a story i wrote. id like it critiqued.
http://angelfire.com/mt/streeter

it starts at part 1, and goes through to part 3.
positive comments are welcome, negative comments welcome as well.

thanks

I'm assuming you want this critiqued as a story and not as an editorial of some nature.

I'll also avoid any grammar issues other than to ask why, suddenly, for one sentence, the 8th of the third part, you suddenly become Yoda.

First off, it has a very slice-of-life feel to it that's very natural in parts. It reminds me a lot of someone literarily famous I can't quite put my finger on, especially the internal dialogue stuff.

However, there's a real problem, IMO, with the style you use in presenting it. Occasionally, it reads kind of like a police report -- lists of events, mostly. I think that it would work better if you left some of the specifics out. Remove a lot of the things that tie it down to a specific set of people.

The reason I say this is that the way you present it, it screams to suck the reader into being the protagonist, but every time you list an event, it pushes the reader back out.

One way to help this would be to describe pertinent events, rather than telling that they happened. Somehow, even in places that seem like they should be in present tense, they're told in the past tense or maybe almost present perfect, as if you're recounting things that just happened, instead of being there and experiencing them.

On the other hand, there's something to be said for the way that that conveys a sort of out-of-body experience, which I think kind of matches the feeling you're going for. But I still think that there needs to be more description and less exposition.

Also, the series of declarative sentences that you sometimes get in tend to push the reader into reading too fast (for this story), and it breaks the rhythm and pacing of the story. It needs to be slow, almost languid.

I'd probably also describe things that set a mood but otherwise don't really seem to have anything to do with the sequence of events.

I'd also leave more out, and let the reader fill in the blanks. There's no reason to tell whether or not you do anything with her. Let the reader discover it. Or fill it in to his own preference, as it doesn't really make any difference.

Note that I'm not claiming I could do any better. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, critique.

Just some things to think about. The hardest part of being a writer, and the part I never really could get my head around, is being able to read your writing as if you hadn't written it. It's going to need to be rewritten probably several times before it flows, but it's a very good start, I think. It really drew me in, at least the first part.

the police report, your not the first to mention it. how should i go about changing the listing of events, and still not tell details, leaving stuff up to the reader? being a personal story it was hard to step aside and write it without writing all the emotions involved, yet i tried to keep them in.

i watched star wars ep2 last night, yoda was prolly a huge influence. :P

how do i keep that slice of life feel through out its whole? i like the animal-rawness that i think im able to convey, yet i think changing stuff around would cause that to disappear.

tons of questions i could ask.

It's hard to do. For one thing, you have to let the reader come to his own conclusions and not be told what to make of the events. Hmmmm. Lemme take a snippet and show you how I'd rewrite it (keep in mind that I'm a systems administrator by trade, and not a writer). Your quote:

She came over one morning a few days after I gave her the notebook. Rang my doorbell and awoke me from my nightly sleep. I stood and started for the door when I realized that it would be very improper to answer said door in my underwear. I returned to my bed, grabbed my blanket, and resumed my journey to the door. I made sure all of the proper bits of anatomy were where they were supposed to be, wrapped the blanket around and opened the door. "It's 12 o'clock and your still in bed?"

How I'd rewrite it (first basic attempt with a couple of minor revisions):

The doorbell started me from a sound sleep. Springing from the bed, I stumbled to the door, nearly bringing several potted plants to the floor in my daze. As I was about to open the door, I felt the air conditioner kick on, and the realization struck me that I was still completely unclothed. I peered through the peephole -- Samantha.

As I walked back to the door, I made sure to right all of the plants so carelessy knocked down in my earlier pinball game of a stagger. I got the door open as the bell started to ring for the fifth time. She spun about suddenly, but stared for what seemed like minutes. Her car was blocking me in, the groceries in it trying to steam up the windows from the baking sun.

``Still asleep?''

What I tried to do here, and I've obviously made up facts to fit it, is show what was going on rather than describe each event. I guess the first thing that I did was to make the events happen as the protagonist sees them. For example, the first thing that occurs to him in the morning is ``That's the doorbell!'', something I think we've all woken up to. Usually I wake up in a daze, but pretend to be awake by moving fast, and that usually leads to banging into doorframes and such. So showing that makes the reader identify more closely with the protagonist.

Also, instead of stating that it wouldn't be right to open the door nude, just show him changing. And you don't even need to show that, just imply it. We don't need to know which side he dresses on, either. And the slightly silly reason he notices his unclad state just adds a slight air of verisimilitude.

Notice how he's in a daze before he realizes that it's Samantha, but afterwards he's righting plants, and it takes him another four rings of the doorbelll before he gets back to the door? Now, I don't know that that's accurate, but describes how his attitude has changed without simply saying ``Seeing that it was Samantha, he decides to answer the door after putting on some underwear, but it sure did wake him up.''

Also, note how he looked through the peephole before he decided that he was going to go back and put on some underwear? Does that mean he might have answered naked if it had been someone else? Does it mean that he might have just let the person go away? We don't know, but we know that it means something, and we know that it meant something to him.

Also, I never said that he put on nothing but underwear, but I implied it in the fact that he took his time, yet Samantha could still tell he had been sleeping. Also, the fact that it seemed like an eternity and that he started noticing obscure things like the groceries implies that maybe she was surprised about something, too. Maybe it was his attire. Maybe it was that the door opened at all. Yet she knew he was there -- his car was there.

And it's not early in the morning -- she's got groceries, and the sun is hot enough to be ``baking''. Also, they've been sitting in the car long enough for the store's refrigeration to be leeching from them. Has she been driving around for hours, thinking about stopping by?

Not to mention the use of more emotive verbs. In the first paragraph, I try to use sudden, lurching sounding verbs, to convey that just-woke-up-must-be-awake! feeling. But in the second paragraph, they become more muted, since his mental state has become that way.

See how much longer it takes to describe all of this than what was actually written? That sort of subtext is one of the potential hallmarks of interesting storytelling. It's not a necessary one, but I think it can be important very often.

And simply changing sentence structure around makes it feel less like work to get through. A constant barrage of subject-verb-object sentences is just a chore.

I suppose I could go on for a while, but I think that covers most of it. I'm sure that's not actually how it played out, but remember that you might want to make some stuff up that didn't actually happen in order to make it more interesting. Of course, if you want to be totally accurate, that's your choice, too. (And don't make fun of my writing -- it's just an example. You can do better.)

Edit: I want to point out that I don't want to influence your style. I'm just trying to give some examples of how you can show something without telling it. Also, I tried to cram a lot of different things into those few paragraphs. I don't think I'd suggest trying to keep that up. Writing can be too dense unless you're a master, and many of them can cut it dangerously close sometimes.

ReEdit: I think I remembered what that story put me in mind of. Harlan Ellison's Mefisto in Onyx. I think you might benefit from reading it. It's almost all internal dialogue, but it's very chilling and convincing. Very different from what you're writing, but somewhat similar in form. It might be hard to find, though. I think it might be included in the collection Slippage, but I don't know which version it is (it was rewritten between its publication in Omni and its book publication.

heh, thanks. actually, much of the story was elaborated on, and added to.

seeing where your coming from i understand what your saying, but ... im not sure the story was about the details, implied or blunty stated. then again, im not sure what made me decide to write a story on whats going on in my life in the first place.

i appreciate it.

Check those edits above. I was writing them when you wrote your reply.

I like police reports. They don't beat around the bush and they get to the point. I wish all books were like that