feedback/criticism on short story

SmokeyJo84

Just looking for some helpful feedback or criticism on this short story I wrote.
Figured it would be easier to upload an attachment than an overly long post!
I write a good bit but I lack confidence in what I write. I dropped out of a creative writing class due to the pressure of having to read aloud my stuff!
Also can never think of titles for my stories so any suggestions would be great!
Thanks!

EileenG

Wow, that's a very strong bit of writing. You should definitely keep writing.

Since the story opens and ends with blood, I think there should be some in the title.

Dublin141

Probably not helpful but I don't think you have any reason to lack confidence in your writing. I found your story very engaging. The best way to get over the shyness is to put your stuff out there (and get used to the good and bad comments) so well done for posting it and hopefully you'll get the confidence to finish that class sometime.

Maybe you could have a go at the next short story competition here too.

I'm useless at titles, sorry!

EileenG

From a purely female point of view, I would tone down the violence slightly, make it more subtle. I did spent a bit of the story muttering "Call the cops, get him arrested". You might want to get into her mind more, explain why she had put up with this from a fiance. It makes a little more sense if she was a long time wife, who was dependent on him.

But it is a very strong, well written story.

SmokeyJo84

thanks very much for your encouraging responses. EileenG i've taken on your suggestion about changing it from fiance to husband, definately makes more sense as there is more dependency or a feeling of being trapped in the situation!

was thinking something along the lines of Nothing Changes without Blood Flowing as the title, although I think that may be a quote from a white supremicist! :eek:

will have to look it up to make sure!

EileenG

I would also make the violence more subtle, the sort of thing that is almost impossible to complain about: holding her hand so tightly it hurts, maybe controlling the food she eats "for the sake of her figure", stuff like that. When it comes to cigarette burns, broken glass and bruises all over the body, you wonder what's wrong with her that she puts up with it. Especially as she had a job and thus an income of her own.

Good title. It doesn't matter who said it first.

pickarooney

It's very well written, for what it is. Personally, I've read enough first-person accounts of domestic violence to last me a lifetime and they all tend to follow a specific pattern. Of course, when something is really well done it matters little how many times it's been done before so with a bit of tweaking this could be made into a stand-out piece.

EileenG's comments on the subtlety of the abuse, with more emphasis on the psychological aspect of it are bang on. We need to get some inkling of her weakness for her fiancé/husband and what she feels she needs from him. From the beginning of the piece it's clear she's had enough and will leave him and the only tension remaining is "will he come back before she's gone." A litte bit less conviction on the protagonist's part, where she weighs up his good points and wonders if she's doing the right thing wouldn't go astray.

How about "Thicker than water" as a title?

Here are a few nit-picky comments from reading it through twice.

luckily they were all intact unlike her dignity

This sentence needs either punctuation or tightening up. It seems a bit of a throwaway remark for the sake of a clever observation. This was one of the few lines in the piece I really didn't like.

she figured there was going to be a nasty bruise or two on her face that would be more difficult to excuse

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is ironic understatement. Her face is grotesquely swollen and discoloured is it not?

The physical side of things had started with the odd cigarette burn on her hand, followed by the shaking, the shoving and the kicking

I could be talking out of my arse, but it seems to me that cigarette burns are a sign of someone who is certifiably deranged and exerting control over a completely cowed victim. It just seems that she would be more likely to convince herself that a kick of a shove was a one-off event, born of anger whereas a cigarette burn is cold, calculated torture.

of medical supplies which she had “borrowed” from the nursing home she worked in

I don't like the inverted commas. Just say she took them.

I don't think a room can be 'heady'. A smell can be heady in that it directly affects the person smelling it.

It was just before midday, the dawn of the new day had seamlessly blended into the previous wretched night.

I'm not sure of the point of the second part of this sentence. It's stating the obvious at best, contradictory at worst.

a habit harder to break than nicotine or caffeine

This doesn't really work for me. Nicotine and caffeine themselves are not habits, per se - the consumption of them is. The sentence seems forced in order to include a comparison which doesn't add anything.

Just the small, simple question from the girl, Darren’s best friend’s girlfriend, managed to spring tears from her eyes.

Bit of a clumsy sentence, and the use of the transitive form of 'spring' grates with me. It's linguistically sound in that you can spring, e.g., a prisoner from gaol, but it reads more like you've misused the word, to be honest.

It used to make her smile but she just cast her eye over the room

I think there's a word missing here, perhaps 'now'?

'encircled from' - if you must use 'encircled' use 'with' instead of 'from' but it sounds a little too geometric; run mascara should be mostly underneath the eye or over the cheek.

caiprinhas - caipirinhas

Montevideo, Uruguay - drop the country name. It doesn't matter if the reader doesn't know where Montevideo is and it reads as though you're trying to educate us.

She caught glances at their photograph as she tore through her belongings, the images of him with his arm around her shoulders, and her with smiles that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

'caught glimpses of' maybe or 'shot glances at'? The rest of the sentence is beautiful.

She sat at the edge of the bed and tapped her sister’s number into the phone. She let it ring out until it went to voicemail.

She'd probably have her sister in her address book. 'Ring out' is when a phone rings and rings and then eventually stops, after about 5 minutes. I'm not sure phones even do this any more. In any case, the person dialling has no control, she can't really let the phone do anything. Just say that she got through to her voicemail or even use dialogue for the voicemail welcome message and her own message.

