Item Reviewed: "The End is Where We Start From"
Author T4tunes
Reviewer: Max Griffin π³οΈβπ
As always, these are just one person's opinions. Always remember Only you know what is best for your story. I've read and commented on your work as I would try to read my own. I hope you find something here useful , and that you will discard the rest with good cheer.
What I liked best
I've already written to you separately, so you know I enjoyed this story. I totally identified with the Retiree, with what he wants, and with his doubts and hesitations. I believe that characters are where all good stories start, and you've got one who is credible and readers will want to cheer for--especially readers who want to be writers!
Plot
Hitchcock famously said that the audience cares about the characters and that the plot is there to give the characters something to care about. There's a lot of truth in this for fiction writers.
Your protagonist has a goal: find a fulfilling way to spend retirement. He's also got an obstacle--there are lots of alternatives, and risks associated with each. The he's settled on has further risks of failure or even public ridicule. Attaining the goal is also important--the stakes of not achieving his goal. Work has given his life purpose. Now that work is gone, where will he find purpose? So, we've got goals, obstacles, and stakes, so we've got the basic building blocks of plot. Good job!
Style and Voice
This story uses a mix of an omniscient narrator and a third person limited narrator.
In omniscient narration, the author stands outside the fictional events, looking in. The author knows the internal thoughts of all the characters; in fact, the author knows everything.
This narrative style dominated 19th century literature and continued well into the 20th. However, it has all but disappeared from commercial fiction today. About 30% of all contemporary fiction uses a first person narrator, while the overwhelming majority of the remainder uses third person limited.
In third person limited, for each scene the author chooses one character to provide the point of view. The reader can know what that character sees, hears, smells, and otherwise senses. The reader can know what that character thinks, as well. But the reader has to infer these things about all the other characters through their words and deeds. The idea is that the author places the readers into the head of one character, and then the readers encounter the fictional world through that character in a holistic manner, the same way we encounter the real world. That's supposed to help draw the reader into the story and thus into the fictional world.
A novel can--and usually does--have many point-of-view characters, but there should be only one for each scene. Generally, a short story uses only one POV character.
Now, I said this story is a mix. Surely, there is only one character: the Retiree. Thus, there are no head-hops or other similar slips into omniscient narration. What I did find, though, are places where the story stops while the narrator intrudes to tell the reader things. In the line-by-line remarks below, I'll focus on these in more detail. In my comments on your opening paragraph, for example, I tried to be pretty specific about ways the narrative falls into telling instead of showing, and to suggest ways to do more of the latter and less of the former.
Showing and not telling is the hardest thing to master in fiction. It's such a blazingly simple concept, and so insanely difficult to achieve. It's especially difficult for authors who have done a lot of technical writing--like both you and me!--where the emphasis is on clarity. All our training says "telling" equals clarity. Whether that's true or not in technical writing is debatable, but it's certainly not true in fiction.
I hope you'll see in the comments below how you might change some of the information from telling to showing while at the same time establishing point of view.
Scene/Setting
There is certainly enough for staging--I never lost track of where the Retiree was at. But I have to say it's pretty sparse. There is a lot of information you can reveal through setting. What does the kitchen or bedroom look like, for example? How about his study? Again, I've put a couple of examples of ways to interlace information with setting in the line-by-line remarks below.
Grammar
Comma Splices.
A comma splice occurs when you have two complete sentences joined by a comma where a period or semicolon should be used. I've marked one or more of these in the line-by-line comments below.
Adverbs. You don't overuse adverbs, but they show up enough to be worth a comment. You know what Stephen King says about adverbs
The road to hell is paved with adverbs. |
. I think he is correct. Adverbs are often a shorthand in which the author falls into "telling" rather than "showing." I try to use zero adverbs, since otherwise I'd sprinkle them all over the place like fairy dust. I've marked one or more places in the line-by-line comments below where I think you might consider a more precise verb or a touch more description rather than an adverb.
Just my personal opinion
One way to think of telling a story is that it is a guided dream in which the author leads the readers through the events. In doing this, the author needs to engage the readers as active participants in the story, so that they become the author's partner in imagining the story. Elements of craft that engage the readers and immerse them in the story enhance this fictive dream. On the other hand, authors should avoid things that interrupt the dream and pull readers out of the story.
Based on this story, I think you are (a) a writer with talent and potential; (b) genuinely interested in learning the craft of fiction. for this reason, I'm giving you a rather more in-depth review than I would ordinarily provide to a "newbie," as you describe yourself. I think you are serious and deserve a serious review, so you are getting one.
But I want to also be absolutely cleare: I like the story, and I especially like the Retiree. There are many places where we are deeply inside his head. He's methodical, he has a sense of humor, he's realistic, and has goals. Readers will identify with him and cheer for him. Since I think good stories start with characters, this is a really good story with an outstanding character. See above: you assuredly have both talent and potential.
Thanks for sharing and by all means keep on writing!
Line-by-line remarks
Your text is in BLUE.
My comments are in GREEN.
If I suggest a re-wording, it's in GRAPE.
The Retiree awoke before dawn. He put his shoes on.
Gradually, as the sleep fog lifted, it came back to him that no job was waiting. He was an ex-commuter. And it was not before dawn at all, it was after 8 AM, and the sun was above the trees and lighting up the bedroom window. He took his shoes off. He made his way to the bathroom sink, splashed cold water on his face, and he walked on down the hall to confront the new day.My Comment: Openings are critical in any work of fiction. Some editors and agents will decide whether or not to read your submission based only on your first sentence.
