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Originally posted by autopilot disengad]...or tell me i'm *special*
either way, here is the first part of 'the unrequited king', a short story i've assembled, over the last week, on fragments scribbled on stolen bits of paper from the office. lemme know what you think.
Ha! You asked for it . . .
Keith wakes up in grimy sheets, greasy, sweating like a fish in a parcel of paper - knowing he’s going to get caught today.
Good start
Light settles on his skin like spores.
Good
Needle points of cold metal.
Unnecessary
He thinks about crying – but before he can come to a conclusion, his alarm clock brrrings and he switches it off slowly.
Easing a plug into the hole in his morning.
a) what does this mean?
b) why is it necessary?
c) it's not a very good metaphor and neither is it a complete sentence. Get rid of it.
2
Keith eats coco pops with semi-skimmed milk.
Nice detail
(He uses) A child’s plastic party bowl and a steel spoon that has black plaque in its scratches and grooves.
Outside his window, boarded up, the world is tuning into day. He can see the suggestion of it happening.
Why is this full stop here? There shouldn’t even be a comma
At the edges of the plywood blocking the view. (He can) See it dully filling the overlapping polythene, turning it the colour of milk. A plastic square between him and his wallpaper.
Sorry to be anal but this telegraphic Bridget Jones style is really so 1997. If you can write properly, do: don’t break the rules simply for effect unless you know what effect you want.
He puts in a pop tart.
(He) Checks his rechargeable batteries – puts them on the counter. He wonders if he has time for a game of Time Crisis. His teeth ache, and his pop tart pops up. He eats it, wondering if he has time to masturbate.
Is the repetition of wondering if he has time to X/Y deliberate? If not, delete Time Crisis. If so, is masturbation a speedier second best?
But the day is like chalk dust,
Nice simile
smoking into the room now, and he feels like crying.
What, again?
3
The pop tart sits in his stomach like a monolith, a foreign body.
Weak. Use one simile or none at all
Already he cannot remember a time before it was there, nor can he imagine it ever leaving.
Lose this. What does it add?
4
He goes through a lot of air freshener.
Nice. Why? I’m intrigued.
5
He sprays it into the room before he’ll enter. Holds it out at arm’s length and counts the duration of the blast. 3 seconds is ok. 5 seconds is too much. 10 seconds or above that, and the hooks of a headache catch at the corners of his head.
“Hooks of a headache”? No need to try so hard. You can write but it’s not very charming to have phrases jump up and down shouting “look at me”.
He sprays 3 seconds in a horizontal sweep. Another 3 up and down. 3 + 3 = 6. But it doesn’t seem the same.
He makes a cross. Horizontal, vertical. And, as he walks further into the room, he can feel the spray settle on his skin.
He shoots a 2 second burst at where the body lies in his blankets.
At last the money shot!
It smells Alpine Fresh.
The last 2 sentences are the pay-off which make all the previous meanderings (not an insult to your prose – Kevin seems to be a meanderer by nature) worth while. Now the story can start.
Overall – good but careless writing, great premise.
This brought to you by Kitten’s House of Criticism. |
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