“Thanks, Jack, I owe you one, you saved my butt.”
“Charley, I would’ve done it for anyone, you don’t need to thank me. The boss will never know.”
“I could’ve lost my job over this, Mr. Kellerman doesn’t like me. He likes you a lot better.”
“Naaa, it’s just an honest mistake, that’s all. I’ve done the same thing myself, don’t think anything of it.”

Jack arrives home at the end of a hectic day, but before the night is over, he'll be a prisoner of an unseen world.
“Hi Honey, dinner is just about ready.”
“You’re a pleasant site to come home to."

For me, this 1st 13 doesn't quite work. There isn't any sense of place or character nor a hint of the direction the story will take. My main sensation is one of confusion. Regardless of whether it's a story of confusion for the main character, to the reader it has to be clear.

Since we have only dialogue and no action, I can't generate any sense of identification or sympathy with the protagonist (not to mention you switch the POV very quickly). The dialogue itself doesn't really create character (Elmore Leonard does this very well) at this point. I'd suggest giving Charley more time and placing him in a situation we can imagine. Right now I have white room syndrome.

With a pro-level market like Ellery Queen, I'd suggest the use of explanatory dialogue tags such "Charley Phelps admits" or "Jack comforts Charley's fears..." I believe it may be a better approach to either let the reader figure it out from context of the dialogue or from protagonist POV thoughts.

I'm full up on critiques for the next week at least. If you want to email me after that, feel free.

Regards,

One thing you said that I'm not understanding, and I would like to, you say that I switch POV very quickly. Can you elaborate on that, I'm not seeing your POV and I'd like to.

Thanks, Bob.

quote:

---

“Thanks, Jack, I owe you one, you saved my butt,” Charley Phelps admits.(1)
“Charley, I would’ve done it for anyone, you don’t need to thank me. Mr. Grinder will never know,” Jack comforts Charley’s fears about being short in his accounts. (2)
“I could’ve lost my job over this, Mr. Grinder doesn’t like me. (3) He likes you a lot better.”
“Naaa, it’s just an honest mistake, that’s all. I’ve done the same thing myself, don’t think anything of it.” (4)

Jack arrives home. (5)
“Hi Honey,” Marci’s soothing voice formally announces that the work day is officially over. (6)
“Hi, you’re a pleasant sight at the end of a hectic day."

---

1. Using dialogue tags like "admits" are a little redundant - we can see Charley admitting something. Most dialogue tags that relate to the content of what is being spoken (queried, joked, admitted, etc.) and not how the dialogue is being delivered (shouted, whispered, etc.) are redundant.

2. This is telling, pure and simpple, and is completely redundant because we can see, in the dialigue this sentence is attached to, that Jack is comforting Charley. Also, there's a bit of a tense issue going on here - are you writing in present tense?

3. You've used the identifier "Mr. Grinder" twice now in two sentences. We get that Jack and Charley are discussing their boss, Mr. Grinder. No need to repeat it twice. You've got a decent ear for dialogue from the looks of it (though punctuation is troublesome at times, too many commas) but it seems like you don't trust us to know what's going on in your stories because you keep repeating everything.

4. This bit of dialogue here is what I was talking about - you have a good ear for it, this sounds somewhat natural and easy.

5. This rings too much like stage direction to my eyes. Give us this information some other way, like a sentence about Jack parking his car in the driveway and walking through the door of his house or something. Brevity is the soul of whit, but too much brevity is a corporate memorandum, sometimes.

6. This line isn't doing what it's supposed to do (the way it's placed it should be a dialogue tag, but really it's narration) and what it is doing it's going about it in a rather clunky way. Where's the POV in these scenes too? Who is the reader supposed to be seeing the world through? The way this thought is structured is seems like Jack is the POV character, but it's not really clear.

Truthfully, if I was an editor I'd probably make the same decision that the Ellery Queen folks made. For one, this isn't very well written, and two, nothing has happened that would make me want to read further. The "mysterious event" that occured between Charley & Jack isn't compelling, and frankly, the fact that you're not telling us what the event actually is when both of those two characters do know means you're hiding something from us. Generally speaking, the reader should be made aware of what the POV character knows, otherwise the reader could begin to feel unfairly manipulated by the author.

