TITLE: Other People's Things
GENRE: Literary, Adult
I hate this song. I push through to the next station on the radio. Too late, that song burrows into my brain and the whiny woman’s voice belts out inane lyrics over and over in my head. Great. Late as usual, but with any luck I'll avoid the biggest snarls of traffic. Here comes the rain. Please, no, I can’t be late for this meeting again; it sours the whole tone that already hovers around collective reproach.
Damn, my coffee burns as I take a sip. Still too hot. The rough patch on my tongue tickles as it rubs across the roof of my mouth.
Brake lights blossom in my windshield. Rain magnifies bulbous spots, red glare. What's going on? A dark shape cuts across the corner of my eye. Is that a man? I stomp on the brake pedal. I can’t stop. Everything slows, but God, I can’t stop. My car keeps careening forward.
The front-end slams into his body, a dull thud shakes the steering wheel. A face flashes by, and the body tumbles up and over. I’m still moving, the world blurs in the blood-smeared windshield. Circular cracks grow. Coffee falls across my lap, my legs burn. I strike another car. The airbag pops, punches my face while the seatbelt grabs my shoulders and wrenches them back. Spinning around fast, shards of glass fly at me from all directions, scratching my face and hands. My fingers stay locked in a rigid grip on the useless steering wheel.
This seems too talky and doesn't draw me in as a reader. I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing - be careful of strange descriptions/word choices.
I agree with Megs. This needs more of a hook. All we know about this character is that it's a person in a car which then crashes. Male or female? Age?
ReplyDeleteHmmm...this is a tough one, because while well written, it doesn't pull me in.
ReplyDeleteStarting with the accident should be intense, but because I really don't have any emotional connection to the protagonist, it feels distant.
And I'm usually ok with present tense, but when the plot is supposed to be intense and quick, like an accident, it's hard to pull off. In this section, the car accident part reads a little flat and slow for me to feel the intensity and speed of the accident. Too much description, or maybe too many full, flowing sentences to be the present tense, in the midst of an accident, flashes of sensation?
I will also say that the first two sort of stream of consciousness paragraphs don't really pull me into the character because the thoughts are so generic - they don't really show me who she is.
Maybe starting with something a little earlier, and showing more of the character so that the reader can be better emotionally invested with her by the time of the accident, would help increase the intensity and emotion. Then sharpening up the accident so it feels intense, would also help the impact be felt by the reader.
good luck.
The writing here is strong and visceral, and the sensory details are great - the music, the coffee. Well done.
ReplyDeleteBut Emily captured a lot of my other thoughts. I don't have a good enough sense of the main character yet to really feel involved in this story. I'm too remote still, so despite the fact that it's a very intense scene, I'm not drawn in the way I should be. I think all it needs is to open in a slightly different spot. Tell me a little more about the MC before diving into the accident.
Good luck!
This is well-written, but gives me the sense that I'm watching the opening to a movie scene that's trying hard to grab attention by throwing too much action at me without context. (Of course, it's only 250 words, so....) As others have said, I, too, like to know something, even a tiny thing, about a character before I care whether they are in jeopardy or not. I can see you easily fixing this by writing a little more about why the character can't miss this meeting again. Why is that of importance? Make us care about the jeopardy of the MC by giving a hint to the consequences of the meeting that we now know will be missed.
ReplyDeleteAlso, can hands stay locked on a steering wheel after the air-bag is deployed? I don't know, but that image jarred me a bit.
Good work!
Another present tense! I suspect that it has to be done REALLY well to work, and that's why I'll say that I really couldn't get past it on this one. #5, 7, & 8 were also present, and it wasn't as jarring. I'm trying to figure out what it is that makes it jarring, and this is all I've come up with. I'll share it, in case it's helpful to you.
ReplyDeleteI think that, with present, absolutely everything has to be filtered through a very strong POV. The sentences that jarred me out are the ones that are statements of action or scene that have no POV involved, like "The rough patch on my tongue...." I think it would work better if burnt tongue was portrayed in the way we thinking of it. We don't think, "My tongue is rubbing the roof of my mouth." We think: "Darn it! And now my tongue's burnt." We don't think, "I stomp on the brake pedal." We think: "Car, please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop!"
Do you see what I'm getting at? We get the feeling that this person is narrating her life, and that keeps us outside the scene, rather than pulling us in.
How to fix it? I honestly don't know, as writing in first person present tense is beyond me.
I guess you'd have to find someone who does know how to do it, and study exactly how she describes what's going on around the person, without the line-by-line narration.
The first two paragraphs seem to be from a different novel than the second two, tone-wise at least. The first two paragraphs, the narrator seems pretty aggravated, like the type of person who will go off on an unprovoked rant in an instant.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the story picks up in the 3rd paragraph with "A dark shape cuts across the corner of my eye," but it gets bogged down with all the telling details in the 4th paragraph.
