Philotic Web

Do we not have one of these threads anymore? I can't remember if it survived the latest incarnation of Pweb.

http://www.philoticweb.net/forum/viewto ... iters+club


Yup.

But I still love you. (Plus, this subject is jazzier).

I love that you're the one who started the other one, too.

I swear to GOD I did a search. Honest!

(double post!)

At any rate, I'm keeping this one. The other one was miserably old and smelly.

(unapologetic triple post!)

Okay, and I just did a search again and still can't find the thread that I know is there. This is probably more symptomatic of my impending insanity than anything else. Anyone else having the same goofy problem?

(slightly embarrassed quadruple post....)

At any rate, the point of this thread: I admit to a certain level of selfishness. You see, I need a critique. And my other critique circles have already had their wells poisoned. What I mean is that I've polished a piece based on critiques I've already received and now that I need fresh eyes to look at it I don't have any.

But maybe I do.

So if any of you out there (I have a hard time asking people personally and individually because it makes it very difficult for them to decline and I really don't mind if you don't currently have the time) would be willing to glance at a short story of mine, I'd appreciate it. It is contemporary fantasy, approximately 4500 words, is titled "Killing the Winter Pigs", and begins thusly:

Ray stood on a white plastic step-stool, scrubbing dinner plates in a sink full of suds that smelled like pine trees. It made him think of Alaska, where the night lasted for half a year, where he could have a cabin in the middle of the woods and his ruined heart couldn't make anyone bleed. But Ray would never leave Momma to live alone with his father. Not even to escape the Sinking Place.

Thanks.

Seriously, do you even need to ask?

Unless I'm already one of the tainted. But if I'm not, fire it my way, please!

Ollie, your openings are almost always nearly flawless.


Bite the bullet and send me your draft in full, you mook.

Thanks ladies!

I swear to GOD I did a search. Honest!

Can we ban this nub?

Yeah, I second that. He quadruple posted INSTEAD OF EDITING.

What a n00b.

So if any of you out there (I have a hard time asking people personally and individually because it makes it very difficult for them to decline and I really don't mind if you don't currently have the time) would be willing to glance at a short story of mine, I'd appreciate it.

I'm not entirely sure I'll be much help, but I'd be willing to give it a glance.

Yeah, I second that. He quadruple posted INSTEAD OF EDITING.

What a n00b.

It's Newbie to rhyme with Boobie, not Noob to rhyme with boob.

Oopsie! I must be a newbie

Yeah, you are. No wink.

the wink was in reference to the usage of newbie to rhyme with boobie, not noob to rhyme with boob.

It's Newbie to rhyme with Boobie, not Noob to rhyme with boob.

This would be a little easier to remember if a certain someone appeared more often.

*desperately fights against oblivion*

I'm re-writing again. Because it's as close to writing as I seem to be getting these days.

The beginning of my short story, "Green Paint and the Benediction of Acorns," is below. I'm not in love with it, so if you have any suggestions (even something like, "Umm.. you're going to have to start over") I'd appreciate it.

---

One summer, when Daddy was a boy and got sent away, he found a dozen dead crows on the witch's lawn. They were big, puffy things, he said, like sponges that soaked up too much water. If you poked them with a stick they'd pop and melt into the ground, a tumble of maggots. He recounted this looking off toward the clouds, arms resting on the steering wheel as he absently picked his cuticles raw.

And now it was my time to see the witch. I didn't want to go, to be away from my family, but I couldn't risk any more killings. I rubbed my leg -- the smaller, weaker one -- as I remembered the golden retriever and the smell of burning tires. I thought of my classmate Lizzie calling me a freak and wondered if I'd be able to stop myself from doing the same to her.

That's how Daddy and I found ourselves in the New Yorker station wagon in mid-October, heading into Maine, up the interstate to the witch's cottage outside Duncan. Violently orange leaves clung to maple branches, and ragweed pollen stole in through the car's vents, making my eyes itchy and wet. I took this as permission to be resentful.

Hooray for openings.

Wind swept. Most of what it swept was snow, smattered about with dead pine needles and the occasional pine cone. It was to the mild discomfort of one Sarah Runewood, situated as she was at the summit of a mountain she has since forgotten the name of, that one such pine cone chose precisely the wrong moment to invade the space-time in which her face was residing. This, it turns out, was the most important event of Sarah's life.

Hey WS, that was pretty interesting. Other than the typo "dead pine needles AND the occasional..." I don't have much.

I think it's funny that I was picking my cuticles raw while reading your line saying the same.

