posted
Formless, watercolor blurs drifted through the drizzle of a gloom-beset morning. Empty of shape and form, phantoms of grind and greed went unnoticed by eyes affixed upon an unknown stairwell. The sounds of everyday bustle were muted by the curious mind devoting extra thought to an emerging riddle. Where did those stairs go? Inclined to everyday routine, Elly pondered how many breakfast minutes she had spent sightseeing from what had become HER light rail bench and never noticed the odd pockmark on the industrial complex across the street. The egg sandwich’s consumption became slower and ever less migrator as her mental gears shifted to low to handle the increased weight of the unexplainable. The stairwells decent to under the park of the complex in relation to
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Wouldn't be much of a writer if I didn't throw something to the wolves every once in a while. Have at it. It can only make me better. Can't let all the newbies have all the fun.
The fragment presents an odd admixture of artful subtext(s) and clumsy language. Three distinct subtext threads unite through the emotionally charged texture thread. That thread poses an ironic congruent opposite of reflective self-effacement and confident smugness.
That is an exquisite facet pair apt for satire's exalted arts, though somewhat shy of an ideal mark. The matter of liminality is on point, between superliminal and subliminal lays satire and irony's liminal mark ideal. Many fantastic fiction readers loathe to read a narrative with even a hint of "literary" quality. If a hint of the literary is superliminal, such readers feel stupider than a narrative: They feel they are lectured down to. Yet such literary facets transform a superficial and ephemeral, here today, gone overnight drama into a timeless and relevant expression, from which savvy and close readers obtain delights.
Subliminal is beneath ordinary notice. Liminal is at the transitional threshold of awareness. Hence, liminal is the ideal for maximum audience span, both and more nonliterary and literary readers.
Liminality is an especially poignant concept for fantastic fiction from folkloristics theory; that is, the transitional threshold times-spaces of mystic, supernatural, and paranormal metaphysics. Staircases and doorways, for examples, are liminal motifs -- at transitional thresholds between superliminal and subliminal awareness. General readers do not note such motifs nor their contexts and textures; savvy readers do. Mindful nonetheless, they influence all spectators, written word or otherwise audiences.
Oh no! Do not go down that staircase into the nether underworld. No, don't go through that door! Well, I told you so.
Fantasy and metaphysical horror are liminality's usual domains, though science fiction's as well for "harder" physical and "softer" social sciences' reality imitation features -- inter- and intradimensional portals are liminal, for examples.
The fragment invokes liminality's liminal aspects and are aptly given due attention and notice from the development of the staircase's mystery and appeal for Elly. Not quite strong and clear enough, though, to signal more than happenstance and writer intuition. If stronger and clearer a mite, the fragment would fully realize the dramatic and rhetorical and emotional situations of liminality. As is, Elly is only a mite curious and emotionally above her routine baseline. Her heightened emotional responses would subtend any loathsome literariness otherwise, for general readers' incitements.
Urgency is a key facet for such designs. Elly is less than urgent, a mere tick of self-deprecation emotion opposite to her self-confidence derived from her previous obliviousness for the staircase's extant presence. If she must see what the staircase means, what she must satisfy and resists, that is ample enough for thirteen lines' introductions. Intimations and implications of urgency, though, otherwise, the dramatic movement and outcome are telegraphed -- the plot tolled from the get-go.
A staircase and door are a common motif, a topos, too, for our host Orson Scott Card's milieu-type narrative, from the M.I.C.E. quotient: milieu emphasis, in which an agonist is displaced from a routine comfort zone place, time, and situation to an unfamiliar and life-upsetting, life-changing, and life-affirming time, place, and situation and, in the end, restored to a new normal emotional equilibrium, returned to sanctuary or equilibriated to the new place, time, and situation. In this fragment's case, those are workable motifs.
Work for me, anyway. If only their abstractness were balanced by the greater concreteness of their vivid and lively physical sensations, their visual sensations at the least, if not aural or tactile. touched with eye and ear, so to speak.
As is, the staircase and door are portrayed as vague summaries of their true natures. Telling details are wanted that invoke reader imaginations of their physical realities. The title, for instance: "The door". Huh, lowercase "door"? And another word or two wanted that expresses more with less word count. A thematically relevant and symbolic yet concrete descriptive term would do, something of a surprise for now and more later when further relevant.
A wild example: //Hobson's Door// invokes the Hobson's choice of no alternatives save the one obvious though resisted choice of entry through the door. And perhaps Hobson's Germanic meaning son of Robert, meaning bright flame, or brilliant red hair, a subliminal the latter.
Such diction and syntax and punctuation matters impede the fragment, too. Some discretionaries, some grammatical errors.
"Formless, watercolor blurs drifted" stray comma and a tautology between 'Formless" and "blurs" and later "Empty of shape and form". Duplicate syntax there, too, prefatory dependent, appositive content. "Formless" could be omitted with no effect.
"Empty of shape and form, phantoms" again, a tautology, plus wordy (of). "phantoms"" word choice is correct grammar though inapt for liminal and telling detail expression designs. Might specter be more apt? Or if a non-metaphysical motif, robots, drones, regardless, some emotionally charged label native to Elly's true nature.
"grind and greed _went_ unnoticed _by eyes_" static voice use of to go for to be, and passive voice "by eyes". Neither necessary or descriptive. Dynamic voice wanted. Plus, illogical, the narrator-agonist, whoever expresses the thought, notices.
"_affixed_ upon an unknown stairwell" word choice error. The term "affixed is exclusive to physical attachment, nailed, glued, frozen, etc., attached _to_, not upon, preposition error -- a confused visual sensation projection. Metaphoric uses of the verb allude to likewise physical attachment to of a metaphoric nature. Are these ayes affixed to the staircase from across the light rail platform? I see nails in eyeballs and bloody nerve and optic fiber bundles stretched across the platform in my mind's eye. "unknown stairwell" vague and flat.
"_The_ sounds of everyday bustle were muted by the curious mind devoting extra thought to an emerging riddle." Unnecessary adjective article "The" and an error. Another "of" one or more each of the first four sentences, diction wordiness and syntax sameness. "bustle" dated expression. "were muted by" passive voice.
"the curious mind" such definite article uses emphasize indefinite subjects to mean, in that case, those of curious minds, plural. The intent, though, is to intimate Elly's curious mind yet not introduce her by name yet. "devoting" and "emerging" unnecessary -ing words, a verb and a gerund. "riddle" see dictionary, not a riddle anymore than a puzzle, enigma or mystery maybe. The sentence wordy and syntax confused overall.
"Where did those stairs go?" A rhetorical question from whom? Narrator? Agonist? Neither's identity established from whom the thought originates, hence, a thought from a disembodied mind.
"Inclined to everyday routine, Elly pondered how many breakfast minutes she had spent sightseeing from what had become HER light rail bench and never noticed the odd pockmark on the industrial complex across the street."
Thirty plus words with no clear or emphatically necessary main idea and, "huh?" what a train wreck of ideas and errors crammed into a sentence.
Inclined's denotative meaning is sloped as like an inclined plane. If tendency for everyday routine is the connotative intent, the two-word verb's preposition particle is toward, or towards, not "to." Or for, or a directional adverb, up, down, etc.
"Elly pondered" attributed indirect thought tag. Wordy, a simple and all but invisible tag, like said, is thought, then a direct thought's verbatim expression more apt for prose.
"how many breakfast minutes she had spent sightseeing" patent on its face a personal to Elly thought, "breakfast minutes", yet missed occasion to express emotional attitude commentary, "had spent sightseeing", and unnecessary past perfect progressive tense shift. Spent, wasted? exhausted? Simple past tense of to sightsee is sightsaw, a stumbler for many readers, though. Like forewent is the simple past of forego, cause for a stumble though apt. Unnecessary -ing in any case.
