posted
As I trudged up the front porch staircase carrying three grocery sacks filled to the brim and a wildly swinging purse that threatened to take flight, I sighed…a deep groaning sigh. My back hurt, my head ached and my spirit was not ready for the full scale assault that would greet me upon my entrance. Pausing before the door, I wedged my purse in between my right hip and the railing, barely managing to grasp the sticky doorknob, turning and pushing at the same time. Whoosh! As the door swung inward, my nostrils were assailed by an all too familiar odor. Egads, would that boy ever do his job on time? “Johnny!” I yelled as my eyes darted from the piled garbage sacks in the entryway to ketchup encrusted dishes on the counter. “Where ARE you? Silence. I rounded the corner,
[This message has been edited by Lissa (edited August 17, 2010).]
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited August 19, 2010).]
posted
I like it. I really don't have anything to pick at. I liked the character and was brought into the scene. Perhaps I relate too much. I would read on.
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posted
What genre, what length, what are you looking for in your feedback request?
Is there a title or is My Turn the title?
My primary suggestion/critique is that I don't know what to expect with this story because I don't know what kind of story it is. Genre stories are different then regular literary fiction. This has a literary feel to it, but then my brain decided to play tricks on me and assume it was a genre story so when she rounded the corner, it fully expected to find the MC tripping over a dead body (which would be par for the course in a murder mystery.)
My other suggestion/thought for you is that there are parts of this that seem overly wordy, some might say over written. It could just be your style and your preference, so take this with a grain of salt and feel free to disregard. Here are some of the pieces that drew my attention more to the words rather than what's happening in the story (thus distracting me from your story, in my opinion): a purse threatening to take flight, grasp (grab? turn and push rather than turning and pushing), nostrils were assailed, beholding a trail. The words are lovely, but they're a bit much.
Typo alert - there's a missing quote mark after the "Where ARE you?" line.
I think there's a good rhythm here and a nice use of language, but my general reaction is that the words are trying to get me to notice them, when really I'd like to notice the story.
As with all feedback - take what works, leave the rest. Best wishes with this!
posted
First of all, thanks for the "wordy" critique. I am so anxious to establish the "feeling" and ambience of the moment, I tend to overdo it.
Secondly, I brought this "genre" conflict up in another post; does the genre have to be apparent in the first 13 lines? I am definitely writing SF but do not introduce the reader to that element until four or five pages in. (This dilemma is being discussed on the writing discussion forum.)
Lis
[This message has been edited by Lissa (edited August 18, 2010).]
posted
I would agree with Kay Ti. The scene is well presented: the frustration of the protagonist and the uncleanliness of her home/apartment and the knowledge that both are atttribtable to another yet unpresented character. A male. There is empathy for this expected female-to-male frustration--though I believe it is a bit of a cliche.
I also felt the sentences are long and burdened with too many words. [I am too often guilty of this myself]. I found I had to "trudge" through the first sentence with your protagonist. Just playing with the first sentence:...
quote:As I trudged up the front porch staircase carrying three grocery sacks filled to the brim and a wildly swinging purse that threatened to take flight, I sighed…a deep groaning sigh.
... I suggest it may scan better and the 13 lines lose nothing of their setting the scene by omiting reference to the purse (and simultaneously address Kay Ti's concern of the purse taking "flight"):
As I trudged up the front porch staircase carrying three grocery sacks filled to the brim, I sighed…a deep groaning sigh.
The purse appears in your third sentence and does very well there.
I also had a momentary pause at
(1) grocery sacks being "filled to the brim" as brims are something I associate with jars and liquid contents. I've had grocery bags overstuffed, even to the point they would begin to rip, but ... anyway, just a mild critique.
(2) "Whoosh!" as a sentence. Works in cartoon strips (in my experience), not so much in prose, except in dialog. You could add it to your sentence: "As the door swung inward with a whoosh..." but I believe it is actually better without it. Again, just my humble opinion.
Kay Ti noted the others.
I, too, would love to know: What genre, what length, what are you looking for in your feedback request? We cannot tell by these 13 lines. Thanks for the opportunity to comment on your work.
posted
The genre doesn't have to be apparent in the very beginning, particularly not of a novel (you have at least a few pages to establish that...) - but when posting for feedback, it's helpful to let people know what kind of bit they're looking at. I don't read horror at all, so I use the genre in the title of a post or top of a fragment to know if I should move on or not. Hate reading a fragment and THEN discovering it's horror. A) I don't read any of it so I'm terrible at critiquing because I don't understand the conventions and B) I hate being frightened by fiction (written or film.) Hate hate hate it.
But that's just me. Sorry for the little rant.
A reader of your novel would know what genre your novel is because he/she would have selected it from a section of the bookstore or library, would have evaluated the cover art, and the title of the story would presumably have hinted at something, so they have those expectations going into it. Just share with us the genre here when asking for feedback so you get people giving you the right kind of feedback. Speculative fiction readers tend to be VERY literal with their reading, so hearing that this is a sci-fi story, unless your MC possesses a motorized flying purse, I strongly suggest you reword the "purse threatening to take flight" line because a speculative fiction reader might assume the purse is actually capable of such a thing. We spec fic writers have to be even more careful of hyperbole, I think.
Oh, and if it matters, I assumed the person who was on the other side of the closet door (once I determined it wasn't a murder mystery and there isn't a body...) was a child, not just a man but a man in the shape of a young one whose mother just walked in and found he hadn't done his chores. I may well be wrong but wanted to share with you my assumption (colored heavily by BEING a mom of a man-shaped young one...) in case it's really off base. You might want to evaluate whether that potential assumption would be problematic for what you're trying to do with this section.
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I would read on.
