TITLE: NO GARDEN OF EDEN IN PARADISE
GENRE: Women's Fiction
Adela, a jealous b****, has just realized the detective who investigating a murder is not interested in her but in the MC.
“Not so fast Mrs. Sinclair. Another question. Are you familiar with the artist Dorian Oberon?”
Shut up, Adela. Don’t tell him anything else. “Why the interest? Have you met her?”
“Only once. She’s quite a lady, wouldn’t you say?”
The Jaguar swerved sporadically, veering to avoid the fallen log and narrowly missing a family of geese slowly passing in the road. Pounding her fist against the dashboard Adela loudly cursed the woman she’d come to hate.
“She’s quite a lady, wouldn’t you say?” Unlike the drunken tottering fool he found crawling along the bar room floor. Or the loud mouthed bitch heard brawling with that greaseball gardener.
Damn her, she moaned. Did she envy Dorian Oberon or simply despise her? Both. Dorian could probably have any man she set her mind to without having to wave her pussy; even Sally’s hayseed and Phyllis Rainbow’s gorilla went ape over her.
“She’s quite a lady, wouldn’t you say?” Get real, Adela. What chance does a blithering drunk like you have against someone like her? She has it all. Beauty. Fame. Talent. The only talent the former Mrs. Steven Sinclair has is data processing, thanks to Penelope Green’s Secretarial School. And fucking a man till his cock drops off.
The engine restarted and she blasted the horn at the geese. “Out of the way, you geeks,” she screamed.
A sudden idea took hold and her anger quickly thawed. She wanted Dorian out of the way too. She knew just how to do it.
OK- I was initially confused at "Shut up, Adela" wondering who was talking and if you had forgotten quotation marks. Then, I assumed she was talking to herself.
ReplyDeleteI must admit I'm not a big fan of internal conversations. But when they do work and sometimes they are necessary- try italics.
I also didn't know this was a flashback. I thought the detective was in the car with her.
And then "the engine restated" I knew the car swerved but not that it died.
However, besides all that, I got a good sense of who Adela was and the last two paragraphs really clicked.
I love this voice, and would definitely read on if I could. I like the way Adela describes Dorian and the men who "go ape" over her, very nice.
ReplyDeleteAt first I was a little confused about where the scene was and who was actually there, but that's probably just the nature of DtN.
Still, you may want to make it clearer that the car stalled when she swerved. And that sentence may read stronger without the adverbs "sporadically" & "slowly"; I don't think you need either one.
"Anger quickly thawed" is good, but if you can re-write w/out quickly it may be stronger. Just a little nit-picky. I like the ending to this scene, nice downbeat. I'd stick around to see what Adela has in mind for Dorian.
I was very, very confused throughout almost this entire selection.
ReplyDeleteI know that part of the problem is the nature of the "Drop the Needle" exercise, jumping into the middle of a scene. I wonder if perhaps some formatting (italics?) was lost in translation, too.
Right off the bat, I'm confused by who is talking to Adela. A previous critter guessed that this conversation happened in the past and perhaps it did, but because Adela's thoughts (Shut up, Adela. Don’t tell him anything else.) are there, it reads more like something that's happening in the present. Again, since this is at the very beginning of the selection, there may have been a preceding paragraph that would make this clearer, but as it stands, I'm just lost. The rest of the scene doesn't indicate that she's talking to anyone, especially with her repeating the whole "quite a lady" thing.
Actually, I just re-read and I'm wondering whether she actually is repeating it, or just remembering it. If she's just remembering it, I would lose the quotation marks. With them, it reads like dialogue.
I agree with the other critters who were confused by the engine restarting thing. It was not clear at all that it had ever stopped running.
Also, I was extremely perplexed by the fact that she called the geese "geeks" at the end. I mean, it was funny, but I wondered whether it was intentional or not. Maybe it was!
And lastly, I think there are a couple of missing commas:
Not so fast, Mrs. Sinclair.Pounding her fist against the dashboard, Adela loudly cursed the woman she’d come to hate.
I was fairly confused, too. I thought she was talking to the detective in person and in the present but I'm not sure she is after I read more. Of course, it could all be chalked up to the DtN format.
ReplyDelete"Geeks" threw me off, too.
I got really confused about whose viewpoint this was until about halfway through and who was talking.
ReplyDeleteI did get a really good picture of the character Adela. She practically jumps off the page, which is great.
Like the others said, I didn't catch that the car had stalled, either.
I like the character of Adela very much. It will be fun to see what kind of trouble and mischief she gets into as the story progresses.
ReplyDeleteI, too, was confused about the internal dialogue, but it is often effective. You just have to be sure which is internal dialogue and which is external dialogue. For instance, you wrote: Damn her, she moaned. Since it didn't have quotation marks around it, I assumed it was internal dialogue. But then the moaned threw me. That sounds like something that was "articulated."
Also, in the sentence "Not so fast, Mrs. Sinclair," I didn't know if the speaker was referring to her driving or the conversation they were having.
"She's quite a lady, wouldn't you say?" is repeated twice. Is this intentional?
Why would she call geese "geeks?"
I assumed this was happening in the present. If it was a flashback, I completely missed it.
It might seem like a lot of picky, picky notes, but the reality is you have a dynamite character and I'm eager "to turn the page" to see what happens next.
I'm a little confused as were some of the other readers. Not sure why she's talking out loud to herself and having an internal conversation.
ReplyDelete"Damn her, she moaned." Can you moan in an internal conversation?
Lost me there.
Adela sounds like a very interesting character and I'd love to find out what she plans to do about Dorian.
Good Luck!
I think you've created an interesting, vibrant character here but I must admit I'm a bit confused and I'm not entirely wild about the way this is presented (talking/thinking to herself). Aside from that, I really like what you've managed to convey. I'd keep reading.
ReplyDelete