TITLE: Carly's Hearse
GENRE: Horror
My step dad's the kind of man who helps the armless beggar throw his-self under the bus. Seen Steven do it too when we was up in New York for three days after he married momma. The beggar went squish and everybody got to crying and screaming and crap. I looked at Momma. She shrugged and we got on the bus.
I was eleven.
When I was twelve Steven introduced me to mattress polo. Now he's got diabetes. He's always had the crap, least since he married momma, but his blood sugar's got real bad. He just had his arm amputated. The wrong limb if you ask me.
"Haven't you thrown yourself under the bus yet?" I says when Steven picks up the phone.
"I commit suicide you don't get nothing out of that insurance policy you got on me."
"Like I can afford me one of them. As long as you're dead, I'm happy."
"What the eff you want?" Steven says.
"Where's Momma?"
"If you called to ask her for money, she's gonna say no."
"'Cus if she don't she gets acquainted with your fist, blah, blah, blah. I need money for a hearse."
Steven mumbles like he had planned what to say but I done ruined it. Finally he barks, "What the hell you gonna do with that?"
"Drive you to your grave."
Steven laughs big. I imagine him wiping tears from his eyes.
"No," he says. "I don't got no cash."
Wow! What a fascinatingly horrible character you've created in the step dad! And I'm very intrigued by the narrator and his relationship with Steven.
ReplyDeleteI loved the opening paragraph, followed by that one sentence "I was eleven." Very clever, too, to use the armless beggar in the opening scene, given the subsequent information about the one-armed step dad.
I did get a bit confused about the third paragraph, but that could be partly because I don't know what mattress polo is and how that connects with diabetes. Also, I wasn't sure if "the crap" refers to diabetes or some other condition.
The conversation between the two characters seems to make no sense, and yet it also fits with the voice so far. It raises questions I just gotta have answered by reading more!
Nice work!
Great voice, but...Confusing. A lot of telling here. If this is horror, where is the danger, conflict, crisis?
ReplyDeletestarted with past tense and shifted in present tense; maybe pick a tense and stay with that?
Also, maybe save the back story for later on, maybe page 50 or so?
Your voice is great, but keep working on the plot.
This is an interesting voice, and though I would need more context to really get into it, that phone conversation at the end really did pique my interest.
ReplyDeleteThanks !
Who is "I" would be my first question. I imagined a girl because of mattress polo, although I don't really know what mattress polo is. I'm assuming he started having sex with her? Although, that doesn't guarantee it's a she. Someone else refers to I as he. Steven could easily drop a name during their conversation.
ReplyDeleteI loved the voice and the matter of fact way I handles the death of the opening beggar and everything else, and I believe her when she says she's gonna drive Steve to his grave. I would have also liked an idea as to how old I is now.
I'd read more.
Love the evil step dad. And the hillbilly voice really drove home just how crazy this family could be. I kept picturing the Hills Have Eyes family.
ReplyDeleteWasn't sold on Steven throwing a bum under a bus in NY without any legal consequences. And I have no idea what the over-arcing conflict is as well.
But I definitely felt the main character's hatred towards this man. The hillbilly tone is well done, but could be tough to keep up for an entire book.
I thought the interaction between Steven and the narrator was interesting. The voice is unique. I agree with Sean, keeping up this dialect (although it sounds more ghetto than hillbilly to me) would be hard to deal with for an entire book. I think you'd lose readers because once the stage is set, and we know how the characters talk, we don't necessarily need to see it.
ReplyDeleteI have a queasy gut turning feeling about this. I love it.
ReplyDeleteGreat voice. Who is the MC? Girl or boy? I don't know what a mattress polo is, but whatever it is doesn't seem to connect to diabetes so the two sentences didn't flow well, IMHO.
ReplyDeleteThe dialogue made me chuckle.
This gets a lot across in a very short space, but to me it feels a trifle overdone, and while the "ick" factor is big, nothing here engages me - nothing makes me want to know more about these people. And an entire book in this vernacular (unless done superbly well, as Daniel Woodrell does his Ozark books) could be very tiring.
ReplyDeletei do like the voice.
