Hi PureSciFiPlus
I am reviewing your story as a judge for "Short Shots: Official WDC Contest" . Thanks for entering!
Reader Impressions
I’ve got to say, this is one weird story. I spent turns at really liking it and being very confused. My ‘things that niggled’ section is very long but that’s mostly because I felt those things mentioned had me spend more time trying to understand what you were writing than letting me just read and get into the story (which actually has a really intriguing plot).
Elizabeth has a secret background that has her wanting to get out of the town, and she’s hoping the sudden appearance of the Christmas sandman is her ticket out. That’s huge right there, but we never find out just why she wants to leave and why she’s pinning her hopes on the sandman. Knowing those things would help the reader get behind her as she pushes for explanations. I especially want to know why a news crew would come to do a piece on her? What’s her background that makes them go down this route? Has she reported on weird stuff before? Has her background sent her slightly bonkers. You’ve got such great (hidden) material here to work with that I would love to see this story fleshed out, with a lot of ‘before’ and a good deal of ‘after’.
I live in New Zealand, where it’s summer for Christmas, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen or even heard of anyone building a sandman. So I definitely understand how one suddenly showing up on a beach would attract attention. Certainly if it appeared overnight. I think if it happened here we’d just attribute it to drunken partygoers! And a sandman that is not washing away with the tide is definitely plain strange.
I felt for Elizabeth when she hears about the news crew and Brian saying he had thought about her creating the sandman. That’s got to be tough on the confidence, but… knowing that background would help us understand not only Elizabeth’s thoughts and feelings but also everyone else’s.
Though it was kind of classic when Elizabeth kicks the sandman. It’s kind of a frustrated action that anyone might carry out. I did wonder, though, how big is it? If she’s aiming for the head I can’t imagine it’s that tall unless she’s unleashing a fabulous kick-boxing kick I could see her doing this and it was a great moment. Elizabeth is frustrated and stressed and beating up this secretive sandman would be just the thing to do! Gotta release tension somehow.
I loved this: After several minutes of just staring in shock, Elizabeth finally spoke. “You can’t be the one who created that Christmas sandman.” It’s the perfect combination of action and speech and portrays her feelings exactly. And so hooks us into reading more – who is she speaking to and why does she sound so disbelieving? (But then I also when ‘who the heck is Peter? Because he comes out of the blue. For a second I had him confused with Brian.) Does she put her hands on her hips when she mentions her daughter? I imagined her doing so, in a sort of disappointed but totally curious manner. (Also, had to grin at Peter’s explanation at why the sandman is so close to the sea. I could really see them losing control of the rolling body and being in a panic as they chased it down the beach. Loved, also, that Peter seemed pretty blasé about it.)
Watch your ending. I felt it was anti-climactic. We didn’t get to hear Peter’s reasoning or even his answer about Judith. We get a vague reference to ‘why’ the sandman but there’s not a great deal in these final paragraphs that satisfies me. Elizabeth doesn’t want the story printed, even though she wrote it, so we presume it carries a heck of a lot of personal history, and the kids made the sandman for Judith because she wanted to move to the city too (or wanted to move because her mum did, that wasn’t clear) but we still don’t know WHY. It sounds like the story is going to rake dead embers and bring them back to life and we get a whole ‘do you want me to print, I don’t want you to print, I need you to print’ to and fro going on that doesn’t give us anything either. Those two final sentences – they carry huge huge weight but without explanation or even a figment of a clue they felt like deadweight. Elizabeth wanted to be a reporter and now she suddenly doesn’t? Why, why, why, why…. Which equals ‘write me a backstory and a sequel please’
Things that Niggled
I sometimes struggled to get some of your sentences and paragraphs making sense, which is hard because your story is a good one and has potential for something far more involved. But if I have to put all my time into trying to decipher what you’re saying, I lose the story itself. Often you repeat the same idea in multiple ways across a few sentences or even paragraphs (something I remember the last time I read one of your contest entries). It’s distracting. One example of this is when Elizabeth is in the office with Brian. She’s sent him the photo of the sandman. They have a conversation that sort of goes (totally paraphrased) like this:
Elizabeth: there’s a story in it.
