|
Establishing the third character in the story, showing her passion and her obstacles, and some creepy poo poo as well. Does it flow well? Do the descriptions go overboard? Or not enough? Can you imagine what's going on, or are there spots where you get lost? I'm shooting for a 16+ YA audience. Chapter 2: Mary. Click. Whirr. Imperfect manicured nails, real, not that press-on crap they sold down at the Woolworths, plucked the photo from the Polaroid and waved it back and forth. Mary lifted her head, aiming the stronger half of her cat-eye bifocals at the photo. These drat things always took too long to develop. She plucked the ink pen from her lapel and wrote on the back of the picture: "April 6th, 2014, #5". Mary Meier clipped the pen back to her lapel and held up the photo to watch it develop alongside the photo's subject, who was hobbling down the sidewalk with an old wooden crutch. He'd probably traded the other crutch for some vodka. As the image developed in the photo, a smile crept across Mary's face like a spider. It started out as just more wrinkles on a sour tart face, but soon her frown gave way to a sneer, then a smile, revealing ancient yellow teeth. "I got you, Jack." Her voice creaked out, raspy and dry through clenched teeth. Her eyes fixed on the man almost at the crosswalk, as she lowered the photo. A young couple walked by and the boy, far too busy gazing into the eyes of his date, bumped Mary's elbow. She recoiled and said, "Hey!" They didn't stop; didn't even apologize. She squinted over her glasses and sneered. "Idiots." Three silver bracelets jingled together as she shook the photo two more times, checked it and then stuffed it into her pocket. The man with the crutch was at the red light. The couple that bumped her was almost at the red light too. His free hand opened out to them, and he muttered something, maybe "vet from iraq" or "my kids need food." The light turned green and the couple crossed, taking care to walk around the vagrant. Instead of crossing, the bum looked at Mary. She spooked and turned quickly to the store window on her right. She raised her camera and took a snapshot of her own reflection. "Damned idiot." She only had four photos left in her camera. There were more boxes of film in her purse, but she wouldn't break open a new pack. It ruined her process; it spoiled the magic of the hunt. With a click of her pen, she added "April 6th, 2014, #6" on the back of the photo and stuffed it into her pocket without waiting for it to develop. The hobo was limping across the street, putting on a big show of his pitiful life. She clipped the pen to her lapel and followed him, matching his speed. Not that she could go much faster if she wanted to. Her damned hip made it hard to get above the pace of a crawling baby. Back in the old days, she could snap a photo crouched behind a trash can or between two bushes, but now? At least she didn't have to hide anymore. Nobody even saw an old lady limping down the sidewalk. They just looked right through her. The bum made it across the street and an older couple made the mistake of throwing him a dollar. Or maybe even a five. She couldn't tell from here. He did his little song-and-dance gratitude speech and turned to the left. She whispered, "Always goes to the left. Like clockwork." Following the old cripple wasn't a problem. She'd tracked him for a week and he kept to his habits. Straight down Roswell St. along the storefronts, cross the street to go past city hall, why hadn't they arrested him yet? and then down one more block to hang a left on over to the dumpster behind the coffee house. Like clockwork. The bum leaned on his crutch a moment, stooped down to pick up a quarter. As he came up, he looked over his shoulder in the opposite direction, then hopped around to face that way. "No, no. Always left. Come on. Left. You go left." Her knuckles whitened around the handle of her purse as the bum shuffled to the right. To the right. He wasn't supposed to go that way. Never had before. He waved his free hand to someone down the street and picked up his pace. "Oh hell." She said through clenched teeth. She wasn't ready for this today. She scratched at her other hand and looked back up the block. She could hurry around the block and catch him at the next intersection. Maybe. If he stopped to chat with whatever he'd waved at, assuming it wasn't some booze-soaked hallucination. Or she could just give up for the day. After all, she already had six photos of him from today — well, five, plus that self-portrait in the window — and that was enough. But she knew it wasn't. It had to be all ten. Had to be. He was out of sight around the corner. "Fish or cut bait, Mary." She craned her neck, trying to see just a little further around the corner. "Fish, or," She looked at the six photos fanned out in her hand, "or cut bait." The street corner was empty. Mary shook her head