Just my thoughts. Keep working at it.

EDIT: I just read the specific questions you had, and I'll answer them now...

1. Genre? Currently, this first 13 is genre-less. Literary fiction maybe, as it's just people going about their business. No sense of fantasy/sci-fi/mystery, except perhaps the mysterious initial scene.

2. Author's note? If the note is necessary to explain some part of the story, it probably needs to be worked into the body of the story itself. If it's a note about how it relates to you personally, then it's potentially interesting information, but not necessarily useful to the reader.

3. Same person? Nope, no idea, none whatsoever. Tell us, why do you think that we would get that impression? There is ZERO indication of that in the 13 lines presented.

4. Plot (not a question but something I'll address anyways)? Sounds good and interesting to me, not necessarily original but could be well done. There seems to be a lot of filler going on before the story actually starts. People generally don't want to read a few pages before the plot really kicks off. Be brave, be concise, and move the beginning of your story closer to the initiating event, if possible. I know you want to set the scene a bit before Jack is thrown into the future or whatever happens, but if you dally too long you'll lose readers.

Just the presence of so much dialogue hurt my eyes. I wouldn't continue in its present form,

Having only 13 lines to display can be useful in most circumstances, and in others it borders on a disserice. But, I like the format because it's quick. It's the format that the bulletin board has chosen, and I support their decision.

I've noticed in my critiques of some of your entries on this board that you've had the same issue with the limitation. And so, we can only comment on what we can see. And that's ok.

I understand as you do, that nothing is personal here. As critiques go, some are useful and some not so useful, some things I will use and others I won't. That's what crits are all about. I picked up several things that I enjoyed hearing comments on.

And for that, I say, thank you very much,
Bob.

I'm also not big on "hooks" so the lack of a lot going on isn't a biggy for me, personally. Its that distance thing that bugs me, and a few somewhat clunky bits like

quote:

---

Marci’s soothing voice formally announces that the work day is officially over.

---

And

quote:

---

Jack comforts Charley’s fears about being short in his accounts

---

quote:

---

Jack arrives home at the end of another hectic day, but before the night is over, he will be a prisoner of an unseen world.
“Hi Honey, dinner is just about ready,” Marci announces.
“You’re a pleasant site to come home to."

---

Just two comments on this paragraph:

The first sentence, partly because it is in present tense, sounds like stage direction (or something in a screenplay), and it makes me go, "huh?" (One of the questions OSC says that we don't want our readers to ask, by the way.)

So my thoughts on the thirteen that are posted now - listed as "second version":

Lack of dialogue tags makes this difficult to read. As a reader, I don't like the extra work of having to piece together who is talking to whom. I read slush for an online magazine and lack of tags would stop me cold. I see this is tagged as mystery genre, and I don't read much in mystery, so if this is a standard convention in the mystery genre, please disregard. Otherwise, please do your readers a favor and make their jobs easier by letting us know who is talking. Either include "Joe said" at the end of his dialogue lines, or something that Joe does. "Joe slammed his fist on the table." To give us a clue that it's Joe who just said whatever.

In this fragment, what I see is Charley and Jack talking about some work issue that one of them has saved the other's butt on. Boss is mean/unlikable. The one whose butt was saved (see, it's too much work as a reader to figure out which one it was...) made a mistake.

Then we have a major foreshadowing. Personal preference, I don't care for such a heavy-handed treatment of foreshadowing. I prefer a lighter touch. "Joe came home at the end of a hectic day, thinking everything would be simpler with a gin and tonic and a plate of his wife's spaghetti. He'd find before the night was over how much more complicated life could be." for example.

The tense issue with the foreshadowing is also a problem. Are you telling the whole story in the present tense? It's *really* difficult to pull off. You may wish to stick to simple past tense, it is the easiest to write in and most natural, as it's likely that most fiction you read is in simple past tense. If you're doing this as a conscious choice, you need to read closely to make sure you don't slip in and out of present tense.