"what had become" another unnecessary past perfect verb construct in short succession. Even was, though static voice, is clearer, stronger, and more apt.
"HER" use of all caps to signal emphasis signals loud vocal intonation. Do Elly's thoughts yell? Intonation emphasis italics indicated instead. Hatrack's UBB code applications allow italics format, of this open and close tag syntax: [i]italics format text[/i], or use convenient format buttons below new topic post and full reply form text boxes.
"light[-]rail bench" few readers connect "light rail" to commuter railroads, occasion missed to solidify physical sensation time, place, and situation where this occurs. Some metropolis somewhere? Bound for a bedroom suburb community? Indoors or outdoors? Presumably daytime, morning or afternoon? Hyphen indicated regardless.
"and never noticed the odd pockmark on the industrial complex across the street." Elliptical compound predicate clause, separate sentence wanted. A pockmark is a minuscule pit or zit from smallpox or acne, hardly an apt metaphor for a staircase entryway. "industrial complex", vague summary of what? "across the street" directly across from the bench and about the same width? Huh? Would one specific entity represent a whole industrial zone? Light industry? Heavy industry, merged industries: brewery, machine shop, yarn processor? Does Elly work at a factory?
"The egg sandwich’s consumption became slower and ever less migrator as her mental gears shifted to low to handle the increased weight of the unexplainable." What? an egg salad sandwich for breakfast? Fried egg and cheese, sausage biscuit? Eggs Benedict? "Consumption" huh? she eats the thing or something else consumes it? it self-consumes? Wordy. "became" another use of that word for static voice-passive voice. "slower and . . ." True verb there: slowed.
Likewise wrong-word error "migrator" Huh? Migrate, migrant, immigrant? no clue. migrated true compound predicate verb instead, or more apt mitigated.
"as" coordination conjunction error that joins two nonsimultaneous idea actions into a simultaneous action. Even true coordination conjunction and is less illogical.
"_to handle_ the increased weight of the unexplainable" unnecessary tense shift to infinitive, also, cliché. "increased weight" inapt and cliché metaphor. Vague summary portrayal of the unexplained, not unexplainable, either. Missed occasion for emotionally charged commentary.
"The stairwells __decent__ to under the park of the complex in relation to" "stairwells"? now more than one? Or singular possessive //stairwell's//? "decent-descent" are common terms on proofreader exams to test competence, along with desert-dessert. Decent means respectable, often of a moral nature, anymore, though, idiom for an ample quantity. Descent is to a derivation of an ancestor, a descendant, or descend stairs, for examples. Nor does the word take multiple preposition and adverb particles "to" and "under".
"park of the complex" huh? Now the industrial complex is an industrial park or is this a parkland for commuters who await the light-rail transit? Wordiness, too: "park of the complex", "in relation to".
More urgency, more apt language, stronger and clearer sensation description, consistent narrative point of view, and more foregrounded liminality would leave me hopelessly engaged. The multiple subtext threads and use of folkloristics' sense of liminality recommend the narrative's potentials overall. As is, though, I am disinclined to read further as an engaged reader.
posted
Thanks for sharing this, walexander. I'm hoping to share some more bits and pieces soon, so it's encouraging that these boards are still active.
On to my feedback, which does NOT come from an expert place - just my basic reaction to your text:
I found the fragment confusing. It raised a lot of questions, but not in ways that really intrigued me. Rather, as a reader, I felt frustrated to the point of wanting to disengage, not read on.
As the author, you might have legitimate reasons for wanting to frustrate your reader - to make her/him work for meaning and clarity. But I'm pretty lazy (as, I suspect, many readers are)... I would not keep reading without some strong motivation to push through my confusion – e.g. connection to the focal character; or understanding the reason for all the vagueness; or, at least, a belief that it would all come clear fairly soon. The fragment doesn't offer me these things yet.
