Hi Dr. Bob,I'll throw in my 2-pence (and good luck with the too-long WOTF piece, I tend to write long as well).
Overall, nicely written, though I'd advise getting out the adverb/adjective chainsaw out.
quote:
The answers didn’t fit the questions.
This prompts in my head the question: Which question and which answers? I suspect this is one of those 'show, don't tell moments'. What I mean is, the concept of an entire test where the answers seem to have no relation to the questions being asked is a neat idea, but to make it 'hooky', I'd suggest showing, perhaps by writing a question out on the page, maybe as internal dialog of the MC, followed by the nonsensical answers. Thus the reader would wonder what the heck kind of test is this, rather than being told that the MC is wondering what the heck kind of test is this.
quote:
pixely small black and white photos
May I suggest cutting either pixely or small but not using both as a means to improve sentence flow here?
quote:
Its machine cut edges were precise and sharp as if purposefully designed to cut those who took up its challenge.
This is my favorite sentence in the scene. It lends menace to something simple like an answer sheet. I actually do like the second use of the word 'cut' because of the portion of the sentence I highlighted in bold. This has more to do with the music of the sentence rather than the meaning.
Certain letters of the alphabet have hard sounds to them, and 't' is one of those letters (there is a term for letters with this effect, but I forget it). So the pairing of 'cut' and 'took' really carry this sentence. So here, the repetition didn't bother me. Even though you didn't hyphenate "machine cut", I read it as such, which then tweaked the way the word sounded in my mind's voice, making the repetition less problematic for me.
So, IMHO, you could either hyphenate, 'machine-cut', or change the first use of 'cut' here, perhaps just using 'machined' or 'machine-fine'. I'm sure you can do better.
quote:
the scree of their pencils sounding like scurrying rats.
I agree, scree is a nice verb. It also illustrates the above point, with the word's scree and scurrying playing off each others first syllables to make a musical sentence.
[This message has been edited by Osiris (edited July 26, 2011).]