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Noah posted:This is a story I wrote for thunderdome, that I really liked and would want to send it out in the future. I'll also get in a crit for someone as soon as they post it. “Are you alright?” He remembered shouting. “I don’t feel a thing,” Archie laughed. He had tears in his eyes. “Hey, let go,” Archie said, fighting with his wheels. Okay, this isn't terribly confusing, but I'm not sure that the transition between flashback and present is as clear as it could be. Maybe another line of Douglas coming back to the present before Archie speaks again. “You’re going to flip over and break your neck,” Douglas said. ”No I won’t, I put all the weights I could in the backpack to act as a counterbalance,” he said, reaching behind his back and using his thumb to point at the backpack strapped to the back of the chair. “You dirty son of a bitch,” Douglas said. Douglas, who had (The previous three words could be replaced by He'd.) never let go of his Army routine, had (this sentence is a little long. Maybe break it into two. Another thing that might work is replacing ", had" with "and") stayed in shape throughout his retirement years, but even he had struggled to push Archie to the top of the hill. “I knew I wasn’t out of shape.” Douglas leaned forward over the back of the wheelchair, using Archie’s shoulders as a rest. Archie’s Old Spice deodorant filled his nose, a mixture of nostalgia and regret wafting about. Archie reached up and stroked the hair on the back of Douglas’s head near his neck. Douglas took two more deep breaths and pushed himself upright. Douglas stood there behind Archie at a military ball some time after they had been shipped back. They were both dressed in their formals, watching couples slow dance across the floor. Archie drank from a flask, Douglas stayed dry. “Go and dance,” Archie said. Douglas shook his head. There was no way he was going to go and dance in front of Archie, taunting him and rubbing the question, Why me, in Archie’s face, Douglas thought. Truth be told there was no good reason why Douglas should walk and Archie shouldn’t. Douglas even wondered if the thought plagued himself more so than it did Archie. He would stay up all night with only those thoughts and the smell of Old Spice next to him. “Come on, you pussy, let go,” Archie said, beginning to sound annoyed. “I’m trying to enjoy the view just a little longer before the ambulance arrives,” Douglas said. Douglas loved Archie, there was no doubt about that. But there was a hidden guilt that kept Douglas around, he liked to think. If Archie hadn’t been shot, they wouldn’t be together, he was positive. They would still be friends, write to each other, but they would have moved on and found another, more perfect partner to be with. Douglas wanted to convince himself of that, that there was someone more perfect for Archie, because then he wouldn’t be an imposter. (Good stuff.) He would give anything, everything, his legs, medals, to throw off his disguise and tell Archie, I love you, but I’m not in love with you. And then Archie would breath a sigh of relief and laugh and say, that’s okay, I’m not in love with you either. They would shake hands, and even though they were both old and bony, they would have a whole new life left to live. “Alright, enough monkeying around, are you going to let me go, or not?” “I’m scared,” Douglas said. Archie put his hand on Douglas’s and rubbed it softly. Archie turned in his chair and looked up at Douglas. “Dougie, please, just let me go,” Archie said. He had tears in his eyes. Douglas flashed back to Archie laying on top of him in Vietnam, tears in his eyes. “I don’t feel a thing,” reverberated through Douglas’s head. He let go. Archie’s chair lurched forward slowly before taking a steeper angle. (You go from present to flashback to present in the same paragraph. Perhaps "He let go." should start a new paragraph.)
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Jan 8, 2013 19:00
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FauxCyclops posted:Here's a piece I'd like to clean up some and submit to some magazines or contests. Based on some previous critique I'm going to shave the word count even further ('The Fixers' to just 'Fixers', for example) Don't shave words off just for the sake of shaving words off. Certainly do it if there are faster and more efficient ways to say what you want, or if you're trying to reach a specific word count. I'm not sure how much bloat there can be left in a sub-1000 word piece. Sometimes an extra word is more important. The difference between "Fixers" and "The Fixers" is that the second one makes them sound more important and special than without the 'the'. * * * * * In this case a gated community, where the well-to-do sequester themselves and their material things from a harsh and undue world. The use of "undue" here sound odd. By "undue", do you mean excessive or inappropriate, or were you thinking of something else. Nobody could tell you why the Fixers came for Cynthia James. Some in their medieval thoughts suppose they eat children like her, which is ludicrous, for they do not only take young people, and In this case a man named Joseph Small was convicted of a kidnapping he did not commit. If such motive and evidence could be found to make a judgment of him, perhaps it is better a person like that no longer wanders free. That seems like an odd judgement for the narrator to make, and a wrong one as well. The narrator knows perfectly well that Small didn't do it, but has the opinion that if the cops arrested him he must be guilty of something, even though he knows there is no evidence. If this is to imply that the Fixers planted the evidence, then there are other problems. If the Fixers planted evidence implicating Smalls and the narrator knows this, that implies that the narrator believes that the Fixers are right in doing whatever they want. "Oh well, if the mysterious abducting beings we know literally nothing about are doing it, they must have a good reason". I also find the idea of Cynthia being forgotten confusing. At first, the normal things happen with normal reactions, then everyone except Henry seems to forget she existed. That seems contradictory - if they can erase all trace of her existence even from memories some time later, why not do it immediately? If they can't do it right away, why bother doing it later at all? Henry insists he never wanted Cynthia gone, but he is sure there is a way to ‘mark’ one to be Fixed. Insists to who? No one knows who that is anymore. Is the insisting him worrying that maybe he's the reason? If so, why? Why would Henry want Cynthia gone, even subconsciously? That would be the starting point for a longer work, but it's completely unexplored here. We know nothing about Henry or Cynthia at all. I also agree that the ending is a non-ending. It's limp.
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Jan 16, 2013 16:47
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