Also, just a slight correction from someone who lives in the northeast and suffers from ragweed allergies. Ragweed pollen is pretty much done by early to mid September and the leaves have not started changing at the time. So, you should change one of the two things.

Informational links:

http://www.foliagenetwork.com/reports/n ... 6_2006.php

http://www.certifiedallergy.com

Ollie, have you read The Wasp Factory? It isn't something I recommend to everyone, but I think it might be something you'd enjoy.

*desperately fights against oblivion*

I'm re-writing again. Because it's as close to writing as I seem to be getting these days.

The beginning of my short story, "Green Paint and the Benediction of Acorns," is below. I'm not in love with it, so if you have any suggestions (even something like, "Umm.. you're going to have to start over") I'd appreciate it.

---

One summer, when Daddy was a boy and got sent away, he found a dozen dead crows on the witch's lawn. They were big, puffy things, he said, like sponges that soaked up too much water. If you poked them with a stick they'd pop and melt into the ground, a tumble of maggots. He recounted this looking off toward the clouds, arms resting on the steering wheel as he absently picked his cuticles raw.

And now it was my time to see the witch. I didn't want to go, to be away from my family, but I couldn't risk any more killings. I rubbed my leg -- the smaller, weaker one -- as I remembered the golden retriever and the smell of burning tires. I thought of my classmate Lizzie calling me a freak and wondered if I'd be able to stop myself from doing the same to her.

That's how Daddy and I found ourselves in the New Yorker station wagon in mid-October, heading into Maine, up the interstate to the witch's cottage outside Duncan. Violently orange leaves clung to maple branches, and ragweed pollen stole in through the car's vents, making my eyes itchy and wet. I took this as permission to be resentful.

1. It delights me to know that I've read enough of your work that I can recognize trends!

2. Your opening paragraph thrills me, Ollie, as always. (Incidentally, the next book on your to-be-read list is RABBIT PUNCHES by Jason Ockert, and I won't tell you why until after you've finished it).

3. The critique bit happens now. It's the second paragraph, really, that I have the most issues with. There's a lot of information in there. a) Our narrator has a bum leg. b) somehow his presence leads to death. c) he may have killed a dog. d) he is or was a potential danger to his classmate.

The problem isn't that any of this information is extraneous, but somehow the delivery isn't executed smoothly. Particularly the latter half of the paragraph seems a bit clunky.

You know the drill and you know my email address, so get cracking.

Nom, as always, you see right through my ignorance Thanks for the tips.

NWS, sure didn't, but it's now on its way to my house.

Kelly, I suspected the same about that second paragraph. I'll take another pass at it. Also, I have trends?? And here I fancied myself unpredictable....

Physical weaknesses or limitations in accompaniment of supernatural power.

Oh my GAWD. I am so transparent....

Then I won't try to find mine to loan you in the mound of books that is currently my library.

Oh my GAWD. I am so transparent....

Hush. You have a signature style!

To change things up a bit, a script I wrote today.

I don't much like the way it turned out, but several people that aren't me have told me they love it.

Chris, it's fun. And solidly composed. It does, however, have a decided affected feel to it, as though you were trying to make it FEEL like a play. That is largely unnecessary because if it were acted, it simply would feel like a play without effort. Also, if you intend to have this performed instead of read, perhaps consider fewer stage directions that might otherwise limit your actors. Unless this was meant to be read only, in which case, why not just write a short story?

At any rate, like I said, it was fun.

Not to butt in, but this is the third (... maybe fifth) way I've tried to open this story, and the only one I've wanted to continue from. It's a bit long, but it is the entire first scene. (Reading note: the small blurb inside [] in a character's inner thoughts. No italics in Notepad.)

