TITLE: After Life
GENRE: Women's Fiction
The day before I died, Charlie and I danced to B.B. King. When the song started, I saw the smiles on the faces of our family and friends, many who had been at our wedding 30 years ago. For me and Charlie, Guess Who? was always our song.
My sons, both taller than me for several years now, were mimicking us, alternating which one was a woman with pouty lips and batting eyelashes. I saw Mom slip behind them, place a hand on each of their shoulders and give them her patented don’t-try-it-again look.
I sighed. “I thought by this point, they would be showing up at these kinds of things with their own dates instead of still pretending to be each others.”
Charlie just shook his head. “They’ll figure it out someday. At least they are friends again.” Through the dance, I saw both our parents, friends of the foundation, hospital, so many people joining us to celebrate. Charlie put his hand on the small of my back and pulled me closer, redirecting all my attention to just him. “I love you Nora,” he whispered. As the song ended, Charlie took my face in both his hands and kissed me amid the applause.
I’m not sure what I expected from life after life. Maybe a big golden gate, a bearded man in a white robe demanding names, verifying quality of character and dates of death on some sort of massive database, ushering in lines of people.
Miss Snark's First Victim
Really vivid details. My hangup is the fact that she's dead. That doesn't sound like women's fiction, that sounds like paranormal...although I can sort of see how it could work. It just puzzled me.
ReplyDeleteThe first line really caught my attention, but then the middle three paragraphs seemed to slip into backstory that the reader doesn't have much context for yet. I wonder if you can get to the fourth paragraph quicker and weave the other details in further on. Just a thought. I'm definitely intrigued though!
ReplyDeleteI like the details but it seems more like it's all back story. And with her being dead, wouldn't that be more a paranormal?
ReplyDeleteYou have a nice, lofty feel to your writing, but I'm a bit confused. All of this is the day before she died, but it has a feel that it was years ago. Did it really happen the day before she died, or was she in a coma-induced fog reliving a favorite moment?
ReplyDeleteI agree with the other comments that this seems to be more like paranormal than women's fiction. But that said, I like that you have managed to include so much background information efficiently. the reader is given a broad landscape of her life before whatever happened to her. Some nice indirect descriptions that suggest what has happened: sons "both taller than me for several year now" and "still pretending to be each other" and "at least they are friends again." I do have some questions about tense and time. The first four paragraphs are the narrator speaking the "day before she died." The last paragraph is, I think, the narrator speaking from the "life after life" perspective. But you've put them all in the past tense. I think there must be some kind of temporal gap between these. I'm not sure if a change of tense is needed but it might be interesting to consider whether the "life after life" narrator could speak in the present tense when she's not describing the time when she was living with her family. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteI thought the writing was good and the first sentence pulled me in, but then you jumped to back story, which I could have lived with, but then you jump back to the present (once she's dead.)
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to go into the backstory, I think we need more than you gave us, so we get a good idea of what her life was like before she died.
If the story's going to be about what happens after she's dead, I'd say skip the backstory.
As is, you jump time and space 3 times, all in 250 words, so as a reader, I'm not settled anywhere.
I thought the writing was good and the first sentence pulled me in, but then you jumped to back story, which I could have lived with, but then you jump back to the present (once she's dead.)
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to go into the backstory, I think we need more than you gave us, so we get a good idea of what her life was like before she died.
If the story's going to be about what happens after she's dead, I'd say skip the backstory.
As is, you jump time and space 3 times, all in 250 words, so as a reader, I'm not settled anywhere.
I found the entry intriguing, especially the idea that the main character is going to die in a day (immediately raises strong story questions!)--but agreed with other commenters that it was jarring to jump forward in time during that final paragraph.
ReplyDeleteI also found the multiple references to family a bit confusing (especially "my sons" followed immediately by "Mom" and then "our parents") and had to take a minute to sort the relationships out.
That said, it's an interesting 250 words and I would definitely read on to see what happens next!
Killer first line. I would read on to see where this goes. As others said, maybe check your genre since this story's main character is speaking from the afterlife. I also think the lines of dialogue could use some refining; the first line is a little wordy. It seems a little stilted and not like natural conversation (easily remedied).
ReplyDeleteGood luck with this.
I've read more of this one in another forum and I'd say it's women's fiction with elements of magical realism--but is that too long for a genre?
ReplyDeleteI agree--killer opening line, and the groundwork is laid for some great relationships already. Nice work!
I liked both her memory of the party and the disbelief about her being dead. My only issue is that it was abrupt.
ReplyDeleteThere was no transition and that brought me up short.
That said a lot of comments I've noticed say things like 'you need more x or y but 250 words are
really not that many words and in this case that transition could have put you to a word
count that wouldn't alow her musings about the afterlife. It's a fine line to walk.
I was caught a little off guard by the first line, and the fact that the character is dead. As was mentioned before, the shift is rather abrupt from the back story to what's happening in the last paragraph.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with the other comments about genre. It doesn't really seem like it would fit with Women's Fiction.
The last line has me interested to see what happened.