and rolled her eyes. She stuffed the photos back into her coat pocket and started towards the light. Her breathing quickened when she stepped up on the sidewalk. She pulled down the brim of her wool hat with a trembling hand, and stared at her feet as she walked. Slowly. The cement was old, mixed with brown smooth pebbles. They didn't do them like that anymore. She kept focused on the patterns of the brown pebbles but after a few more steps, there were a few splotches of shiny black liquid on the sidewalk. The air became stale with just a hint of stagnant sewer water. "Just keep going." With each step there were more splotches, and they were bigger. Like she was moving towards the place where a water balloon had popped. The stench of sewage got stronger, and soon her shoes made a smacking sticky sound when she lifted each foot. And then she heard it; a bubbling wheezing sound, a sick, pneumonia rasp. The sound of lungs filled with blood and pus and mud and roots. "Not now Vanessa. Leave me alone." Another gurgled wheeze. There was no getting around her. Mary raised her head. At the bottom of the apartment's concrete steps, Vanessa gripped the rail, trying to balance herself. Every time Mary saw her, she was certain Vanessa would topple, splattering more bits of herself across the sidewalk. She stood in the center of that black sticky ooze, one foot bare and the other in a shiny black flip flop. Her other flip flop had fallen off when Marvin carried her to the truck. Her glistening black jeans had large red mud streaks on the knees. When they killed her, those jeans were blue. Mary remembered the faded spots on them — hell — she still had the polaroids. Her hands looked like muddy black slugs, each digit pointed in impossible directions. Her tank top's flowery pattern obscured beneath streams of black blood that seeped from the deep gash across her throat. "Vanessa." Mary said The corpse didn't reply. Her broken jaw, and the rotted and decaying skin of her cheeks, let her mouth hang agape after all these years. Her eyes pleaded to Mary, never blinking, never looking away. She didn't release her grip from the steps where they snatched her twenty, or was it twenty-five? years ago. Vanessa wavered like a tall seaweed following the current. The only parts of her not bathed in dirt or black blood were her porcelain white eyes, begging Mary. "What. Don't look at me like that. It wasn't me. You know that don't you? I told him you wasn't a whore, but he was sure. Kinda makes you wonder how he'd know the difference, you know?" Mary tried to smile, but it couldn't stay there. The couple that bumped into Mary earlier was walking up behind Vanessa, talking to each other, not looking up. "Hey. You don't want to bump into her." The words stumbled out of Mary, not loud, not loud enough. She couldn't not warn a person, it went against her upbringing. But she also knew they couldn't see Vanessa, and they'd only see Mary, rambling like a lunatic. They walked through Vanessa, her murky blood smearing across their arms and faces. The man smiled at his date, and a black filmy clump stuck to his cheek. The girl's chest matted with blood and tendons and gristle, but they kept moving. They looked up in time to avoid bumping into Mary. "Oh, whoops, I'm sorry! Pardon me." The boy said with a dripping black smile. "Just get out of my way." Mary said, grunting past them, taking care to make a wide circle around what remained of Vanessa's wavering corpse. The bum was at the next corner. She ignored her throbbing hip and walked, staring down at the sidewalk. Her orthopedic shoes smacked as she stepped through the puddles, through the splatters, the droplets, until there was no more blood on the the old concrete. She stopped, took a deep breath and looked up. She turned around in time to see the couple, no longer drizzled in Vanessa-gravy, rounding the opposite corner. Vanessa was gone, the sidewalk was just old brown gravel cement. She closed her eyes. "That wasn't so bad." And then she turned to see where the bum had gone. But she was too late, he'd escaped while she was pushing past Vanessa. "Oh hell." The looked back at the stair rail. Looked at the cross walks. Checked her watch. The day was shot. She held up the camera and snapped a shot of the empty intersection where the bum had been heading. When she got to that intersection, she took snapshots of all three ways he could have gone. She dated and numbered each photo, stuffed them into her pocket and headed home. Her hip throbbed each time she put weight on her left foot. With each bolt of pain, she hissed "Vanessa." ===== Edit: This is picking up from Chapter 1. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3619872 Don't freak out. I'm not going to post every chapter as I go. Just the first three to get feedback. Thanks everybody. magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Apr 7, 2014 |
#
?
