Hatrack River Writers Workshop: De-Slugging

This is topic De-Slugging in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by EthanK (Member # 2838) on :

This is another of my 'bottom drawer' scraps, which for fun I'm combining into one kitchen sink story. Aliens, mysterious wild children...a little unwieldy, but tell me what you think of this. Thanks.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done Isabel?” said the old man slowly.

The teenage girl sat curled on the hardwood floor, an over-sized white sweater enveloping her hands in sleeves that extended several inches beyond them. Isabel was very pale, her skin was nearly the color of the shirt, but her hair hung loosely over her whole body like a great black mass of waving kelp. It was quite a stark contrast. She glowered back at him from between great fronds of hair, but didn’t say anything.

“Now I’m going to have to re-pour all of them.”

Isabel’s caretaker shuffled back off to his garden feebly clutching a forty ounce bottle of beer. Isabel seemed to snarl at him, or maybe curl her adolescent lip into a semi-sneer.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

My first thought is, if you know it's unwieldly, you may as well fix it!

I can't see the unwiedliness yet, of course. My reactions: I'm not hooked. I know that the girl has annoyed the man, but I don't know why, and most of this is spent on describing her appearance, which doesn't interest me. I'd suggest getting straight to the cool thing in the story, whatever that may be.

Posted by EthanK (Member # 2838) on :

Yeah, good point. I'll move the description. She's been drinking beer out of the pans left out for the garden slugs. She's a wild-child, raised by wolves sort of creature. As always, thank you for the feedback.

Posted by wordslinger (Member # 2863) on :

I agree that the description should be moved, it pulled me out of what was going on.

Another thing that grabbed my attention was the the long tag you used, (the old mans said slowly). It made me stop for a second.

Since he seems to be getting onto the girl how about something like : Scolded the old man or the old man scolded.

(LY) words in tags pull me out of the dialogue when I read.

It could just be me though, because I see a lot of published authors do it too.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

POV

Posted by Vultus (Member # 2887) on :

It seems that tagging the end of your first spoken line does it injustice: let the line stand, unexplained. Rather, introduce the old man as scolding the teenager in the beginning of the next paragraph.

Posted by tchernabyelo (Member # 2651) on :

To me, the following feels more natural;

"Isabel! Do you realise what you've done?"

The use of the name would be to grab her attention. Leaving it at the end of the sentence seems to serve no purpose - he knows her name, she (presumably, wild child or no) knows her name, so there's no point to it.

It's not a great deal of a hook - a kid drinking beer left for slug traps. I mean, there's kind of an "eew" factor, but I'm not grabbed.

I like the physical description of Isabel, though. I'd keep that, just not necessarily right up front.

Posted by thexmedic (Member # 2844) on :

I agree with tchernabyelo, the description can wait. The interesting part here is Isabel's reaction, and they're just not enough of it. If I'm going to spend a story with her I want to know what she's like, and the only way I'm going to learn that is by seeing what she does. Once I'm invested in her that way then I'll be interested to find out what she looks like.