Hi Champ

I’m reviewing your entry, "Invalid Item" , for the Summer round of "A Romance Contest" .


The Prompt
This contest doesn’t ask a lot in relation to prompts, so that entries can be quite varied. However, it still does require romance (being a romance contest) and the presence of a season. For this round, the season is summer and while we got a glimpse of summer in the opening paragraph and later when Joey is with his parents, it didn’t really make its presence noticed otherwise I must admit, I do find summer hard to fictionalise myself – it doesn’t have the new growth of spring, the autumn colours or the snow of winter to call upon – but I think you missed a great opportunity when Frank is at the school house. Now that the early morning has passed, surely it must be getting hotter and I’d expect heat shimmers, sun glinting off windows, and Frank to now be feeling the heat, especially when he sits outside talking with Joey. For example, Frank could be picking at his shirt where it’s sticking to him with sweat, or he could even be glad for his hat so his head won’t get burnt. Just little things to remind us about the season.

The romance aspect puzzled me – mostly because I didn’t really find any, at least not the ‘usual’ sort between two people, which is what this contest is based upon. You do bring romance in – romanticising youth and the freedom of childhood, and Frank does gain some feelings for Joey though I felt this was more because his actions/life renewed Frank’s life, refreshed his own desire for life. And we do have the romance of history sprinkled through the story, as well as the vengeance aspect for a love/life lost. However, I think this would have gone more towards the expected romance if you’d brought Frank’s own story into the same sort of vein – perhaps family in the cemetery, or he’s just lost his wife and is lost himself


The Plot
The plot itself is reasonably simple but we don’t really get to the core until nearer the end, when we find out that Frank is an author, a jaded one by the sound of it. He thinks of his stories simply as lies, and it takes young Joey to remind him that there’s more to a story/tale/fantasy than it just being lies. It seems as if Frank gains some sort of renewal on his own life after being immersed in a ghostly one, as if his heart has been prodded back to life. This need for a restart would make for interesting telling – or perhaps an opening to this story.

I love visiting old cemeteries myself and I’m a crier too – I totally get Frank’s reverence for the site and how he cries; the youthful ages would have started me off! So sad to think of lives cut short, and more so when lives are cut off by other means, and the ‘other means’ here help keep the action going, keep Frank puzzled and amused all in one, and opening up his own feelings.

I really liked the end – how the image of Joey tied in the stories that Joey had told Frank, and also how the lassoing came to be quite a feature of the story. I’ve tried lassoing, anyone who can hit a target 100 times in a row surely is a champion!!!! I would like to have known, though, if members of the town knew about Joey’s manifestation, and I’d have liked Frank to have brought it up somehow because it was clear from Joey’s conversations that others had seen him before. Though Frank at some point goes from disbelief to belief, he never seems to not act ‘normal’ about it. Maybe that’s because he’s a writer, I don’t know, but wouldn’t someone notice him looking a little frazzled perhaps?

I did have one main question – why is Frank visiting the cemetery or even the national park? Knowing that would have given some sort of basis for him being in the town. Perhaps he’s heard of ghostly manifestations or maybe he’s on his way to somewhere and something called at him to stop a while. Without a smidgeon of a reason I felt myself a little lost on the whole ‘why?’ he was in this particular spot.


The Characters
Joey is the more ‘defined’ character, I think, but that seemed to be because Frank acted almost like a first person narrator and his gaze was outward and we didn’t learn a lot about himself therefore. Also, beyond knowing that Frank was balding there wasn’t a lot told about him to allow me to get a physical description. Joey, on the other hand, we know his eyes, hair colour, what he’s wearing, and you describe all these attributes nicely. I loved the ‘dog eared’ corners of the pockets, such a wonderful visual of well-worn clothing; dog-eared presumably because he so forcibly shoves his hands into the pockets, ripping the stitches. You also described his demeanour well – the happiness and the sadness, the ‘not quite here’-ness. I’m quite the fan of having ghostly characters myself and I loved that you treated Joey as if he was entirely real, that the reader had an inkling that something was up but wasn’t quite sure. I did wonder about the chewing gum, but I’ve got a ghost who lends his scarf to a ‘living’ person so I can’t say you’ve got it wrong at all!!