The last line has a typo. "Site" should be "sight." As in, "You're a sight for sore eyes." Sight as in vision, not site as in place.

Overall impression: There are a lot of really basic things going on in this first thirteen, but not a lot to draw out story tension or create dramatic questions in the mind of the reader. I have a mild curiosity about what whoever screwed up earlier in the day at work that the other guy covered up for, but only mild. It's told in a detached way, the kind of conversation that might take place between two people who don't really know each other in the elevator. These aren't the kinds of conversations I'm dying to be a fly on the wall for. If Charley's been having an affair with Jack's wife and has saved his butt at work so that Jack continues to have a job so that Charley can continue to have his trysts with Jack's wife on his lunch break...(the lunch break he gets because Jack's making up for CHarley having covered for him by covering CHarley's lunch shifts for the next week...) well - then THAT would be getting interesting.

Right now the story features a few characters of with no particular distinguishing features having rather mundane conversations about run of the mill events.

Can you dig us into the story to get us interested in what's actually going on? Even if the next 13 lines are full of tension and conflict, you've lost readers by not moving the conflict forward to the top of the page. Is this perhaps a case of not knowing where to start the story? OSC has a great bit in his writing lessons about trying to find the right place to start the story. It's not always chronologically the first event in the story. Sometimes it makes more sense to start us further along in the story, then drop in a few details here and there to let us know what else is going on/has gone on before.

I've just finished reading a YA series called Maximum Ride whose first book Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment does a good job with this. You start in the middle of the action, then the backstory of the characters unfolds over the next few chapters (short 2-3 page chapters.) It's worth checking out from the library if you're looking for ways to insert backstory into your stories without making it a jarring "Here's what happened before now" kind of thing.

quote:

---

One thing you said that I'm not understanding, and I would like to, you say that I switch POV very quickly. Can you elaborate on that, I'm not seeing your POV and I'd like to.

---

I no longer can see the original version, so I may be totally off base, but I remember it seemingly starting with the "viewpoint" of two characters and then switching to two seemingly unrelated characters (it was difficult to tell because of the lack of dialog tags and description).

When I talk about POV, I'm talking about who "owns" a scene; whose eyes is the reader "looking" through. There are some POVs (omniscent) where no one in particular owns a scene.

There's nothing wrong with switching POVs, but doing it very quickly can sometimes be very hard on a reader; just when you figure out who is doing what, it changes.

Nick

The qualifier "slow" is there to differentiate from punchy dialog that has lines around 1-5 words:

"What's up?"
"Snakes."
"What?"
"On the power lines."
"How'd they get there?"
"Aliens."
"You're pulling my leg."
"Charlie saw them."
"That explains it."

It moves, and at no time am I wondering what the other character is doing while his friend is prattling on, as there's really no opportunity for the other character, and by extension the reader, to get distracted.

In this case, it's compounded by redundant sentences/fragments:

quote:

---

“Thanks, Jack, I owe you one, you saved my butt.”
“Charley, I would’ve done it for anyone, you don’t need to thank me. The boss will never know.”
“I could’ve lost my job over this, Mr. Kellerman doesn’t like me. He likes you a lot better.”
“Naaa, it’s just an honest mistake, that’s all. I’ve done the same thing myself, don’t think anything of it.”

---

Also, if his relationship with his boss is not part of the story, which your earlier aside seemed to indicate, this dialog can go a lot faster:

quote:

---

“I owe you one, Jack.”
“Charley, I would’ve done it for anyone.”
“I could’ve lost my job.”
“An honest mistake. I’ve done the same thing myself.”

---

BTW, noticing your style, which relys heavily on dialog, I have a crazy suggestion: listen to radio plays/dramas, and even radio commercials. They are forced to almost exclusively use dialog to describe what's going on (they get some breaks with the occasional sound effect and voice inflections, but not many).

And Merlion recommend looking at the "meat" story, and I think this is what is being referred to:
http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

The nice thing about dialog only is that it is readily adaptable to other formats:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE