Workshop Thread #1 - "Love Rhymes with Hideous Car Wreck" by xxxyyy

[ForEverAfter]

This is the place to post feedback for xxxyyy's workshop submission. Everybody is welcome to provide feedback, especially those planning on doing a workshop themselves. Please try to provide a good balance of praise and criticism. No work of fiction is perfect, nor is any story without fault. (Yes, that includes Shakespeare.)

Here's the link: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?p9744bb445z6p9t

If you'd like to post a track-changes edit, or any other document, please do so via mediafire and provide the link in this thread. I will be posting my first round of comments in the next day or so.

Considering the length of the submission, I don't expect everyone (or anyone, necessarily) to provide a line edit. If you have limited time, focus on strengths and weaknesses. Read it a couple of times, and take the time to think about how it can be improved.

Try not to leave it to the last minute. The workshop will close, and be archived, next Monday morning (16th of July).

 

[ForEverAfter]

I'm doing a comprehensive track changes edit. Going to take me a couple of hours. In the meantime, here's some general comments:

I love the title.

My favorite part of the story is the speech Jared's father gives at the wedding. I laughed out loud when I was reading it. I really like the way you've established the characters. Particularly Jared and his father.

"They married eight months, four days, thirteen hours and thirty-two minutes after Jared first pumped a load of semen into a woman." ... "like any good husband, he indulged his wife no matter how whimsical he considered the endeavor to be." I could quote a lot of great lines, these are just two that stood out for me in terms of Jared's characterization.

The first half of the story is better than the second half. There is so much build up and back story to a somewhat disappointingly constructed finale. Not quite an anti-climax, but not worthy of all the characters and emotions you have set up. The end needs to be as tight as the beginning. There's a bit of a leap in terms of Jared's motivation. He already knows she's cheated on him. I get that the journals of her sexual exploits push him over the edge, but you need to show us the transition. The last couple of pages are too condensed. And the first couple of pages are the opposite. In my track changes, I'm cutting out bits of back story that aren't needed. My edit will chop out at least a thousand words. Generally, as a rule, the back story shouldn't outweigh the story. The first half of the story should be half as long as it is. And the second half should be twice as long.

There's too many drug references that serve no purpose. And too many details about guns. I glazed over a little bit when I got to the parts of the story where you describe the chemicals he's ingesting. Because, unless you are going to elaborate on the effects of the chemicals, they aren't doing much. You cannot assume that your readership are going to be able relate to every substance and "fill in the blanks". If he takes something, we need to know what it does to him. And, how it contributes towards his motivations at the end.

I like his father so much that I don't want him to be dead. You've set up the parents in the back story and then they are non-existent in the body. I would replace Will the bartender with Jared's father and have the mother die from alcohol-related illnesses. Will doesn't really fit into the story. I don't know who he is or what his relationship with the protagonist means. It'd be much stronger if Jared's father was one of the motivating forces between his decision to exact revenge. It's such a playful and ridiculous character, that it'd be a shame not to utilize him to some extent.

Rather than saying it doesn't matter how Jared found out about the adultery, just don't mention it. Pointing out that there is no reason, detracts from the reality of the story. If it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter. You don't need to tell us it doesn't matter.

I enjoyed reading your story. It's pretty rough, but it has a lot of potential. I will post up my full edit in the next 24 hours.



-4EA

 

[xxxyyy]

^ right on all counts.
edit: man you really did nail everything i did wrong with this story. thank you so much.
edit2: i can explain why i wrote it in this particular style. i recently re-read jung and was very intrugued iwth the concept of metanoia.

 

[ForEverAfter]

You're very welcome. As hydro said, it's best not to explain yourself too much. Let the work speak for itself.

I've chopped the first half of the story in half. The turning point that should mark his descent towards revenge is when he wakes up vomiting in the hotel after getting drunk with his deadbeat father. I've made an absurd number of edits up until that point. I chopped over fifteen hundred words out, including the scene at Will's bar which i strongly believe should be rewritten with his father. I don't think Jared would have hidden weapons in the house. It's too convenient. It's better if his dad gives him the guns/knives when he's totally fucked up on alcohol and drugs and half-convinces him to go on a revenge spree. Then he wakes up in the hotel, with the weapons. Don't show the scene of his father giving them to him. Just have him wake up with a gun and a knife. Then the descent has to begin, the degradation of his character. I've taken out most of the drug references up to that point. He should start getting really fucked up, especially after he finds the journals. When he finds them, he needs to be on the verge of doing something radical and they push him over the edge. I apologize for the massive amount of alterations I've made to your story, but I think it's a lot tighter and more focused now. This edit is just a suggestion of what can be cut and re-arranged in order to tighten aspects of the story. Logistically, it makes a bit more sense. And there aren't as many unnecessary tangents. I've also fixed up the formatting, spelling and grammar mistakes, and added the odd sentence here and there to bridge some gaps. Don't take the drastic amount of changes as an indication that I dislike your story. I always do this with workshops. You submitted a second draft. A damn good second draft. But, it needed some work. I think the first half is pretty tight now. Work on the second half, if you'd like, and post up a third draft. It's up to you.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?umbgzxfk05xoaqx

-4EA

 

[xxxyyy]

yeah you're right. the story works better that way. i'll get on rewriting/editing it
edit: the way i originally had planned to write it would have been a lot longer, i cut a lot of shit because of the 4000 word limit. this is probably why a lot of it appears choppy.

 

[ForEverAfter]

I don't think the story warrants much more than 3,000-4,000 words. What I mean by that is the plot is short and simple and there aren't too many characters. In order to engage me for 5,000+ words, the story would have to continue on after he starts the killing spree. And, personally, I think it's better to end it where you did. The quality of your writing allows you to flesh out a relatively simple plot into a reasonably long story. But, I don't think you can flesh it out much more than that. I'd say 4,500 would be pushing it. Unless you introduce complications in the plot and extra characters. Aspiring writers have a tendency to either over-write or under-write stories. I'm like you. I write stories that are way too long, then I cut them down during the drafting process. It's better to do it this way, I think, rather than the other way round. It's generally accepted in the literary world that stories become shorter during the drafting process. The shorter the better, assuming you don't have to compromise integral aspects of your story. Most novels that are over 400 pages are, in my opinion, too long. There are exceptions obviously. But, generally, I prefer to read work that is condensed and refined. Which is why I don't have much tolerance for Stephen King these days. Apologies if I'm rambling. My eyeballs are itchy. Morphine, you know.

 

[xxxyyy]

yeah there were a a couple of sub-plots in the first draft that basically went nowhere and are probably better left excluded. there was a bit more on a friendship forming between the main character and the bartender, and a bit of origin story for viola.

 

[thujone]

I know that I had agreed to harbouring the hope these stories wouldn't be about drugs but it was exactly those details that helped draw me into the protagonist's emotional state. The description of Viola and the dance is great, but I don't understand why you didn't let the magic moment linger for a bit instead of erasing it right away with that "Oh it should be mentioned" addendum. It was a fun read for me because I could connect with a lot of the details (and the details were provided well) but the ending seemed cliché and seeing the direction it was going in stole from the impact it could have had.

 

[Max Power]

[didn't read any other critiques]

I felt it started pretty strongly but the end was entirely too disjointed. You know your drugs, but the level of detail about them was unnecessary, imo. It works once or twice, but it started to get stale later on. You did a great job of describing them getting together but it wasn't as good when describing the fallout. Her cheating was a bit glossed over, it goes back to me saying the first half was better. You did a good job too of setting up a connection with the main character, if you embellished on that aspect a bit more it would definitely lend some weight to the backend. In all honestly, the killing scenes were a bit too cheesy for my tastes. There's definitely potential in this though, if only as one of those stories of a young man's descent to hell and the unraveling that comes with it.

If I may ask, was this part auto-biographical? You don't have to answer; I suppose in a way all of a writer's work partly is.

 

[Max Power]

There's too many drug references that serve no purpose. And too many details about guns. I glazed over a little bit when I got to the parts of the story where you describe the chemicals he's ingesting. Because, unless you are going to elaborate on the effects of the chemicals, they aren't doing much. You cannot assume that your readership are going to be able relate to every substance and "fill in the blanks". If he takes something, we need to know what it does to him. And, how it contributes towards his motivations at the end.

I agree with this. A good way to fix up all the extra drug references is to focus on how they make him feel instead of their names.

also, my favorite parts were Thujone's parts too.