Your opening is your best opportunity to draw readers into your fictional world, to induce a dream-like state in which your words guide their imaginations. The readers become the author's active partners in imagining the fictional world, in a state of suspended disbelief. In crafting the opening of any story, it's the author's primary task to launch this fictional dream.
One of the best ways to draw readers into your story is to draw them into the head of your protagonist. Thus, when you start with your Retiree doing things and sensing things, you're doing exactly that. However, I've got some tweaks that might improve the immediacy and intimacy for the readers.
First, giving the Retiree a name--say, Fred or Ethel--will help readers identify with him or her. So, I'd suggest you personalize your character with a name. Second, think about the information in the second paragraph. Most of this is narrated, in the sense that a narrator, who is not the retiree, is standing outside the story telling the reader the time and other critical facts. In the same way you personalize the Retiree with a name, you could personalize these bits of information by putting them in the Retiree's head. By way of example, consider the following Fred squinted against the glare of the morning sun that streamed over the trees and into his bedroom. The clock on his nightstand read 8:13. Of course. No pre-dawn commute for him today, or ever again, now that he's retired. He plopped back on the bed with a grunt and slipped off his shoes. In the bathroom, the ceramic tiles cooled the soles of his bare feet while he splashed cold water on his face. Time to confront the new day and the puzzle of retirement.
This isn't very good and I'm sure you can do better--you have the mental picture of where he's and what he's feeling. The point is that it's got the same information as your paragraph, but it's about what's in Fred's head. Thus, I start with him squinting against the glare of the morning sun. I could just easily have the sunlight warm his cheeks or have him sense something else: that sensation puts the readers in his head, squinting or sensing right with him. Then he reads the clock on his nightstand, and we get his mental reaction: no pre-dawn commute today, or ever. Because the first sentence puts the reader in Fred's head, the readers will naturally infer the next sentences are in his head, too, including the thought about no commute. That little step of inference helps to draw the readers in. A few more sensations follow, then the final sentence foreshadows the content of the story: the puzzle of retirement.
Notice the example paragraph has exactly the same information or even a little more than your paragraph, but it's tweaked so that it's not an external narrator telling readers things. Instead, the reader in Fred's head, and hence in the story, sensing, feeling, and thinking.
A new day for a new beginning.My Comment: Your first two paragraphs launch your story, but this paragraph stops the story. It's that narrator again, standing outside the story, telling the reader facts. These facts are important, to be sure, but they should be tweaked so that you show them through the Retiree's words and deeds rather than through narration. For example, maybe he's got a file he's prepared of alternative ways to spend retirement. Or maybe the calendar is filled with things to do except starting today and forward, when it's a blank. That's both enticing and terrifying, so show both reactions. Maybe there's a card or watch or some memento from his retirement party that mentions his 40 year career--showing through scene-setting. Keep the story going by continuing to have the Retiree thinking, sensing and doing.
And there was writing. The career had required a great deal of it, all technical and as non-fiction as you can get (unless you count the long-term business strategies),My Comment: hahaha! Love it! Here, you're clearly inside the Retiree's head as he contemplates things. That little joke reinforces where the point of view resides, and also makes the Retiree likable.
It was really no contest. Writing should be the first pursuit. Probably. Or, maybe not.My Comment: Here, you've got deep point of view inside the Retiree's head. We're all with him now, uncertain and kind of dithering. Good work!
The Retiree sat quietly and listened to his inner artist and inner skeptic battle it out.My Comment: We all have fetishes, and one of mine is adverbs. "Sit quietly" in this case. He's musing, right? Later his tea is cold, we infer he's concentrating on his thoughts. The thing here is to paint a picture of what a person "sitting quietly" looks like. What is it like for Fred to experience sitting quietly? The adverb tells us he's not speaking, but I think you much more than that, so show him sitting there, musing, distracted, through his words and deeds. Maybe the cat stropes his legs and he picks her up and pets her, or even speaks to her. Give the cat a name that connects with the problem of the story or reveals something about the character. My cat is named Erwin Schrodinger the Cat, for example.
That sounded right, a community can be a place after all, so he narrowed the search and learned that communities came in a variety of shapes and flavors.My Comment: Comma splice
First, a writersβ circle. My Comment: this is more deep point of view musings...I'm starting to want something to happen besides the character thinking. See the cat above.
The Retiree had the sense that he had inadvertently wandered into the bedroom of a very serious young lady.My Comment: love the metaphor. I'd say the young lady suffered from hoarder's syndrome, given the chaotic array of things in her closet...but that's just me.
Over the next few days, the Retiree came back to the site and just played, messing around with a few word games and even entering a contest. My Comment: This is narrated summary of action. It's almost always stronger to show the action happening, real time, rather than tell us in summary what he did.
I only review things I like, and I really liked this story. I'm a professor by day, and find awarding grades the least satisfying part of my job. Since I'm reviewing in part for my own edification, I decided long ago to give a rating of "4" to everything I review, thus avoiding the necessity of "grading" things on WDC. So please don't assign any weight to my "grade" -- but know that I selected this story for review because I liked it and thought I could learn from studying it.
Again, these are just one person's opinions. Only you know what is best for your story! The surest path to success is to keep writing and to be true to your muse!
Thanks again for sharing this item. Keep on writing!
Max Griffin π³οΈβπ
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