She dropped the toiletries onto the lid of the wicker linen basket and figured now was as good a time as ever to find out if she was pregnant

A really finicky remark perhaps, but the sequence of action + thought makes it read as though she's not able to do both at once! As though she needs to carry out a physical action before engaging a thought. If it's not just my imagination, you could avoid this by removing the conjunction: "...basket, figuring that now was as..." or "...basket. Now was as good...". you could probaly dispense with the word 'wicker' which slows down the sentence needlessly.

until the single line showed up

Is the reader supposed to understand that this is a negative result?

If so, two things: 1) most people won't know. I've read about a dozen of these things myself and couldn't tell you with complete certainty what lines/colours mean what (and it varies from brand to brand) and 2) it takes from the last paragraph where it's revealed in no uncertain terms that she's not pregnant.

If not, don't tell us the specifics, just say "until the result showed".

Emma answered it

The 'it' doesn't refer to anything specific. Lose it.
Why is Emma surprised that her sister is calling when she knows she just called a few minutes before? I'm getting a mixed signal - she doesn't have Emma's number listed but knows it by heart and her sister is surprised that she would ring her. Are they estranged? It doesn't seem that way from the rest of the paragraph.

A dull ache rippled through her stomach and back

'through' and 'back' don't really concord. An ache (by definition dull) is localised and doesn't move about, unlike other pains).

She jumped when her neighbours slammed a door in their house

A bit repetitious - "when the neighbour's door slammed" tells us enough.

I'm not sure a snide laugh makes any sense when there's nobody around to hear it. Maybe a sardonic laugh instead?

confident, or arrogant, that she would forgive him

'Confident that she would forgive him' is fine. 'Arrogant that she would forgive him' doesn't work. 'Arrogantly confident that she would forgive him' would also work.

Tears and blood had been shed and she was still bleeding now, from deep inside, but it was far from life threatening.

The piece deserves a better last line than this. It's weak and contrived.

One last thing - it might be better if you converted the file to PDF and reuploaded it, or at least resaved it as a .DOC as not everyone will be able to open a Word 2007 file and you might miss out on some feedback as a result.

Wantobe

I can't open it.

pickarooney

Hope the OP doesn't mind - I converted it to PDF.

SmokeyJo84

cheers pickarooney for the critique! havent got the time to go over your advice and the story in depth at the moment but will definately take on board some of your advice and edit it! and cheers for converting it to pdf for me!

Im kind of glad I didn't stay in the class, it's very hard to hear/see criticism of your work but, seeing as I am just getting back into writing and want to improve over time, it's a necessary evil! Only way is to practise and develop thick skin!

Thanks again!

EileenG

Just keep at it, and grow the thick skin. Remember, the criticism is of your work as it stands now. All it needs is an edit to fix those problems, and the more detailed the criticism, the easier it is to fix.

It's a lot better being told exactly what is wrong than just getting rejections. Or worse, having people praise more than is merited, so when the rejections come, you become convinced they are out to get you.

No-one gets it right on the first draft, and no-one expects the first draft to be perfect. Or even particularly good.

I like writing classes, in that it gives you a deadline, but unless you get the right class, the criticism/feedback can be useless. Too much praise, or a grumpy "Not my sort of thing". You rarely get the sort of line by line analysis you just got.

fishnetsxD

Your story seems interesting.
According to my English teacher a short story is between 800 - 1200 words so it is longer. Anyways continue writing

alfa beta

nicely written - thanks for posting - I'd also go along with a lot of Pickarooney's comments.

I feel the whole story needs a good strong edit - go through it line by line, paragraph by paragraph and see if you're 100% happy with everything.

Read it aloud perhaps - act out the dialogue perhaps - question the plausibility of every scenario - and ask yourself in each case 'will the reader get it?' or 'Will the reader believe it?'

Obviously you'll never really know the answer - but I do find it helps when editing if you try to distance yourself from your writing - how you do that I'm not sure - for me it's all about slowing down, reading aloud and 'listening' to it - does it sound as good as published work? If not, why not?

Sometimes you'll find yourself dropping adjectives that seem a little contrived or shortening sentences that drag - it's amazing what a few rereads and reworkings can achieve.

Also - from a structural point of view, I was wondering if the story would work better if the pregnancy issue didn't arise in any shape or form until the very last paragraph - ie: the story would be about a woman who's suffering at the hands of an abusive partner, it would be about her reaching the end of her tether, and realising that no matter how much she wants to change him, she can't, we would see her at the point where the desire to change her husband becomes a desire (and a necessity) to escape - ok so, the reader now is happy that she's decided to get out of this situation and she calls her sister and all that....then at the very end one of two scenarios could be played out (depending on what kind of a message you want to achieve) 1. She's pregnant - and her escape is also represented as the rescue of her child from a future that would involve the possibility of abuse (or at least the witnessing of it) or 2. It's revealed at the end of the story that she's pregnant and it's also made clear that she's lost the child (or in danger of losing it).

Anyway, that's just my tuppence worth...


Oh and with regard to this comment:

fishnetsxD wrote: »

Your story seems interesting.
According to my English teacher a short story is between 800 - 1200 words so it is longer. Anyways continue writing

With all due respect, your English Teacher is talking bollox - a short story is as long as it takes to finish the story.

tripper63

well done smokey Jo i liked it very well written i have just one sugestion

[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Italic]“I’m sorry about last night. I don’t know why I went mad like that. I didn’t mean to hurt you.

You’re all I have, I love you.”
[/FONT][FONT=TimesNewRoman,Italic][/FONT]
She threw the mobile back onto the bed, got up and went into the bathroom.
When the message is read I think it is a ideal opportunity to explore her inner thoughts maybe years a go a text would suffice and she took him back maybe not something like that.

You've written an excellent piece feel good