Hatrack River Writers Workshop: "The Problem of Evil"

This is topic "The Problem of Evil" in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Gnomeinclaychair (Member # 2926) on :

Okay, I've got another one for ya I'd like an opinion on. It's older and I haven't looked at it in awhile so I can take a really fresh look at it.

I wrote it as kind of an anti-City of Angels. I mean, if angels wander around doing stuff, maybe their counterparts do too. The title is from the philosophical problem: How can God exist, being omni-benevolent, while evil exists in the world. It is NOT quite a religious story. I guess it's about morality. Er, it ain't small at 14,497 words. Maybe it can stand some trimming. Probably too big to be published as a short story, isn't it?

Here are the first 13:

I get all the tough cases. All the ones they can’t crack, I get and I crack ‘em. I’m famous for it. Ask anybody down here. There for awhile I was in retirement kinda. I was hanging out in Chemicals, cooking up new stuff for the streets. Wonderful stuff. Does all our work for us just about. I was working on a brand new batch of it -- I don’t know what it is yet, I always let the humans name the stuff -- when I got called up.

Being called up isn’t pleasant.

Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :

This seems to suffer from the very common mistake of being particularly vague about the details so as to surprise the reader's later or because the authur just doesn't think they are important.

My brain likes to be able to at least give the thoughts a name. Not always possible in first person without being awkward so for those (this) I may be more lenient.

Even when talking colloquial first person, punctuation should be correct, which is a pain in the a...rear when people don't speak with proper sentences or grammar.

I wouldn't read it further just because I think it is too vague. Forcing me to read between the lines is okay for picking up the details but for picking up things like that the protagonist is a demon or that they are in hell, well...the lines are a bit too far apart.

Posted by Leigh (Member # 2901) on :

I thought it was a little too vague. Knowing that the protagonist wasn't human earlier would have also of being a good thing as well. It also didn't grab hold of me and read, not many books can do that so I force myself to read them, and that is what I had to do then.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

The concept sounds very Screwtape, which may be good in some ways but it means you're up against the most serious kind of competition. And this opening isn't on that level.

One hint from Screwtape, devils can't actually create new pleasures (including drugs), they can only tempt people to take them in excess, or in the wrong way, or when it is forbidden. Now, you want to do things different, that's fine, but anyone who really knows much about drugs will agree with Screwtape, at least functionally.