ReplyDeletei'd consider throwing in just a flavor of the dialect, if so many feel it's too much and off-putting. it's hard to decide how much is too much, as i've been there and done that, and still not conqured...
i wasn't quite getting a 'horror' feeling yet, although the step dad is a gruesome guy, that's for sure.
i wasn't sure what mattress polo was 100%, but assumed it was alluding to abuse, but then got confused how diabetes tied to that line. but did enjoy they amputated the wrong limb, though i'm not sure if his 'third leg' is really considered a limb.
the dialogue was a little confusing, at least the line:'Cus if she don't she gets acquainted with your fist, blah, blah, blah. I need money for a hearse...
Well-written, strong voice, good conflict, but I had a hard time connecting with the main character. She seems so well-armored against Steven, but she's well-armored against me too. I'm assuming from the "mattress polo" comment that Steven molested her as a kid, and her hostility toward him comes through, but a hint of vulnerability in interior monologue would go a long way toward making her accessible to readers.
ReplyDeleteI like your MC and how she stands up against her horrible stepfather. The only comment I'd make is that you repeat the word 'crap' twice in short succession. Can you change the second one to 'shit'? I think that would sound more natural in the sentence anyway. But good job.
ReplyDeleteRE: the title—It’s another okay title without much punch.
ReplyDelete(An oooh, a horror! I don’t see many of those . . . unfortunately.)
As for the text—
My step dad's the kind of man who helps the armless beggar throw his-self under the bus. Seen Steven do it too when we was up in New York for three days after he married momma. The beggar went squish and everybody got to crying and screaming and crap. I looked at Momma. She shrugged and we got on the bus.
Hooked enough with this first paragraph—I like the voice, don’t find it overtiring yet, and am curious.
I was eleven.
When I was twelve Steven introduced me to mattress polo. Now he's got diabetes. He's always had the crap, least since he married momma, but his blood sugar's got real bad. He just had his arm amputated. The wrong limb if you ask me.
No transitions here between the thoughts, and that bothers me far more—makes it far harder to read—than the particular syntax and vernacular style. What is mattress polo? What does it have to do with Steven’s character? What does Steven’s diabetes have with polo? And an amputation with diabetes?
I still like the voice, but by now I’m scratching my head a little bit.
"Haven't you thrown yourself under the bus yet?" I says when Steven picks up the phone.
"I commit suicide you don't get nothing out of that insurance policy you got on me."
I’d put a comma after “suicide.”
"Like I can afford me one of them. As long as you're dead, I'm happy."
"What the eff you want?" Steven says.
"Where's Momma?"
"If you called to ask her for money, she's gonna say no."
This is all good—I’m still intrigued by the voice of the sympathetic character I heard in that first paragraph, but my interest is starting to slowly die away since you haven’t presented me with a sense of urgency or reason to care. I’m not getting any more sense of character in terms of thoughts or motivation.
"'Cus if she don't she gets acquainted with your fist, blah, blah, blah. I need money for a hearse."
This is super interesting! But I want to know more—how does your character say this? Why does the accusation come out so lightly, especially to a man like Steven? Why a hearse? I think you can clue is in a little bit more.
Steven mumbles like he had planned what to say but I done ruined it. Finally he barks, "What the hell you gonna do with that?"
"Drive you to your grave."
Steven laughs big. I imagine him wiping tears from his eyes.
"No," he says. "I don't got no cash."
I like this, but again, I’ve no sense of character anymore. (That first paragraph was great. Intriguing.) By now, you’re not adding anything to that original source of interest, which was this character, and considering that he’s making a phone call—with this really odd request—I’m feeling a bit distanced. It’s hard to give any more feedback considering the particular type of writing you have here.
I’d read more, try to see if I could connect with the character on some level for an extended particular period of time, but otherwise this would end up being a pass sooner than later. Not hooked, per se.
(Odd, also, that we think that this character is different genres. I see now, after taking into consideration that your character might be a girl, that mattress polo probably means molestation. I guess it could molestation with a boy, too, but that just didn't cross my mind. It was the relatively matter-of-fact way that your MC described the bus scene that made me think this was a boy.)
ReplyDeletegenders*
ReplyDeleteSorry!