I generally have problems reading present-tense narration - I can't get my head around it and convert it to past. But. Present should give us a sense of immediacy/urgency, and I'm not feeling it here.
The writing is strong, but I am in agreement with the other commenters in terms of execution, etc.
The first two pars are superfluous. The crash itself isn't quite dramatic or different enough. Sorry...
ReplyDeleteI think the crash description is good but could be grittier. I'm also distracted by the present tense, but with the crash scene I see how it works. I'd like to know what this is about --- so I'd continue.
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting to start with a crash, but I think I would have been inclined to stop reading after the first two paragraphs--they are a bit dry and so far this character seems like a very flat every-person. As a reader, I find it hard to visualize the crash, since we don't know age (other than over 16) or gender of the driver.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this seems so far to lean more commercial than literary.
Best- SA
I like the idea, and I love "Brake lights blossom in my windshield" - beautiful, vivid. Bits of striking imagery are scatter throughout.
ReplyDeleteStill, the first two paragraphs especially are an odd mix of character thought and author commentary (consider "it sours the whole tone..." is this something someone would actually think while driving in the rain?). I'm as yet not emotionally invested in the character enough to be swept up in the horror of the car crash.
Not really hooked. You have the chance to catch our attention with interesting character details, and I don't think you've done it with these first two paragraphs. She's late for work (who isn't?), burns her tongue on coffee, has a specific taste in music, though I'm not sure what it is.
ReplyDeleteI think you could tell us so much more about her with the addition of little details. You say, "I can't be late for this meeting again" - what kind of meeting? And why again? Those are the things I'm interested in.
Good luck.
I was completely hooked! Although you may want to consider a screenplay... I thought it painted the picture beautifully.
ReplyDeleteI hope I'm not repeating what other critters have said, but I haven't read any other comments.
ReplyDeleteThere were two things that threw me off here: the lack of character development and the pacing.
In your first paragraphs you give us jumpy, stream of consciousness thoughts but no details about the character. Why not "I hate this song. I don't understand why anyone likes [insert the name of the song]? This is an easy way to tell us about your MC.
Another thing: your stream of consciousness approach sets a quick pace, but that place slows down at the wreck. Where we jump from thought to thought in random order at first, you slow down and describe every tiny piece of a crash which should take seconds to happen. This seems backwards to me. Why not slow down the pace of the opening paragraph, give us more details there, and then give us only a few details of the crash. If I were in the middle of a car wreck, I'd notice my legs felt hot but not that my coffee had spilled...not until after the car stopped and I checked my pants, at least. This is an example of something you can trim.
Keep working on it though, because a car crash should be a great opening if you can pull it off right.
The point at which the brake lights blossum begins great action. Before that, if the background to the narrator brings the pace down. If it was shorter with only enough to justify her mood/attention span, and then the brake lights blossum'd--- it would be stronger, imho.
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't hook me. You start with a protagonist who's annoyed by the song on the radio, which in turn annoys me. It's not hooking me in at all, it's making me want to stop reading, and I also stop caring about the character, which means I don't care when he has a car crash. I'd start somewhere else, maybe with the third or fourth paragraphs. I'm also not a fan of the present tense in this case.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't grab me. The first paragraph feels very jerky, and the present tense only adds to that.
ReplyDeleteI rarely care for present tense, but sometimes it works, though in this opening it's not grabbing me. I almost stopped reading after the first three sentences.
ReplyDeleteI think it could work if you drop the opening two paragraphs and begin with the third. I did want to know more by the end of your entry. I must say, though, that if you don't provide me with some sort of information about the character, I'll quit reading within a half page more.
I do think you write well, maybe you are trying too hard to be literary and artsy rather than simply telling your story.
Good luck!
The opening thoughts were too random and generic, I think. They don't tell us anything about your character.
ReplyDeleteWhen you got to the crash, you described it in terms a writer would - spinning around fast, shards of glass fire at me - but it's present tense, so you should be telling us what's going on in your character's head. If you were in that car crash, would you say, 'spinning around fast etc,.
No. You be going 'Oh my god, I'm gonna die!' That's what this needs.
I do have to say I didn't like the character but they were driving in the rain and playing with the radio and fussing with the coffee when they should have been paying attention to the road. Doesn't have anything to do with the writing or story, but the instant dislike was there.
The opening was a bit detached -- anyone could have been having these thoughts so there's no special character attributes to really hook onto. Perhaps if there's some specific details inserted, like what song is playing and why that morning, that song bugs the protagonist so. That would give me something to perhaps identify with.
ReplyDeleteAlso the voice throughout sounds a little choppy. The way the narrator describes the rain and traffic is the same voice used to describe the accident so there's not as much drama as I'd expect. It might be effective to start out smoothly and then switch to the abrupt descriptions as the accident is happening in order to show the turning point.