Brian: do you think there’s a story?
Elizabeth: I think it’s a story.
Brian: I don’t see a story.
Elizabeth: there’s a story.
And afterwards, as Elizabeth is driving home from this meeting we get two more renditions about the story. I got to the point, honestly, where I was like ‘give up about the story!’ And that’s wrong, because we can see from Elizabeth’s comments that she’s pinning her hopes on the sandman being her ticket out of the town, hoping it will propel her to a better journalism job in the city. I get that she’s fixated, but it needs to be turned about so that we’re hoping alongside her not wishing she’d just shush. One way could be to use another word for story – scoop, article, item, report, feature etc. Even ‘something’ would work…As soon as I saw that I knew there was something about it. Especially, after everyone else started showing up there.
A query – when Elizabeth is by herself, is she always speaking out loud or is some of it thought? There seem many times when it’s a thought but because you use speech marks, I can’t quite tell. I talk to myself a lot, sure, but I’m not spilling massive sentences like she is. One example where I felt that thought was ideal was when Elizabeth pulls into her drive, questioning why she thought it was a story and did she want out of town so badly. (By the way, both sentences need a question mark.) She sounds tired and as if she’s losing hope and is definitely questioning herself. Yeah, she might mumble but this seems an ideal place for doubtful thoughts to be running around in her head.
small group of six tween – I think you could use ‘small’ or ‘six’ but together it’s a duplicate. Also, when Elizabeth zeroes in on one of the tweens, it’s not clear at all this Judith is actually her daughter. This is because you’ve not given Elizabeth’s name before. I only twigged she was her daughter when I got to the end of the story. When we first meet Elizabeth (second para) you could say Elizabeth Denton smiled. That would clear things up when we meet Judith.
Elizabeth sat down in the chair opposite Brian after she entered Brian’s office. – this is an example of detail you don’t need to worry about because the reader has already presumed it. Ending this sentence after ‘opposite Brian’ is not at all detrimental to the sentence and we know the latter simply because she is sitting opposite Brian and it’s likely to be his office because that’s where they had their last conversation. A little later, when they’re talking about the possibility of a hoax, just make it more clear who’s speaking. When you don’t indicate narrator, usually one reads as A, B, A, B, but a couple of times I think Elizabeth speaks twice in a row and that needs to be made clear. (Ha, you know how Elizabeth’s swears she didn’t create the sandman? Well, when she gets back to the beach that night it’s all ‘her creation’. Not a good way to pretend she didn’t make it )
Why did you call me? – this should be ‘didn’t’ if we take notice of Brian’s comment a few paragraphs later. So don’t forget to proofread, and ensure also that you’ve got all the speech marks where they should be and that questions end with a question mark.
I don’t now how I’m going to do it – needs to be ‘know’ rather than ‘now’ but this sentence and the one after it are a prime example of repetition, made more so with the ‘to do it’ from the previous sentence also. You could amalgamate these two latter sentences like I don’t know how, but I’m going to prove I didn’t do it.. Aside from cutting the repetition, it also sounds a bit more fist-pumping determination.
Watch the timings you’ve given around the sandman creation. Elizabeth mentions how she thinks it can’t have been created quickly, and yet she dismantles it in a few minutes. Something doesn’t match up there.
Closing Comments
I struggled with the way the story is written, feeling like I was taken away from the actual piece itself and had to spend most of my time in decipher mode. And I didn’t like feeling that way because under all that, you’ve got a fascinating story! I want to know why Elizabeth is so keen to get out of town. Yes, she wants to be more famous but what happened in that small town to make her need to escape it so much, to put such faith in a simple sandman to get her there. Indeed, to have her daughter design the hoax? Something powerful here that we don’t know. If we’d had a bit of that background, then Elizabeth’s drive would also have made more sense and I could almost have forgiven the relentless ‘is there a story, there’s no story, I’m sure there’s a story’ flow.
Thank you once again for entering "Short Shots: Official WDC Contest" . If you have any queries about anything above, don't hesitate to get in touch.
Kind regards,
Osirantinous
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