Elizabeth forced herself to breathe evenly, curled up in a tight ball beneath a mound of blankets. She imagined her body was made of steel, and nothing could make her move.
It was a pretty illusion, but it didn’t last long.

The shadow fell across her doorway, spilling into the room. He was coming for her. His almost silent footfall sounded on the floor. His heavy, anticipatory breathing filled the suddenly stale air. His weight slanted the mattress as he climbed into bed beside her, shoving the weak protection of blankets off of her and onto the floor. He uncurled her body, despite the resistance.

Elizabeth silently cursed herself for once again becoming frozen in fear. Not running. Not screaming.

[This message has been edited by ThisProteanSoul (edited September 28, 2005).]

[This message has been edited by ThisProteanSoul (edited September 28, 2005).]

I don't like the initial poem. I always skip over them to get to the action.

The main problem I see is that Elizabeth is reacting to something I don't understand. Until paragraph 2, I didn't know there was anyone else present. Until paragraph 3, I didn't know she wasn't hiding from him, or that she was in bed. Tell us up front! Something like,

In the darkness I am waiting
Forever dreaming of freedom
Whispering lies to my self
Meant to quiet the desperation

Elizabeth forced herself to breathe evenly, curled up in a tight ball beneath a mound of blankets. She imagined her body was made of steel, and nothing could make her move.
It was a pretty illusion, but it didn’t last long.

[This first sentence doesn’t make sense.] The shadow fell across [maybe use through then across?] her doorway, spilling into the room. He was coming for her. His almost silent footfall sounded on the floor. [Another option for this that I thought sounded clearer is: His almost silent footfall could be heard on the floor; he was coming for her.] His heavy, anticipatory breathing filled the suddenly stale air. His weight slanted the mattress as he climbed into bed beside her, shoving the weak protection of blankets off of her and onto the floor. He uncurled her body, despite the resistance.

Elizabeth silently cursed herself for once again becoming frozen in fear. Not running. Not screaming.

Sounds good, has a creepy feel to it. Not sure what’s going on, it seems like she knows him. If this is a stranger you should get it across sooner. You also start a lot of sentences with "his," try to find different ways to start a sentence. It will make your story more direct and not repetitive.

Yes, I noticed that, Ratlance.. the bit about the sentences constantly starting with 'he'. It bothered me suddenly as I pasted it into the post! I tend to hate repetition, so the moment I noticed it, I wanted to fix it.

quote:

---

I don't like the initial poem. I always skip over them to get to the action.

---

"The shadow" in one sentence followed by "He" in the next confuses me. I'd prefer "His shadow" or "Joe's shadow" to "The shadow".

I do like the "Elizabeth" paragraph. It reads well.

------------------------

In the darkness I am waiting
Forever dreaming of freedom
Whispering lies to my self
Meant to quiet the desperation

Elizabeth forced herself to breathe evenly, though it took a moment of effort. Curled up as she was in her bed, she was merely a tight ball beneath a mound of blankets. She imagined her body was made of steel, and nothing could make her move.

It was a pretty illusion, but it didn’t last long. His shadow fell through her doorway, spilling into the room. He was coming for her. Though almost silent, his footsteps could still be heard on the wood floorboards, accompanied by his heavy, anticipatory breathing that filled the suddenly stale air. The mattress slanted from his weight as he climbed into bed beside her, shoving the weak protection of blankets off of her and onto the floor. He uncurled her body, despite the resistance.

Wouldn't her first instinct be escaping?

The second contradictory phrase is: "It was a pretty illusion." Being made of steel could be "comforting", "invincible", but not pretty.

Did the air turned "suddenly stale" because he's coming? And finally, "anticipatory" sounds clunky and slwows down the flow.

I will work with the 'anticipatory' and stale bit, I agree.

Does anyone else agree that 'pretty illusion' doesn't work? I can understand the thought behind it, but don't necessarily agree. If others feel it doesn't give the right feel, I'll switch to 'comforting.'

Also, I'd like more opinions on if waiting until the second paragraph to say someone is coming for her doesn't work or not.. if I really have to (though I hate to do it, ugh), I will switch 'He was coming for her' to be the very first sentence.

About the only thing I can think of, that will make certain the reader doesn't think it's just a break-in by a stranger or something, and that it's a repeating thing, is to write a line like, "As usual, her mother either slept through the event or was lying in her own bed, too terrified to come to her daughter's rescue. Which it was, Elizabeth didn't know, for she had never managed to find out her mother's awareness of what went on." But it may not be in the first 13 lines, which is what this is about.

There's a moment at the end of the scene where it's revealed, and I want the reader to feel some shock and horror that it turns out to be her own father that just raped her. To simply say "Her father came into the room" takes it at an angle that lacks something. The shock wouldn't be as strong, because you would already know she's afraid of what he's coming to do.