"... phantoms of grind and greed..." – an interesting phrase – but what am I looking at? Pedestrians? Workers in the city? Literal phantoms?
I don't have any physical context or picture of the "unknown stairwell". And I'm unsure what 'unknown' means here... That it wasn't there before? Perhaps a different word choice would help (as per suggestions from extrinsic).
(Aside: extrinsic's comments about liminality are interesting; the association didn't occur to me. It would be worth exploring – if that's where you're going with this. For example, if Elly is going to cross some or other threshold, or if something or someone is crossing over towards her.)
"HER light rail bench" – she's in a railway station? She can't be on a train because her viewpoint is static ("across the street" implies that to me anyway). The emphasis on the possessive ("HER") was one thing that did intrigue me... Is Elly homeless, thus the importance of 'owning' this bench? Anything's possible. The verb "sightseeing" could imply 'tourist' though...
"... and ever less migrator...": this one stumped me completely. And it detracts from what is an interesting image (the mental gears shifting down to encompass this new, unexplained phenomenon [though what exactly the phenomenon IS still escapes me]).
These unanswered questions (and others like them) arise in about half of the sentences – and leave me feeling disengaged. Basically, I'm at sea. I do not have a sense of the world I'm in or what I'm here to witness.
I also can't tell if the 'blurring' is intentional or not – and if it is, why the effect has been applied. A few sharp images that ground this a bit more might change my perspective on it completely.
I hope this is of some use. And wishing you well with completing it! Warren.
Arts workshops generally and writing workshops particularly are a close analogue to marketing's focus groups. Focus groups evaluate consumer sentiments and product marketability, though from a marketer-producer perspective.
Focus groups favor marketing-naive participation, hence, unskilled product, service, and ad evaluators. A substantial difference from workshops is focus groups do not educate participants, want naive participants for their broad representation of mass-consumer bases and gullibilities. Although -- a dysfunctional, toxic even, cynicism behind that mentality.
By osmosis, design, instruction, Socratic irony, and more, workshops do educate participants, for writer craft skill growth at least, plus reading and comprehension skill growth and critical thought process growth.
And Hatrack participation waxes and wanes. Summertime lulls and doldrums are upon us.
walexander,
One other diction consideration stuck with me from my first read of the fragment. This one entails many if not most or all of prose's word-choice, grammar, and rhetoric challenges and delights:
"the drizzle of a gloom-beset morning."
"beset", like verb set, is a peculiar word, only the root form and progressive inflection -ing form, no difference between simple present and simple past tense forms. "beset" means adorn or harass, maybe besiege. The word is on the flat side of emotional charge and is a heavily handed superliminal term.
Another similar-sound word holds greater meaning and appeal potentials, plus, affords tense differences that suit hyphenated-word modifier reading and comprehension ease:
to besot, means to be infatuated or to make dull or stupid. Doubled or more artful meaning ambiguity potential there apt for both metaphor and irony's congruent opposites subtext. Then, and for tense consistency's sake: //the drizzle of a gloom-besotted morning.//
quote:Formless, watercolor blurs drifted through the drizzle of a gloom-beset morning.
Pretty, but because I lack context of where we are and what’s going on, and, who’s observing this, at this point, I can’t tell if this is how the world appeared to a character, if the blurs are only rendered so by the drizzle, or is they really are as noted, floating blurs (though without size data they could be teaspoon or elephant size.
In short, a teeny bit of context might focus the writing while leaving the view blurry.
quote: Empty of shape and form, phantoms of grind and greed went unnoticed by eyes affixed upon an unknown stairwell.
I give up. What’s a “phantoms of grind and greed?” And why does it look like a watercolor blur? Again, pretty and poetic, but devoid of context.
