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comment by onehunna
onehunna  ·  3918 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: To Another Place

Hey hey hey. I just read this, and here is my feedback in textual form.

    All of a sudden, the booming presence becomes a gigantic hand that rips through the ceiling and picks Sperry up between thumb and finger.

Cut 'All of a sudden'. Phrases like this one and 'suddenly' tend to do the opposite of what you're intending. They make action seem less sudden to the reader. The action speaks louder on its own. 'The booming presence becomes a gigantic hand that rips through the ceiling and picks Sperry up between thumb and finger.' Much better.

    Sperry’s protests prove so unsuccessful that he wound up wiggling himself into a mini coma.

Abrupt tense change here ('wound' turns to 'winds').

    Sperry is unresponsive, so the giant finger nudges him awake.

This is just one example but this sentence could be improved dramatically (as well as the audience's image of the scene) by describing a little more of Sperry's actions/condition. For example, try: 'Sperry lies there, naked and wet and unresponsive. The giant finger nudges him awake.'

    Faster and faster until his foot glimpses a spiky object on the ground, tripping him into a forward roll. Once inert, Sperry slowly crawls deeper into the water with more concern for his privates than his pain.

A few things here. 'Glimpses' is the incorrect usage of the word. Maybe try 'catches on' or something of that nature. Second, 'a spiky object on the ground' is much too obscure and takes us out of the moment. Try 'a thick patch of brambles' or 'a sharpened stick', anything but a nameless spiky object. Watch your adverb usage here as well. Does 'slowly' necessarily change the way we view Sperry's action, crawling? Adverbs aren't always bad of course but just something to note.

    “Where am I? This is nowhere near my show- Oh no! The water’s still running! That’s going to cost a fortune.” Sperry gives the water a backhanded smack.

Last part is a bit confusing--where is the water that Sperry is smacking? Water from the lake, right? Might be helpful for the reader to mention the lake again, especially since Sperry mentions water that has nothing to do with the water he is smacking. 'Sperry gives the water from the lake a backhanded smack.'

    Sperry gives a timid horizontal head shake.

This right here doesn't work for me. Cut the word 'horizontal' for suresies.

    Sperry is incredulous, “Who would I ask to ruin my roof? Why would I carefully lock the door if I wanted a big, cruddy hand barging in?” Sperry is agitated, you can tell by his neck strains.

So, saying 'Sperry is X' is unnecessary and clunky here. The reader is (or should be) able to tell Sperry is incredulous and agitated by the things he is saying and his body language. Speak through your characters and your characters will say everything else.

    Then it swipes it’s cupped self into the lake, bringing up hundreds of hidden creatures. They all get flung into the treetops.

'They all get' is clunky. Instead, try something like 'The massive hand flings the pile of lake-dwellers far into the treetops.'

    “…”

Cut this--the reader will create their own silences as the dialogue flows.

    “WHERE ARE YOU GOING!?!?”

Two pieces of general advice, (and typing that out makes me cringe, blanket advice for writing = bad news bears) a) try not to use all capitals with dialogue, but maybe that's just a me thing. Just seems clunky, our reader will be able to tell how loud the character is shouting via the context clues surrounding the dialogue. B) Watch your exclamation point use here--a lot of beginning writers love to splash !'s everywhere like cheap candy but eventually it gets to be too much. '!?!?' is unnecessary as well.

---

Work on your opening--right now it's not very 'grabby'. You want the reader to be interested immediately. You can try doing this with a simple one-liner that related to the story, maybe even have Sperry voicing his disgust for 'contaminants' that are mentioned later on, which might be even more important to do. Whatever it is, you need to hook the potential reader and entice them to continue. Of course, every piece of work isn't exactly going to start with a bang but I think you can do better than 'Sperry drapes his towel on the closed toilet lid.'

You build this story up quite a bit, with a lot of grand and mystical events happening throughout, but it leads us to nowhere. The omnipotent/all-powerful voice can't seem to give Sperry any answers, and at the end Sperry is left alone and without much resolution. Then at the end, this line in particular is confusing:

    Although he forgets about his four hour coma.

So was Sperry in a coma the whole time all of this craziness was happening? If so, (and this is just my opinion) the whole coma thing is a cop-out and leaves the reader feeling kind of empty afterwards. You just took us and Sperry on this wild journey but it was all in his head? Kind of unfulfilling.

Keep writing.





louderwords  ·  3917 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Much appreciate the feedback. I'll incorporate it into a rewrite, but I must point something out.

The ending is not a cop out. If you notice the sequence of the story, he falls into the coma AFTER the hand picks him up, therefore it's not "all a dream" because the hand was part of the story before the coma. I may have to make that clearer, but I didn't see how the ending could be interpreted as "he was in a coma the whole time" it was supposed to be a bit of a joke that he thinks he isn't very far from civilization, but is actually a huge walk through unclean woods away. I avoid those kinds of ending like the plague because I think those are a cop out.

Additionally, the hand and voice and ears aren't omnipotent, which is why they don't give him answers. I was showing how there could be these big, incredible beings that appear to be all-knowing since their abilities exceed those of a normal human, when in fact they are just as clueless and fallible as humans.