Short story (start of) feedback requested?

LegacyUser

Hi there,

I used to be really into writing short stories when I was young but kind of gave up for a few years (almost a decade now in fact :-) ). Anyway I was trying to get back into it but I've no idea if I'm any good or if I've totally lost the knack for it. I'd really appreciate any feedback (good/bad/anything) on the below, it's the first quarter of a short story I was thinking of. I already know what the endings going to be but I want to check it's not totally awful before finishing it. Please be gentle!

("If you show some-one something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin and say 'When you're ready'" - Black Swan Green, David Mitchell)


Quiet


The music is loud, beating and pulsing and brash and loud, so loud that to be heard you must shout through a hand cupped tight between your mouth and the straining ear. I can feel Martins fingers, cool and damp from his beer, against my ear, his screaming is faint but audible. Order received I pry myself through the masses towards the bar. My first time here, a messy Saturday night, in a dive club on Grands Boulevard, Paris. The crowd is heavy and hot, it moves unevenly across the bar as I find a way in to the sticky counter.

The barman can’t hear me, the music causes auditory blindness for distances greater than three inches. I hold up two fingers and point to the beer tap in front of me. Holding the drinks by their slippery rims I turn back to the dance floor to begin the return trip, slowly pushing through the writhing crowds. Ahead of me I see a girl I know. Elaine. Petite, brunette. French-English student on Erasmus for the year. Talks at length of writing booker-prize winning fiction. Carries print-outs of her favourite poetry around in her purse. Openly laughs at my passion for sci-fi novels. One of those literature students who wear their pretensions like crumbs of food stuck to the side of their mouths.

She is dancing with a smaller girl, who has short black hair and blue jeans and a dark red shirt. Flat shoes, black, a thin gold bracelet on one wrist. She is dancing clunkily, perhaps half a beat off from the roaring music and visibly out of synch with everyone else on the floor. As I watch a guy trying to get past shoves her to the side, a drunk girl in high heels stands on her foot. She turns, and I see her face. Her eyes are closed and she is smiling and there is an expression of pure bliss across her face as she moves gracelessly on the dancefloor. Around her people pout and gurn as they move, she smiles peacefully. But I think it’s not from the dancing, nor from the deafening music. I think I don’t know what it is but she looks so joyful being there, as though she truly would not want to be anywhere else in the world.

Over the next two weeks I make enquiries about Elaine’s small friend and clubbing companion. I gather scraps of information, rumours, enough for an outline of a half-person. She is in Paris studying the art of patisserie a six-month placement from a cuisine college in London. Originally from Manchester. She is by turns 19, 21, 22. She lives near the Marais, sharing with Elaine, who is mutual friends with some-one from college. She is quiet. It’s not enough, still only a skeleton character sketch – missing it’s vital organs. I ask my few acquaintances, my fewer friends. I speak to more people than I have since I moved here. I’m a man of few words, preferring to listen than talk so my networks are limited. I ask Martin, a quiet plea to see if he can find out where I could run into her again, he smirks and agrees. Eight days later he delivers.

She is quiet. Definitely 21. She has a few close friends, all back in London. Can be seen often wandering alone along the Seine, east to west from the Marais down past Place du Concorde and towards Trocadero. Near Hotel de Ville she will stop, climb over the railings and sit with her feet dangling above the river, reading or dreaming for hours. She will sit alone, but waves to the tourists in the tour boats as they go past.

By night she joins Elaine and frequents the throbbing, thumping nightclubs like the one I first saw her in. She eschews the house parties, the brasseries and cocktail bars, meeting only in the deafening caves along Grand Boulevard and the Odean. She is rarely seen outside these two habitats, sitting, reading, dreaming alone along the banks of the Seine or in the dens of noise, dancing with the sweating gasping clubbers moving as one and drowning in the waves of sound.

--Kaiser--

The first line of a novel/story is very important. The first paragraph and page are also important but especially the first line. You have to grab the reader, tantalise them, compell them to read further. I thought your first line was a little clunky, it doesn't flow as well as it could. As for the rest, not badly written but there's not enough substance there to impel me to read further

echo beach

I did feel curious about this girl and would like to know more about her but I'm not sure if it will be worth the effort of reading the remaining three-quarters of this story. That isn't a good enough reason for you not to write it.

Just a few points that struck me.
We get no information on the writer, except that he is a man of few words. Where is he from?
There are some inconsistencies. There is one American word 'purse' rather than 'handbag' but the rest reads more as if he is English or perhaps Irish.
Elaine knows him well enough to laugh at his taste in novels but he doesn't ask her for an introduction to her friend.
Martin comes up with all this information but not her name.
Assuming this is set in the present why doesn't he look her up on Facebook?

Think about the language you use. Maybe some people 'eschew' things but I don't know any of them.

PurpleBee

I was sure the narrator was a woman until the line "I'm a man of few words" probably because of the bitchy view offered of Elaine at the start. I'm not sure I quite get what makes the other girl so interesting though. If she is to be the mysterious centre I think perhaps she should be a bit more mysterious...

pickarooney

PurpleBee wrote: »

I was sure the narrator was a woman until the line "I'm a man of few words"

Same here.

alfa beta

you can write

but now you need to edit

the comments from pickarooney, purplebee and echobeach all point to one thing - the reader needs to get a better sense of of what (and who) the narrator is all about

the story is obviously going to lead to some sort of encounter between the narrator and the girl

as a writer you need to remember your narrator is often no more nor no less than any other character in your fiction