And, if the one watching the stairwell is ignoring them (and how is that possible? I sure as hell would respond to something like that in my field of vision) why open with them? The lack of context is getting in the way, I think. My initial reaction to this was that this person was there for a purpose. So when it turns out that it’s just curiosity…
quote: Inclined to everyday routine, Elly pondered how many breakfast minutes she had spent sightseeing from what had become HER light rail bench and never noticed the odd pockmark on the industrial complex across the street.
It feels like a lot of this story is still inside your head, and “filling in the blanks” for you as you read.
You open with blurs. Then you abandon them and turn to unknown eyes affixed to a stairwell for unknown reasons. You follow that with a comment on someone we know nothing about observing an “odd pockmark.” Is that the stairwell? Doesn’t seem so to me, but that may be that such stairwells to a basement are more common where I live.
Then we have this unknown woman slowing her thinking because of the “unexplainable.” But stairways are how we get to various levels. So why one leading under an industrial building would be unexplainable is…well, unexplainable. But that may be because I’m still wondering what the blurs are and why she doesn’t find them interesting.
So in the end, while I can appreciate the beautiful turn of phrase, I’m lost.
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Wow, there is some great advice from you guys. Thank you. Just got back from camping.
And E. I take it by all these lumps on top of my head you gave me with the copyeditor's manual you think this first draft has some errors in it?
I didn't hold out much hope for this story but now I'm actually intrigued to work on it a little.
This was part of a series of opening attempts to get something started. I threw it to the wolves in hopes of jarring a snippet loose that I might work with.
My own critique of it is lack of clarity. The shifting focus is not tied together well, it's too haphazard, no cohesion. I was experimenting with word phrasing, trying to capture, how you can stare ahead and yet see nothing until something out of place draws the eye.
If at first, you don't succeed . . . If the tenth time you don't succeed . . .
posted
"how you can stare ahead and yet see nothing until something out of place draws the eye."
That -- is the basis for "telling details'" features, plus allusive representation, metaphoric expression. Draws sensory notice, actually: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, emotion, etc.
What doesn't work for me is more a matter of figurative language inaptness, even missed occasions for apt language at all, than style manual principles or, actually, grammar handbook principles. If grammar is a tureen, if style is a bucket, and if rhetoric is a pond, then language is an ocean.
Though only intimated above, a standout of the fragment, for me, is a barely liminal complication of a mysterious staircase and doorway to, what, another milieu different than the alpha routine? and Elly's need for a personal, larger-than-life upset routine. Complication introduction through incidentalism appeals to me and is an area I've recently invested many the midnight candle burnt.
Incidentally, Elly notices a staircase into the underworld she had not noted beforehand. A potential incidental dramatic situation then is Elly contests with herself about response to the stairs' summons to a profound life alteration.
Solitary personas in dramatic tension are a challenge to write dramatically, often due to little or no contest interaction. They are in a suspended state of being, a stasis, static, a limbo, stuck in a proverbial bathtub and contemplate the navel. However, Elly interacts through and with her place, time, and situation, her setting and not personas, though; hence, she is physically still and solitary yet dramatically interactive and proactive.
If Digital Age technology would make solitaires of us all, then narratives that satirize that social trend are apt, timely, timeless, and present-sense relevant with large appeal promise and potential. An overall theme-dramatic situation then is an individual and a null society, neither socially engaged by nor socially engaged with society -- a null identity insecurity state ripe for, what, substance abuse? Or food, sex, wager, yada, abuse? How about a digital device abuse -- Elly gets her device fix with a breakfast egg sandwich, mayhaps a Mc-scratch and peel coupon access code -- insecurity coping strategy for a surprise? Role Play Game aficionado click bait and treasure skin reward obsession-complusion fix?
Meantime, incidentalism could use name exposition for the places Elly observes, and remarks about the sandwich's relevant sensations, yet be telling details that lend concreteness to the setting description: the light-rail stop, the industrial complex, the McD-ish sustenance life, yet as well allude to the dramatic situation, yet nonetheless strong and clear imply urgency and raise dramatic tension. And all in an economy of words.
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