Apr 6, 2014 18:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 03:24 |
|
|
Oh come on. Tear it to shreds. I must know. I must.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2014 15:47
|
|
|
magnificent7 posted:Oh come on. Tear it to shreds. I must know. I must. Yeah I'm digging this. Maybe notch back a few of the descriptions a bit? You're doing a good job ladening Mary with description, so just cut a couple of your less favourite bits? But splendidly creepy image of the couple walking through the ghost and I want to know what happens next, so its effective mystery.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2014 21:44
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:Yeah I'm digging this. Maybe notch back a few of the descriptions a bit? You're doing a good job ladening Mary with description, so just cut a couple of your less favourite bits? But splendidly creepy image of the couple walking through the ghost and I want to know what happens next, so its effective mystery.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2014 22:25
|
|
|
If you're going to keep posting chapters of this for crit, it would probably be easier for everyone if you just had one unified thread for the book. Posting each chapter individually is gonna clog up the forum, but also make it really hard for people to check back to see what was going on in previous chapter.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2014 01:26
|
|
|
True. This is probably the last one I'll post unless I hit a brick wall.
|
|
#
?
Apr 12, 2014 02:41
|
|
|
What you need to ask yourself is what is absolutely necessary. There are too many incidental details. It took me three or so goes to get past the introduction to get to the interesting scene at the end. Little things that jar - you make a point of saying she has three silver rings rattle on her arm for example. Is this vital to the introduction of her character? For an initial scene you need to think broadly - either who this character is or thematically what she is going to bring to the story. The sense I got here is that she is taking photographs and she is fastidious about them and she is seemingly used to the paranormal... more or less. This criticism of course reads fairly vacuously, but I think once you get everything in the story down and go back for the second draft you'll see what i mean. These are very much things that she might do, but I get no sense that these are things the reader really needs to know. As a matter of personal taste, there is a glibness that runs through this that I feel is detrimental. I am going simply from the fact you define the genre as horror in the thread title, and what I read seems more like snarky self-aware Whedonesque 'horror'. Terms like 'vanessa-gravy' do not inspire dread or fear.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2014 20:18
|
|
|
Update: Dear Xxxx, Congratulations! You are the recipient of my very first query letter. I swear, I'll make it brief and painless, unlike my two years in 3rd grade. Elevator pitch: Snapshot: A woman who thinks she's discovered her grandfather's grisly past in a photograph is in fear for her life when other people who've seen the snapshot are discovered with their throat cut. etc. etc. Yes that's right, bucking conventionality and a devil-may-care attitude that will most certainly result in nothing. But god dammit third revision is finished and it's time to poo poo or get off the pot. And THEN go back for another round of revisions.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 02:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 03:24 |
|
|
magnificent7 posted:Establishing the third character in the story, showing her passion and her obstacles, and some creepy poo poo as well. Third character? No, you're establishing the second character. You have not established Kate as a character yet. She is bland and forgettable. You say your main character is Kate, but the first two chapters are from other people's perspectives. By the time you switch to her - chapter 3 (maybe even longer), she will become the third perspective, and seem much less important than if she was the first character you meet in the book. ***** Chapter 2: Mary. Click. Whirr. Imperfect manicured nails, real, not that press-on crap they sold down at the Woolworths, plucked the photo from the Polaroid and waved it back and forth. Mary lifted her head, aiming the stronger half of her cat-eye bifocals at the photo. These drat things always took too long to develop. As opposed to regular photographs? She plucked the ink pen from her lapel and wrote on the back of the picture: "April 6th, 2014, #5". Mary Meier clipped the pen back to her lapel and held up the photo to watch it develop alongside the photo's subject, who was hobbling down the sidewalk with an old wooden crutch. He'd probably traded the other crutch for some vodka. She doesn't know? Is there a reason why As the image developed in the photo, a smile crept across Mary's face like a spider. It started out as just more wrinkles on a sour tart face, but soon her frown gave way to a sneer, then a smile, revealing ancient yellow teeth. "I got you, Jack." Her voice creaked out, raspy and dry through clenched teeth. Her eyes fixed on the man almost at the crosswalk, as she lowered the photo. A young couple walked by and the boy, far too busy gazing into the eyes of his date, bumped Mary's elbow. She recoiled and