Write Down To It

Short story fix, at least part of it.

While reading several Blogs and commenting, I found a Contest that I’m quite interested in, they’re even giving away 15,000 GPS. That certainly got my interest. The contest is in recognition of WdC’s fifteenth birthday and it features the writing of in depth reviews. OK, I can do that, I often give in depth reviews. There’s another aspect of the contest that really got my eye and that is, I would be given an in depth review of a writing piece of my choice.

I just finished my first short story but I’m hesitant of posting it just yet. You see, it’s not quite ready. It’s a story, a sort of weird love story. I’ve pained over many of the words, making sure that they expressed exactly what I meant. The story seems to flow, and I have to recheck it, but I think each sentence leads into the next. There’s a beginning and an ending, and the prose itself is decent. But it lacks the soul I require, this may be in part due to the PoV I’ve chosen. It’s still not ready and needs work.

Let’s examine one of my paragraphs:

Miss Nadine, holding her breath, waited until he sat before placing her tray before her. He divided the food onto thick paper plates, smiling when he was done. Her hunger, having returned, suffered through his prayer as she ogled the fat pieces of chicken that promised juicy mouthfuls of spicy, old-fashioned crispiness. When he was done, she gurgled as she muttered her “Amen.”
Hmmm, I can see a problem. It is in the first sentence: Miss Nadine, holding her breath. The issue is, the PoV I’ve chosen to write in is third person omniscient, and in third person, writing should be in the past tense, it’s difficult to sustain the present tense, and if defies the rules. Third person is about he, she, and it. Present tense is awkward and, as you can see, and not consistent.
Miss Nadine held her breath and waited …

Better.

The rest of the sentence goes like this, “waited until he sat before placing her tray before her.” I think I can do better than that, and if I “show” this action, it will come across clearer. I can’t believe that I used the preposition “before” twice, but I can fix that. Miss Nadine is holding her breath, therefore, this suggest she is hoping he doesn’t drop something, or perhaps maybe she is concerned about his weight, maybe what he sits on is wobbly. Whatever, as I write the sentence I’m sure to want to justify “holding her breath.”

How do I do this? I think about what I know. I know this character “Uncle Mason,” to be a bit of a klutz, gangly. Based on his description, gangly, it means, tall, thin and awkward, I now know that Miss Nadine isn’t worried about his weight, and gangly enables me to come up with some fairly good descriptions of how he sat. So, I visualize sitting and I’ve come up with:

Sitting with all legs, like a spider, knees jutting out, dropping, drooping, lowering … you get my gist? I don’t know why I didn’t see this in the first of the few rewrites, but then rewriting is about finding awkward stuff. The following is what I’ll tentatively go with:
Miss Nadine held her breath and waited as Uncle Mason drooped , languid in movement into a pile of bones and jutting knees.
I left out the tray, I’m not sure if I want to bring it back or not. I’ve also named the other character, Uncle Mason. I’ve drooped him in the chair because it makes me think of marionettes, I’ve described his movement as languid, and I’ve told how he falls. I’ve also juxtaposed bones and knees; I think that there are enough differences in these body parts to do so. Can you see this? I think I will bring back the tray; I want to keep the steps in order.

She then dragged the spare tray near her lap, easing a foot between the legs to steady it.

One of the things I don’t like to do when writing is to detail steps, more specifically, give direction as in: She pulled out her right hand and crossed it over her left side – ew, boring, and awful. In the above sentence, I’ve brought back the tray and I positioned it. This denotes the size of Miss Nadine, a far larger woman than one who could sit comfortably with two legs under the tray. She isn’t able to bring it quite to her lap, she’ll have to bend forward to eat.

After she does this, what else does she do?

Uncle Mason, she observed, divided the food with quick measured movements, thunking it onto thick paper plates.
I chose to have her observe.. This has to come to an end, and I end it with what he does and I finalize it.

He smiled when he had finished and picked up his fork.

This works.

Satisfied with the results she too picked up her fork and staved off her burgeoning hunger waiting on his lead. Mouth salivating, she was ready to go but Uncle Mason closed his eyes and lowered his head. The aroma of fine fried chicken whiffed through the air right under her nose and she suffered through his prayer while ogling the fat pieces of chicken that promised juicy mouthfuls of spicy, old-fashioned crispiness. After the prayer, she gurgled a modest “Amen.”

I kept most of what I had written, I’m trying to convey her hunger.

This paragraph is longer than the original but it says more of what I want it to say. I already know that I’ll be revising it. Even after I placed it here, I went back and changed words.

I’ve had used the word “pile” twice, I don’t want that, so I changed what his falling into the chair is like, he fell into a pile, and what the food he dumped onto the plate resulted in, he filed food on the plate. Words I’m looking for to replace pile should be simple: chunk, hunk, lump, mass, stack, gob, and I see that most of these words will describe the situation of the food on the plate.

Uncle Mason, she observed, busied himself with dividing the food with quick precision, thunking it onto thick paper plates in measured gobs.
I changed piles to gobs and that sounds like a lot of food to me. This also attest to size, we know he is lanky, I’ve said as much, and she has to be of substantial size.

There is more work to do, I thought I was finished, but since I decided to sleep on my work before posting, the errors are jumping out.