There are some things that need to be discovered as a reader goes along, I feel. Not all of it can be in one swoop in the beginning paragraph.

And she's not insanely young.. 14 or 15. So I can't say anything subtle like 'her young body was curled up' or anything, because she's physically mature (and mentally). I also heavily refrain from graphic detail in this story, so I can't reveal it any way there either. It becomes obvious immediately in the next scene though.

----------

By the way, I am looking for readers for this to give further critiquing, if anyone's interested. It's currently 4,152 words long.

It wasn't hard to work out what was going on. I think your writing captured the event sufficiently incisively for anyone with a passing familiarity with the subject to understand what Elizabeth is preparing herself against.

I don't think "flowing" and "unclear" are at all contradictory, btw. Why can't you make it both clear and flowing?

I also have to say that I think weighing comments here by "who has the actual knowledge and intelligence to be judging my writing correctly for future publication" is perhaps missing the point.

It's your story. Get the comments, decide what to do about them. Even if [Some Genius Editor You Totally Respect] stopped in and made some suggestions, it's still your story, and you're the one who has to decide what to do about it. And even if only morons comment on your story, it's still your story, and you're the one who has to decide what to do about it. You can't abdicate that responsibility.

Comments are just data.

Besides, have you not read a book that you didn't like much? I have. There are many published authors out there, and not everybody in the world loves their books. We have to come to terms with the facts that once our books will be published, not everybody will love them. That is especially true for genre novels.

"Elizabeth tried to remain calm when her father entered her bedroom. Curled up in a ball she imagined her body was steel..."

Revealing that the POV shows fear of her parent gives the reader a sense of age right off the bat. Also, giving this information right up front changes the whole nature of your hook to one that I would find much more interesting. Instead of the "mysterious stranger" you now have the grounds to build a complicated, grotesque relationship.

I'm against cheating on the information reveal unless you can do it without getting caught. When the readers know you're hiding something, it makes it harder to draw them in because they're waiting for the missing bit before they decide how to react.

If you can pull it off, it's still dangerous because then the reader could feel betrayed and tricked. Maybe you want that, maybe not.

I have a hard time identifying with those particular comments, because I've never felt that way about a book. I never feel cheated, I just feel the author chose a bit further along to reveal a detail. I mean, if they were revealing something chapters in, yes, but.. even just within the first chapter? If they sit there and just say it all out, I practically feel like one of the doinks on Yahoo saying a/s/l?

I have a hard time seeing it as bad either. I've read many books where you don't find out something essential until later. Let's take the book I'm reading right now, for example. "The Finest Creation" by Jean Rabe. The story starts out with two characters speaking, but you never see who they are. New chapter, you're at a scene with a girl getting ready to travel to a wedding with her brother, and then you find those two original characters again at the end of this second chapter and find out they're not humans, but intelligent horses.

To me, this doesn't feel like info cheating, it feels like merely creating that 'oooh' moment with a reader. It's a deepening of the plot. And since I was never lead to necessarily feel the characters were one thing or another, I didn't feel misled.

Is my attempt really so different? Or is it just that all of the books I've seen employ this are truthfully bad books?

As to the other things, she does know it's going to happen. This is by far not the first time. She wasn't trying to avoid thinking of it either, she was simply imagining herself as invulnerable to it. She does think of it as rape. Also, as him cheating on her mother.

She simply doesn't feel those in the outside world could or would help her, because she's received nothing but cruelty from regular life as well. Not to mention that she feels it would be a grave weakness if she submitted to begging for help. She has to take care of herself, or she feels she isn't even worthy to live.

And I know how kids react. I did mention I've been abused all my childhood. I have very firsthand experience. I've also studied it a fair amount. Trust me, you can still be scared, even if it's happened a dozen times.

It isn't just a matter of abuse patterns, it's a matter of what humans fear/resist and what they don't fear/resist. When you really know something is going to happen, it doesn't scare you.

1:As others have mentioned, I skip poems, they make me uncomfortable when they are not done well. Not saying yours isn't done well just that I have a a conditioned response thing happening and I think a lot of people might. (I couldn't even do Tolkien's ones throughout LOTR)

2: How can she see the shadow in the doorway or the way it spills into the room if she is rolled up in a ball under the blanket?

3: I would nit 'almost silent' and ask for a stronger word

4: Same with 'suddenly stale' I don't know how that could work unless she is still under the blankets breathing in her own CO2.

Kickle (is that like tickling with kicks? I like your name), thank you for that article, it's certainly an interesting read. It also will give me something to reflect on for another story I'm writing, in which I am also finally writing from the viewpoint of an abused character based off of myself.