 

[xxxyyy]

i definetely drew from my experiences with my ex. yeah it's a bit of a revenge fantasy, and i wrote the end in a pregabalin haze, i just wanted it to be done. it's is one of the few stories i wrote which are not narrated from the main characters perspective, and i wanted to write it as cold and clinical as i could.

edit: i made a rough second draft based on your feedback. keep in mind that i am seriously sleep-deprived and not at all sober, i'll go over it again once my head clears. i'll submit a final second draft before monday. version 2 rough draft
now i'll go over max power's story and provide feedback. sorry, i've been sort of out of the picture lately.

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

that Viola's eyes and the pill bottles are both "amber" is my favorite detail. even despite reading a billion stories with amber pill bottles. on that note, we only need to here them called "amber" once in yours.

nothing wrong with mentioning drugs and then not going into all of their effects. but make sure it is shaping the narrator's voice the way you want. like when he reads the alprazolam label, "2MG, TAKE AS NEEDED," cool. "using a combination of methaqualone, diazepam...," drug-nerd talk. the gun talk is a little more off-putting. i realize those are essentially the same thing, so you're likely not getting very objective feedback from me there. the gun talk is connected to his plans to murder his wife for cheating, which doesn't help. though i think it could also be reshaped to give the tone you want. you want it to feel violent, not nerdy. that the guns were modified is a important thing to mention because they were his father's, the gunsmith. but things like "reforging the cylinder...," you got an eye roll from me.

characters bleeding into a first-person narrator is usually awesome, and you have that going on here with your protagonist. from the get go with "His fucking bitch cunt slut wife" to the end with the narrator taking on his obsession with guns and the how his wife "drowned in her own blood." but your narrator also seems to often be throwing a pity party for the husband, with "He had a very definitive conception of what kind of her he should be, and he did... a person who not inflict needless pain on other, a clear sense of right and wrong... a person who tried to do the right thing." actually, typing that out, i think you should consider running with it and try to find a dark humor route. you know, as your narrator ends up going postal and all. but you have to find something to do with it other than what you have going on right now, because you are gonna have a hard time finding an audience who wants to read a straightforward, detailed account of a dope addicted alcoholic murdering his wife.

even though you should probably work on the dynamic between the narrator and protagonist, i love how their meshing shows the distant way he looks up to his father.

 

[Thou]

I just read through the piece. Then I read it again.


I would have preferred to submit my thoughts on this story in a vastly more expansive fashion but my add meds aren't available till Tuesday so I'll do what I can and apologize for being so perfunctory.


The prose was at times a touch awkward, this only happened from time to time. The way he described his wife in the second paragraph serves as an example, it just didn't come through smooth enough though the sentiment and feelings were expressed and delivered properly.

I liked the way you paired our star crossed lovers and felt visceral attachment to their first encounter. Induced a a very real sense of "love-at-first-sight" kind of thing, which was easily palpable.

I agree on much of foreverafter's assessments about the overuse of drugs; although I'm not saying the junk shouldn't be there, just show the reader what junk does! People aren't very up to par on psychopharmacology these days, and if you're shooting for a demographic beyond bluelight, this is essential.

I feel there wasn't nearly enough dialogue between all characters, none excluded. Best way to show who they are is through their actions, don't describe them, breathe air into them so that they'll describe themselves!

I wondered why protagonist chose business school, and met his wife at some kind of hippy festival? It seems incongruent to me, but maybe that's just me.

I'll add quite a bit more later, these were just a few admonitions to vector my teeth into the piece formally.

that Viola's eyes and the pill bottles are both "amber" is my favorite detail.

I caught this on the second read. I think this is phenomenal.

 

[L2R]

i agree with 4EA's (and others) critiques. The first half is far better than the second. Those single paragraph sections could be substantially expanded. I think if you slowly show how the relationship sours, it would create a better sense of foreboding anticipation for the horrible path it takes.

also an earlier incident of vengeance on the part of Jared could make the "hunting" end less inexplicable.

Overall, there were many awkward phrases, but your colourful writing style more than made up for it.

 

[ForEverAfter]

I must admit I didn't pick up on the amber pill bottle thing. Nice. Also I forgot to mention a writer's tick you appear to have developed. The word "but". You overuse it. Particularly at the beginning of sentences.

I'm going to close this thread now and archive it. Thanks to everyone who took the time to contribute. Hope we've helped. Good luck with the redrafting process xxxyyy.