So I noticed something really cool about the beginning of your story and I was wondering if it was on purpose. It is pretty difficult to make a character likeable right away and you managed to do it in a way I thought was clever. People who read books like people who read books, generally, so when you introduce your main character as being lost in a book the reader (likely a bookworm) will instantly identify.
typos and thoughts on things:
"Jenny Amberson startled so suddenly that Mr. Christopher screeched"
Startled is either the wrong word or the wrong tense. Started?
"Beth Amazon, Allison Klipspringer, Rita Cavalira, and Cassandra Shakes"
I'm totally fine with this list of names as long as you realize I will remember none of them.
"scrolling through Instragram and sipping an extra"
Instagram.
"There was one final theory that only the men who huffed paint behind the preschool believed."
My god those sound like terrible people. Really really dark implications there.
"Black Mambas"
Many gangs formed on racial lines exist with names in the form of say Latin Kings or Black Disciples. I realize a Black Mamba is a snake, but you may be making racial implications with that name.
Overall impression:
I think it's great. I like the silly high school character drama. I am intrigued by the disappearance. I am intrigued by the basement. The return of the Black Mambas as a plot sounds great actually, but I think you may be focusing on it too much too early. You've got me for the next chapter already just with the disappearance and the basement, and it seems a little bit of a stretch that these high school kids would actually show any interest in the supposed return of the Black Mambas, though I do think it is good that you at least mention it.
It's Scott from Just Write Chicago here. Great story man, it almost got me to cry, but I'm just about as stoic as George so I just sucked it up. I think a lot of men experience the emotional toll of male stoicism, and you captured it really well. I had a couple problems but the simple fact is, if you get me to the point where I'm holding back tears, you're getting five stars.
The only problem I had was a bit of confusion over was the idea that George was on the "wrong side" of the war, which seemed to be an important point at the end. I didn't understand how he could be on the wrong side of a war he felt was being waged on him personally.
Other than that though I thought it was very smooth, tense, and had an effective sensory density that did not slow down the plot. I read it aloud, so I caught a few sentences I thought were awkward, and a few images that seemed out of place. I'll try to list them here.
"George rested silently in his usual chair peering, as if viewing it at great distance, into the lit fireplace."
I have to correct myself often with sentence constructions like this. I do it way too much, which is why I recognized it. I don't think it works because the fireplace appears in the sentence so long after it is referenced by the action of the verb "peering" and by the "it" in that parenthetical phrase that my mind could not actually construct the scene until the last word of the sentence. I would just reverse it to:
"George rested silently in his usual chair peering into the lit fireplace as if viewing it from a great distance."
I don't know why I do it, I think maybe it sounds more poetic in my head when I write as you do, but it is confusing.
"The muted applause against the roof gave way to a full ovation when he opened the door."
This is a great image and I suspect you are proud of it. You should be. It tripped me up when I was reading though because I was forced to assemble the metaphor on my own like an Ikea futon. Oh, I see, yes, rain does sound like applause, I get it, clever. I thought about the sentence for a minute and for me personally it would smooth the reading a bit if the it were attributed to the rain directly like "The rain's muted applause..."
"The mud-caked cougar leaped as if spat from the depths of a volcano"
This one just made me laugh because I imagined a mountain lion flying out of a volcano. It took me a second to realize you were alluding to the explosive force of an erupting volcano, which I get, but for me personally the image of a volcano overpowers the scene.
That's all I could find, and this looks like it is almost ten years old, so you must be really damn good by now.
-Scott
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