Survivor, I agree with Beth and was just about to drop it anyway. We both feel we're right, and we probably both are, it's just that it's taking a lot of back and forth to lay everything out in explanation. It's also doing nothing to help my writing, so it's rather pointless to hash out here.

The only thing about the poem, for me, is that I'm not sure who is speaking those words, if anyone. To me, that creates a sort of disconnected feeling. I'd like to feel like I know something about the voice, the speaker/thinker, when I read the words. The prose of poetry sometimes makes it harder to get a feel for the character's voice; and many times, it doesn't even belong to a character, which makes it commentary.

If Elizabeth is thinking those words, you might want to make them more a part of her thoughts early on. My opinion is they should be in the paragraph, as part of her thoughts. She could have written that poem earlier. If not, then you can't do much else. You simply have to decide if it's worth the risk and weigh their importance to you as a writer against the feedback you've received on them, so far.

Second, I feel the only feedback that really matters is the editors, (and that only when publication is your goal). Feedback is great, but it tends to have the scatter-shot accuracy of a shotgun. It usually hits the target, more or less, but also hits a lot of stuff that isn't the target.

Finally, I think the only concern for 'cheating' comes when the POV character knows something the reader doesn't. To me, that's like watching a movie where you see through someone's eyes, but the director blacks out a section of the screen so he can surprise you later with what the character saw there. A good director might make it work once, but it really would cheat the audience.

In my opinion, if I'm supposed to be there in Elizabeth's head, then I feel cheated if I don't know what's in her head. Many books out there that try such gimmicks, and I personally feel it's generally a cheap trick. Sure, a skilled writer might pull it off once, but I think if you want to have that surprise effect, you need to separate the reader from Elizabeth's head and thoughts.

But by child, I mean a person maybe 9 years old and down.

15-16, or how anything in that range isn't really a child. I don't buy that an almost grown woman would still have these child-like mannerisms like curling under blankets and pretending to be invisible.

I don't know the background of this story, so I don't know if Liz has never been to any sort of school or interacted with kids her age, but if she did, she should know what her old man is doing it wrong, and the old a kid gets, the more likely they are to report the abuse against them.

I wasn't disagreeing with what you said, per se, I was simply trying to figure out if I was actually doing what you accused me of, and if my desire to withhold for a mere page would really kill my story for readers.

Swimming Bird: Guess I'm pretty dumb then, eh? I wasn't getting outright raped by my father, but I never reported him till I was 16.

I think you'd be amazed what that fear of authority, being wrong, and getting the hell beaten out of you, or killed can do to someone. Being a kid has nothing to do with it. Adults get raped and beaten by people all the time and suffer through it without ever reporting it. Why would a teen not possibly be the same?

If you can convey that in your writing without telling us, that's probably going to be a good story.

As it stands, I still don't buy that a 15-16 year old would revert to childhood escapism in this fashion. That's just me.

This is a board for discussing the literary qualities of stories, not the life experiences of the authors. "This really happened to me" isn't a valid defense of a fictional work. And it only works by guilting others into withholding criticism.

The way I look at it, I've survived a lot worse things than having people criticize my work. And when I asked for the criticism so that I could learn to write better, I can't see the point in getting all upset and trying to resist learning what I can from it. There are a lot of things that happen which I didn't request. I'll spend my time avoiding those things first.

She's not reverting to childhood... hiding under a blanket is something adults do too. Or you can look at it as, certain adults retain certain childlike tendencies. But there's a difference between that and outright reverting to childhood. I often pretended I was asleep as a means of trying to discourage my father from doing anything. Elizabeth isn't trembling in fear and wishing it all away, she's imagining herself immune to it.

Also, Swimming Bird, I never said you called me dumb. I said myself that I was dumb, compared to what you said. Which I was. O.k., maybe inexperienced and 'trained' into certain reactions is a better description. I was not attacking you or what you said, just explaining another side to things.

And... ONCE AGAIN. Elizabeth does NOT think like a normal human. There IS a valid reason she is reacting this way, there IS a valid reason she's not reporting him. That's all in the story, as it should be.

I'm just saying consider the timeline, I may or may not be right.

If you are only writing for yourself, then that's fine...but it isn't appropriate to ask other people to read such things.

If you're writing something for other people to read, then you have to consider how they will (or actually do) react to things like POV cheating.

And yes, I AM writing this for others, not just myself. Or else I wouldn't be in this forum, posting up the first 13 lines. I see no reason, personally, to do that with something I'm writing for only myself.

A lot is going to depend on the readership this is aimed at. I think you've got a clear indication that it isn't working for a large number of readers here on Hatrack. That doesn't mean that a different readership might not be more receptive, and quicker to pick up on what's going on.