stick with three on each side - the symmetry is attractive.

2. If you want to save words, there are a few spots of redundancy where you could trim: the important men could do with less description (tall hats & robes says priest to me, so of no one other than important priests has anything to say, then just say important priests. If others do have things to say, then the robes & hats doesn't work) and you mention twice that Dee is named after her great-grandmother. No need for both.

However you do have some possibly redndant stuff to cut out. You tell us "We named her Deidra after my wife’s great grandmother, who was important to my wife’s family in a way I never really understood. So we honored great grandma with the name, but I honored my daughter with the nickname." Unless the great-grandmother's importance is important to the plot in some way (and the fact that the narrator says "in some way I never really understood" implies otherwise) then that can go. It kind of looks as if if you're hesitating to get to the point. Now there might be good reasons for the narrator to do this, but even if so it'd be kind of nice to see the narrator get close to the point and shy away from it.

Maybe it's just me, but this line does show us a bit of the father-daughter relationship. That he cares about her enough to give her a nickname, that she loved it (or him) enough to accept it, and that it sounds like it was something special they shared together, to the exclusion of coke-sniffing mom. It might take some careful rewording to get this back in there, but it's a line that I particularly liked.

Regardless, you've still got me hooked.

Edit: Maybe something like this?

quote:

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We named her Deidra after my wife’s great grandmother, but the nickname was all my doing.

---

I dunno.

I don't think the information that the dad was the one who made the nickname is important, it's kind of implied. Unless, of course, you want to show that the dad feels a kind of ownership of his daughter. How does he feel about his daughters freakish sainthood? Some more of his attitude would flavor the prose nicely.

And ditto on the symmetry.

Really strong first thirteen. Great work.
~Sheena

My one thought was:

quote:

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Important men in robes and tall hats called her a saint.

---

"Important men in robes and tall hats" is a bit much; how about "Holy men"?

It seems like I often start strong, but get a little side-tracked and run out of momentum on my stories. I think this is a focus issue, and I need to satisfy the promises of my open more thoroughly.

Would anyone be willing to post some promises they feel are being made, or perhaps what kind of story/resolution they would expect to get from this story?

I like the above. It makes me think she was never seen as normal, and somehow was forced to vassilate between monster and saint throughout her life. Regardless, never normal, always a freak-show.

/Important men in robes and tall hats called her a saint./

I've got to side with the others on this. Since you're obviously alluding to the Catholic church (whether intentional or not), why not just own it? They are one of the most powerful organizations in the world, so being called a saint by them is no small feat. Instead of "important men in robes and tall hats", perhaps try "Vatican priests called her a saint" (or "Tibetan monks called her a ____", etc).

/When she was little, I called her Dee./

I really liked the above line. The POV character saw her humanity, despite the rest of the world's perspective. I expect this to be really important to the story and to Dee.

/We named her Deidra after my wife’s great grandmother. When Jen divorced me and began snorting her alimony off a mirror, I asked Dee if she wanted to change her name. She said, “He wanted me to have this name. I’ll keep it.” I always assumed she meant God./

I like the last sentence of why Dee chose to keep her name and the dad's assumption of who she was referring to. I expect to see this cleared up before the end of the story. I'm slightly confused as to how Jen's cocaine addiction relates to the name change. I've known many drug abusers and their children in my life and none have ever changed their name or offered to change their children's name, so this would definitely need to be cleared up for me.

/By the time Dee was sixteen, her fame had burned down to ashes scattered in the archives of the Internet. Sometimes the flame was fanned anew when some nut remembered her and did something sociopathic, hoping to draw attention to himself in Dee’s name./

Really curious about Dee's fate and how she arrived at her fate, which I expect to understand before the end of the story. I figure she's dead, in exile, or some other fantastic explanation that makes sense as the story progresses. It's nice to see the continuation from the first lines, about blessed vs. cursed, i.e. a nut performing a sociopathic in Dee's name.

I'd keep reading.

From this intro I would expect to find out:

- what was wrong/different about Dee that people called her freak
- what changed that lead to her being called a saint
- who "He" is
- what happened to her in the end (I get the impression she's dead - Do you have to be dead to become a saint? Maybe it's the past tense)
- how her father feels about the whole ordeal (since he's the narrator)

Good news: I am back writing consistently after the birth of my first child!

Bad news: I only finished this one story the last 3 months!

I want two things:

1) I want to read this story.

2) I want to hear how you managed to do anything at all in the first three months. I'm expecting my first child at the end of June and I'm woried I won't get any writing done for the next twenty years.

1) You got it. I'll send it as soon as I get home from work tonight.

2) It's not that bad. I think it was the sleep deprivation more than anything. Tough to write in a perpetual fog.