said, "Hey!" They didn't stop; didn't even apologize. She squinted over her glasses and sneered. "Idiots." Three silver bracelets jingled together as she shook the photo two more times, checked it and then stuffed it into her pocket. The man with the crutch was at the red light. The couple that bumped her was almost at the red light too. His free hand opened out to them, and he muttered something, maybe "vet from iraq" or "my kids need food." Which is it? Does she care? What is her reason for hunting and killing these people? The light turned green and the couple crossed, taking care to walk around the vagrant. Instead of crossing, the bum looked at Mary. She spooked and turned quickly to the store window on her right. What? Why would she get spooked if someone looks at her? She's been an accomplice to murder for FIFTY YEARS. This poo poo should be boring and routine for her. Makes no sense. She raised her camera and took a snapshot of her own reflection. "Damned idiot." She only had four photos left in her camera. There were more boxes of film in her purse, but she wouldn't break open a new pack. It ruined her process; it spoiled the magic of the hunt. What process, what 'magic of the hunt'? You are inside her head. You have the opportunity to be explicitly clear. Do not be coy. With a click of her pen, she added "April 6th, 2014, #6" on the back of the photo and stuffed it into her pocket without waiting for it to develop. The hobo was limping across the street, putting on a big show of his pitiful life. She clipped the pen to her lapel and followed him, matching his speed. Not that she could go much faster if she wanted to. Her damned hip made it hard to get above the pace of a crawling baby. Back in the old days, she could snap a photo crouched behind a trash can or between two bushes, but now? At least she didn't have to hide anymore. Nobody even saw an old lady limping down the sidewalk. They just looked right through her. The bum made it across the street and an older couple made the mistake of throwing him a dollar. Or maybe even a five. She couldn't tell from here. He did his little song-and-dance gratitude speech and turned to the left. She whispered, "Always goes to the left. Like clockwork." Following the old cripple wasn't a problem. She'd tracked him for a week and he kept to his habits. Straight down Roswell St. along the storefronts, cross the street to go past city hall, why hadn't they arrested him yet? and then down one more block to hang a left on over to the dumpster behind the coffee house. Like clockwork. The bum leaned on his crutch a moment, stooped down to pick up a quarter. As he came up, he looked over his shoulder in the opposite direction, then hopped around to face that way. "No, no. Always left. Come on. Left. You go left." Her knuckles whitened around the handle of her purse as the bum shuffled to the right. To the right. He wasn't supposed to go that way. Never had before. He waved his free hand to someone down the street and picked up his pace. "Oh hell." She said through clenched teeth. She wasn't ready for this today. What the gently caress? This is serious overreaction for a guy not turning the way she expected. You know, for someone doing this for FIFTY YEARS, you'd think that people doing unexpected things would not be unexpected. She scratched at her other hand and looked back up the block. She could hurry around the block and catch him at the next intersection. Maybe. If he stopped to chat with whatever he'd waved at, assuming it wasn't some booze-soaked hallucination. You are doing a poor job of communicating. She has been stalking this guy for a week. Does he or does he NOT have booze-soaked hallucinations? I can't tell the difference between her observations and her predjudices. BE CLEAR. If she's observed him have a booze-soaked hallucination, clearly say so. If she has not, than she should also know that. She's hunting these people, she should KNOW things about them. Or she could just give up for the day. After all, she already had six photos of him from today — well, five, plus that self-portrait in the window — and that was enough. But she knew it wasn't. It had to be all ten. Had to be. Why? -snip the rest- Mary has full-blown, elaborate hallucinations while awake for 25 years and functions well enough that no one has noticed her. Eh, maybe. Your first two characters are told from the perspectives of serial killers, but they don't even begin to try and hint at a reason WHY they kill. They must have a reason, but even though Mary stalks this guy for a week, she's very vague on what he actually does. Why are homeless people so dangerous, such a threat, that they must be killed? How does killing them keep the city clean? Why do they care about keeping the city clean? The things Mary says and thinks seem cartoonish, as if she's a character from the Simpsons parodying old people looking down on young whippersnappers with their fancy haircuts and their disrespect. It's almost laughable, and doesn't seem real. magnificent7 posted:Update: Query letters are business letters, and not a place to try and fail to be funny. Definitely do not say that it's the very first query letter, I don't see how that will help at all. You're not going to get sympathy points by saying it's your first letter. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Jun 22, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jun 22, 2014 15:50
|
|
