Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Spree

This is topic Spree in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by robinlindh (Member # 3327) on :

”Freak!”
“Jody; go sit on the bench.” Coach Lopez had no time for Jody’s outbursts.
“She can’t play. We always lose because you let her play.”
“Jody, the bench!” Jody threw her designer cap to the ground and stomped off the diamond, leaving a faint trail of dust behind her.
“Okay Spree, try it again.” Spree held the bat up just like she was taught. She bent her knees and nodded her head for the ball. [I can do this, it is so easy.] Spree saw the ball flying toward her, she took a deep breath, reached back and swung her arms as hard and as fast as her muscles would allow.
“Strike two!”

[This message has been edited by robinlindh (edited March 29, 2006).]

[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited April 01, 2006).]

Posted by tchernabyelo (Member # 2651) on :

This is more than 13 lines so it's going to get edited down as soon as KDW spots it. Please check the rules before posting; they're there for good reasons.

This doesn't grab me. It's a kid who isn't good at sports. I was a kid who wasn't good at sports. There are millions of us out there, and I don't see anything yet to make me think this one's going to be more interesting than any of the others. Your characterisation and scene-setting are utterly plausible, but just... well, to me, not inteeresting.

Starting with an unattributed line of dialogue is often regarded as a no-no. It gives us no context and no idea whose POV we're in. We're actually in Spree's, here, but we don't know that, really, until we get to Spree's own thoughts.

Oh, and I figured Jody as a male name at first, so when it turned out that she was a girl, that threw me out of the narration a little. Best to avoid that sort of thing by using a less ambiguous name.

Posted by Choccido (Member # 3299) on :

Yeah. I agree with tch up there on the "It didn't grab my attention part". The name, I knew was a girl... And although the story is called "Spree" you should focous on Spree. Not Jody. Anyways, why is there a girl on the team if she can't play? It doesn't usually work that way... So... Work on it, or no one will have an interest in this story.

Posted by Ray (Member # 2415) on :

Give us the genre, word count, and what you want us to do: critique just this or if you want the whole thing read. Also, as tchernabyelo mentioned, keep the thirteen lines rule in mind.

I didn't have a problem that the girl wasn't good at sports. I was never into sports, but that hasn't stopped me from enjoying other stories with sports in them. If a character cares about sports and I care about the characters, then sports are gonna matter to me while I'm reading the story.

I'm not hooked because of the dialogue. There's too much of it at once, and I don't know what's going on. Is this the beginning of the game, the end of it, somewhere in the middle? What age are these girls? How far into the season are they? How does this team get along? You need to set the stage first and make me care about what's going on before you dump all this dialogue in. As it is, you haven't given me any reason to care.

Posted by Mig (Member # 3318) on :

This might work better if you settled on one POV instead of switching between first person and third person omniscient.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

I'd agree: pick a POV.

Also give us more tags and names, as in

"Freak!” Jody said. Spree disgusted her. The team was always losing because the girl couldn't bat even an easy ball. [POV; speaker; who the freak is; her sex; and what the sport is -- all right here.]

I could be interested in this. I already dislike Jody (so maybe she shouldn't be POV). I have some respect for coach. I don't see this as about Spree's difficulty with sports, but as a conflict between the in girl and the outcast -- which does interest me.