TITLE: POUGHKEEPSIE
GENRE: Commercial Fiction
Eve trains herself to be a vicious murderer to avenge the death of her daughter but falls in love with her target.
He stepped close to her; she could feel his breath on her neck. "Eve, you make me not want to die."
She turned to see his face. "I didn't want to be a killer and now that's all I am."
Eve's knees gave out. He carried her to his couch. Beckett pet her hair with his big hand, letting her empty her pain and guilt on his bare chest. Eve felt like she was letting go of a rope she had clung to for too long. Whether she was wrong or right, she gave up judging. She let her lips find his sensuous ones for the first time. He kissed her gently. Not demanding.
Eve added her tongue, exploring his taste. She grabbed the back of his neck with one hand and traced his gunshot wounds with the other. He let her lead.
My call. Kill him or love him. He'll allow either.
Love the last line.
ReplyDeleteIt feels a little telley and I think you could better describe 'Eve added her tongue, exploring his taste.'
Maybe something like "With a needy sweep of her tongue, she sank into the spicey playground of his mouth."
I'm not a fan of the line "Eve felt like she was letting go of a rope she had clung to for too long." Maybe it would sound better if you took out "Eve felt like" and started it with "She was letting go..."
ReplyDeleteI also don't like the dialogue. It sounds too much like a soap opera. I like characters who don't say what they think but rather show it.
And the last line should be "Her call." You switched from third person to first person. But despite that - the last line is gripping.
I can tell the stakes are high. Love or Revenge. Very nice.
love the stakes, and i really enjoy that she's the dominant one in this scene. The prose itself, however, needs a bit of work. I'd watch the POV shift in the last sentence.
ReplyDeleteAlso the:
"Eve, you make me not want to die."
Was a bit wordy and i had to re-read it. Sometimes the double negative conveys better what we want to say, and this may be the case here (because there is a difference between wanting to live and not wanting to di) but it just didn't quite work for me.
Good luck!
I'm sure others will disagree, but there's nothing too sensual to me about a tongue. It's just gross when you read it. It's why you never see a toungy kiss on TV, unless it's a comedic moment designed to gross you out. The elements around it are really great, but the tongue moment took me out. Again, this is probably personal preference.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there were some telly moments, as others have said. "his sensuous ones" could be replaced by a good description. Also, you could cut down on some description and narrative elsewhere and expound on the "tracing the gunshot wound" moment. This simple description would show a lot of the emotion you're telling us about. This is a truly awesome moment, and it gets lost.
I think this is great fun, and am totally picturing the whole rough grainy film noir dusty back office setting...
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I think you could pump up the volume, rather than softening it the way the others have suggested. Maybe go full on balls-to-the-wall hard pulp fiction, maximizing every cliche comic book beat.
I like what you're trying to convey, but I don't think you've quite pulled it off. The two lines of dialogue seem stilted and unrelated, and I wondered why she thinks she's only a killer when her target is still alive and she hasn't killed anyone?
ReplyDeleteBeckett pet her hair with his big hand -- made me think, is his other hand little?
ANd the POV shifts back and forth, which is okay if this is omniscient POV, but I got the feeling it was supposed to be Eve's.
The tongue line could be described better and you might show her emptying her pain and guilt on his chest rather than telling us.
The emotion does come through, though. I get a good sense of how she feels. Perhaps work on the writing a bit.
In theory I like this, but I just didn't connect. The dialogue was strange, but there are some nice emotional cues here.
ReplyDeleteWhy did Eve's knees give out? Is she wounded or just tired of the fight? Are the gunshot wounds "wounds" or scars?
Right, I agree with the others that the dialogue is a bit awkward. People never say all the things they want to. Sometimes the best parts of a scene is what goes unspoken.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I'd like to see more of Eve's internalization for her feelings for him. She doesn't want to be a killer, but she's TELLING us that. I'm not feeling it in this scene.
I love the rope metaphor, and how you show her let go, revenge taking a back seat to something more.
ReplyDeleteSuch high stakes! Really makes me wonder what's going on with them! I don't necessarily think it's awkward, mainly because it's so short. Otherwise, I liked it :)
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure who’s POV we’re in here. Several questions for you:
ReplyDelete- Make all your words count. Do you need the, ‘to her’ in the first line? How about ‘to see his face’ in the second? Do you need the simile? Do you need all of your adjectives?
- Beckett’s dialogue sounds clunky to me. Would it be stronger as, “You make me want to live”?
- Why do Eve’s knees give out?
- Once you establish who’s in the scene, there’s no need to repeat proper names. The reader can follow with ‘he’ and ‘she’.