---

Lucas Grey was not having a good day. It had started much the same as the hundreds of others he had spent as Captain of one ship or another, the 'Envoy of Twilight' being only the newest one. He had woken up at what the clock and his body told him was dawn, though looking out his window, he could see several thousand dawns anywhere he looked. He showered with the same water that had gone through the ship's recycling system thirty or forty times by now, and ate a breakfast of something he had a sinking feeling the ship was recycling as well. With no usable link to anywhere outside the walls of the ship, and thus no news or letters from home to open, he had walked down from his room on the top deck to the bridge of the ship and met his pilot, Chase, already at her console where Lucas was beginning to suspect she slept. In fact, Lucas wasn't so sure she wasn't sleeping now. The normally bright girl was very still. He approached her slowly and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Chase, time to wake up" spoke Lucas, and felt Chase stir, though only slightly. Lucas buried his forehead in his palm as he realized it wasn't Chase he'd be talking to in a moment. He walked to his chair on the platform above Chase's, and used his palm to start up his own console before turning his attention back to the girl in front of him. She swirled around in her chair, and Lucas realized that if she had slept at her console in the night, it had only been very little. Her eyes were a tired, dull grey compared to their normally unsettlingly bright blue, and her long, platinum hair had unwound from it's braids and now lay splayed over her shoulders. Her lips spread open and sowed him a brilliant white smile. It was the most horribly unnatural thing Lucas had ever seen, and he would have very much liked to pull his eyes out after seeing it. Turning back to the console and beginning to look over how the ship's systems were runing, he spoke without looking in her eyes, "You still haven't got that right. Chase's never shows off her teeth in a smile, Harland. What's she up to that she's left control of her body up to you?"

The ship's AI construct had let Chase's features fall and Lucas saw just how tired she must have been, as shadows appeared over her eyes. Though, looking around, Lucas wasn't so sure that Harland hadn't fiddled with the lighting on the bridge to get just that effect. Feeling that Harland had lifted Chase's eyes to fix him with the construct's best attempt at a look to kill. Lucas ignored him, and continued to flick through the ship's navigation logs, recounting the hours since he had sat in this chair last. Looking back over to the girl seated in front of him, he saw her eyebrow twitch upward, and wondered if Harland had run into a glitch, or was naturally replicating human physical ticks now.

"Well, she started doing just what you're doing now," spoke the construct as he sat Chase upright, folding her arms and turning away from the Captain. He spoke with Chase's cheery voice, though her eyes were closed, and Lucas suspected Harland was looking elsewhere, deeper into the ship's computer banks. "Flipping through the nav. logs and making adjustments. Now she's moving too fast for me to follow without paying more attention to her than the ship, but... Here we go. She's onto the rate of planetary shift in this sector over the last few hundred years, and the ship's readings on electromagnetic interference. I have no idea what she's..."

"I do," the Captain cut off his construct. [No wonder she wasn't sleeping. need to get in there and help or else...] Lucas paused what he was doing then, pulling his palm off the console in the middle of a scan. He quietly weighed the idea of entering the ship's virtual world, and coming face to face with however Harland chose to present himself, against the chance that he was wrong, and he could leave handling things to Chase and risk the ship being ripped apart from the inside out.

Unless this was meant to be read only, in which case, why not just write a short story?

It was written for a class in which it was to be read, the assignment being to write a play. Really, I'd much rather have written it as a story, and may very well do so at some future date.

Thanks for the input.

Hi Janus,

I hope it is okay to do these publicly.

Very interesting premise for a story. If I get it, you have a girl who is periodically inhabited by an AI, maybe while she is working on things virtually.

I know you're having a hard time starting this story, so I'm very sorry to give you this advice, but "So and so was having a bad day" as your first sentence, and then describing waking up would probably send your story to an editor's slush pile no matter how good it was after that. I was also confused at first because for whatever reason, the ship was a sea going vessel at first.

I would suggest skip the whole waking up bit, and just have him walk in to start his shift. Then again, the start of a shift is a difficult place to begin a story at too. Not as in hard to write, but hard to make interesting.

If I am correct the important event of the scene is that Chase is being possessed by the construct. Except that this doesn't seem to bother Lucas into any kind of action. I'm not sure of your plot or conflict, but consider the possibility that this doesn't have to occur or be discovered at the start of a shift.

If you have more of the story, you can send it on to me: ami (at) geekatplay (dot) com.

Ollie,

You can send your story to me too if you want. I might want to take advantage of your expertise for the book I'm writing in return for a few critiques.

Okay, this is the Writer's Garret. Can we post writer news here? I just got a rejection from Analog from a story of mine that made semi-finalist. So off to SF&F it goes. And I'm going to a novel writing workshop in March.

Also, Dave Wolverton (David Farland) is sending out daily email writing tips. Check it out here: http://www.runelords.com/journal/

I am writing a short story. I just want to make sure that the opening makes sense. Help me out?

----

Trey Thorn thought the lights on, and the room lit up. Beth Armstrong, his wife, sat on a stool before a pedestal holding a large wad of unformed wet clay. Her hands hung at her side, arms sleeved in dry brown silt. White gauze wrapped her head.

"What are you doing sitting in the dark?" said Trey. He thought the windows open and they did, tiny motors humming temporarily as the shades drew wide, casting the room in sunlight.