Thought we might not be able to ‘see’ Frank all that well, I think we can understand quite clearly that he’s a writer, even before he roundabout tells us. His imagination in the cemetery and in the school house gives him away. I love that he gets right down to having the children hear the pots and pans banging. You’ve given Frank a good handle on his five senses. I would like to have seen a little bit of recall from his own school days, though, since it seems to be that he didn’t enjoy school (at least he says he skipped whenever he could); tying the past and present in would have been a nice touch, maybe given more of a link to Joey himself. I get the feeling that he sees himself pretty much like this sad kid, without friends but with an audience to play to.

Now, though I don’t think the story really had the romance that the contest was after, I do still feel it had romance. And in particular this came through when Frank sees Joey with his parents. Their love for each other is clear and the whole idea of seeing into the past is somewhat romantic in and of itself.


The Technical Things
Few typos here and there, mostly around punctuation, and a couple of things I was puzzled over.

The questioner asked. – since we have a question that precedes this it’s almost in triplicate that we have a question, when you use ‘questioner’ and ‘asked’ here. I’d be inclined to simply remove this particular bit, and let the spoken question stand on its own.

Inscriptions – I expect everyone’s got an opinion on how to ‘show’ these but I don’t think you need the speech marks, unless you’ve got someone reciting them (which it didn’t sound like). The italics ‘show’ enough.

… as he makes a fool of visitors… – it’s the tense that stopped me here. You write in past tense and then every so often present tense (like ‘makes’) pops up, and it’s quite noticeable. Good lord, we are in 2016! is another prime example (though this could be tempered by putting it into italics to show a ‘present’ thought).

Frank wanted him to stay, but he wouldn’t, not here. – this latter part of the sentence only really makes sense if Frank actually asked Joey to stay. If he doesn’t, then how does he know Joey won’t stay. A little bit of clarification required here.

…end of the day. See the children… – use a comma and small ‘s’ on ‘See’ here, rather than the full stop otherwise the latter sentence is a fragment and doesn’t quite make sense.

time-honored tradition – I expect you mean that ‘howdy’ is a traditional greeting back ‘in the west’ but it sounds a little odd here since Frank’s only just met Joey and this is the first time he’s said ‘howdy’ to him. It’s sort of not ‘time-honored’ to me so I wonder if another wording choice could be used, or maybe even ‘western’ tacked on between ‘time-honored’ and ‘tradition’?

The boy had used Frank’s name. – right, I couldn’t find where Frank had actually introduced himself. Joey gives his name at the cemetery but it doesn’t seem that Frank reciprocated. So, if he hadn’t told Joey his name, then Joey saying it should produce quite a reaction.

“Yep!’ Saturday… – just remove that single quote here.

… until dead, the old man said… – needs a speech mark after ‘dead’ at the very least, but I think because the proprietor is also ‘speaking’ within his speech you need to put speech marks around that quoted speech (rather than italics).

You can still find it; it’s hard now… – these two seemed to contract each other just a bit, so I think ‘but’ might be a good thing to use in place of the semi-colon.


Overall Impressions
Overall, a nice story, one that I think could definitely be expanded to give some of Frank’s own background, and I’d love to know what he did later – after he’d left the town. Or… did he go out to find the stone with Joey’s inscription? However, with regards to the contest this story was written for, I do think there was a lack of romance (and one could say that the fact romance/love doesn’t feature as one of the three genres is rather telling).


Thank you so much for entering "A Romance Contest" , and we hope you come back again! And - if you have any queries about anything above, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Kind regards,
Osirantinous



My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .